The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Relationship Between the Spiritual Science and the Natural Sciences I

[ 1 ] Today I will not be giving a lecture or a presentation, but rather discussing a few topics in a way that I believe is still lacking in our branches. To this end, I will draw upon the pamphlet *Science and Theosophy* by F. von Wrangell, published in Leipzig by Max Altmann in 1914.* In doing so, I would like to show, in particular, how one can build upon such a work in a discussion.^{1The indented quotations in this and the following lectures reproduce the entire text of the Wrangell pamphlet.}

[ 2 ] The title “Science and Theosophy” apparently touches on an issue that is important for us to consider, for we will very often find ourselves facing the objection that our movement is not scientific, or that scientists do not know what to make of it. In short, engaging with science in some way will certainly be necessary very often for some of us, for we will have to confront this objection and may also be pointed to various specific details in the process. Therefore, it will be helpful to take up the reflections of a man who considers himself to be fully immersed in the scientific spirit of the present, and of whom, once one has read through the pamphlet, one can readily say that he deals with the relationship between science and theosophy in a very astute manner—namely, in such a way that he establishes a connection that many who are actively engaged in the scientific enterprise of our time will attempt to establish. And we—or at least a certain number of us—must be able to engage with such people who wish to establish a relationship between science and theosophy.

[ 3 ] Since the brochure is also written in a spirit of goodwill toward Theosophy, we are not initially compelled to resort to polemics or criticism, but can build upon some of the author’s ideas, drawing on the specific nature of our spiritual striving. Of course, if some of us were to write such a brochure, we might even avoid the title “Theosophy” altogether, given the various experiences we have had in such debates. This is a question that can perhaps be examined more closely as we read through the brochure itself.

[ 4 ] The brochure is divided into separate, easy-to-follow chapters and features a quote from Kant as its motto, which reads:

“It is not correct to say, in the lecture halls of wisdom, that in a metaphysical sense there cannot be more than a single world.” Kant

[ 5 ] Taken out of context like this, one certainly cannot glean much from this statement by Kant. However, the author of this essay wishes to invoke Kant in the belief that Kant intended to say with this statement that the worldview constructed by the empirical sciences need not be regarded as the only possible one. Here, perhaps, the author of this essay has not quite accurately grasped Kant’s view, for in the relevant context Kant essentially means something else. Kant means: When a person reflects—reflects metaphysically—he can conceive of various real worlds, and the question then arises as to why, of these various conceivable possible worlds, the one in which we live is the one that exists for us; whereas for the author of this little treatise, the question is: Is it possible to have worldviews other than the materialistic one? Of course, he holds the view that precisely such a different, spiritual worldview must also apply to this world of ours.

[ 6 ] The journal then begins with its first article, titled:

Introduction

A powerful spiritual movement has currently taken hold of European cultural life, in contrast to the materialistic intellectual current that prevailed in intellectual circles around the middle of the 19th century.

[ 7 ] The author thus observes, as it were, the workings of intellectual activity around him and finds that things have changed from what they were in the mid-19th century; that around the middle of the 19th century, people found the salvation of science precisely in materialism, whereas now—at the time this little book was published, in 1914—a powerful spiritual movement has taken hold of European culture.

[ 8 ] He goes on to say:

What are the underlying reasons for this countercurrent? It seems to me that they lie not only in people’s metaphysical needs, but also—at least in part—in the widespread awareness of the danger to human civilization posed by the dominance of a materialistic worldview.

[ 9 ] The author of this little treatise, therefore, is among those who not only believe that a metaphysical need has awakened in humanity with the 20th century, but also believe that there is a certain moral danger in people’s minds being taken over by a materialistic worldview.

At an ever-increasing pace, the materialistic current of thought is pouring through numerous channels from the intellectual heights into the lower strata of human society, where it is displacing the religious convictions rooted in reverence that once provided a firm foundation for the moral life of the masses. It is becoming increasingly clear to many that the triumph of the materialist worldview inevitably leads to a materialist outlook on life and entails a corresponding way of life, which regards the exploitation of life’s brief span for as much pleasure as possible as the only reasonable way to live.

Even in earlier times, when a firm moral framework grounded in tradition and authority succumbed to corrosive intellectual criticism, the pursuit of crude sensual pleasure took hold of humanity and led it down disastrous paths that distanced it from what we perceive as its very purpose.

This is not contradicted by the fact that among men who, inspired by an unconditional love of truth, make the results of their research and thought known to their fellow human beings, regardless of the consequences this may entail—that among these men, many, if not most, stand at a high level of moral greatness and are driven by noble, selfless motives, fully convinced that they are thereby serving humanity.

[ 10 ] Here, the author points out that certain dangers to people’s moral lives must inevitably arise as a consequence of a materialistic worldview, and he says: This danger cannot be countered solely by the objection that those people who theoretically accept a materialistic worldview as their own and as the correct one are themselves at a high level of moral conduct.

[ 11 ] Based on his observations, the author touches on a point that I have alluded to repeatedly in our Spiritual Science—and I may well say, from a higher perspective. For when one says that a mind as eminently theoretical and materialistic as Haeckel’s, for example, is grounded in high moral ideals and also demonstrates a higher moral outlook in his life—and that therefore a materialistic worldview need not entail a materialistic way of life—one overlooks one thing—and I have pointed this out in various lectures I have given— namely, that in the development of humanity, feelings and thoughts evolve at different speeds.

[ 12 ] If one surveys even a brief period of human history, one finds that ideas evolve relatively quickly. Starting in the 15th and 16th centuries, materialistic thinking—the full expression of human theorizing in materialistic thought—developed rapidly, and all sciences have gradually become permeated, theoretically, by materialistic modes of thought. Moral life, which is lived out in feelings, has developed less rapidly. At least, people still show in their old sensibilities and feelings that the capacity for feeling has not advanced as rapidly. Therefore, people today still live in accordance with the moral sentiments that arose from the previous worldview, and that is why there is currently a conflict between materialistic thinking and the still-traditional, non-materialistic way of life and lifestyle. But the time is approaching when the consequences of the materialistic-theoretical worldview will be drawn, so that what one might call the moral life is about to be overwhelmed by the consequences of the materialistic worldview. One can thus significantly deepen one’s understanding of the different rates at which feelings and thoughts develop by viewing them from the perspective of Spiritual Science.

[ 13 ] It goes on to say:

But if the final result of this intellectual endeavor appears to us to be at odds with the purpose of human existence, then it is legitimate to ask whether there might not be a fundamental flaw in the seemingly so solid structure of critical thought?

[ 14 ] The author is therefore convinced that immorality must necessarily follow from theoretical materialism, and that he can only expect salvation for humanity from morality. And so he wonders whether a materialist worldview—which must necessarily lead to immorality—not only exhibits flaws but is inherently flawed when viewed critically. And so he continues:

Does this error manifest itself solely through emotion, or can it also be identified through reason? This question has occupied my mind as well, and in what follows I will attempt to clarify it for myself. I hope that my line of reasoning will also interest some readers who, like me, are convinced that it is more effective to combat an error of reason with its own weapons than to rely solely on emotion to counter it. To clarify my scientific standpoint, I should mention that I am an astronomer by training, that my independent work lies in the fields of theoretical meteorology and physical geography, and that from my early youth onward I have moved almost exclusively in academic circles, so that respect for rigorous science grounded in critical thinking has, so to speak, become second nature to me.

[ 15 ] This, however, allows the author to justify having something to say about the relationship between science and theosophy, because he demonstrates that he is familiar with science to a certain extent, and his judgment must therefore be infinitely more valuable than that of someone who, for example, reads Kant and says, “This is all nonsense,” “we Theosophists don’t need to read Kant,” thereby revealing that he himself has probably not seriously read and reflected on even five lines of Kant. It goes on to say:

I am firmly convinced that a worldview which cannot withstand rigorous intellectual scrutiny is not of lasting value, no matter how appealing it may be to the emotions. These introductory words are intended to inform the reader of the task I have set for myself in this work and the perspective from which I intend to address it.

[ 16 ] The following essay will briefly describe what the materialistic-mechanistic worldview is—that worldview which took shape over the course of the latter half of the 19th century in such a way that there were, and still are today, many, many people who consider what the author describes here in a few sentences to be the only scientifically possible worldview. Let us consider what the author writes:

The Basic Assumptions of a Materialistic-Mechanistic Worldview

Let us first consider the most essential basic assumptions of a materialistic-mechanistic worldview. They can be summarized in the following principles:

1. All events that we observe through our senses and perceive intellectually proceed according to laws; that is, every state of the cosmos is necessarily determined by the state that precedes it in time and just as necessarily gives rise to the states that follow it. All changes—that is, all events—are inevitable consequences of the forces present in the cosmos.

[ 17 ] Well, what the author here attempts to analyze as the basic assumption of the materialistic-mechanistic worldview has also been mentioned frequently in the course of our lectures. But if you compare what the author says here with the way it is presented in our lectures, you will notice the difference. And for those who wish to familiarize themselves with our consciousness of Spiritual Science, it is helpful to bring this difference to their attention.

[ 18 ] Anyone who reads through this first point—which characterizes the materialistic-mechanistic worldview in a beautiful, insightful, and scientifically informed manner—will see: this is very good; it accurately captures the materialistic-mechanistic worldview. But when we attempt to provide such a characterization in the lectures held for the purposes of our movement, we approach it in a different way, and it would be good to reflect on how differently we handle such matters.

[ 19 ] Isn't it true that Mr. von Wrangell is expressing what might be called a materialistic-mechanistic worldview? He speaks of his own accord, offering a few sentences in which he summarizes the impressions he has gained from the matter. You will have noticed—if you are at all inclined to notice such things—that I generally do not proceed in this way, but quite differently. I generally start from something that is there, something that truly exists as a result of a historical process. And so, if I wanted to characterize this point, I would not simply have spoken such sentences on my own, but I would have chosen one of the essential—and indeed, the good—authors in order to express, in the words and manner of such an author, what the matter in question is.

[ 20 ] I have often used the name Du Bois-Reymond as a starting point for material that could serve as a basis for my lectures. As a result, if you do not see the whole picture in context, you may often have come to believe that I intended to criticize Du Bois-Reymond. But I never intend to criticize; rather, I simply wish to highlight a characteristic representative so that it is not I who speak, but he. This is what we might call the “sense of fact” that is necessary for us—the sense that we do not make assertions, but let the facts speak for themselves. Thus, I have often recounted that Du Bois-Reymond delivered a speech on the understanding of nature at the Leipzig Congress of Natural Scientists in 1872. At that time, he also spoke about the way in which he had arrived at his conception of the world through his scientific research.

[ 21 ] Du Bois-Reymond is a physiologist by specialty. His main work lies in the field of neurophysiology. He has often spoken, in eloquent terms, about the worldview of natural scientists. For example, at the Leipzig Natural Scientists’ Conference in 1872, he spoke about the limits of the scientific worldview and the limits of our understanding of nature, and in doing so, he also spoke of the “Laplacean mind.” What is that? Du Bois-Reymond characterized it at the time. This “Laplacean mind” is one that is well-versed in contemporary mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and so on, and forms a worldview based on these sciences. Such a “Laplacean mind,” therefore, ends up forming a worldview that is based on so-called astronomical insights into reality.

[ 22 ] What, we might now ask, is the astronomical understanding of reality; what is astronomical knowledge? We can clarify this in a few words.

[ 23 ] The astronomer creates a mental image: the Sun, the planets, the Moon, the Earth; he creates a mental image of the planets orbiting the Sun or moving in ellipses around it; he creates a mental image of the force of attraction—gravity—acting on the planets; he creates a mental image of a centripetal force; and based on this centripetal force, he creates a mental image of the planets orbiting the Sun.

[ 24 ] Thus, the astronomer keeps in mind that he can observe the major events unfolding around him in outer space; that he can observe them through the material entities visible in space and through the forces they exert upon one another in space. Because these entities exert material forces upon one another, things are set in motion; that is to say, things are set in motion when one has a mental image of the solar system in this way and views it accordingly. One has a picture of the things spread out in space and of the events that unfold over the course of time.

[ 25 ] Now, anyone who, in the spirit of Du Bois-Reymond, wishes to form a worldview that is in step with the present says the following. We must assume that all matter consists of the smallest particles, of atoms. Just as a solar system consists of the sun, the moon, and the planets, so too does the smallest piece of matter consist of something similar to the sun and the planets. And just as the sun exerts forces, and just as the planets emit forces among themselves and interact with one another, so too do forces act among the individual atoms. This sets the atoms in motion. Thus, we have motion within every material particle. The atoms, like the sun and the planets, are in motion. Although these movements are small, they are such that we can compare them to the large movements exerted by the celestial bodies out there in space—that is, when we take the smallest piece of matter that we can see, something is happening inside it just as the astronomer has a mental image of it out there in the universe. And now natural science has come to create a mental image of all this in such a way that, wherever something is truly in motion, this stems from the fact that the atoms are guided by their own forces.

[ 26 ] In the second half of the 19th century, thermodynamics in particular—as established by Julius Robert Mayer, Joule, Tyndall, and Helmholtz, and further developed by Clausius and others—contributed to the formation of this worldview. Thus, when one touches a body and feels heat, one says: What one experiences as the sensation of “warmth” is merely an illusion. What truly exists out there is that the smallest particles—the atoms of the substance in question—are in motion; and one understands a state of heat when one knows how the atoms are moving—when, to use Du Bois-Reymond’s words, one has an “astronomical” understanding of it. The ideal of the Laplacian mind is to reach the point where one can say: What does heat have to do with me? My worldview depends on my discovering the motion of the atoms, which, through their motion, bring about everything we experience as heat, light, and so on. This Laplacian mind, then, forms a worldview consisting of space, matter with its active forces, and motion. In that lecture he gave on the limits of scientific knowledge at the Leipzig Naturalists’ Society, Du Bois-Reymond thus sets forth this ideal of the Laplacian mind and asks: What would such a Laplacian mind be capable of?

[ 27 ] You see, his ideal is the astronomical understanding of the world. When a mathematician takes the image of our solar system as it is at any given moment, he need only plug certain numbers into his formula to obtain a picture of what it was like an hour ago, three hours ago, ten years ago, or centuries ago. How does one go about this if one wants to calculate whether a solar or lunar eclipse took place at a specific time during the first decade of our calendar? There are formulas developed based on the current state of science. One need only plug the corresponding numbers into the formula to calculate every single state. One can calculate when a solar eclipse will occur—say, in the year 1970 or in the year 2728. In short, one can calculate every state preceding or following that point in time. And now, a mind like Laplace’s would need to have the formula that encompasses this entire solar system. So anyone who possessed this “Laplacean mind”—one that encompassed the atoms in space and all their states of motion—could—as Du Bois-Reymond also says—use the “world formula” derived from the atoms and their current states of motion to calculate, for example, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. He would only need to plug the necessary values into the formula. It would depend solely on how the atoms were arranged at that time, and the fact that “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” would follow from that. — If one substitutes certain values into the formula, a certain picture of the current state of the atoms would emerge, and then one could, for example, discern the Battle of Salamis. One would only need to proceed from differential to differential, and one would be able to reconstruct the entire Battle of Salamis. That is the ideal of the Laplacian mind: a knowledge of the world that is called astronomical. There may be more to add on these matters from time to time. For now, I’d just like to mention a small experience for those who are paying close attention. As a boy, I once came across a school yearbook. Such yearbooks are, of course, printed. They usually contain an essay written by one of the teachers. At the time, this essay was not entirely easy for me to understand, for it was titled “The Force of Attraction Considered as the Effect of Motion.” Even back then, I was dealing with an author who, so to speak, had also set himself the ideal of the Laplacian mind; and he had elaborated on many other points along the same lines.

[ 28 ] If you take all of this together, you will see that I did not attempt to speak merely of an abstract idea of an astronomical-materialist worldview, but rather let the facts and the personalities themselves speak, so that, in a certain sense, I truly strove to cultivate a style of presentation that eliminates the personal. For when I tell you what Du Bois-Reymond said on a particular occasion, I let him speak and not myself. My task is simply to follow up on what these figures have said; I try to let the world speak. This is an attempt to set myself aside, not to recount my own views, but to present facts. When reading this passage by Wrangell, one should be particularly aware that our Spiritual Science already strives, in the very manner of its presentation, for a sense of the facts—not merely to skim over the objective, but to delve deeply into the facts, to truly immerse oneself in them.

[ 29 ] Now you will recognize what I have distilled from the facts when you let the following lines from the pamphlet sink in once more: “All events that we observe through our senses and perceive mentally proceed according to laws; that is, every state of the cosmos is necessarily conditioned by the state that precedes it in time and just as necessarily gives rise to the states that follow it. All changes—that is, all events—are inevitable consequences of the forces present in the cosmos.”

[ 30 ] And now it continues:

It does not affect the essence of the question whether—for the sake of clarity—one calls the carrier of these forces “matter” or, following the monists, forms a mental image of “energy” as the sole active force, which, while presenting various forms of appearance to the human senses, essentially represents an unchanging sum of latent or actual possibilities of motion.

[ 31 ] I, too, would rarely phrase a sentence like that—and only if other ideas have already been summarized. Do you recall that I once spoke about what is expressed in this sentence? It reads: “It does not affect the essence of the question whether one—for the sake of greater clarity—calls the bearer of forces ‘matter’ or, following the monists, forms a mental image of the concept of ‘energy’ as the sole active force...” I would not put it that way, but I would indeed point to the students of Haeckel and Büchner, who focus above all on the matter spread out in space. These were, in the words of the Swabian Vischer, the “Stoffhuber.”

[ 32 ] Then came the man who is now the chairman of the Monist League: Ostwald. At a meeting of natural scientists—I believe it was the one in Kiel, which I have already mentioned—he gave a lecture on overcoming materialism through energetics, through “energism.” There he pointed out that what matters is not matter, but force. So he replaced matter with force. Do you remember how I quoted his own words from back then? He said, in essence: When one person slaps another, what matters to the person receiving the slap is not the matter but the force with which the slap is delivered. Nowhere do we perceive matter, but rather force. And so force was substituted for matter—or, to use not merely a rephrasing but a transformation: energy. But this “energism,” which now calls itself monism, is nothing other than masked materialism. Once again, I tried to show you with an example how there really was a time when the “matter-worshippers” were replaced by the “energy-worshippers.” I did not attempt to present a theoretical proposition, but rather sought to characterize the reality as it is. And that must be our aim in general. For it is only by having a sense of reality in the physical realm that we can develop a sense of reality in the spiritual realm—rather than merely dabbling in our own assertions.

[ 33 ] Thus, the author of the pamphlet states: “It does not affect the essence of the question whether—for the sake of greater clarity—one calls the carrier of forces ‘matter’ or, following the example of the monists, forms a mental image of the concept of ‘energy’ as the sole active force...” Heat is one way—as it were, the tool—of receiving slaps; light is the other way. And when one considers the various sense organs, one must say that the slaps have a different effect in each case. When they strike the eyes, for example, the same slaps appear as light phenomena. That is also the theory. Just look at the words once more: “It does not affect the essence of the question whether—for the sake of greater clarity—one calls the bearer of the forces ‘matter’ or, following the monists, forms a mental image of ‘energy’ as the sole active force, which, while presenting various forms of appearance to the human senses, fundamentally represents an unchanging sum of latent or actual possibilities of movement.”

[ 34 ] You can understand what the author means here by the phrase “latent or actual possibilities of motion” as follows: Imagine a support here, and on top of it a tube—a glass tube—containing water. This water exerts pressure on the bottom of the tube. The moment I remove the support, the water flows down. In the latter case, we are dealing with an actual movement; before I removed the support, the same force was present, but it was not active—it was at rest. Everything that then flowed down from the water and became active was previously latent, not active.

The course of all events is fixed and unchangeable, and human beings, too, are just as unfree in their thinking, feeling, and willing as, for example, a stone in its fall.

[ 35 ] This is the necessary consequence of Laplace’s worldview. That is, if I place my hand there—which is an image of the moving atoms—and if the Laplacian mind can still calculate that image, as I have indicated, then this rules out human freedom; that is, the Laplacian mind rules out human freedom.

[ 36 ] This is the first point that Mr. von Wrangell raises from the perspective of a materialistic-mechanistic worldview. The second point is as follows:

2. The inner experiences that take place in human consciousness (one’s feelings, thoughts, and volitional impulses) are not fundamentally different from other processes in nature that humans observe through their senses. These inner experiences are merely byproducts of material processes within the human brain and nervous system.

[ 37 ] This second point thus expresses the idea that when I think, feel, and will, these are merely accompanying phenomena of the internal processes that Laplace’s head selects for itself. We are therefore not dealing with independent thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, but only with accompanying phenomena. If you follow what I have said, for example, in the lecture “The Legacy of the 19th Century” and in other similar lectures, if you study some of what is contained in *The Riddles of Philosophy*, then you will see how many thinkers in the second half of the 19th century came to regard as self-evident the view that human beings are in fact nothing other than the structure of material processes and their energies, and that thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will are merely accompanying phenomena.

[ 38 ] As the third point of the materialistic-mechanistic worldview, Mr. von Wrangell states the following:

3. After a person’s physical death, the existence of the individual human being comes to a definitive end, since a person’s so-called spiritual life is bound to their physical body and cannot exist without it.

[ 39 ] Anyone can see this point as a consequence of the first point. The first point is what matters. The second and third are necessary consequences.

[ 40 ] In the next short essay, Mr. von Wrangell discusses what he calls:

Examining These Basic Assumptions

On what are these basic assumptions of the materialist worldview based? Are they indisputably proven facts, or merely more or less probable hypotheses? The most important and far-reaching of the three aforementioned assumptions is the first one—the idea of the necessary course of all events. It is regarded as beyond all doubt not only by materialists but also by many spiritualists, who, while accepting the independent existence of spiritual beings and believing in the continued existence of the human spiritual essence—their “soul”—after physical death, nevertheless accept the immutable laws governing both the spiritual world and the sensory world. First, then, let it be established that this mental image of unconditional, exceptionless regularity—that is, the necessity of all events, even in the spiritual realm—excludes the concept of morality, of good and evil; for to act morally means to choose the good when the evil could be chosen.

[ 41 ] In this short chapter, Mr. von Wrangell attempts to make clear that morality cannot exist if the materialistic-mechanistic worldview is the only correct one. For if I must do, at every moment of my life, what is merely a byproduct of the atoms, then there can be no question of freedom, nor can there be any question of morality, since everything is done out of necessity. Just as one cannot say that a stone falling to the ground is good, and one that does not fall to the ground is not good, so too one cannot say of human actions that they are good or not good. In the case of a criminal, everything happens out of necessity; in the case of a good person, everything happens out of necessity. Therefore, there is some truth in the statement: “ First, let it be established that this mental image of unconditional, exceptionless lawfulness—that is, the necessity of all events, including those in the spiritual realm—excludes the concept of morality, of good and evil; for to act morally means to choose the good when the evil could be chosen.” But one cannot choose if everything is bound by materialistic necessity.

[ 42 ] The next chapter is titled:

Freedom and Morality

As soon as there is no freedom of choice, there can be no question of morality in the sense in which this concept is understood by human beings and in which it corresponds to our inner feelings. We can certainly speak of more or less useful, unfree actions and impulses, but a moral judgment of unfree actions or feelings has no justification and no meaning. With the elimination of freedom, responsibility also ceases to exist. This indisputable connection between freedom and morality cannot serve as an argument against the concept of lawfulness; it is merely intended to remind us of the logical consequences associated with the assumption of unconditional necessity.

[ 43 ] Thus, Mr. von Wrangell seeks to make it clear here that it necessarily follows from the materialistic-mechanistic worldview that one cannot really speak of freedom and morality.

[ 44 ] Now, he is a scientific mind, and a scientific mind is accustomed to drawing the consequences of premises in a genuine, honest manner. Our age misses much that would immediately strike it as absurd if it had truly already adopted a scientific conscience—if it did not, lacking such a conscience, mix and jumble together all sorts of things. Mr. von Wrangell does not do this; rather, he says: If we accept the materialist worldview, we can no longer speak of freedom and morality; for either the materialist worldview is correct—in which case it is nonsense to speak of freedom and morality—or we speak of freedom and morality—in which case it makes no sense to speak of the materialist-mechanical worldview.

[ 45 ] But since Mr. von Wrangell is a scientist who is already accustomed to drawing the consequences of his premises—and that is an important fact—he is not accustomed to being so sloppy in his thinking; for it is a sloppiness of thought when someone says, “I am a materialist,” without at the same time denying morality. He does not wish to be guilty of this sloppiness of thought. On the other hand, he also has the habit that one tends to develop when one becomes a scientist, namely to say: “Let the world fall to pieces—what I have scientifically discovered must be true!” Therefore, one cannot simply say, “Let’s discard the materialist worldview”; rather, if the materialist worldview is true, it must be accepted—and then one is faced with the sad necessity of having to cast morality overboard. So it is not merely a matter of asking, “Where does morality lead us?”—he says that is not enough—but rather the materialist worldview must be examined, quite apart from whatever consequences this may have for morality. Thus, a different approach to the materialist worldview must be taken.

[ 46 ] The next chapter is titled:

The Mystery of the World

Yes, one can say that the question of whether human beings are responsible for their actions—that is, whether they have the ability to regulate their volitional impulses according to motives that are “clearly determined by their physical constitution”—that this question of the freedom or lack of freedom of the will encompasses the entire mystery of the universe for us humans. For if this question is answered in terms of the necessity of all events—which applies absolutely and without exception throughout the entire universe—then materialism is the only correct view, and the world, with all its torment and suffering, is a mechanism operating without purpose, without a discernible beginning, but with the eternal death of the whole as its ultimate goal.

[ 47 ] When we began our Spiritual Science movement, I had occasion to read aloud some poems by the poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, who, one might say, has come to embrace a materialistic-mechanistic worldview and, even as a poet, truly draws the logical conclusions from it. That is why she has written poems such as “Existence is a filthy whirlwind.” — One must surely arrive at this conclusion if one is not sloppy in one’s thinking, if one allows one’s thoughts to influence one’s feelings. And it is only because people are so careless and so cowardly in their thinking that they do not ask themselves the question: What becomes of life under the influence of a materialistic-mechanistic worldview? — But one must show that it is inherently flawed; otherwise, one would simply have accepted the consequences of delle Grazie’s view.

[ 48 ] Mr. von Wrangell goes on to say:

The greatest minds and the deepest thinkers have sought to solve this most important of all questions, and it seems presumptuous to attempt to say anything new on the matter. However, this cannot be a universally valid answer, but at most a hint at the train of thought that led to a subjective solution to the riddle. Such a hint can sometimes be of help to a kindred spirit.

[ 49 ] Mr. von Wrangell thus points out that the greatest minds—poets and thinkers—have sought to resolve this question, and that it is unnecessary to attempt to say anything new on the matter. At most, it could be a reference to the train of thought that led to a subjective solution to this riddle—that is, a reference to his own train of thought.

[ 50 ] In the next chapter, he examines the origin of our mental image that what precedes always logically entails what follows. It states:

The Origin of Regularity

From this perspective, it seems justified to raise the question: From where do we derive the mental image of the unconditional regularity of all events? Is it, perhaps, an immediate, intuitive truth underlying all thought, or has humanity only gradually, through long and arduous intellectual labor, arrived at this mental image—a mental image that now appears to Europeans, who draw on the cultural achievements of the past, as a self-evident truth?

[ 51 ] Mr. von Wrangell asks here: Is it the case that humans have always believed in this unconditional lawfulness, or have they only come to believe in it over the course of time? Only then can one recognize the validity of this mental image; for if people have always believed in it, it must contain something that is self-evidently true; but if people have only gradually come to accept it, one can examine how they arrived at this mental image. In this way, one can form an opinion about its validity. He goes on to say:

The latter is the case. This is an acquired, not an innate, insight. On the contrary, human beings’ innate, immediate consciousness gives them the idea of inner freedom limited by external circumstances—that is, of arbitrariness in their volitional decisions. The mental image of regularity is derived only gradually from experience.

[ 52 ] Well, as you can see from countless lectures of mine, it took a long time for people to arrive at this mental image of regularity—from ancient clairvoyance all the way to the time when the mental image of regularity emerged. In truth, the mental image of regularity is only four centuries old, for it essentially stems from Galileo. I have discussed this on several occasions. If one goes back to the time before Galileo, there is absolutely no notion that everything is permeated by such regularity.

[ 53 ] Mr. von Wrangell says: “This is an acquired, not an innate, understanding... The mental image of regularity is only gradually derived from experience.” — Well, I would like to know whether the child is compelled by its inner astral conditions to reach for the sugar—that is, whether it comes naturally to the child, or whether the child feels it already has a choice. I have told something like an anecdote before, which I would like to recount here as well. It was during my student days; I used to walk back and forth with a fellow student in the lobby of Vienna’s Südbahnhof. He was a die-hard materialist and firmly held the view that all thinking is merely a process in the brain, just like the hands of a clock moving forward. And just as one cannot speak of it as something special—but rather as something connected to the mechanical substances and forces present within it—so he believed that the brain, too, performs these astronomical movements. He had a Laplacian mind; we were eighteen or nineteen years old at the time. So I said to him once: “But you never say ‘my brain thinks’; instead, you say ‘I think.’ Why are you lying about that all the time? Why do you always say ‘I think’ and not ‘my brain thinks’?” — Well, this fellow student had derived his knowledge—the ideas of volitional decision and regularity—not from experience, but from convoluted theories. He did not believe in inner arbitrariness, yet he said “I think” and not “my brain thinks.” He was thus in constant contradiction with himself.

[ 54 ] The next chapter is titled:

Free will cannot be proven empirically

Can this contradiction be resolved rationally? It is evident that no proof based on experience can be provided for the free will of humans or other beings. To do so would require demonstrating that, in an actual case, the same being made two different decisions under identical circumstances.

[ 55 ] Mr. von Wrangell thus says that the truth of human free will cannot be proven through external experience, because one can make only one decision. If one wanted to prove it, one would have to be able to make two decisions. Well, I have already explained that in this matter one does not rely on experience at all, but rather constructs an experience. For example, imagine a donkey with a bundle of hay on its left and another on its right—both equally tasty and of the same size. The donkey, growing hungrier and hungrier, must now decide whether to eat from one bundle of hay or the other, since one is just as tasty as the other and just as large as the other. And so it does not know whether to turn this way or that. In short, the donkey could not reach a decision and had to starve to death between the two bundles of hay. — Such concepts were devised because people felt that, based on experience, it is impossible to observe freedom. Mr. von Wrangell draws attention to this and then asks the question:

[ 56 ] But can free will be empirically refuted? To answer this question, let us first recall a few epistemological truths!

[ 57 ] To answer this question, Mr. von Wrangell discusses several epistemological truths in the next short chapter. This chapter is titled:

An Epistemological Retrospective

Human beings have direct consciousness only of themselves. They feel desires that they seek to satisfy and that trigger impulses of the will within them; they receive impressions of which they soon become convinced that they depend on certain sensory organs of their body. When they close their eyes, they receive no impressions of light or color; when they cover their ears, they weaken or completely lose their auditory sensations. Similarly, experience shows them that the nose mediates the sense of smell, and the mouth—in its parts covered by mucous membranes—mediates the sense of taste. Only the sense of touch seems to be unbound to any particular part of the body; it can be exercised through the entire skin. A normal, healthy person has five different senses while awake that convey impressions to him, with each sense conveying its own specific type of impression.

[ 58 ] Here, Mr. von Wrangell is influenced by the popular understanding of the senses. Those who once attended a short series of lectures that I titled “Anthroposophy” at the time will have seen that five senses are not enough; rather, one must assume there are twelve senses. Among these twelve senses is also the sense for another’s thinking, for another’s “I”; and therefore, anyone who has properly followed our Spiritual Science movement can recognize the shortcomings of Wrangell’s assertions. They are not incorrect, to be sure, but they are only partially correct. We cannot say: “Human beings have direct consciousness only of themselves.” That is incorrect. For then we could never perceive other selves.

[ 59 ] In recent times, there has indeed been a rather convoluted view held by all sorts of people. Perhaps the philosopher and psychologist Lipps could be cited as a representative figure among those who hold this view. They are not aware that when they encounter a person, they have an immediate impression of that person’s “I”; rather, they say: When I encounter a person, that person has a face; it makes certain movements, and the person says certain things, and from what the person says and does, one is supposed to be able to conclude that there is an “I” behind it all. Thus, the “I” is something inferred, not something perceived directly. In contrast, a new school of philosophy, well represented by Max Scheler, holds a different view. It has already recognized that one can have a direct impression of another person’s “I.” And what Husserl, the philosopher, wrote about the “I”—in a more strictly scientific vein—and what Scheler wrote, in a somewhat more popular style, particularly in his more recent essays, shows that modern philosophy is on the path to recognizing that direct consciousness can also know something about another consciousness. — One could therefore say that Mr. von Wrangell has been influenced by popular epistemology when he states: “Human beings have direct consciousness only of themselves.” And further: “They feel desires that they seek to satisfy and that trigger impulses of the will within them.” He then describes how human beings perceive the world through their senses.

[ 60 ] I have also written about this physiology of the senses. Look it up in *Luzifer-Gnosis* and you will see that I tried to clarify the impossibility of this physiology of the senses using the simple analogy of a seal. I said at the time: This physiology of the senses is materialistic from the very outset. It assumes that nothing from the outside can enter us, because it secretly creates a materialistic mental image of the outside world. But it is just like the seal and the sealing wax: The seal always remains outside the sealing wax; nothing of the seal’s material substance passes into the sealing wax. But the name “Müller,” which is engraved on it, does indeed pass entirely from the seal into the sealing wax. If one now places the primary value on what is spiritually expressed in the name “Müller”—and not on the material aspect, from which nothing passes over—then one can see that what is put forward by sensory physiology means absolutely nothing. But these are teachings so deeply ingrained in people’s minds that most simply do not question them, even if they wish to become spiritualists. You can read more about this in my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*, in the chapter titled “The World as Illusion.”

[ 61 ] Mr. von Wrangell then continues:

Since human beings cannot conceive of an existing state changing without a cause, they assume that the sensory impressions they perceive are brought about by causes that they locate outside their own immediately perceived self. They call these external causes of their internal sensory impressions “things” and, in their totality, “the world” or—in epistemological terms—the “non-self,” as opposed to the immediately perceived “self.”

[ 62 ] That's clear; you just have to get used to the fact that the discussion touches a bit on epistemology.

A wealth of experience and the resulting harmony with beings he recognizes as similar to himself—his fellow human beings—teach him that these “things,” the “non-self,” can exist even independently of his consciousness.

[ 63 ] Otherwise, a person would have to believe that when he turns his gaze away not only from living things but also from inanimate objects, those objects cease to exist.

For example, when a person loses consciousness during sleep, upon waking he finds that things continue to exist in their “reality”—that is, in their ability to evoke sensory impressions in him. A person also recognizes his own body as, in a certain sense, belonging to the world “outside of him.”

[ 64 ] It's good to emphasize this, because we have not only things that are inside, but also things that are outside.

He can receive sensory impressions from his limbs, just as he does from other things; for example, he can see his hands, touch them, etc., and here, too, he distinguishes between the internal process of his sensory impressions and their external cause, which in this case he recognizes as one of his body parts. He soon becomes convinced that it is his body—that is, that this thing is in a very special connection with his “I,” that is, with what feels and thinks there—primarily through the sense of touch, which shows him that when he brings his own body parts into contact with other things, he feels the contact directly, whereas he does not immediately perceive it when other objects are brought into contact with one another.” ^{2In the brochure itself, the following footnote appears here: “The ‘separation of the faculty of sensation in sensitives’ observed by de Rochas is a particular abnormal phenomenon that deserves thorough study.”}

[ 65 ] It is very good to have one’s attention drawn to something like this. This, then, is how Mr. von Wrangell answers the question of how a person comes to recognize his own body among the things that exist in the space outside. Those who think carelessly simply say to themselves: Thinking about something like this is nonsense; only so-called scientists would think about such things. — But Wrangell says: When these two pieces of chalk collide, it doesn’t hurt, but when I bump into something with my body, it hurts. That is the difference. And because one hurts and the other does not, I designate the one as belonging to me, and the other as not belonging to me. — It is good to know that we have nothing other than the consequence of this consciousness.

[ 66 ] Well, you see, my dear friends, I had intended to conclude today’s discussion with this pamphlet. But we have only gotten as far as page 10. We should at least attempt to find the connection between what is written in the world and what, in the strictest sense, belongs to our Spiritual Science. But the next chapters are still too interesting: the formation of concepts; mental images of space and time; the principle of causality; the application of the concept of arbitrariness to the environment; the observation of uniform phenomena; the nature of all science; astronomy, the oldest science; uniform motion; measurement; and the principle underlying clocks. — It’s so interesting that perhaps we should continue our discussion tomorrow at seven o’clock.