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Title: Man or Matter

Author: Ernst Lehrs

Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5641]
Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OR
MATTER ***

Man or Matter

MAN OR MATTER

Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature
on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought

by

ERNST LEHRS Ph. D.

Contents

PREFACE

Part I

SCIENCE AT THE THRESHOLD

I. INTRODUCTORY

The author's search for a way of extending the boundaries of scientific understanding. A meeting with Rudolf Steiner, and with the
work arising from his teachings.

II. WHERE DO WE STAND TO-DAY?

The self-restriction of scientific inquiry to one-eyed colourblind observation. Its effect: The lack of a true conception of 'force'.

III. THE ONLOOKER'S PHILOSOPHIC MALADY

Thought - the sole reality and yet a pure non-entity for the modern spectator. Descartes and Hume. Robert Hooke's 'proof' of the
non-reality of conceptual thinking. The modern principle of Indeterminacy - a sign that science is still dominated by the Humean
way of thinking.

IV. THE COUNTRY THAT IS NOT OURS

Electricity, man's competitor in modern civilization. The onlooker in search of the soul of nature. Galvani and Crookes. Paradoxes
in the discovery of electricity. 'Something unknown is doing we don't know what.'

Part II GOETHEANISM - WHENCE AND WHITHER

V. THE ADVENTURE OF REASON

Kant and Goethe. Goethe's study of the plant - a path toward seeing with the eye-of-the-spirit. Nature a script that asks to be read.

VI. EXCEPT WE BECOME ...

Spiritual kinsmen of Goethe in the British sphere of human culture.
Thomas Reid's philosophic discovery, its significance for the overcoming of the onlooker-standpoint in science. The picture of
man inherent in Reid's philosophy. Man's original gift of remembering his pre-earthly life. The disappearance of this memory in
the past, and its re-appearance in modern times. Pelagius versus Augustine. Wordsworth and Traherne. Traherne, a 'Reidean before
Reid was born'.

VII. 'ALWAYS STAND BY FORM'

Ruskin and Howard - two readers in the book of nature. Goethe's meteorological ideas. His conception of the urphenomenon.
Goethe and Howard.

VIII. DYNAMICS VERSUS KINETICS

The onlooker science - by necessity a 'pointer-reading' science. The onlooker's misjudgment of the cognitive value of the
impressions conveyed by the senses. The Parallelogram of Forces - its fallacious kinematic and its true dynamic interpretation.
The roots in man of his concepts 'mass' and 'force'. The formula F=ma. The origin of man's faculty of mathematical thinking.

IX. PRO LEVITATE

(a) ALERTNESS CONTRA INERTNESS

Limitations of the validity of the concept 'inertia'. Restatement of Newton's
first law. Introduction of the term 'magical' as opposed to mechanical. The
phenomenon of the rising arm. Introduction of the term 'alertness' as
opposed to 'inertness' (inertia).
Van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter. The four Elements. The old concept of 'Chaos'. Young and old matter. The
natural facts behind the ancient fire rites. The event on Mount Sinai.

(b) LEVITY CONTRA GRAVITY

The Contra Levitatem maxim of the Florentine Academicians. Ruskin's warning against science as an interpreter of its own
observations. How man's inner nature and the outer universe interpret one another. The Solfatara phenomenon. The super-physical
character of Levity.

X. THE FOURTH STATE OF MATTER

The need of raising scientific inquiry to nature's upper border. The laws of Conservation, their origin and their validity. Joule and
Mayer.
Extension of the field-concept from the central to the peripheral field-type. Natural phenomena brought about by the suctional
effect of the earth's levity-field. The different conditions of matter seen in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. Heat, the fourth
state of matter. Procreation of physical substance - a natural fact. The case of Tillandsia. The problem of the trace-elements.
Homeopathy, an example of the effect of dematerialized matter. The meteorological circuit of water. The nature of lightning.

XI. MATTER AS PART OF NATURE'S ALPHABET

The origin of the scientific conception of the chemical element. Study of some prototypes of physical substances in the light of the
levity-gravity polarity. The functional concept of matter. The complete order of polarities - cold-warm, dry-moist - in the doctrine
of the four elements. The position of sulphur and phosphorus in this respect. Vulcanism and snow-formation as manifestations of
functional sulphur and phosphorus respectively. The process of crystallization. Carbon as a mediator between sulphur and
phosphorus. The alchemical triad.

XII. SPACE AND COUNTER-SPACE

Geometrical considerations required by the recognition of levity. The value in this respect of projective geometrical thinking.
Geometrical polarities of the first and second order.

XIII. 'RADIANT MATTER'

Electricity and magnetism as manifestations of interacting levity and gravity. Electricity - a product of disintegrating matter.
Modern physics, no longer a 'natural' science. Eddington's question,' Manufacture or Discovery?' Man's enhanced responsibility in
the age of physical science.

XIV. COLOURS AS 'DEEDS AND SUFFERINGS OF LIGHT'

Goethe's Farbenlehre - the foundation of an optical science based on the colour-seeing faculty of the eye. The modern physicist's
view of the Newtonian interpretation of the spectrum. A short history of Goethe's search for a satisfactory conception of Light and
Colour. His discovery of Newton's cardinal error. First results of his own studies. The 'negative' spectrum.

XV. SEEING AS 'DEED' - I

Goethe's way of studying the totality of the act of seeing. The 'inner light'.

XVI. SEEING AS 'DEED' - II

Extension of Goethe's inquiry to a pursuit of the act of seeing beyond the boundaries of the body.

XVII. OPTICS OF THE DOER

Purging optics from its onlooker-concepts. The role of foregone conclusions in the physical conception of light. The true aspect of
the so-called velocity of light.

XVIII. THE SPECTRUM AS A SCRIPT OF THE SPIRIT

Evaluation of the foregoing studies for a new understanding of the prismatic phenomenon. The secret of the rainbow. Intimation of
new possibilities of experimental research guided by the new conception of the spectrum.

Part III TOWARDS A NEW COSMOLOGY

XIX. THE COUNTRY IN WHICH MAN IS NOT A STRANGER

(a) INTRODUCTORY NOTE

From Goethe's seeing with the eye-of-the-spirit to Spiritual Imagination. Levity (Ether) as revealed to Spiritual Imagination.

(b) - (e) WARMTH LIGHT SOUND LIFE

The four modifications of ether. Their relation to the four elements.

XX. PRO ANIMA

(a) THE WELL-SPRINGS OF NATURE'S DEEDS AND SUFFERINGS

The sentient (astral) forces of the cosmos as governors of the various interactions between levity and gravity. The astral aspect of
the planetary system. Its reflexion in earthly substances. Beginnings of an astral conception of the human organism in modern

physiology.

(b) HEARING AS DEED

A Goetheanistic study of acoustic phenomena and of the sense of hearing. From hearing with the ear-of-the-spirit to Spiritual
Inspiration.

(c) KEPLER AND THE 'MUSIC OF THE SPHERES'

Goethe's view of Kepler. Kepler's third law - a revelation of the musical order of the universe.

XXI. KNOW THYSELF

INDEX

Illustrations

IN COLOUR

A The relation of the electrical polarity to Levity and Gravity

B The Spectrum phenomenon as conceived by Goethe

C Light under the action of a transverse field-gradient

MONOCHROME

I. Robert Hooke's 'proof' of the non-reality of human concepts

II. Leaf-metamorphosis

III. Leaf-metamorphosis

IV. Goethe's sketch of a cloud-formation

V. A Snow-Crystal

VI. A cluster of Calcite crystals

VII. Various species of bacteria

VIII. Various species of fresh-water algae

Author's Note

The author makes grateful acknowledgment of the help he has gained from
other works in the wide field opened up by Rudolf Steiner, and of his debt
to the friends who in various ways assisted him in preparing his manuscript.

Quotations have been made from the following books by kind permission of
their respective publishers:

The Life of Sir William Crookes by E. E. Fournier d'Albe (Messrs. Ernest
Benn Ltd.);
Man the Unknown by A. Carrel (Messrs. Hamish Hamilton Ltd.);
The Philosophy of Physical Science and The Nature of The Physical
Worldly A.. Eddington (University Press, Cambridge);
Science and the Human Temperament by E. Schrödinger (Messrs. George
Allen and Unwin Ltd.);
Centuries of Meditations and Poetical Works by Th. Traherne (Messrs. P. J.
and A. E. Dobell).

Preface

In this book the reader will find expounded a method of investigating nature
by means of which scientific understanding can be carried across the
boundaries of the physical-material to the supersensible sources of all

natural events, and thereby into the realm where is rooted the true being of
man.

The beginnings of this method were worked out by Goethe more than 150
years ago. The nineteenth century, however, failed to provide any fertile
ground for the development of the seeds thus sown. It was left to Rudolf
Steiner, shortly before the end of the century, to recognize the significance
of 'Goetheanism' for the future development not only of science but of
human culture in general. It is to him, also, that we owe the possibility of
carrying on Goethe's efforts in the way required by the needs of our own
time.

The following pages contain results of the author's work along the path thus
opened up by Goethe and Rudolf Steiner - a work begun twenty-seven
years ago, soon after he had made the acquaintance of Rudolf Steiner. With
the publication of these results he addresses himself to everyone - with or
without a specialized scientific training - who is concerned with the fate of
man's powers of cognition in the present age.

*

The reader may welcome a remark as to the way in which this book needs
to be read.

It has not been the author's intention to provide an encyclopaedic collection
of new conceptions in various fields of natural observation. Rather did he
wish, as the sub-title of the book indicates, to offer a new method of
training both mind and eye (and other senses as well), by means of which
our modern 'onlooking' consciousness can be transformed into a new kind
of 'participating' consciousness. Hence it would be of no avail to pick out
one chapter or another for first reading, perhaps because of some special
interest in its subject-matter. The chapters are stages on a road which has to
be travelled, and each stage is necessary for reaching the next. It is only
through thus accepting the method with which the book has been written
that the reader will be able to form a competent judgment of its essential
elements.

E. L.

Hawkwood College Easter 1950

PART I

Science at the Threshold

CHAPTER I

Introductory

If I introduce this book by relating how I came to encounter Rudolf Steiner
and his work, more than twenty-five years ago, and what decided me not
only to make his way of knowledge my own, but also to enter
professionally into an activity inspired by his teachings, it is because in this
way I can most directly give the reader an impression of the kind of spirit
out of which I have written. I am sure, too, that although what I have to say
in this chapter is personal in content, it is characteristic of many in our time.

When I first made acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner and his work, I was
finishing my academic training as an electrical engineer. At the end of the
1914-18 war my first thought had been to take up my studies from where I
had let them drop, four years earlier. The war seemed to imply nothing
more than a passing interruption of them. This, at any rate, was the opinion
of my former teachers; the war had made no difference whatever to their
ideas, whether on the subject-matter of their teaching or on its educational
purpose. I myself, however, soon began to feel differently. It became
obvious to me that my relationship to my subject, and therefore to those
teaching it, had completely changed. What I had experienced through the
war had awakened in me a question of which I had previously been
unaware; now I felt obliged to put it to everything I came across.

As a child of my age I had grown up in the conviction that it was within the
scope of man to shape his life according to the laws of reason within him;
his progress, in the sense in which I then understood it, seemed assured by
his increasing ability to determine his own outer conditions with the help of
science. Indeed, it was the wish to take an active part in this progress that
had led me to choose my profession. Now, however, the war stood there as
a gigantic social deed which I could in no way regard as reasonably
justified. How, in an age when the logic of science was supreme, was it
possible that a great part of mankind, including just those peoples to whom
science had owed its origin and never-ceasing expansion, could act in so
completely unscientific a way? Where lay the causes of the contradiction
thus revealed between human thinking and human doing?

Pursued by these questions, I decided after a while to give my studies a new
turn. The kind of training then provided in Germany at the so-called
Technische Hochschulen was designed essentially to give students a close
practical acquaintance with all sorts of technical appliances; it included
only as much theory as was wanted for understanding the mathematical
calculations arising in technical practice. It now seemed to me necessary to
pay more attention to theoretical considerations, so as to gain a more exact
knowledge of the sources from which science drew its conception of nature.
Accordingly I left the Hochschule for a course in mathematics and physics
at a university, though without abandoning my original idea of preparing for
a career in the field of electrical engineering. It was with this in mind that I
later chose for my Ph.D. thesis a piece of experimental research on the uses
of high-frequency electric currents.

During my subsequent years of stuffy, however, I found myself no nearer an
answer to the problem that haunted me. All that I experienced, in scientific
work as in life generally, merely gave it an even sharper edge. Everywhere I
saw an abyss widening between human knowing and human action. How
often was I not bitterly disillusioned by the behaviour of men for whose
ability to think through the most complicated scientific questions I had the
utmost admiration!

On all sides I found this same bewildering gulf between scientific
achievement and the way men conducted their own lives and influenced the

lives of others. I was forced to the conclusion that human thinking, at any
rate in its modern form, was either powerless to govern human actions, or at
least unable to direct them towards right ends. In fact, where scientific
thinking had done most to change the practical relations of human life, as in
the mechanization of economic production, conditions had arisen which
made it more difficult, not less, for men to live in a way worthy of man. At
a time when humanity was equipped as never before to investigate the order
of the universe, and had achieved triumphs of design in mechanical
constructions, human life was falling into ever wilder chaos. Why was this?

The fact that most of my contemporaries were apparently quite unaware of
the problem that stirred me so deeply could not weaken my sense of its
reality. This slumber of so many souls in face of the vital questions of
modern life seemed to me merely a further symptom of the sickness of our
age. Nor could I think much better of those who, more sensitive to the
contradictions in and around them, sought refuge in art or religion. The
catastrophe of the war had shown me that this departmentalizing of life,
which at one time I had myself considered a sort of ideal, was quite
inconsistent with the needs of to-day. To make use of art or religion as a
refuge was a sign of their increasing separation from the rest of human
culture. It implied a cleavage between the different spheres of society which
ruled out any genuine solution of social problems.

I knew from history that religion and art had once exercised a function
which is to-day reserved for science, for they had given guidance in even
the most practical activities of human society. And in so doing they had
enhanced the quality of human living, whereas the influence of science has
had just the opposite effect. This power of guidance, however, they had
long since lost, and in view of this fact I came to the conclusion that
salvation must be looked for in the first place from science. Here, in the
thinking and knowing of man, was the root of modern troubles; here must
come a drastic revision, and here, if possible, a completely new direction
must be found.

Such views certainly flew in the face of the universal modern conviction
that the present mode of knowledge, with whose help so much insight into
the natural world has been won, is the only one possible, given once for all

to man in a form never to be changed. But is there any need, I asked myself,
to cling to this purely static notion of man's capacity for gaining
knowledge? Among the greatest achievements of modern science, does not
the conception of evolution take a foremost place? And does not this teach
us that the condition of a living organism at any time is the result of the one
preceding it, and that the transition implies a corresponding functional
enhancement? But if we have once recognized this as an established truth,
why should we apply it to organisms at every stage of development except
the .highest, namely the human, where the organic form reveals and serves
the self-conscious spirit?

Putting the question thus, I was led inevitably to a conclusion which science
itself had failed to draw from its idea of evolution. Whatever the driving
factor in evolution may be, it is clear that in the kingdoms of nature leading
up to man this factor has always worked on the evolving organisms from
outside. The moment we come to man himself, however, and see how
evolution has flowered in his power of conscious thought, we have to
reckon with a fundamental change.

Once a being has recognized itself as a product of evolution, it immediately
ceases to be that and nothing more. With its very first act of self-knowledge
it transcends its previous limits, and must in future rely on its own
conscious actions for the carrying on of its development.

For me, accordingly, the concept of evolution, when thought through to the
end, began to suggest the possibility of further growth in man's spiritual
capacities. But I saw also that this growth could no longer be merely
passive, and the question which now beset me was: by what action of his
own can man break his way into this new phase of evolution? I saw that this
action must not consist merely in giving outer effect to the natural powers
of human thinking; that was happening everywhere in the disordered world
around me. The necessary action must have inner effects; indeed, it had to
be one whereby the will was turned upon the thinking-powers themselves,
entirely transforming them, and so removing the discrepancy between the
thinker and the doer in modern man.

Thus far I could go through my own observation and reflexion, but no
further. To form a general idea of the deed on which everything else

depended was one thing; it was quite another to know how to perform the
deed, and above all where to make a start with it. Anyone intending to make
a machine must first learn something of mechanics; in the same way,
anyone setting out to do something constructive in the sphere of human
consciousness - and this, for me, was the essential point - must begin by
learning something of the laws holding sway in that sphere. But who could
give me this knowledge?

Physiology, psychology and philosophy in their ordinary forms were of no
use to me, for they were themselves part and parcel of just that kind of
knowing which had to be overcome. In their various accounts of man there
was no vantage point from which the deed I had in mind could be
accomplished, for none of them looked beyond the ordinary powers of
knowledge. It was the same with the accepted theory of evolution; as a
product of the current mode of thinking it could be applied to everything
except the one essential - this very mode of thinking. Obviously, the laws of
the development of human consciousness cannot be discovered from a
standpoint within the modern form of that consciousness. But how could
one find a viewpoint outside, as it were, this consciousness, from which to
discover its laws with the same scientific objectivity which it had itself
applied to discovering the laws of physical nature?

It was when this question stood before me in all clarity that destiny led me
to Rudolf Steiner and his work. The occasion was a conference held in 1921
in Stuttgart by the Anthroposophical Movement; it was one of several
arranged during the years 1920-2 especially for teachers and students at the
Hochschulen and Universities. What chiefly moved me to attend this
particular conference was the title of a lecture to be given by one of the
pupils and co-workers of Rudolf Steiner - 'The Overcoming of Einstein's
Theory of Relativity'.1

The reader will readily appreciate what this title meant for me. In the circles
where my work lay, an intense controversy was just then raging round
Einstein's ideas. I usually took sides with the supporters of Einstein, for it
seemed to me that Einstein had carried the existing mode of scientific
thinking to its logical conclusions, whereas I missed this consistency among
his opponents. At the same time I found that the effect of this theory, when

its implications were fully developed, was to make everything seem so
'relative' that no reliable world-outlook was left. This was proof for me that
our age was in need of an altogether different form of scientific thinking,
equally consistent in itself, but more in tune with man's own being.

What appealed to me in the lecture-title was simply this, that whereas
everyone else sought to prove Einstein right or wrong, here was someone
who apparently intended, not merely to add another proof for or against his
theory-there were plenty of those already - but to take some steps to
overcome it. From the point of view of orthodox science, of course, it was
absurd to speak of 'overcoming' a theory, as though it were an accomplished
fact, but to me this title suggested exactly what I was looking for.

Although it was the title of this lecture that drew me to the Stuttgart
Conference (circumstances prevented me from hearing just this lecture), it
was the course given there by Rudolf Steiner himself which was to prove
the decisive experience of my life. It comprised eight lectures, under the
title: 'Mathematics, Scientific Experiment and Observation, and
Epistemological Results from the Standpoint of Anthroposophy'; what they
gave me answered my question beyond all expectation.

In the course of a comprehensive historical survey the lecturer
characterized, in a way I found utterly convincing, the present mathematical
interpretation of nature as a transitional stage of human consciousness - a
kind of knowing which is on the way from a past pre-mathematical to a
future post-mathematical form of cognition. The importance of
mathematics, whether as a discipline of the human spirit or as an instrument
of natural science, was not for a moment undervalued. On the contrary,
what Rudolf Steiner said about Projective (Synthetic) Geometry, for
instance, its future possibilities and its role as a means of understanding
higher processes of nature than had hitherto been accessible to science,
clearly explained the positive feelings I myself had experienced - without
knowing why - when I had studied the subject.

Through his lectures and his part in the discussions - they were held daily
by the various speakers and ranged over almost every field of modern
knowledge - I gradually realized that Rudolf Steiner was in possession of
unique powers. Not only did he show himself fully at home in all these

fields; he was able to connect them with each other, and with the nature and
being of man, in such a way that an apparent chaos of unrelated details was
wrought into a higher synthesis. Moreover, it became clear to me that one
who could speak as he did about the stages of human consciousness past,
present and future, must have full access to all of them at will, and be able
to make each of them an object of exact observation. I saw a thinker who
was himself sufficient proof that man can find within the resources of his
own spirit the vantage-ground for the deed which I had dimly surmised, and
by which alone true civilization could be saved. Through all these things I
knew that I had found the teacher I had been seeking.

Thus I was fully confirmed in my hopes of the Conference; but I was also
often astonished at what I heard. Not least among my surprises was Rudolf
Steiner's presentation of Goethe as the herald of the new form of scientific
knowledge which he himself was expounding. I was here introduced to a
side of Goethe which was as completely unknown to me as to so many
others among my contemporaries, who had not yet come into touch with
Anthroposophy. For me, as for them, Goethe had always been the great
thinker revealing his thoughts through poetry. Indeed, only shortly before
my meeting with Rudolf Steiner it was in his poetry that Goethe had
become newly alive to me as a helper in my search for a fuller human
experience of nature and my fellow-men. But despite all my Goethe studies
I had been quite unaware that more than a century earlier he had achieved
something in the field of science, organic and inorganic alike, which could
help modern man towards the new kind of knowledge so badly needed to-
day. This was inevitable for me, since I shared the modern conviction that
art and science were fields of activity essentially strange to one another.
And so it was again Rudolf Steiner who opened the way for me to Goethe
as botanist, physicist and the like.

I must mention another aspect of the Stuttgart Conference which Belongs to
this picture of my first encounter with Anthroposophy, and gave it special
weight for anyone in my situation at that period. In Stuttgart there were
many different activities concerned with the practical application of Rudolf
Steiner's teachings, and so one could become acquainted with teachings and
applications at the same time. There was the Waldorf School, founded little
more than a year before, with several hundred pupils already. It was the first

school to undertake the transformation of anthroposophical knowledge of
man into educational practice; later it was followed by others, in Germany
and elsewhere. There was one of the clinics, where qualified doctors were
applying the same knowledge to the study of illness and the action of
medicaments. In various laboratories efforts were made to develop new
methods of experimental research in physics, chemistry, biology and other
branches of science. Further, a large business concern had been founded in
Stuttgart in an attempt to embody some of Rudolf Steiner's ideas for the
reform of social life. Besides all this I could attend performances of the new
art of movement, again the creation of Rudolf Steiner and called by him
'Eurhythmy', in which the astounded eye could see how noble a speech can
be uttered by the human body when its limbs are moved in accordance with
its inherent spiritual laws. Thus, in all the many things that were going on
besides the lectures, one could find direct proof of the fruitfulness of what
one heard in them.2

Under the impression of this Conference I soon began to study the writings
of Rudolf Steiner. Not quite two years later, I decided to join professionally
with those who were putting Anthroposophy into outer practice. Because it
appeared to me as the most urgent need of the time to prepare the new
generation for the tasks awaiting it through an education shaped on the
entire human being, I turned to Rudolf Steiner with the request to be taken
into the Stuttgart School as teacher of natural science. On this occasion I
told him of my general scientific interests, and how I hoped to follow them
up later on. I spoke of my intended educational activity as something which
might help me at the same time to prepare myself for this other task.
Anyone who learns so to see nature that his ideas can be taken up and
understood by the living, lively soul of the growing child will thereby be
training himself, I thought, in just that kind of observation and thinking
which the new science of nature demands. Rudolf Steiner agreed with this,
and it was not long afterwards that I joined the school where I was to work
for eleven years as a science master in the senior classes, which activity I
have since continued outside Germany in a more or less similar form.

This conversation with Rudolf Steiner took place in a large hall where,
while we were talking, over a thousand people were assembling to discuss
matters of concern to the Anthroposophical Movement. This did not prevent

him from asking me about the details of my examination work, in which I
was still engaged at that time; he always gave himself fully to whatever
claimed his attention at the moment. I told him of my experimental
researches in electrical high-frequency phenomena, briefly introducing the
particular problem with which I was occupied. I took it for granted that a
question from such a specialized branch of physics would not be of much
interest to him. Judge of my astonishment when he at once took out of his
pocket a note-book and a huge carpenter's pencil, made a sketch and
proceeded to speak of the problem as one fully conversant with it, and in
such a way that he gave me the starting point for an entirely new conception
of electricity. It was instantly borne in on me that if electricity came to be
understood in this sense, results would follow which in the end would lead
to a quite new technique in the use of it. From that moment it became one
of my life's aims to contribute whatever my circumstances and powers
would allow to the development of an understanding of nature of this kind.
1 The speaker was the late Dr. Elizabeth Vreede, for some years leader of the Mathematical-

Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.

2 The activities mentioned above do not exhaust the practical possibilities of Spiritual Science. At

that time (1921) Rudolf Steiner had not yet given his indications for the treatment of children needing
special care of soul and body, or for the renewal of the art of acting, or for the conquest of
materialistic methods in agricultural practice. Nor did there yet exist the movement for religious
renewal Which Dr. Fr. Rittelmeyer later founded, with the help and advice of Rudolf Steiner.

CHAPTER II

Where Do We Stand To-day?

In the year 1932, when the world celebrated the hundredth anniversary of
Goethe's death, Professor W. Heisenberg, one of the foremost thinkers in
the field of modern physics, delivered a speech before the Saxon Academy
of Science which may be regarded as symptomatic of the need in recent

science to investigate critically the foundations of its own efforts to know
nature.1 In this speech Heisenberg draws a picture of the progress of science
which differs significantly from the one generally known. Instead of giving
the usual description of this progress as 'a chain of brilliant and surprising
discoveries', he shows it as resting on the fact that, with the aim of
continually simplifying and unifying the scientific conception of the world,
human thinking, in course of time, has narrowed more and more the scope
of its inquiries into outer nature.

'Almost every scientific advance is bought at the cost of renunciation,
almost every gain in knowledge sacrifices important standpoints and
established modes of thought. As facts and knowledge accumulate, the
claim of the scientist to an understanding of the world in a certain sense
diminishes.' Our justifiable admiration for the success with which the
unending multiplicity of natural occurrences on earth and in the stars has
been reduced to so simple a scheme of laws - Heisenberg implies - must
therefore not make us forget that these attainments are bought at the price
'of renouncing the aim of bringing the phenomena of nature to our thinking
in an immediate and living way'.

In the course of his exposition, Heisenberg also speaks of Goethe, in whose
scientific endeavours he perceives a noteworthy attempt to set scientific
understanding upon a path other than that of progressive self-restriction.

'The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the
progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the bitter
struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of Newton. It
would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant: there is much
significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to
fighting against the development of Newtonian optics.' There is only one
thing for which Heisenberg criticizes Goethe: 'If one should wish to
reproach Goethe, it could only be for not going far enough - that is, for
having attacked the views of Newton instead of declaring that the whole of
Newtonian Physics-Optics, Mechanics and the Law of Gravitation - were
from the devil.'

Although the full significance of Heisenberg's remarks on Goethe will
become apparent only at a later stage of our discussion, they have been
quoted here because they form part of the symptom we wish to characterize.
Only this much may be pointed out immediately, that Goethe - if not in the
scientific then indeed in the poetical part of his writings - did fulfil what
Heisenberg rightly feels to have been his true task.2

We mentioned Heisenberg's speech as a symptom of a certain tendency,
characteristic of the latest phase in science, to survey critically its own
epistemological foundations. A few years previous to Heisenberg's speech,
the need of such a survey found an eloquent advocate in the late Professor
A. N. Whitehead, in his book Science and the Modern World, where, in
view of the contradictory nature of modern physical theories, he insists that
'if science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must
become philosophical and enter upon a thorough criticism of its own
foundations'.

Among the scientists who have felt this need, and who have taken pains to
fulfil it, the late Professor A. Eddington obtains an eminent position.
Among his relevant utterances we will quote here the following, because it
contains a concrete statement concerning the field of external observation
which forms the basis for the modern scientific world-picture. In his
Philosophy of Physical Science we find him stating that 'ideally, all our
knowledge of the universe could have been reached by visual sensation
alone - in fact by the simplest form of visual sensation, colourless and non-
stereoscopic'.3 In other words, in order to obtain scientific cognition of the
physical world, man has felt constrained to surrender the use of all his
senses except the sense of sight, and to limit even the act of seeing to the
use of a single, colour-blind eye.

Let us listen to yet another voice from the ranks of present-day science,
expressing a criticism which is symptomatic of our time. It comes from the
late physiologist, Professor A, Carrel, who, concerning the effect which
scientific research has had on man's life in general, says in his book, Man
the Unknown: 'The sciences of inert matter have led us into a country that is
not ours. ... Man is a stranger in the world he has created.'

Of these utterances, Eddington's is at the present point of our discussion of
special interest for us; for he outlines in it the precise field of sense-
perception into which science has withdrawn in the course of that general
retreat towards an ever more restricted questioning of nature which was
noted by Heisenberg.

The pertinence of Eddington's statement is shown immediately one
considers what a person would know of the world if his only source of
experience were the sense of sight, still further limited in the way
Eddington describes. Out of everything that the world brings to the totality
of our senses, there remains nothing more than mere movements, with
certain changes of rate, direction, and so on. The picture of the world
received by such an observer is a purely kinematic one. And this is, indeed,
the character of the world-picture of modern physical science. For in the
scientific treatment of natural phenomena all the qualities brought to us by
our other senses, such as colour, tone, warmth, density and even electricity
and magnetism, are reduced to mere movement-changes.

As a result, modern science is prevented from conceiving any valid idea of
'force'. In so far as the concept 'force' appears in scientific considerations, it
plays the part of an 'auxiliary concept', and what man naively conceives as
force has come to be defined as merely a 'descriptive law of behaviour'. We
must leave it for later considerations to show how the scientific mind of
man has created for itself the conviction that the part of science occupied
with the actions of force in nature can properly be treated with purely
kinematic concepts. It is the fact itself which concerns us here. In respect of
it, note as a characteristic of modern text-books that they often simply use
the term 'kinetics' (a shortening of kinematics) to designate the science of
'dynamics'.4

In the course of our investigations we shall discover the peculiarity in
human nature which - during the first phase, now ended, of man's struggle
towards scientific awareness - has caused this renunciation of all sense-
experiences except those which come to man through the sight of a single
colour-blind eye. It will then also become clear out of what historic
necessity this self-restriction of scientific inquiry arose. The
acknowledgment of this necessity, however, must not prevent us from

recognizing the fact that, as a result of this restriction, modern scientific
research, which has penetrated far into the dynamic substrata of nature,
finds itself in the peculiar situation that it is not at all guided by its own
concepts, but by the very forces it tries to detect. And in this fact lies the
root of the danger which besets the present age.5

He who recognizes this, therefore, feels impelled to look for a way which
leads beyond a one-eyed, colour-blind conception of the world. It is the aim
of this book to show that such a way exists and how it can be followed.
Proof will thereby be given that along this way not only is a true
understanding achieved of the forces already known to science (though not
really understood by it), but also that other forces, just as active in nature as
for example electricity and magnetism, come within reach of scientific
observation and understanding. And it will be shown that these other forces
are of a kind that requires to be known to-day if we are to restore the lost
balance to human civilization.

*

There is a rule known to physicians that 'a true diagnosis of a case contains
in itself the therapy'. No true diagnosis is possible, however, without
investigation of the 'history' of the case. Applied to our task, this means that
we must try to find an aspect of human development, both individual and
historical, which will enable us to recognize in man's own being the cause
responsible for the peculiar narrowing of the scope of scientific inquiry, as
described by the scientists cited above.

A characteristic of scientific inquiry, distinguishing it from man's earlier
ways of solving the riddles of the world, is that it admits as instruments of
knowledge exclusively those activities of the human soul over which we
have full control because they take place in the full light of consciousness.
This also explains why there has been no science, in the true sense of the
word, prior to the beginning of the era commonly called 'modern' - that is,
before the fifteenth century. For the consciousness on which man's scientific
striving is based is itself an outcome of human evolution.

This evolution, therefore, needs to be considered in such a way that we
understand the origin of modern man's state of mind, and in particular why

this state of mind cannot of itself have any other relationship to the world
than that of a spectator. For let us be clear that this peculiar relationship by
no means belongs only to the scientifically engaged mind. Every adult in
our age is, by virtue of his psycho-physical structure, more or less a world-
spectator. What distinguishes the state of man's mind when engaged in
scientific observation is that it is restricted to a one-eyed colour-blind
approach.

*

'Death is the price man has to pay for his brain and his personality' - this is
how a modern physiologist (A. Carrel in his aforementioned book, Man the
Unknown) describes the connexion between man's bodily functions and his
waking consciousness. It is characteristic of the outlook prevailing in the
nineteenth century that thinking was regarded as the result of the life of the
body; that is, of the body's matter-building processes. Hence no attention
was paid at that time to the lonely voice of the German philosopher, C.
Fortlage (1806-81), who in his System of Psychology as Empirical Science
suggested that consciousness is really based on death processes in the body.
From this fact he boldly drew the conclusion (known to us today to be true)
that if 'partial death' gave rise to ordinary consciousness, then 'total death'
must result in an extraordinary enhancement of consciousness. Again, when
in our century Rudolf Steiner drew attention to the same fact, which he had
found along his own lines of investigation, showing thereby the true role of
the nervous system in regard to the various activities of the soul, official
science turned a deaf ear to his pronouncement.6 To-day the scientist
regards it as forming part of 'unknown man' that life must recede - in other
words, that the organ-building processes of the body must come to a
standstill - if consciousness is to come into its own.

With the recognition of a death process in the nervous system as the bodily
foundation of consciousness, and particularly of man's conceptual activities,
the question arises as to the nature of those activities which have their
foundation in other systems, such as that of the muscles, where life, not
death, prevails. Here an answer must be given which will surprise the
reader acquainted with modern theories of psycho-physical interaction; but
if he meets it with an open mind he will not find it difficult to test.

Just as the conceptual activity has as its bodily foundation the brain, with
the nervous appendages, so it is volitional activity which is based on
processes taking place in the muscular region of the body and in those
organs which provide the body's metabolism.

A statement which says that man's will is as directly based on the metabolic
processes of the body, both inside and outside the muscles, as is his
perceiving and thought-forming mind on a process in the nerves, is bound
to cause surprise. Firstly, it seems to leave out the role commonly ascribed
to the so-called motoric part of the nervous system in bringing about bodily
action; and secondly, the acknowledgment of the dependence of
consciousness on corporeal 'dying' implies that willing is an unconscious
activity because of its being based on life processes of the body.

The first of these two problems will find its answer at a later stage of our
discussion when we shall see what entitles us to draw a direct connexion
between volition and muscular action. To answer the second problem,
simple self-observation is required. This tells us that, when we move a limb,
all that we know of is the intention (in its conceptual form) which rouses
the will and gives it its direction, and the fact of the completed deed. In
between, we accompany the movement with a dim awareness of the
momentary positions of the parts of the body involved, so that we know
whether or not they are moving in the intended manner. This awareness is
due to a particular sense, the 'sense of movement' or 'muscular sense' - one
of those senses whose existence physiology has lately come to
acknowledge. Nothing, however, is known to us of all the complex changes
which are set into play within the muscles themselves in order to carry out
some intended movement. And it is these that are the direct outcome of the
activity of our will.

Regarding man's psycho-physical organization thus, we come to see in it a
kind of polarity - a death-pole, as it were, represented by the nerves
including their extension into the senses, and a life-pole, represented by the
metabolic and muscular systems; and connected with them a pole of
consciousness and one of unconsciousness - or as we can also say, of
waking and sleeping consciousness. For the degree of consciousness on the

side of the life-pole is not different from the state in which the entire human
being dwells during sleep.

It is by thus recognizing the dependence of consciousness on processes of
bodily disintegration that we first come to understand why consciousness,
once it has reached a certain degree of brightness, is bound to suffer
repeated interruptions. Every night, when we sleep, our nervous system
becomes alive (though with gradually decreasing intensity) in order that
what has been destroyed during the day may be restored. While the system
is kept in this condition, no consciousness can obtain in it.

In between the two polarically opposite systems there is a third, again of
clearly distinct character, which functions as a mediator between the two.
Here all processes are of a strictly rhythmic nature, as is shown by the
process of breathing and the pulsation of the blood. This system, too,
provides the foundation for a certain type of psychological process, namely
feeling. That feeling is an activity of the soul distinct from both thinking
and willing, and that it has its direct counterpart in the rhythmic processes
of the body, can be most easily tested through observing oneself when
listening to music.

As one might expect from its median position, the feeling sphere of the soul
is characterized by a degree of consciousness half-way between waking and
sleeping. Of our feelings we are not more conscious than of our dreams; we
are as little detached from them as from our dream experiences while these
last; what remains in our memory of past feelings is usually not more than
what we remember of past dreams.

This picture of the threefold psycho-physical structure of man will now
enable us to understand the evolution of consciousness both in individual
life and in the life of mankind. To furnish the foundation of waking
consciousness, parts of the body must become divorced from life. This
process, however, is one which, if we take the word in its widest sense, we
may call, ageing. All organic bodies, and equally that of man, are originally
traversed throughout by life. Only gradually certain parts of such an
organism become precipitated, as it were, from the general organic
structure, and they do so increasingly towards the end of that organism's
life-span.

In the human body this separation sets in gently during the later stages of
embryonic development and brings about the first degree of independence
of bones and nerves from the rest of the organism. The retreat of life
continues after birth, reaching a certain climax in the nervous system at
about the twenty-first year. In the body of a small child there is still
comparatively little contrast between living and non-living organs. There is
equally little contrast between sleeping and waking condition in its soul.
And the nature of the soul at this stage is volition throughout. Never, in fact,
does man's soul so intensively will as in the time when it is occupied in
bringing the body into an upright position, and never again does it exert its
strength with the same unconsciousness of the goal to which it strives.

What, then, is the soul's characteristic relationship to the world around at
this stage? The following observations will enable us to answer this
question.

It is well known that small children often angrily strike an object against
which they have stumbled. This has been interpreted as 'animism', by which
it is meant that the child, by analogy with his experience of himself as a
soul-filled body, imagines the things in his surroundings to be similarly
ensouled. Anyone who really observes the child's mode of experience (of
which we as adults, indeed, keep something in our will-life) is led to a quite
different interpretation of such a phenomenon. For he realizes that the child
neither experiences himself as soul-entity distinct from his body, nor faces
the content of the world in so detached a manner as to be in need of using
his imagination to read into it any soul-entities distinct from his own.

In this early period of his life the human being still feels the world as part of
himself, and himself as part of the world. Consequently, his relation to the
objects around him and to his own body is one and the same. To the
example of the child beating the external object he has stumbled against,
there belongs the complementary picture of the child who beats himself
because he has done something which makes him angry with himself.

In sharp contrast to this state of oneness of the child's soul, in regard both to
its own body and to the surrounding world, there stands the separatedness
of the adult's intellectual consciousness, severed from both body and world.
What happens to this part of the soul during its transition from one

condition to the other may be aptly described by using a comparison from
another sphere of natural phenomena. (Later descriptions in this book will
show that a comparison such as the one used here is more than a mere
external analogy.)

Let us think of water in which salt has been dissolved. In this state the salt
is one with its solvent; there is no visible distinction between them. The
situation changes when part of the salt crystallizes. By this process the part
of the salt substance concerned loses its connexion with the liquid and
contracts into individually outlined and spatially defined pieces of solid
matter. It thereby becomes optically distinguishable from its environment.

Something similar happens to the soul within the region of the nervous
system. What keeps the soul in a state of unconsciousness as long as the
body, in childhood, is traversed by life throughout, and what continues to
keep it in this condition in the parts which remain alive after the separation
of the nerves, is the fact that in these parts - to maintain the analogy - the
soul is dissolved in the body. With the growing independence of the nerves,
the soul itself gains independence from the body. At the same time it
undergoes a process similar to contraction whereby it becomes discernible
to itself as an entity distinguished from the surrounding world. In this way
the soul is enabled, eventually, to meet the world from outside as a self-
conscious onlooker.

*

What we have here described as the emergence of an individual's
intellectual consciousness from the original, purely volitional condition of
the soul is nothing but a replica of a greater process through which mankind
as a whole, or more exactly Western mankind, has gone in the course of its
historical development. Man was not always the 'brain-thinker' he is to-
day.7 Directly the separation of the nerve system was completed, and
thereby the full clarity of the brain-bound consciousness achieved, man
began to concern himself with science in the modern sense.

To understand why this science became restricted to one-eyed, colour-blind
observation we need only apply to the human sense system, in particular,
what we have learnt concerning man's threefold being.

Sharply distinguished by their respective modes of functioning though they
are, the three bodily systems are each spread out through the whole body
and are thus to be found everywhere adjacent to each other. Hence, the
corresponding three states of consciousness, the sleeping, dreaming and
waking, are also everywhere adjacent and woven into one another. It is the
predominance of one or other which imparts a particular quality of soul to
one or other region of the body. This is clearly shown within the realm of
sense activity, itself the most conscious part of the human being. It is
sufficient to compare, say, the senses of sight and smell, and to notice in
what different degree we are conscious of the impressions they convey, and
how differently the corresponding elements of conception, feeling and
willing are blended in each. We never turn away as instinctively from
objectionable colour arrangement as from an unpleasant smell. How small a
part, on the other hand, do the representations of odours play in our
recollection of past experiences, compared with those of sight.8 The same is
valid in descending measure for all other senses.

Of all senses, the sense of sight has in greatest measure the qualities of a
'conceptual sense'. The experiences which it brings, and these alone, were
suitable as a basis for the new science, and even so a further limitation was
necessary. For in spite of the special quality of the sense of sight, it is still
not free from certain elements of feeling and will - that is, from elements
with the character of dream or sleep. The first plays a part in our perception
of colour; the second, in observing the forms and perspective ordering of
objects we look at.

Here is repeated in a special way the threefold organization of man, for the
seeing of colour depends on an organic process apart from the nerve
processes and similar to that which takes place between heart and lungs,
whilst the seeing of forms and spatial vision depend upon certain
movements of the eyeball (quick traversing of the outline of the viewed
object with the line of sight, alteration of the angle between the two axes of
sight according to distance), in which the eye is active as a sort of outer
limb of the body, an activity which enters our consciousness as little as does
that of our limbs. It now becomes clear that no world-content obtained in
such more or less unconscious ways could be made available for the

building of a new scientific world-conception. Only as much as man
experiences through the sight of a single, colour-blind eye, could be used.9

*

If we would understand the role of science in the present phase of human
development, we must be ready to apply two entirely different and
seemingly contradictory judgments to one and the same historical
phenomenon. The fact that something has occurred out of historical
necessity - that is, a necessity springing from the very laws of cosmic
evolution - does not save it from having a character which, in view of its
consequences, must needs be called tragic.

In this era of advanced intellectualism, little understanding of the existence
of true tragedy in human existence has survived. As a result, the word
'tragedy' itself has deteriorated in its meaning and is nowadays used mostly
as a synonym for 'sad event', 'calamity' 'serious event', even 'crime' (Oxford
Diet.). In its original meaning, however, springing from the dramatic poetry
of ancient Greece, the word combines the concept of calamity with that of
inevitability; the author of the destructive action was not held to be
personally responsible for it, since he was caught up in a nexus of
circumstances which he could not change.

This is not the place to discuss why tragedy in this sense forms part of
man's existence. It suffices to acknowledge that it does and, where it occurs,
to observe it with scientific objectivity.

Our considerations, starting from certain statements made by some leading
scientific thinkers of our time, have helped us not only to confirm the truth
inherent in these statements, but to recognize the facts stated by them as
being the outcome of certain laws of evolution and thereby having an
historic necessity. This, however, does not mean that man's scientific
labours, carried out under the historically given restrictions, great and
successful as these labours were and are, have not led to calamitous effects
such as we found indicated by Professor Carrel. The sciences of matter have
led man into a country that is not his, and the world which he has created by
means of scientific research is not only one in which he is a stranger but one
which threatens to-day to deprive him of his own existence. The reason is

that this world is essentially a world of active forces, and the true nature of
these is something which modern man, restricted to his onlooker-
consciousness, is positively unable to conceive.

We have taken a first step in diagnosing man's present spiritual condition. A
few more steps are required to lead us to the point where we can conceive
the therapy he needs.
1 This address and another by the same author are published together under the common title,

Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft ('Changes in the foundations of Natural
Science'). Heisenberg's name has become known above all by his formulation of the so-called
Principle of Indeterminacy.

2 See, in this respect, Faust's dispute with Mephistopheles on the causes responsible for the

geological changes of the earth. (Faust II, Act 4)

3
See also Eddington's more elaborate description of this fact in his New
Pathways in Science. The above statement, like others of Eddington's, has
been Contested from the side of professional philosophy as logically
untenable. Our own further discussion will show that it accords with the
facts.
4 Both words, kinematics and kinetics, are derivatives of the Greek word kinein, to move. The term

'kinematic' is used when motion is considered abstractly without reference to force or mass. Kinetics
is applied kinematics, or, as pointed out above, dynamics treated with kinematic concepts.

5 These last statements will find further illustration in the next two chapters.

6 First published in 1917 in his book Von Seelenrätseln.

7
Homer's men still think with the diaphragm (phrenes). Similarly, the
ancient practice of Yoga, as a means of acquiring knowledge, shows that at
the time When it flourished man's conceptual activity was felt to be seated
elsewhere than in the head.
8 This must not be confused with the fact that a smell may evoke other memories by way of

association.

9 For one who endeavours to observe historical facts in the manner here described, it is no mere play

of chance that the father of scientific atomism, John Dalton, was by nature colour blind. In fact,
colour blindness was known, for a considerable time during the last century, as 'Daltonism', since it
was through the publication of Dalton's self-observations that for the first time general attention was
drawn to this phenomenon.

CHAPTER III

The Onlooker's Philosophic Malady

In his isolation as world spectator, the modern philosopher was bound to
reach two completely opposite views regarding the objective value of
human thought. One of these was given expression in Descartes' famous
words: Cogito ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'). Descartes (1596-1650),
rightly described as the inaugurator of modern philosophy, thus held the
view that only in his own thought-activity does man find a guarantee of his
own existence.

In coming to this view, Descartes took as his starting-point his experience
that human consciousness contains only the thought pictures evoked by
sense-perception, and yet knows nothing of the how and why of the things
responsible for such impressions. He thus found himself compelled, in the
first place, to doubt whether any of these things had any objective
existence, at all. Hence, there remained over for him only one indubitable
item in the entire content of the universe - his own thinking; for were he to
doubt even this, he could do so only by again making use of it. From the 'I
doubt, therefore I am', he was led in this way to the 'I think, therefore I am'.

The other conception of human thought reached by the onlooker-
consciousness was diametrically opposed to that of Descartes, and entirely
cancelled its conceptual significance. It was put forward - not long
afterwards - by Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the first scientist to make
systematic use of the newly invented microscope by means of which he
made the fundamental discovery of the cellular structure of plant tissues. It

was, indeed, on the strength of his microscopic studies that he boldly
undertook to determine the relationship of human thought to objective
reality. He published his views in the introduction to his Micrographia, the
great work in which, with the lavish help of carefully executed copper
engravings, he made his microscopic observations known to the world.

Hooke's line of thought is briefly as follows: In past ages men subscribed to
the naive belief that what they have in their consciousness as thought
pictures of the world, actually reproduces the real content of that world. The
microscope now demonstrates, however, how much the familiar appearance
of the world depends on the structure of our sense apparatus; for it reveals a
realm just as real as that already known to us, but hitherto concealed from
us because it is not accessible to the natural senses. Accordingly, if the
microscope can penetrate through the veil of illusion which normally hides
a whole world of potentially visible phenomena, it may be that it can even
teach us something about the ideas we have hitherto formed concerning the
nature of things. Perhaps it can bring us a step nearer the truth in the sphere
of thought, as it so obviously has done in that of observation.

Of all the ideas that human reason can form, Hooke considered the simplest
and the most fundamental to be the geometrical concepts of point and
straight line. Undoubtedly we are able to think these, but the naïve
consciousness takes for granted that it also perceives them as objective
realities outside itself, so that thoughts and facts correspond to each other.
We must now ask, however, if this belief is not due to an optical deception.
Let us turn to the microscope and see what point and line in the external
world look like through it.

For his investigation Hooke chose the point of a needle and a knife-edge, as
providing the best representatives among physical objects of point and
straight line. In the sketches here reproduced we may see how Hooke made
clear to his readers how little these two things, when observed through the
microscope, resemble what is seen by the unaided eye. This fact convinced
Hooke that the apparent agreement between the world of perception and the
world of ideas rests on nothing more solid than an optical limitation (Plate
I).

Compared with the more refined methods of present-day thought, Hooke's
procedure may strike us as somewhat primitive. Actually he did nothing
more than has since been done times without number; for the scientist has
become more and more willing to allow artificially evoked sense-
perceptions to dictate the thoughts he uses in forming a scientific picture of
the world.

In the present context we are concerned with the historical import of
Hooke's procedure. This lies in the fact that, immediately after Descartes
had satisfied himself that in thinking man had the one sure guarantee of his
own existence, Hooke proved in a seemingly indubitable manner that
thinking was entirely divorced from reality. It required only another century
for philosophy to draw from this the unavoidable consequence. It appeared
in the form of Hume's philosophic system, the outcome of which was
universal scepticism.

As we shall see in due course, Hume's mode of reasoning continues to rule
scientific thought even to-day, quite irrespective of the fact that science
itself claims to have its philosophical parent in Kant, the very thinker who
devoted his life's work to the refutation of Hume.

*

On the basis of his investigations into human consciousness Hume felt
obliged to reason thus: My consciousness, as I know it, has no contact with
the external world other than that of a mere outside onlooker. What it wins
for its own content from the outer world is in the nature of single, mutually
unrelated parts. Whatever may unite these parts into an objective whole
within the world itself can never enter my consciousness; and any such
unifying factor entertained by my thought can be only a self-constructed,
hypothetical picture. Hume summed up his view in two axioms which he
himself described as the alpha and omega of his whole philosophy. The first
runs: 'All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences.' The other: 'The
Mind never perceives any real connexions between distinct existences.'
(Treatise of Human Nature.)

If once we agree that we can know of nothing but unrelated thought
pictures, because our consciousness is not in a position to relate these

pictures to a unifying reality, then we have no right to ascribe, with
Descartes and his school, an objective reality to the self. Even though the
self may appear to us as the unifying agent among our thoughts, it must
itself be a mental picture among mental pictures ; and man can have no
knowledge of any permanent reality outside this fluctuating picture-realm.
So, with Hume, the onlooker-consciousness came to experience its own
utter inability to achieve a knowledge of the objective existence either of a
material world be - behind all external phenomena, or of a spiritual self
behind all the details of its own internal content.

Accordingly, human consciousness found itself hurled into the abyss of
universal scepticism. Hume himself suffered unspeakably under the impact
of what he considered inescapable ideas - rightly described from another
side as the 'suicide of human intelligence' - and his philosophy often seemed
to him like a malady, as he himself called it, against whose grip he could
see no remedy. The only thing left to him, if he was to prevent philosophical
suicide from ending in physical suicide, was to forget in daily life his own
conclusions as far as possible.

What Hume experienced as his philosophical malady, however, was the
result not of a mental abnormality peculiar to himself, but of that modern
form of consciousness which still prevails in general today. This explains
why, despite all attempts to disprove Hume's philosophy, scientific thought
has not broken away from its alpha and omega in the slightest degree.

A proof of this is to be found, for example, in the principle of
Indeterminacy which has arisen in modern physics.

*

The conception of Indeterminacy as an unavoidable consequence of the
latest phase of physical research is due to Professor W. Heisenberg.
Originally this conception forced itself upon Heisenberg as a result of
experimental research. In the meantime the same idea has received its
purely philosophical foundation. We shall here deal with both lines of
approach.

After the discovery by Galileo of the parallelogram of forces, it became the
object of classical physics - unexpressed, indeed, until Newton wrote his
Principia - to bring the unchanging laws ruling nature into the light of
human consciousness, and to give them conceptual expression in the
language of mathematical formulae. Since, however, science was obliged to
restrict itself to what could be observed with a single, colour-blind eye,
physics has taken as its main object of research the spatio-temporal
relationships, and their changes, between discrete, ideally conceived, point-
like particles. Accordingly, the mathematically formulable laws holding
sway in nature came to mean the laws according to which the smallest
particles in the material foundation of the world change their position with
regard to each other. A science of this kind could logically maintain that, if
ever it succeeded in defining both the position and the state of motion, in
one single moment, of the totality of particles composing the universe, it
would have discovered the law on which universal existence depends. This
necessarily rested on the presupposition that it really was the ultimate
particles of the physical world which were under observation. In the search
for these, guided chiefly by the study of electricity, the physicists tracked
down ever smaller and smaller units; and along this path scientific research
has arrived at the following peculiar situation.

To observe any object in the sense world we need an appropriate medium of
observation. For ordinary things, light provides this. In the sense in which
light is understood to-day, this is possible because the spatial extension of
the single light impulses, their so-called wavelength, is immeasurably
smaller than the average magnitude of all microscopically visible objects.
This ensures that they can be observed clearly by the human eye. Much
smaller objects, however, will require a correspondingly shorter wave-
length in the medium of observation. Now shorter wave-lengths than those
of visible light have been found in ultra-violet light and in X-rays; and
these, accordingly, are now often used for minute physical research.

In this way, however, we are led by nature to a definite boundary; for we
now find ourselves in a realm where the dimensions of the observation
medium and the observed object are more or less the same. The result,
unfortunately, is that when the 'light' meets the object, it changes the latter's
condition of movement. On the other hand, if a 'light' is used whose wave-

length is too big to have any influence on the object's condition of
movement, it precludes any exact determination of the object's location.

Thus, having arrived at the very ground of the world - that is, where the
cosmic laws might be expected to reveal themselves directly - the scientist
finds himself in the remarkable situation of only being able to determine
accurately either the position of an observed object and not its state of
motion, or its state of motion and not its position. The law he seeks,
however, requires that both should be known at the same time. Nor is this
situation due to the imperfection of the scientific apparatus employed, but
to its very perfection, so that it appears to arise from the nature of the
foundation of the world - in so far, at least, as modern science is bound to
conceive it.

If it is true that a valid scientific knowledge of nature is possible only in the
sphere open to a single-eyed, colour-blind observation, and if it is true - as a
science of this kind, at any rate, is obliged to believe - that all processes
within the material foundation of the world depend on nothing but the
movements of certain elementary particles of extremely small size, then the
fact must be faced that the very nature of these processes rules out the
discovery of any stable ordering of things in the sense of mathematically
formulable laws. The discovery of such laws will then always be the last
step but one in scientific investigation; the last will inevitably be the
dissolution of such laws into chaos. For a consistent scientific thinking that
goes this way, therefore, nothing is left but to recognize chaos as the only
real basis of an apparently ordered world, a chaos on whose surface the
laws that seem to hold sway are only the illusory picturings of the human
mind. This, then, is the principle of Indeterminacy as it has been
encountered in the course of practical investigation into the electrical
processes within physical matter.

In the following way Professor Schrödinger, another leading thinker
among modern theoretical physicists, explains the philosophical basis for
the principle of Indeterminacy, which scientists have established in the
meantime:1

'Every quantitative observation, every observation making use of
measurement, is by nature discontinuous. ... However far we go in the
pursuit of accuracy we shall never get anything other than a finite series of
discrete results. ... The raw material of our quantitative cognition of nature
will always have this primitive and discontinuous character. ... It is possible
that a physical system might be so simple that this meagre information
would suffice to settle its fate; in that case nature would not be more
complicated than a game of chess. To determine a position of a game of
chess thirty-three facts suffice. ... If nature is more complicated than a game
of chess, a belief to which one tends to incline, then a physical system
cannot be determined by a finite number of observations. But in practice a
finite number of observations is all that we could make.'

Classical physics, the author goes on to show, held that it was possible to
gain a real insight into the laws of the universe, because in principle an
infinite number of such discrete observations would enable us to fill in the
gaps sufficiently to allow us to determine the system of the physical world.
Against this assumption modern physics must hold the view that an infinite
number of observations cannot in any case be carried out in practice, and
that nothing compels us to assume that even this would suffice to furnish us
with the means for a complete determination, which alone would allow us
to speak of 'law' in nature. 'This is the direction in which modern physics
has led us without really intending it.'

What we have previously said will make it clear enough that in these words
of a modern physicist we meet once more the two fundamentals of Hume's
philosophy. It is just as obvious, however, that the very principle thus re-
affirmed at the latest stage of modern physical science was already firmly
established by Hooke, when he sought to prove to his contemporaries the
unreality of human ideas.

Let us recall Hooke's motives and results. The human reason discovers that
certain law-abiding forms of thought dwell within itself; these are the rules
of mathematical thinking. The eye informs the reason that the same kind of
law and order is present also in the outer world. The mind can think point
and line; the eye reports that the same forms exist in nature outside. (Hooke
could just as well have taken as his examples the apex and edge of a

crystal.) The reason mistrusts the eye, however, and with the help of the
microscope 'improves' on it. What hitherto had been taken for a compact,
regulated whole now collapses into a heap of unordered parts; behind the
illusion of law a finer observation detects the reality of chaos!

Had science in its vehement career from discovery to discovery not
forgotten its own beginnings so completely, it would not have needed its
latest researches to bring out a principle which it had in fact been following
from the outset - a principle which philosophy had already recognized, if
not in quite the same formulation, in the eighteenth century. Indeterminacy,
as we have just seen it explained by Schrödinger, is nothing but the exact
continuation of Humean scepticism.
1 In his book, Science and the Human Temperament (Dublin, 1935).

CHAPTER IV

The Country that is Not Ours

The last two chapters have served to show the impasse into which human
perception and thinking have come - in so far as they have been used for
scientific purposes - by virtue of the relationship to the world in which
man's consciousness found itself when it awoke to itself at the beginning of
modern times. Now although the onlooker in man, especially in the earliest
stage of our period, gave itself up to the conviction that a self-contained
picture of the universe could be formed out of the kind of materials
available to it, it nevertheless had a dim inkling that this picture, because it
lacked all dynamic content, had no bearing on the real nature of the
universe. Unable to find this reality within himself, the world-onlooker set
about searching in his own way for what was missing, and turned to the
perceptible world outside man. Here he came, all unexpectedly, upon ...
electricity. Scarcely was electricity discovered than it drew human scientific
thinking irresistibly into its own realm. Thereby man found himself, with a
consciousness completely blind to dynamics, within a sphere of only too

real dynamic forces. The following description will show what results this
has had for man and his civilization.

*

First, let us recall how potent a role electricity has come to play in social
life through the great discoveries which began at the end of the eighteenth
century. To do this we need only compare the present relationship between
production and consumption in the economic sphere with what it was
before the power-machine, and especially the electrically driven machine,
had been invented. Consider some major public undertaking in former times
- say the construction of a great mediaeval cathedral. Almost all the work
was done by human beings, with some help, of course, from domesticated
animals. Under these circumstances the entire source of productive power
lay in the will-energies of living beings, whose bodies had to be supplied
with food, clothing and housing; and to provide these, other productive
powers of a similar kind were required near the same place. Accordingly,
since each of the power units employed in the work was simultaneously
both producer and consumer, a certain natural limit was placed on the
accumulation of productive forces in any one locality.

This condition of natural balance between production and consumption was
profoundly disturbed by the introduction of the steam engine; but even so
there were still some limits, though of a quite different kind, to local
concentrations of productive power. For steam engines require water and
coal at the scene of action, and these take up space and need continual
shifting and replenishing. Owing to the very nature of physical matter, it
cannot be heaped up where it is required in unlimited quantities.

All this changed directly man succeeded in producing energy electro-
magnetically by the mere rotation of material masses, and in using the
water-power of the earth - itself ultimately derived from the cosmic energies
of the sun - for driving his dynamos. Not only is the source of energy thus
tapped practically inexhaustible, but the machines produce it without
consuming on their own account, apart from wear and tear, and so make
possible the almost limitless accumulation of power in one place. For
electricity is distinguished from all other power-supplying natural forces,
living or otherwise, precisely in this, that it can be concentrated spatially

with the aid of a physical carrier whose material bulk is insignificant
compared with the energy supplied.

Through this property of electricity it has been possible for man to extend
the range of his activity in all directions, far and near. So the balance
between production and consumption, which in previous ages was more or
less adequately maintained by natural conditions, has been entirely
destroyed, and a major social-economic problem created.

In yet another way, and through quite another of its properties, electricity
plays an important part in modern life. Not only does it compete with the
human will; it also makes possible automatically intelligent operations quite
beyond anything man can do on his own. There are innumerable examples
of this in modern electrical technology; we need mention here only the
photo-electric cell and the many devices into which it enters.

To an ever-increasing, quite uncontrolled degree - for to the mind of
present-day man it is only natural to translate every new discovery into
practice as soon and as extensively as possible - electricity enters decisively
into our modern existence. If we take all its activities into account, we see
arising amongst humanity a vast realm of labour units, possessed in their
own way not only of will but of the sharpest imaginable intelligence.
Although they are wholly remote from man's own nature, he more and more
subdues his thoughts and actions to theirs, allowing them to take rank as
guides and shapers of his civilization.

Turning to the sphere of scientific research, we find electricity playing a
role in the development of modern thinking remarkably similar to its part as
a labour-force in everyday life. We find it associated with phenomena
which, in Professor Heisenberg's words, expose their mutual connexions to
exact mathematical thinking more readily than do any other facts of nature;
and yet the way in which these phenomena have become known has played
fast and loose with mathematical thinking to an unparalleled degree. To
recognize that in this sphere modern science owes its triumphs to a strange
and often paradoxical mixture of outer accident and error in human thought,
we need only review the history of the subject without prejudice.

*

The discovery of electricity has so far been accomplished in four clearly
distinct stages. The first extends from the time when men first knew of
electrical phenomena to the beginning of the natural scientific age; the
second includes the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth
centuries; the third begins with Galvani's discovery and closes with the first
observations of radiant electricity; and the fourth brings us to our own day.
We shall here concern ourselves with a few outstanding features of each
phase, enough to characterize the strange path along which man has been
led by the discovery of electricity.

Until the beginning of modern times, nothing more was known about
electricity, or of its sister force, magnetism, than what we find in Pliny's
writings. There, without recognizing a qualitative distinction between them,
he refers to the faculty of rubbed amber and of certain pieces of iron to
attract other small pieces of matter. It required the awakening of that
overruling interest in material nature, characteristic of our own age, for the
essential difference between electric and magnetic attraction to be
recognized. The first to give a proper description of this was Queen
Elizabeth's doctor, Gilbert. His discovery was soon followed by the
construction of the first electrical machine by the German Guericke (also
known through his invention of the air pump) which opened the way for the
discovery that electricity could be transmitted from one place to another.

It was not, however, until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the
crop of electrical discoveries began to increase considerably: among these
was the recognition of the dual nature of electricity, by the Frenchman,
Dufais, and the chance invention of the Leyden jar (made simultaneously
by the German, von Kleist, and two Dutchmen, Musschenbroek and
Cunaeus). The Leyden jar brought electrical effects of quite unexpected
intensity within reach. Stimulated by what could be done with electricity in
this form, more and more people now busied themselves in experimenting
with so fascinating a force of nature, until in the second third of the century
a whole army of observers was at work, whether by way of profession or of
hobby, finding out ever new manifestations of its powers.

The mood that prevailed in those days among men engaged in electrical
research is well reflected in a letter written by the Englishman, Walsh, after

he had established the electric nature of the shocks given by certain fishes,
to Benjamin Franklin, who shortly before had discovered the natural
occurrence of electricity in the atmosphere:

'I rejoice in addressing these communications to You. He, who predicted
and shewed that electricity wings the formidable bolt of the Atmosphere,
will hear with attention that in the deep it speeds a humbler bolt, silent and
invisible; He, who analysed the electrical Phial, will hear with pleasure that
its laws prevail in animate Phials; He, who by Reason became an
electrician, will hear with reverence of an instinctive electrician, gifted in
his birth with a wonderful apparatus, and with the skill to use it.' (Phil.
Trans. 1773.)

Dare one believe that in electricity the soul of nature had been discovered?
This was the question which at that time stirred the hearts of very many in
Europe. Doctors had already sought to arouse new vitality in their patients
by the use of strong electric shocks; attempts had even been made to bring
the dead back to life by such means. . In a time like ours, when we are
primarily concerned with the practical application of scientific discoveries,
we are mostly accustomed to regard such flights of thought from a past age
as nothing but the unessential accompaniment of youthful, immature
science, and to smile at them accordingly as historical curiosities. This is a
mistake, for we then overlook how within them was hidden an inkling of
the truth, however wrongly conceived at the time, and we ignore the role
which such apparently fantastic hopes have played in connexion with the
entry of electricity into human civilization. (Nor are such hopes confined to
the eighteenth century; as we shall see, the same impulse urged Crookes a
hundred years later to that decisive discovery which was to usher in the
latest phase in the history of science, a phase in which the investigating
human spirit has been led to that boundary of the physical-material world
where the transition takes place from inert matter into freely working
energy.)

If there was any doubt left as to whether in nature the same power was at
work which, in animal and man, was hidden away within the soul, this
doubt seemed finally to have been dispelled through Galvani's discovery
that animal limbs could be made to move electrically through being touched

by two bits of different metals. No wonder that 'the storm which was loosed
in the world of the physicists, the physiologists and the doctors through
Galvani's publication can only be compared with the one crossing the
political horizon of Europe at the same time. Wherever there happened to
be frogs and two pieces of different metals available, everyone sought proof
with his own eyes that the severed limbs could be marvellously re-
enlivened.'1

Like many of his contemporaries, Galvani was drawn by the fascinating
behaviour of the new force of nature to carry on electrical experiments as a
hobby alongside his professional work, anatomical research. For his
experiments he used the room where his anatomical specimens were set out.
So it happened that his electrical machine stood near some frogs' legs,
prepared for dissection. By a further coincidence his assistant, while
playing with the machine, released a few sparks just when some of the
specimens were in such contact with the surface beneath them that they
were bound to react to the sudden alteration of the electric field round the
machine caused by its discharge. At each spark the frogs' legs twitched.
What Galvani saw with his own eyes seemed to be no less than the union of
two phenomena, one observed by Franklin in the heights of the atmosphere,
the other by Walsh in the depths of the sea.

Galvani, as he himself describes, proceeded with immense enthusiasm to
investigate systematically what accident had thus put into his hands.2 He
wanted first to see whether changes occurring naturally in the electrical
condition of the atmosphere would call forth the same reaction in his
specimens. For this purpose he fastened one end of an iron wire to a point
high up outside his house; the lower end he connected with the nervous
substance of a limb from one of his specimens, and to the foot of this he
attached a second wire whose other end he submerged in a well. The
specimen itself was either enclosed in a glass flask in order to insulate it, or
simply left lying on a table near the well. And all this he did whenever a
thunderstorm was threatening. As he himself reported: 'All took place as
expected. Whenever the lightning flashed, all the muscles simultaneously
came into repeated and violent twitchings, so that the movements of the
muscles, like the flash of the lightning, always preceded the thunder, and
thus, as it were, heralded its coming.' We can have some idea of what went

on in Galvani's mind during these experiments if we picture vividly to
ourselves the animal limbs twitching about every time the lightning flashed,
as if a revitalizing force of will had suddenly taken possession of them.

In the course of his investigations - he carried them on for a long time -
Galvani was astonished to observe that some of his specimens, which he
had hung on to an iron railing by means of brass hooks, sometimes fell to
twitching even when the sky was quite clear and there was no sign of
thunder. His natural conclusion was that this must be due to hitherto
unnoticed electrical changes in the atmosphere. Observations maintained
for hours every day, however, led to no conclusive result; when twitchings
did occur it was only with some of the specimens, and even then there was
no discoverable cause. Then it happened one day that Galvani, 'tired out
with fruitless watching', took hold of one of the brass hooks by which the
specimens were hung, and pressed it more strongly than usual against the
iron railing. Immediately a twitching took place. 'I was almost at the point
of ascribing the occurrence to atmospheric electricity,' Galvani tells us. All
the same he took one of the specimens, a frog, into his laboratory and there
subjected it to similar conditions by putting it on an iron plate, and pressing
against this with the hook that was stuck through its spinal cord.
Immediately the twitching occurred again. He tried with other metals and,
for checking purposes, with non-metals as well. With some ingenuity he
fixed up an arrangement, rather like that of an electric bell, whereby the
limbs in contracting broke contact and in relaxing restored it, and so he
managed to keep the frog in continuous rhythmical movement.

Whereas Galvani had been rightly convinced by his earlier observations
that the movement in the specimens represented a reaction to an electric
stimulus from outside, he now changed his mind. In the very moment of his
really significant discovery he succumbed to the error that he had to do with
an effect of animal electricity located somewhere in the dead creature itself,
perhaps in the fashion of what had been observed in the electric fishes. He
decided that the metal attachment served merely to set in motion the
electricity within the animal.

Whilst Galvani persisted in this mistake until his death, Volta realized that
the source of the electric force, as in the first of Galvani's observations,

must still be sought outside the specimens, and himself rightly attributed it
to the contacting metals. Guided by this hypothesis, Volta started systematic
research into the Galvanic properties of metals, and presently succeeded in
producing electricity once more from purely mineral substances, namely
from two different metals in contact with a conductive liquid.

This mode of producing electricity, however, differed from any previously
known in allowing for the first time the production of continuous electrical
effects. It is this quality of the cells and piles constructed by Volta that laid
open the road for electric force to assume that role in human civilization
which we have already described. That Volta himself was aware of this
essentially new factor in the Galvanic production of electricity is shown by
his own report to the Royal Society:

'The chief of my results, and which comprehends nearly all the others, is the
construction of an apparatus which resembles in its effects, viz. such as
giving shocks to the arms, &c, the Leyden phial, and still better electric
batteries weakly charged; . . . but which infinitely surpasses the virtue and
power of these same batteries; as it has no need, like them, of being charged
beforehand, by means of a foreign electricity; and as it is capable of giving
the usual commotion as often as ever it is properly touched.'

Whilst Volta's success was based on avoiding Galvani's error, his apparatus
nevertheless turned out inadvertently to be a close counterpart of precisely
that animal organ which Galvani had in mind when misinterpreting his own
discoveries! That Volta himself realized this is clear from the concluding
words in his letter:

'This apparatus, as it resembles more the natural organ of the torpedo, or of
the electrical eel, than the Leyden Phial or the ordinary electric batteries, I
may call an artificial electric organ.'

This new method of producing continuous electrical effects had far-
reaching results, one of which was the discovery of the magnetic properties
of the electric current by the Dane, Oersted - once again a purely accidental
discovery, moving directly counter to the assumptions of the discoverer
himself. About to leave the lecture room where he had just been trying to
prove the non-existence of such magnetic properties (an attempt seemingly

crowned with success), Oersted happened to glance once more at his
demonstration bench. To his astonishment he noticed that one of his
magnetic needles was out of alignment; evidently it was attracted by a
magnetic field created by the current running through a wire he had just
been using, which was still in circuit. Thus what had escaped Oersted
throughout his planned researches - namely, that the magnetic force which
accompanies an electric current must be sought in a direction at right angles
to the current - a fortuitous event enabled him to detect.

These repeated strokes of chance and frequently mistaken interpretations of
the phenomenon thus detected show that men were exploring the electrical
realm as it were in the dark; it was a realm foreign to their ordinary ideas
and they had not developed the forms of thought necessary for
understanding it. (And this, as our further survey will show, is still true,
even to-day.)

In our historical survey we come next to the researches of Faraday and
Maxwell. Faraday was convinced that if electrical processes are
accompanied by magnetic forces, as Oersted had shown, the reverse must
also be true - magnetism must be accompanied by electricity. He was led to
this correct conviction by his belief in the qualitative unity of all the forces
of nature - a reflexion, as his biography shows, of his strongly monotheistic,
Old Testament faith. Precisely this view, however - which since Faraday
natural science has quite consciously adopted as a leading principle - will
reveal itself to us as a fundamental error.

It seems paradoxical to assert that the more consistently human thought has
followed this error, the greater have been the results of the scientific
investigation of electricity. Precisely this paradox, however, is characteristic
of the realm of nature to which electricity belongs; and anyone earnestly
seeking to overcome the illusions of our age will have to face the fact that
the immediate effectiveness of an idea in practice is no proof of its ultimate
truth.

Another eloquent example of the strange destiny of human thought in
connexion with electricity is to be found in the work of Clark Maxwell,
who, starting from Faraday's discoveries, gave the theory of electricity its
mathematical basis. Along his purely theoretical line of thought he was led

to the recognition of the existence of a form of electrical activity hitherto
undreamt of - electro-magnetic vibrations. Stimulated by Maxwell's
mathematical conclusions, Hertz and Marconi were soon afterwards able to
demonstrate those phenomena which have led on the one hand to the
electro-magnetic theory of light, and on the other to the practical
achievements of wireless communication.

Once again, there is the paradoxical fact that this outcome of Maxwell's
labours contradicts the very foundation on which he had built his theoretical
edifice. For his starting-point had been to form a picture of the electro-
magnetic field of force to which he could apply certain well-known
formulae of mechanics. This he did by comparing the behaviour of the
electrical force to the currents of an elastic fluid - that is, of a material
substance. It is true that both he and his successors rightly emphasized that
such a picture was not in any way meant as an explanation of electricity, but
merely as an auxiliary concept in the form of a purely external analogy.
Nevertheless, it was in the guise of a material fluid that he thought of this
force, and that he could submit it to mathematical calculation. Yet the fact is
that from this starting-point the strict logic of mathematics led him to the
discovery that electricity is capable of behaviour which makes it appear
qualitatively similar to ... light!

Whilst practical men were turning the work of Faraday and Maxwell to
account by exploiting the mechanical working of electricity in power-
production, and its similarity to light in the wireless communication of
thought, a new field of research, with entirely new practical possibilities,
was suddenly opened up in the last third of the nineteenth century through
the discovery of how electricity behaves in rarefied air. This brings us to the
discovery of cathode rays and the phenomena accompanying them, from
which the latest stage in the history of electricity originated. And here once
more, as in the history of Galvani's discoveries, we encounter certain
undercurrents of longing and expectation in the human soul which seemed
to find an answer through this sudden, great advance in the knowledge of
electricity - an advance which has again led to practical applications of the
utmost significance for human society, though not at all in the way first
hoped for.

Interest in the phenomena arising when electricity passes through gases
with reduced pressure had simultaneously taken hold of several
investigators in the seventies of the nineteenth century. But the decisive step
in this sphere of research was taken by the English physicist, William
Crookes. He was led on by a line of thought which seems entirely
irrelevant; yet it was this which first directed his interest to the peculiar
phenomena accompanying cathode rays; and they proved to be the starting-
point of the long train of inquiry which has now culminated in the release of
atomic energy.3

In the midst of his many interests and activities, Crookes was filled from his
youth with a longing to find by empirical means the bridge leading from the
world of physical effects to that of superphysical causes. He himself tells
how this longing was awakened in him by the loss of a much-beloved
brother. Before the dead body he came to the question, which thereafter was
never to leave him, whether there was a land where the human individuality
continues after it has laid aside its bodily sheath, and how that land was to
be found. Seeing that scientific research was the instrument which modern
man had forged to penetrate through the veil of external phenomena to the
causes producing them, it was natural for Crookes to turn to it in seeking
the way from the one world into the other.

It was after meeting with a man able to produce effects within the corporeal
world by means of forces quite different from those familiar to science, that
Crookes decided to devote himself to this scientific quest. Thus he first
came into touch with that sphere of phenomena which is known as
spiritualism, or perhaps more suitably, spiritism. Crookes now found
himself before a special order of happenings which seemed to testify to a
world other than that open to our senses; physical matter here showed itself
capable of movement in defiance of gravity, manifestations of light and
sound appeared without a physical source to produce them. Through
becoming familiar with such things at seances arranged by his mediumistic
acquaintance, he began to hope that he had found the way by which
scientific research could overstep the limits of the physical world.
Accordingly, he threw himself eagerly into the systematic investigation of
his new experiences, and so became the father of modern scientific
spiritism.

Crookes had hoped that the scientists of his day would be positively
interested in his researches. But his first paper in this field, 'On Phenomena
called Spiritual', was at once and almost unanimously rejected by his
colleagues, and as long as he concerned himself with such matters he
suffered through their opposition. It passed his understanding as a scientist
why anything should be regarded in advance as outside the scope of
scientific research. After several years of fruitless struggle he broke off his
investigations into spiritism, deeply disillusioned at his failure to interest
official science in it. His own partiality for it continued, however (he served
as President of the Society for Psychical Research from 1896-9), and he
missed no opportunity of confessing himself a pioneer in the search for the
boundary-land between the worlds of matter and spirit. Through all his
varied scientific work the longing persisted to know more of this land.

Just as Crookes had once sought to investigate spiritism scientifically, so in
his subsequent scientific inquiries he was always something of a spiritist.
He admitted, indeed, that he felt specially attracted by the strange light
effects arising when electricity passes through rarefied gases, because they
reminded him of certain luminous phenomena he had observed during his
spiritistic investigations. Besides this, there was the fact that light here
showed itself susceptible to the magnetic force in a way otherwise
characteristic only of certain material substances. Accordingly, everything
combined to suggest to Crookes that here, if anywhere, he was at the
boundary between the physical and the superphysical worlds. No wonder
that he threw himself into the study of these phenomena with enthusiasm.

He soon succeeded in evoking striking effects - light and heat, and also
mechanical - along the path of electricity passing invisibly through the tube
later named after him. Thus he proved for the first time visibly, so to say,
the double nature - material and supermaterial - of electricity. What Crookes
himself thought about these discoveries in the realm of the cathode rays we
may judge from the title, 'Radiant Matter', or 'The Fourth State of Matter',
which he gave to his first publication about them. And so he was only being
consistent when, in his lectures before the Royal Institution in London, and
the British Association in Sheffield in 1879, after showing to an amazed
scientific audience the newly discovered properties of electricity, he came
to the climax of his exposition by saying: 'We have seen that in some of its

properties Radiant Matter is as material as this table, whilst in other
properties it almost assumes the character of Radiant Energy. We have
actually touched here the borderland where Matter and Force seem to merge
into one another, the shadowy realm between Known and Unknown, which
for me has always had peculiar temptations.' And in boldly prophetic words,
which time has partly justified, he added, 'I venture to think that the greatest
scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this Borderland,
and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie Ultimate Realities, subtle, far-
reaching, wonderful.'

No one can read these words of Crookes without hearing again, as an
undertone, the question which had forced itself on him at the bedside of his
dead brother, long before. All that is left of the human being whom death
has taken is a heap of substances, deserted by the force which had used
them as the instrument of its own activity. Whither vanishes this force when
it leaves the body, and is there any possibility of its revealing itself even
without occupying such a body?

Stirred by this question, the young Crookes set out to find a world of forces
which differ from the usual mechanical ones exercised by matter on matter,
in that they are autonomous, superior to matter in its inert conglomeration,
yet capable of using matter, just as the soul makes use of the body so long
as it dwells within it. His aim was to secure proof that such forces exist, or,
at any rate, to penetrate into the realm where the transition from matter to
pure, matter-free force takes place. And once again, as in Galvani's day,
electricity fascinated the eyes of a man who was seeking for the land of the
soul. What spiritism denied, electricity seemed to grant.

The aversion to spiritism which Crookes met with in contemporary science
was, from the standpoint of such a science, largely justified. Science, in the
form in which Crookes himself conceived it, took for granted that the
relationship of human consciousness to the world was that of external
onlooking. Accordingly, if the scientist remained within the limits thus
prescribed for consciousness, it was only consistent to refuse to make
anything beyond these limits an object of scientific research.

On the other hand, it says much for the courage and open mindedness of
Crookes that he refused to be held back from what was for him the only

possible way of extending the boundaries of science beyond the given
physical world. Moreover, it was only natural that in his search for a world
of a higher order than the physical he should, as a man of his time, first turn
his attention to spiritistic occurrences, for spiritism, as it had come over to
Europe from America in the middle of the nineteenth century, was nothing
but an attempt by the onlooker-consciousness to learn something in its own
way about the supersensible world. The spiritist expects the spirit to reveal
itself in outwardly perceptible phenomena as if it were part of the physical
world. Towards the end of his life Crookes confessed that if he were able to
begin again he would prefer to study telepathic phenomena - the direct
transference of thought from one person to another - rather than the purely
mechanical, or so-called telekinetic, expressions of psychic forces. But
although his interest was thus turning towards a more interior field of
psychic investigation, he remained true to his times in still assuming that
knowledge about the world, whatever it might be, could be won only by
placing oneself as a mere onlooker outside the object of research.

*

The stream of new discoveries which followed Crookes's work justified his
conviction that in cathode ray phenomena we have to do with a frontier
region of physical nature. Still, the land that lies on the other side of this
frontier is not the one Crookes had been looking for throughout his life. For,
instead of finding the way into the land whither man's soul disappears at
death, Crookes had inadvertently crossed the border into another land - a
land which the twentieth-century scientist is impelled to call 'the country
that is not ours'.

The realm thrown open to science by Crookes's observations, which human
knowledge now entered as if taking it by storm, was that of the radioactive
processes of the mineral stratum of the earth. Many new and surprising
properties of electricity were discovered there - yet the riddle of electricity
itself, instead of coming nearer, withdrew into ever deeper obscurity.

The very first step into this newly discovered territory made the riddle still
more bewildering. As we have said, Maxwell's use of a material analogy as
a means of formulating mathematically the properties of electro-magnetic
fields of force had led to results which brought electricity into close

conjunction with light. In his own way Crookes focused, to begin with, his
attention entirely on the light-like character of electric effects in a vacuum.
It was precisely these observations, however, as continued by Lenard and
others, which presently made it necessary to see in electricity nothing else
than a special manifestation of inert mass.

The developments leading up to this stage are recent and familiar enough to
be briefly summarized. The first step was once more an accident, when
Röntgen (or rather one of his assistants) noticed that a bunch of keys, laid
down by chance on top of an unopened box of photographic plates near a
cathode tube, had produced an inexplicable shadow-image of itself on one
of the plates. The cathode tube was apparently giving off some hitherto
unknown type of radiation, capable of penetrating opaque substances.
Röntgen was an experimentalist, not a theorist; his pupils used to say
privately that in publishing this discovery of X-rays he attempted a
theoretical explanation for the first and only time in his life - and got it
wrong!

However, this accidental discovery had far-reaching consequences. It drew
attention to the fluorescence of minerals placed in the cathode tube; this
inspired Becquerel to inquire whether naturally fluorescent substances gave
off anything like X-rays, and eventually - yet again by accident - he came
upon certain uranium compounds. These were found to give off a radiation
similar to X-rays, and to give it off naturally and all the time. Soon
afterwards the Curies succeeded in isolating the element, radium, an
element which was found to be undergoing a continuous natural
disintegration. The way was now clear for that long series of experiments
on atomic disintegration which led finally to the splitting of the nucleus and
the construction of the atomic bomb.

*

A typical modern paradox emerges from these results. By restricting his
cognitive powers to a field of experience in which the concept of force as
an objective reality was unthinkable, man has been led on a line of practical
investigation the pursuit of which was bound to land him amongst the
force-activities of the cosmos. For what distinguishes electric and sub-
electric activities from all other forces of physical nature so far known to

science, is that for their operation they have no need of the resistance
offered by space-bound material bodies; they represent a world of pure
dynamics into which spatial limitations do not enter.

Equally paradoxical is the situation of theoretical thinking in face of that
realm of natural being which practical research has lately entered. We have
seen that this thinking, by virtue of the consciousness on which it is
founded, is impelled always to clothe its ideas in spatial form. Wherever
anything in the pure spatial adjacency of physical things remains
inexplicable, resort is had to hypothetical pictures whose content consists
once more of nothing but spatially extended and spatially adjacent items. In
this way matter came to be seen as consisting of molecules, molecules of
atoms, and atoms of electrons, protons, neutrons, and so forth.

In so far as scientific thought has held to purely spatial conceptions, it has
been obliged to concentrate on ever smaller and smaller spatial sizes, so that
the spatially conceived atom-picture has finally to reckon with dimensions
wherein the old concept of space loses validity. When once thinking had
started in this direction, it was electricity which once more gave it the
strongest impulse to go even further along the same lines.

Where we have arrived along this path is brought out in a passage in
Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World. There, after describing the
modern picture of electrons dancing round the atomic nucleus, he says:
'This spectacle is so fascinating that we have perhaps forgotten that there
was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. This question
was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven round the
electron; it belongs to the waiting list.' The only thing we can say about the
electron, if we are not to deceive ourselves, Eddington concludes, is:
'Something unknown is doing we don't know what.'4

Let us add a further detail from this picture of the atom, as given in
Eddington's Philosophy of Physical Science. Referring to the so-called
positron, the positive particle regarded as the polar opposite of the negative
electron, he remarks: 'A positron is a hole from which an electron has been
removed; it is a bung-hole which would be evened up with its surroundings
if an electron were inserted. ... You will see that the physicist allows himself

even greater liberty than the sculptor. The sculptor removes material to
obtain the form he desires. The physicist goes further and adds material if
necessary - an operation which he describes as removing negative material.
He fills up a bung-hole, saying he is removing a positron.' Eddington thus
shows to what paradoxical ideas the scientist is driven, when with his
accustomed forms of thought he ventures into regions where the conditions
necessary for such forms no longer exist; and he concludes his remarks with
the following caution: 'Once again I would remind you that objective truth
is not the point at issue.'

By this reminder Eddington shows how far science has reconciled itself to
the philosophic scepticism at which man's thinking had arrived in the days
of Hume. In so far as the above remark was intended to be a consolation for
the bewildered student, it is poor comfort in the light of the actions which
science has let loose with the help of those unknown entities. For it is just
this resignation of human thought which renders it unable to cope with the
flood of phenomena springing from the sub-material realm of nature, and
has allowed scientific research to outrun scientific understanding.
1 E. du Bois-Raymond: Investigations into Animal Electricity (1884). Galvani published his

discovery when the French Revolution had reached its zenith and Napoleon was climbing to power.

2 The above account follows A. J. von Oettingen's edition of Galvani's monograph, De viribus

electricitatis in motu musculari.

3 For what follows see The Life of Sir William Crookes, by E. E. Fournier D'Albe (London, 1923).

4 Eddington's italics. See also, in this respect, Professor White head's criticism of the hypothetical

picture of the electron and its behaviour.

PART II

Goetheanism - Whence and Whither?

CHAPTER V

The Adventure of Reason

In 1790, a year before Galvani's monograph, Concerning the Forces of
Electricity, appeared, Goethe published his Metamorphosis of Plants, which
represents the first step towards the practical overcoming of the limitations
of the onlooker-consciousness in science. Goethe's paper was not destined
to raise such a storm as soon followed Galvani's publication. And yet the
fruit of Goethe's endeavours is not less significant than Galvani's discovery,
for the progress of mankind. For in Goethe's achievement lay the seed of
that form of knowing which man requires, if in the age of the electrification
of civilization he is to remain master of his existence.

*

Among the essays in which Goethe in later years gave out some of the
results of his scientific observation in axiomatic form, is one called
'Intuitive Judgment' ('Anschauende Urteilskraft'), in which he maintains that
he has achieved in practice what Kant had declared to be for ever beyond
the scope of the human mind. Goethe refers to a passage in the Critique of
Judgment, where Kant defines the limits of human cognitional powers as he
had observed them in his study of the peculiar nature of the human reason.
We must first go briefly into Kant's own exposition of the matter.1

Kant distinguishes between two possible forms of reason, the intellectus
archetypus and the intellectus ectypus. By the first he means a reason
'which being, not like ours, discursive, but intuitive, proceeds from the
synthetic universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, that
is, from the whole to the parts'. According to Kant, such a reason lies
outside human possibilities. In contrast to it, the intellectus ectypus peculiar
to man is restricted to taking in through the senses the single details of the
world as such; with these it can certainly construct pictures of their
totalities, but these pictures never have more than a hypothetical character

and can claim no reality for themselves. Above all, it is not given to such a
thinking to think 'wholes' in such a way that through an act of thought alone
the single items contained in them can be conceived as parts springing from
them by necessity. (To illustrate this, we may say that, according to Kant,
we can certainly comprehend the parts of an organism, say of a plant, and
out of its components make a picture of the plant as a whole; but we are not
in a position to think that 'whole' of the plant which conditions the existence
of its organism and brings forth its parts by necessity.) Kant expresses this
in the following way:

'For external objects as phenomena an adequate ground related to purposes
cannot be met with; this, although it lies in nature, must be sought only in
the supersensible substrata of nature, from all possible insight into which
we are cut off. Our understanding has then this peculiarity as concerns the
judgment, that in cognitive understanding the particular is not determined
by the universal and cannot therefore be derived from it.'

The attempt to prove whether or not another form of reason than this (the
intellectus archetypus) is possible - even though declared to be beyond man
- Kant regarded as superfluous, because the fact was enough for him 'that
we are led to the Idea of it - which contains no contradiction - in contrast to
our discursive understanding, which has need of images (intellectus
ectypus), and to the contingency of its constitution'.

Kant here brings forward two reasons why it is permissible to conceive of
the existence of an extra-human, archetypal reason. On the one hand he
admits that the existence of our own reason in its present condition is of a
contingent order, and thus does not exclude the possible existence of a
reason differently constituted. On the other hand, he allows that we can
think of a form of reason which in every respect is the opposite of our own,
without meeting any logical inconsistency.

From these definitions emerges a conception of the properties of man's
cognitional powers which agrees exactly with those on which, as we have
seen, Hume built up his whole philosophy. Both allow to the reason a
knowledge-material consisting only of pictures - that is, of pictures evoked
in consciousness through sense-perception, and received by it from the
outer world in the form of disconnected units, whilst denying it all powers,

as Hume expressed it, ever 'to perceive any real connections between
distinct existences'.

This agreement between Kant and Hume must at first sight surprise us,
when we recall that, as already mentioned, Kant worked out his philosophy
precisely to protect the cognizing being of man from the consequences of
Hume's thought. For, as he himself said, it was his becoming acquainted
with Hume's Treatise that 'roused him out of his dogmatic slumber' and
obliged him to reflect on the foundations of human knowing. We shall
understand this apparent paradox, however, if we take it as a symptom of
humanity's close imprisonment in recent centuries within the limits of its
onlooker-consciousness.

In his struggle against Hume, Kant was not concerned to challenge his
opponent's definition of man's reasoning power. His sole object was to show
that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as Hume in the
application of this power. All that Kant could aspire to do was to protect the
ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving
that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. For
with his will man belongs to a world of purposeful doing, whereas the
reason, as our quotations have shown, is incapable even in observing
external nature, of comprehending the wholes within nature which
determine natural ends. Still less can it do this in regard to man, a being
who in his actions is integrated into higher purposes.

Kant's deed is significant in that it correctly drew attention to that polar
division in human nature which, after all, was already established in Kant's
own time. Kant demonstrated also that to win insight into the ethical nature
of man with the aid of the isolated intellect alone implied a trespass beyond
permissible limits. In order to give the doing part of the human being its
necessary anchorage, however, Kant assigned it to a moral world-order
entirely external to man, to which it could be properly related only through
obedient submission.

In this way Kant became the philosopher of that division between
knowledge and faith which to this day is upheld in both the ecclesiastical
and scientific spheres of our civilization. Nevertheless, he did not succeed
in safeguarding humanity from the consequences of Hume's philosophy; for

man cannot live indefinitely in the belief that with the two parts of his own
being he is bound up with two mutually unrelated worlds. The time when
this was feasible is already over, as may be seen from the fact that ever
greater masses of men wish to determine their behaviour according to their
own ideas, and as they see no alternative in the civilization around them but
to form ideas by means of the discursive reason which inevitably leads to
agnosticism, they determine their actions accordingly. Meanwhile, the
ethical life as viewed by Kant accordingly shrinks ever further into a
powerless, hole-and-corner existence.

*

It is Goethe's merit to have first shown that there is a way out of this
impasse. He had no need to argue theoretically with Kant as to the
justification of denying man any power of understanding apart from the
discursive, and of leaving the faculty of intuitive knowledge to a divinity
somewhere outside the world of man. For Goethe was his own witness that
Kant was mistaken in regarding man's present condition as his lasting
nature. Let us hear how he expresses himself on this fact at the beginning of
his essay written as an answer to Kant's statement:

'It is true, the author here seems to be pointing to an intellect not human but
divine. And yet, if in the moral sphere we are supposed to lift ourselves up
to a higher region through faith in God, Virtue and Immortality, so drawing
nearer to the Primal Being, why should it not be likewise in the intellectual?
By contemplation (Anschauen) of an ever-creative nature, may we not make
ourselves worthy to be spiritual sharers in her productions? I at first, led by
an inner urge that would not rest, had quite unconsciously been seeking for
the realm of Type and Archetype, and my attempt had been rewarded: I had
been able to build up a description, in conformity with Nature herself. Now
therefore nothing more could hinder me from braving what the Old Man of
the King's Hill2 himself calls the Adventure of Reason.'

Goethe started from the conviction that our senses as well as our intellect
are gifts of nature, and that, if at any given moment they prove incapable
through their collaboration of solving a riddle of nature, we must ask her to
help us to develop this collaboration adequately. Thus there was no question

for him of any restriction of sense-perception in order to bring the latter in
line with the existing power of the intellect, but rather to learn to make an
ever fuller use of the senses and to bring our intellect into line with what
they tell. 'The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives', is one of
his basic utterances concerning their respective roles in our quest for
knowledge and understanding. As to the senses themselves, he was sure that
'the human being is adequately equipped for all true earthly requirements if
he trusts his senses, and so develops them as to make them worthy of trust'.

There is no contradiction in the statement that we have to trust our senses,
and that we have to develop them to make them trustworthy. For, 'nature
speaks upwards to the known senses of man, downwards to unknown
senses of his'. Goethe's path was aimed at wakening faculties, both
perceptual and conceptual, which lay dormant in himself. His experience
showed him that 'every process in nature, rightly observed, wakens in us a
new organ of cognition'. Right observation, in this respect, consisted in a
form of contemplating nature which he called a 're-creating (creating in the
wake) of an ever-creative nature' (Nachschaffen einer immer schaffenden
Natur).

*

We should do Goethe an injustice if we measured the value of his scientific
work by the amount of factual knowledge he contributed to one or other
sphere of research. Although Goethe did bring many new things to light, as
has been duly recognized in the scientific fields concerned, it cannot be
gainsaid that other scientists in his own day, working along the usual lines,
far exceeded his total of discoveries. Nor can it be denied that, as critics
have pointed out, he occasionally went astray in reporting his observations.
These things, however, do not determine the value or otherwise of his
scientific labours. His work draws its significance not so much from the
'what', to use a Goethean expression, as from the 'how' of his observations,
that is, from his way of investigating nature. Having once developed this
method in the field of plant observation, Goethe was able, with its aid, to
establish a new view of animal nature, to lay the basis for a new
meteorology, and, by creating his theory of light and colour, to provide a
model for a research in the field of physics, free from onlooker-restrictions.

In the scientific work of Goethe his botanical studies have a special place.
As a living organism, the plant is involved in an endless process of
becoming. It shares this characteristic, of course, with the higher creatures
of nature, and yet between it and them there is an essential difference.
Whereas in animal and man a considerable part of the life-processes
conceal themselves within the organism, in order to provide a basis for
inner soul processes, the plant brings its inner life into direct and total outer
manifestation. Hence the plant, better than anything, could become Goethe's
first teacher in his exercise of re-creating nature.

It is for the same reason that we shall here use the plant for introducing
Goethe's method. The following exposition, however, does not aim at
rendering in detail Goethe's own botanical researches, expounded by him in
two extensive essays, Morphology and The Metamorphosis of Plants, as
well as in a series of smaller writings. There are several excellent
translations of the chief paper, the Metamorphosis, from which the English-
speaking reader can derive sufficient insight into Goethe's way of
expressing his ideas; a pleasure as well as a profit which he should not deny
himself.

Our own way of procedure will have to be such that Goethe's method, and
its fruitfulness for the general advance of science, come as clearly as
possible into view.3 Botanical details will be referred to only as far as seems
necessary for this purpose.

The data for observation, from which in Goethe's own fashion we shall
start, have been selected as best for our purpose, quite independently of the
data used by Goethe himself. Our choice was determined by the material
available when these pages were being written. The reader is free to
supplement our studies by his own observation of other plants.

*

Plates II and III show two series of leaves which are so arranged as to
represent definite stages in the growth-process of the plant concerned. In
each sequence shown the leaves have been taken from a single plant, in
which each leaf-form was repeated, perhaps several times, before it passed
over into the next stage. The leaves on Plate II come from a Sidalcea (of the

mallow family), those on Plate III from a Delphinium. We will describe the
forms in sequence, so that we may grasp as clearly as possible the transition
from one to another as presented to the eye.

Starting with the right-hand leaf at the bottom of Plate II, we let our eye and
mind be impressed by its characteristic form, seeking to take hold of the
pattern after which it is shaped. Its edge bears numerous incisions of
varying depths which, however, do not disturb the roundness of the leaf as a
whole. If we re-create in our imagination the 'becoming' of such a leaf, that
is, its gradual growth in all directions, we receive an impression of these
incisions as 'negative' forms, because, at the points where they occur, the
multiplication of the cells resulting from the general growth has been
retarded. We observe that this holding back follows a certain order.

We now proceed to the next leaf on the same plate and observe that, whilst
the initial plan is faithfully maintained, the ratio between the positive and
negative forms has changed. A number of incisions, hardly yet indicated in
the first leaf, have become quite conspicuous. The leaf begins to look as if it
were breaking up into a number of subdivisions.

In the next leaf we find this process still further advanced. The large
incisions have almost reached the centre, while a number of smaller ones at
the periphery have also grown deeper into the leaf. The basic plan of the
total leaf is still maintained, but the negative forms have so far got the upper
hand that the original roundness is no longer obvious.

The last leaf shows the process in its extreme degree. As we glance back
and along the whole series of development, we recognize that the form of
the last leaf is already indicated in that of the first. It appears as if the form
has gradually come to the fore through certain forces which have
increasingly prevented the leaf from filling in the whole of its ground-plan
with matter. In the last leaf the common plan is still visible in the
distribution of the veins, but the fleshy part of the leaf has become restricted
to narrow strips along these veins.

The metamorphosis of the delphinium leaf (Plate III) is of a different
character. Here the plant begins with a highly elaborate form of the leaf,
while in the end nothing remains but the barest indication of it. The

impression received from this series of leaves is that of a gradual
withdrawal of the magnificent form, revealed in its fullness only in the first
leaf.

A more intense impression of what these metamorphoses actually mean is
achieved by altering our mode of contemplation in the following way. After
repeated and careful observation of the different forms on either of the
plates, we build up inwardly, as a memory picture, the shape of the first
leaf, and then transform this mental image successively into the images of
the ensuing forms until we reach the final stage. The same process can also
be tried retrogressively, and so repeated forward and backward.

This is how Goethe studied the doing of the plant, and it is by this method
that he discovered the spiritual principle of all plant life, and succeeded also
in throwing a first light on the inner life-principle of animals.

*

We chose the transformation of leaf forms into one another as the starting-
point of our observations, because the principle of metamorphosis appears
here in a most conspicuous manner. This principle, however, is not confined
to this part of the plant's organism. In fact, all the different organs which the
plant produces within its life cycle - foliage, calyx, corolla, organs of
fertilization, fruit and seed - are metamorphoses of one and the same organ.

Man has long learnt to make use of this law of metamorphosis in the plant
for what is called doubling the flower of a certain species. Such a flower
crowds many additional petals within its original circle, and these petals are
nothing but metamorphosed stamens; this, for instance, is the difference
between the wild and the cultivated rose. The multitude of petals in the
latter is obtained by the transformation of a number of the former's
innumerable stamens. (Note the intermediate stages between the two, often
found inside the flower of such plants.)

This falling back from the stage of an organ of fertilization to that of a petal
shows that the plant is capable of regressive metamorphosis, and we may
conclude from this that in the normal sequence the different organs are
transformed from one another by way of progressive metamorphosis. It is

evident that the regressive type occurs only as an abnormality, or as a result
of artificial cultivation. Plants once brought into this condition frequently
show a general state of unrest, so that other organs also are inclined to fall
back to a lower level. Thus we may come across a rose, an outer petal of
which appears in the form of a leaf of the calyx (sepal), or one of the sepals
is found to have grown into an ordinary rose leaf.

We now extend our mental exercise to the plant's whole organism. By a
similar mental effort as applied to the leaf-formations we strive to build up
a complete plant. We start with the seed, from which we first imagine the
cotyledons unfolding, letting this be followed by the gradual development
of the entire green part of the plant, its stem and leaves, until the final
leaves change into the sepals of the calyx. These again we turn into the
petals of the flower, until via pistil and stamens the fruit and seed are
formed.

By pursuing in this way the living doing of the plant from stage to stage we
become aware of a significant rhythm in its total life cycle. This, when first
discovered by Goethe, gave him the key to an understanding of nature's
general procedure in building living organisms, and in maintaining life in
them.

The plant clearly divides into three major parts: firstly, the one that extends
from the cotyledons to the calyx, the green part of the plant, that is, where
the life principle is most active; secondly, the one comprising the flower
itself with the organs of fertilization, where the vitality of the plant gives
way to other principles; and lastly, the fruit and seed, which are destined to
be discharged from the mother organism. Each of these three contains two
kinds of organs: first, organs with the tendency to grow into width-leaf,
flower and fruit; second, organs which are outwardly smaller and simpler,
but have the function of preparing the decisive leaps in the plant's
development: these are the calyx, the stamens, etc., and the seed.

In this succession, Goethe recognized a certain rhythm of expansion and
contraction, and he found that the plant passes through it three times during
any one cycle of its life. In the foliage the plant expands, in the calyx it
contracts; it expands again in the flower and contracts in the pistil and
stamens; finally, it expands in the fruit and contracts in the seed.

The deeper meaning of this threefold rhythm will become clear when we
consider it against the background of what we observed in the
metamorphosis of the leaf. Take the mallow leaf; its metamorphosis shows
a step-wise progression from coarser to finer forms, whereby the
characteristic plan of the leaf comes more and more into view, so that in the
topmost leaf it reaches a certain stage of perfection. Now we observe that in
the calyx this stage is not improved on, but that the plant recurs to a much
simpler formation.

Whilst in the case of the mallow the withdrawal from the stage of the leaf
into that of the calyx occurs with a sudden leap, we observe that the
delphinium performs this process by degrees. Whilst the mallow reaches the
highly elaborate form of the leaf only in the final stage, the delphinium
leaps forth at the outset, as it were, with the fully accomplished leaf, and
then protracts its withdrawal into the calyx over a number of steps, so that
this process can be watched with our very eyes. In this type of
metamorphosis the last leaf beneath the calyx shows a form that differs little
from that of a calyx itself, with its simple sepals. Only in its general
geometrical arrangement does it still remind us of the original pattern.

In a case like this, the stem-leaves, to use Goethe's expression, 'softly steal
into the calyx stage'.4 In the topmost leaf the plant has already achieved
something which, along the other line of metamorphosis, is tackled only
after the leaf plan itself has been gradually executed. In this case the calyx
stage, we may say, is attained at one leap.

Whatever type of metamorphosis is followed by a plant (and there are
others as well, so that we may even speak of metamorphoses between
different types of metamorphosis!) they all obey the same basic rule,
namely, that before proceeding to the next higher stage of the cycle, the
plant sacrifices something already achieved in a preceding one. Behind the
inconspicuous sheath of the calyx we see the plant preparing itself for a new
creation of an entirely different order. As successor to the leaf, the flower
appears to us time and again as a miracle. Nothing in the lower realm of the
plant predicts the form, colour, scent and all the other properties of the new
organ produced at this stage. The completed leaf, preceding the plant's
withdrawal into the calyx, represents a triumph of structure over matter.

Now, in the flower, matter is overcome to a still higher degree. It is as if the
material substance here becomes transparent, so that what is immaterial in
the plant may shine through its outer surface.

*

In this 'climbing up the spiritual ladder' Goethe learned to recognize one of
nature's basic principles. He termed it Steigerung (heightening). Thus he
saw the plant develop through Metamorphosis and Heightening towards its
consummation. Implicit in the second of these two principles, however,
there is yet another natural principle for which Goethe did not coin a
specific term, although he shows through other utterances that he was well
aware of it, and of its universal significance for all life. We propose to call it
here the principle of Renunciation.

In the life of the plant this principle shows itself most conspicuously where
the green leaf is heightened into the flower. While progressing from leaf to
flower the plant undergoes a decisive ebb in its vitality. Compared with the
leaf, the flower is a dying organ. This dying, however, is of a kind we may
aptly call a 'dying into being'. Life in its mere vegetative form is here seen
withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take
place. The same principle can be seen at work in the insect kingdom, when
the caterpillar's tremendous vitality passes over into the short-lived beauty
of the butterfly. In the human being it is responsible for that metamorphosis
of organic processes which occurs on the path from the metabolic to the
nervous system, and which we came to recognize as the precondition for the
appearance of consciousness within the organism.

What powerful forces must be at work in the plant organism at this point of
transition from its green to its coloured parts! They enforce a complete halt
upon the juices that rise up right into the calyx, so that these bring nothing
of their life-bearing activity into the formation of the flower, but undergo a
complete transmutation, not gradually, but with a sudden leap.

After achieving its masterpiece in the flower, the plant once more goes
through a process of withdrawal, this time into the tiny organs of
fertilization. (We shall return later to this essential stage in the life cycle of
the plant, and shall then clear up the misinterpretation put upon it ever since

scientific biology began.) After fertilization, the fruit begins to swell; once
more the plant produces an organ with a more or less conspicuous spatial
extension. This is followed by a final and extreme contraction in the
forming of the seed inside the fruit. In the seed the plant gives up all outer
appearance to such a degree that nothing seems to remain but a small,
insignificant speck of organized matter. Yet this tiny, inconspicuous thing
bears in it the power of bringing forth a whole new plant.

In these three successive rhythms of expansion and contraction the plant
reveals to us the basic rule of its existence. During each expansion, the
active principle of the plant presses forth into visible appearance; during
each contraction it withdraws from outer embodiment into what we may
describe as a more or less pure state of being. We thus find the spiritual
principle of the plant engaged in a kind of breathing rhythm, now
appearing, now disappearing, now assuming power over matter, now
withdrawing from it again.

In the fully developed plant this rhythm repeats itself three times in
succession and at ever higher levels, so that the plant, in climbing from
stage to stage, each time goes through a process of withdrawal before
appearing at the next. The greater the creative power required at a certain
stage, the more nearly complete must be the withdrawal from outer
appearance. This is why the most extreme withdrawal of the plant into the
state of being takes place in the seed, when the plant prepares itself for its
transition from one generation to another. Even earlier, the flower stands
towards the leaves as something like a new generation springing from the
small organ of the calyx, as does the fruit to the flower when it arises from
the tiny organs of reproduction. In the end, however, nothing appears
outwardly so unlike the actual plant as the little seed which, at the expense
of all appearance, has the power to renew the whole cycle.

Through studying the plant in this way Goethe grew aware also of the
significance of the nodes and eyes which the plant develops as points where
its vital energy is specially concentrated; not only the seed, but the eye also,
is capable of producing a new, complete plant. In each of these eyes, formed
in the axils of the leaves, the power of the plant is present in its entirety,
very much as in each single seed.

In other ways, too, the plant shows its capacity to act as a whole at various
places of its organism. Otherwise, no plant could be propagated by cuttings;
in any little twig cut from a parent plant, all the manifold forces operative in
the gathering, transmuting, forming of matter, that are necessary for the
production of root, leaf, flower, fruit, etc., are potentially present, ready to
leap into action provided we give it suitable outer conditions. Other plants,
such as gloxinia and begonia, are known to have the power of bringing
forth a new, complete plant from each of their leaves. From a small cut
applied to a vein in a leaf, which is then embedded in earth, a root will soon
be seen springing downward, and a stalk with leaves rising upward.

A particular observation made by Goethe in this respect is of interest for
methodological reasons. In the introduction to his treatise Metamorphosis of
Plants, when referring to the regressive metamorphosis of stamens into
petals as an example of an irregular metamorphosis, he remarks that
'experiences of this kind of metamorphosis will enable us to disclose what
is hidden from us in the regular way of development, and to see clearly and
visibly what we should otherwise only be able to infer'. In this remark
Goethe expresses a truth that is valid in many spheres of life, both human
and natural. It is frequently a pathological aberration in an organic entity
that allows us to see in physical appearance things that do not come
outwardly to the fore in the more balanced condition of normal
development, although they are equally part of the regular organic process.

An enlightening experience of this kind came to Goethe's aid when one day
he happened to see a 'proliferated' rose (durchgewachsene Rose), that is, a
rose from whose centre a whole new plant had sprung. Instead of the
contracted seed-pod, with the attached, equally contracted, organs of
fertilization, there appeared a continuation of the stalk, half red and half
green, bearing in succession a number of small reddish petals with traces of
anthers. Thorns could be seen appearing further up, petals half-turned into
leaves, and even a number of fresh nodes from which little imperfect
flowers were budding. The whole phenomenon, in all its irregularity, was
one more proof for Goethe that the plant in its totality is potentially present
at each point of its organism.5

*

Goethe's observation of the single plant in statu agendi had trained him to
recognize things of quite different outer appearance as identical in their
inner nature. Leaf, sepal, petal, etc., much as they differ outwardly, yet
showed themselves to him as manifestations of one and the same spiritual
archetype. His idea of Metamorphosis enabled him to reduce what in outer
appearance seems incompatibly different to its common formative
principle. His next step was to observe the different appearances of one and
the same species in different regions of the earth, and thus to watch the
capacity of the species to respond in a completely flexible way to the
various climatic conditions, yet without concealing its inner identity in the
varying outer forms. His travels in Switzerland and Italy gave him
opportunity for such observations, and in the Alpine regions especially he
was delighted at the variations in the species which he already knew so well
from his home in Weimar. He saw their proportions, the distances between
the single parts, the degree of lignification, the intensity of colour, etc.,
varying with the varied conditions, yet never concealing the identity of the
species.

Having once advanced in his investigations from metamorphosis in the
parts of the single plant to metamorphosis among different representatives
of single plant species, Goethe had to take only one further, entirely
decisive, step in order to recognize how every member of the plant kingdom
is the manifestation of a single formative principle common to them all. He
was thus faced with the momentous task of preparing his spirit to think an
idea from which the plant world in its entire variety could be derived.

Goethe did not take such a step easily, for it was one of his scientific
principles never to think out an idea prematurely. He was well aware that he
who aspires to recognize and to express in idea the spirit which reveals
itself through the phenomena of the sense-world must develop the art of
waiting - of waiting, however, in a way intensely active, whereby one looks
again and yet again, until what one looks at begins to speak and the day at
last dawns when, through tireless 're-creation of an ever-creating nature',
one has grown ripe to express her secrets openly. Goethe was a master in
this art of active waiting.

* It was in the very year that Galvani, through his chance discovery, opened
the way to the overwhelming invasion of mankind by the purely physical
forces of nature, that Goethe came clearly to see that he had achieved the
goal of his labours. We can form some picture of the decisive act in the
drama of his seeking and finding from letters written during the years 1785-
7.

In the spring of 1785 he writes to a friend in a way that shows him fully
aware of his new method of studying nature, which he recognized was a
reading of her phenomena: 'I can't tell you how the Book of Nature is
becoming readable to me. My long practice in spelling has helped me; it
now suddenly works, and my quiet joy is inexpressible.' Again in the
summer of the following year: 'It is a growing aware of the Form with
which again and again nature plays, and, in playing, brings forth manifold
life.'

Then Goethe went on his famous journey to Italy which was to bear such
significant fruit for his inner life, both in art and in science. At Michaelmas,
1786, he reports from his visit to the botanical garden in Padua that 'the
thought becomes more and more living that it may be possible out of one
form to develop all plant forms'. At this moment Goethe felt so near to the
basic conception of the plant for which he was seeking, that he already
christened it with a special name. The term he coined for it is Urpflanze,
literally rendered archetypal plant, or ur-plant, as we propose quite simply
to call it.6

It was the rich tropical and sub-tropical vegetation in the botanical gardens
in Palermo that helped Goethe to his decisive observations. The peculiar
nature of the warmer regions of the earth enables the spirit to reveal itself
more intensively than is possible in the temperate zone. Thus in tropical
vegetation many things come before the eye which otherwise remain
undisclosed, and then can be detected only through an effort of active
thought. From this point of view, tropical vegetation is 'abnormal' in the
same sense as was the proliferated rose which confirmed for Goethe's
physical perception that inner law of plant-growth which had already
become clear to his mind.

During his sojourn in Palermo in the spring of 1787 Goethe writes in his
notebook: 'There must be one (ur-plant): how otherwise could we recognize
this or that formation to be a plant unless they were all formed after one
pattern?' Soon after this, he writes in a letter to the poet Herder, one of his
friends in Weimar:

'Further, I must confide to you that I am quite close to the secret of plant
creation, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. The ur-plant will be
the strangest creature in the world, for which nature herself should envy me.
With this model and the key to it one will be able to invent plants ad
infinitum; they would be consistent; that is to say, though non-existing, they
would be capable of existing, being no shades or semblances of the painter
or poet, but possessing truth and necessity. The same law will be capable of
extension to all living things.'

*

To become more familiar with the conception of the ur-plant, let us bring
the life-cycle of the plant before our inner eye once again. There, all the
different organs of the plant-leaf, blossom, fruit, etc. - appear as the
metamorphic revelations of the one, identical active principle, a principle
which gradually manifests itself to us by way of successive heightening
from the cotyledons to the perfected glory of the flower. Amongst all the
forms which thus appear in turn, that of the leaf has a special place; for the
leaf is that organ of the plant in which the ground-plan of all plant existence
comes most immediately to expression. Not only do all the different leaf
forms arise, through endless changing, out of each other, but the leaf, in
accordance with the same principle, also changes itself into all the other
organs which the plant produces in the course of its growth.

It is by precisely the same principle that the ur-plant reveals itself in the
plant kingdom as a whole. Just as in the single plant organism the different
parts are a graduated revelation of the ur-plant, so are the single kinds and
species within the total plant world. As we let our glance range over all its
ranks and stages (from the single-celled, almost formless alga to the rose
and beyond to the tree), we are following, step by step, the revelation of the
ur-plant. Barely hinting at itself in the lowest vegetable species, it comes in
the next higher stages into ever clearer view, finally streaming forth in full

glory in the magnificence of the manifold blossoming plants. Then, as its
highest creation, it brings forth the tree, which, itself a veritable miniature
earth, becomes the basis for innumerable single plant growths.

It has struck biologists of Goethe's own and later times that contrary to their
method he did not build up his study of the plant by starting with its lowest
form, and so the reproach has been levelled against him of having unduly
neglected the latter. Because of this, the views he had come to were
regarded as scientifically unfounded. Goethe's note-books prove that there
is no justification for such a reproach. He was in actual fact deeply
interested in the lower plants, but he realized that they could not contribute
anything fundamental to the spiritual image of the plant as such which he
was seeking to attain. To understand the plant he found himself obliged to
pay special attention to examples in which it came to its most perfect
expression. For what was hidden in the alga was made manifest in the rose.
To demand of Goethe that in accordance with ordinary science he should
have explained nature 'from below upwards' is to misunderstand the
methodological basis of all his investigations.

Seen with Goethe's eyes, the plant kingdom as a whole appears to be a
single mighty plant. In it the ur-plant, while pressing into appearance, is
seen to observe the very rule which we have found governing its action in
the single plant - that of repeated expansion and contraction.7 Taking the
tree in the sense already indicated, as the state of highest expansion along
the ur-plant's way of entering into spatial manifestation, we note that tree-
formation occurs successively at four different levels - as fern-tree (also the
extinct tree-form of the horsetail) among the cryptogams, as coniferous tree
among the gymnosperms, as palm-tree among the monocotyledons, and
lastly in the form of the manifold species of the leaf-trees at the highest
level of the plant kingdom, the dicotyledons. All these levels have come
successively into existence, as geological research has shown; the ur-plant
achieved these various tree-formations successively, thus giving up again its
state of expansion each time after having reached it at a particular level.

From the concept of the ur-plant Goethe soon learned to develop another
concept which was to express the spiritual principle working in a particular
plant species, just as the ur-plant was the spiritual principle covering the

plant kingdom as a whole. He called it the type. In the manifold types which
are thus seen active in the plant world we meet offsprings, as it were, of the
mother, the 'ur-plant', which in them assumes differentiated modes of
action.

The present part of our discussion may be concluded by the introduction of
a concept which Goethe formed for the organ of cognition attained through
contemplating nature in the state of becoming, as the plant had taught him
to do.

Let us look back once again on the way in which we first tried to build up
the picture of leaf metamorphosis. There we made use, first of all, of exact
sense-perceptions to which we applied the power of memory in its function
as their keeper. We then endeavoured to transform within our mind the
single memory pictures (leaf forms) into one another. By doing so we
applied to them the activity of mobile fantasy. In this way we actually
endowed, on the one hand, objective memory, which by nature is static,
with the dynamic properties of fantasy, and, on the other hand, mobile
fantasy, which by nature is subjective, with the objective character of
memory. Now, for the new organ of cognition arising from the union of
these two polar faculties of the soul, Goethe coined the significant
expression, exact sensorial fantasy.8 In terms of our knowledge of man's
psycho-physical make-up, acquired earlier, we can say that, just as the
nervous system forms the basis for memory, and the blood the basis for
fantasy, so the 'exact sensorial fantasy' is based on a newly created
collaboration of the two.

*

Our observations have reached a point where we may consider that stage in
the life cycle of the single plant where, by means of the process of
pollination, the seed acquires the capacity to produce out of itself a new
example of the species. Our discussion of this will bring home the
fundamental difference in idea that arises when, instead of judging a
process from the standpoint of the mere onlooker, we try to comprehend it
through re-creating it inwardly.

Biological science of our day takes it for granted that the process uniting
pollen with seed in the plant is an act of fertilization analogous to that
which occurs among the higher organisms of nature. Now it is not to be
gainsaid that to external observation this comparison seems obvious, and
that it is therefore only natural to speak of the pollen as the male, and of the
ovule as the female, element, and of their union as entirely parallel to that
between the sexes in the higher kingdoms of nature.

Goethe confesses that at first he himself 'had credulously put up with the
ruling dogma of sexuality'. He was first made aware of the invalidity of this
analogy by Professor Schelver who, as Superintendent of the Jena Botanical
Institute, was working under Goethe's direction and had trained himself in
Goethe's method of observing plants. This man had come to see that if one
held strictly to the Goethean practice of using nothing for the explanation of
the plant but what one could read from the plant itself, one must not ascribe
to it any sexual process. He was convinced that for a Goethean kind of
biology it must be possible to find, even for the process of pollination, an
idea derived from nothing but the two principles of plant life: growth and
formation.

Goethe immediately recognized the Tightness of this thought, and set about
the task of relating the pollination process to the picture of the plant which
his investigations had already yielded. His way of reporting the result
shows how fully conscious he was of its revolutionary nature. Nor was he
in any doubt as to the kind of reception it would be given by official
biology.

In observing the growth of the plant, Goethe had perceived that this
proceeds simultaneously according to two different principles. On the one
hand the plant grows in an axial direction and thereby produces its main and
side stems. To this growth principle Goethe gave the name 'vertical
tendency'. Were the plant to follow this principle only, its lateral shoots
would all stand vertically one above the other. But observation shows that
the different plant species obey very different laws in this respect, as may
be seen if one links up all the leaf buds along any plant stem; they form a
line which winds spiral fashion around it. Each plant family is
distinguishable by its own characteristic spiral, which can be represented

either geometrically by a diagram, or arithmetically by a fraction. If, for
example, the leaves are so arranged in a plant that every fifth leaf recurs on
the same side of the stem, while the spiral connecting the five successive
leaf-buds winds twice round the stem, this is expressed in botany by the
fraction 2 / 5. To distinguish this principle of plant growth from the vertical
tendency, Goethe used the term 'spiral tendency'.

To help towards a clear understanding of both tendencies, Goethe describes
an exercise which is characteristic of his way of schooling himself in what
he called exact sensorial fantasy. He first looks out for a phenomenon in
which the 'secret' of the spiral tendency is made 'open'. This he finds in such
a plant as the convolvulus; in this kind of plant the vertical tendency is
lacking, and the spiral principle comes obviously into outer view.
Accordingly, the convolvulus requires an external support, around which it
can wind itself. Goethe now suggests that after looking at a convolvulus as
it grows upwards around its support, one should first make this clearly
present to one's inner eye, and then again picture the plant's growth without
the vertical support, allowing instead the upward-growing plant inwardly to
produce a vertical support for itself. By way of inward re-creation (which
the reader should not fail to carry out himself) Goethe attained a clear
experience of how, in all those plants which in growing upwards produce
their leaves spiral-wise around the stem, the vertical and spiral tendencies
work together.

In following the two growth-principles, Goethe saw that the vertical comes
to a halt in the blossom; the straight line here shrinks together, so to say,
into a point, surviving only in the ovary and pistil as continuations of the
plant's stalk. The spiral tendency, on the other hand, is to be found in the
circle of the stamens arranged around these; the process which in the leaves
strove outwards in spiral succession around a straight line is now telescoped
on to a single plane. In other words, the vertical-spiral growth of the plant
here separates into its two components. And when a pollen grain lands on a
pistil and joins with the ovule prepared in the ovary, the two components
are united again. Out of the now complete seed a new and complete plant
can arise.

Goethe understood that he would be taught a correct conception of this
process only by the plant itself. Accordingly, he asked himself where else in
the growing plant something like separation and reunion could be seen. This
he found in the branching and reuniting of the veins in the leaves, known as
anastomosis.

In the dividing of the two growth-principles in the plant through the
formation of carpel and pistil, on the one hand, and the pollen-bearing
stamens on the other, and in their reunion through the coming together of
the pollen with the seed, Goethe recognized a metamorphosis of the process
of anastomosis at a higher level. His vision of it caused him to term it
'spiritual anastomosis'.

Goethe held a lofty and comprehensive view of the significance of the male
and female principles as spiritual opposites in the cosmos. Among the
various manifestations of this polarity in earthly nature he found one, but
one only, in the duality of the sexes as characteristic of man and animal.
Nothing compelled him, therefore, to ascribe it in the same form to the
plant. This enabled him to discover how the plant bore the same polarity in
plant fashion.

In the neighbourhood of Weimar, Goethe often watched a vine slinging its
foliaged stem about the trunk and branches of an elm tree. In this
impressive sight nature offered him a picture of 'the female and male, the
one that needs and the one that gives, side by side in the vertical and spiral
directions'. Thus his artist's eye clearly detected in the upward striving of
the plant a decisively masculine principle, and in its spiral winding an
equally definite feminine principle. Since in the normal plant both
principles are inwardly connected, 'we can represent vegetation as a whole
as being in a secret androgynous union from the root up. From this union,
through the changes of growth, both systems break away into open polarity
and so stand in decisive opposition to each other, only to unite again in a
higher sense.'

Thus Goethe found himself led to ideas regarding the male and female
principles in the plant, which were the exact opposite of those one obtains
if, in trying to explain the process of pollination, one does not keep to the
plant itself but imports an analogy from another kingdom of nature. For in

continuance of the vertical principle of the plant, the pistil and carpel
represent the male aspect in the process of spiritual anastomosis, and the
mobile, wind- or insect-borne pollen, in continuing the spiral principle,
represents the female part.

If the process of pollination is what the plant tells us it is, then the question
arises as to the reason for the occurrence of such a process in the life cycle
of the fully developed plant. Goethe himself has not expressed himself
explicitly on this subject. But his term 'spiritual anastomosis' shows that he
had some definite idea about it. Let us picture in our mind what happens
physically in the plant as a result of pollination and then try to read from
this picture, as from a hieroglyph, what act of the spiritual principle in the
plant comes to expression through it.

Without pollination there is no ripening of the seed. Ripening means for the
seed its acquisition of the power to bring forth a new and independent plant
organism through which the species continues its existence within nature. In
the life cycle of the plant this event takes place after the organism has
reached its highest degree of physical perfection. When we now read these
facts in the light of the knowledge that they are deeds of the activity of the
type, we may describe them as follows:

Stage by stage the type expends itself in ever more elaborate forms of
appearance, until in the blossom a triumph of form over matter is reached. A
mere continuation of this path could lead to nothing but a loss of all
connexion between the plant's superphysical and physical component parts.
Thus, to guarantee for the species its continuation in a new generation, the
formative power of the type must find a way of linking itself anew to some
part of the plant's materiality. This is achieved by the plant's abandoning the
union between its two polar growth-principles and re-establishing it again,
which in the majority of cases takes place even in such a way that the
bearers of the two principles originate from two different organisms.

By picturing the process in this way we are brought face to face with a rule
of nature which, once we have recognized it, proves to hold sway at all
levels of organic nature. In general terms it may be expressed as follows:

In order that spiritual continuity may be maintained within the coming and
going multitude of nature's creations, the physical stream must suffer
discontinuity at certain intervals.

In the case of the plant this discontinuity is achieved by the breaking
asunder of the male and female growth-principles. When they have
reunited, the type begins to abandon either the entire old plant or at least
part of it, according to whether the species is an annual or a perennial one,
in order to concentrate on the tiny seed, setting, as it were, its living seal on
it.

This is as far as we can go in describing this mysterious process, at least at
the present stage of our considerations.

*

Our pursuit of Goethe's way of observing the life of the plant has brought us
to a point where it becomes possible to rectify a widespread error
concerning his position as an evolutionary theorist.

Goethe has been honourably mentioned as a predecessor of Darwin. The
truth is, that the idea of evolution emerging from Goethe's mode of
regarding nature is the exact opposite of the one held by Darwin and - in
whatever modified form - by his followers. A brief consideration of the
Darwinian concepts of inheritance and adaptation will show this.

Goethe's approach to his conception of the type is clear evidence that he did
not undervalue the factor of adaptation as a formative element in nature; we
have seen that he became acquainted with it in studying the same plant
species under different climatic conditions. In his view, however, adaptation
appears not as the passive effect of a blindly working, external cause, but as
the response of the spiritual type to the conditions meeting it from outside.

The same applies to the concept of inheritance. Through inheritance Goethe
saw single, accessory characteristics of a species being carried over from
one generation to the next; but never could the reappearance of the basic
features of the species itself be explained in this way. He was sufficiently
initiated into nature's methods to know that she was not in need of a

continuity of the stream of physical substance, in the sense of the theory of
inheritance, to guarantee a continuance of the features of the species
through successive generations, but that it was her craft to achieve such
continuance by means of physical discontinuity.

*

Goethe was not temperamentally given to reflecting deliberately about his
own cognitional processes. Moreover, the excess of reflexion going on
around him in the intellectual life of his younger days inclined him to guard
himself with a certain anxiety against philosophical cogitations. His words
to a friend - 'Dear friend, I have done it well, and never reflected about
thinking' - bring this home to us. If in his later years Goethe could become
to some degree epistemologically conscious of his spiritual achievements,
as, for instance, his essay on Intuitive Judgment shows, he owed this to his
friendship with Schiller, who became for him a kind of soul mirror, in
which he could see the reflexion of his own processes of consciousness.
Indeed, at their first personal encounter, significant as it was for their whole
later relationship, Schiller - though all unconsciously - performed a decisive
service of this kind for him. Goethe himself speaks of the occasion in his
essay Happy Encounter (Gliickliches Ereignis), written twelve years after
Schiller's death.

The occasion was, outwardly regarded, fortuitous: both men were leaving a
lecture on natural science at the University of Jena, Schiller having been
present as Professor of History in the University, and Goethe as its patron
and as a Weimar Minister of State. They met at the door of the lecture hall
and went out into the street together. Schiller, who had been wanting to
come into closer contact with Goethe for a long time, used the opportunity
to begin a conversation. He opened with a comment on the lecture they had
just heard, saying that such a piecemeal way of handling nature could not
bring the layman any real satisfaction. Goethe, to whom this remark was
heartily welcome, replied that such a style of scientific observation 'was
uncanny even for the initiated, and that there must certainly be another way
altogether, which did not treat of nature as divided and in pieces, but
presented her as working and alive, striving out of the whole into the parts'.

Schiller's interest was at once aroused by this remark, although as a
thorough Kantian he could not conceal his doubts whether the kind of thing
indicated by Goethe was within human capacity. Goethe began to explain
himself further, and so the discussion proceeded, until the speakers arrived
at Schiller's house. Quite absorbed in his description of plant
metamorphosis, Goethe went in with Schiller and climbed the stairs to the
latter's study. Once there, he seized pen and paper from Schiller's writing
desk, and to bring his conception of the ur-plant vividly before his
companion's eyes he made 'a symbolic plant appear with many a
characteristic stroke of the pen'.

Although Schiller had listened up to this point 'with great interest and
definite understanding', he shook his head as Goethe finished, and said -
Kantian that he was at that time: 'That is no experience, that is an idea.'
These words were very disappointing to Goethe. At once his old antipathy
towards Schiller rose up, an antipathy caused by much in Schiller's public
utterances which he had found distasteful.

Once again he felt that Schiller and he were 'spiritual antipodes, removed
from each other by more than an earth diameter'. However, Goethe
restrained his rising annoyance, and answered Schiller in a tranquil but
determined manner: 'I am glad to have ideas without knowing it, and to see
them with my very eyes.'

Although at this meeting Goethe and Schiller came to no real agreement,
the personal relationship formed through it did not break off; both had
become aware of the value of each to the other. For Goethe his first meeting
with Schiller had the significant result of showing him that 'thinking about
thought' could be fruitful. For Schiller this significance consisted in his
having met in Goethe a human intellect which, simply by its existing
properties, invalidated Kant's philosophy. For him Goethe's mind became
an object of empirical study on which he based the beginnings of a new
philosophy free from onlooker-restrictions.

An essay, written by Goethe about the same time as the one just quoted,
shows how he came to think at a later date about the raising of human
perception into the realm of ideas. In this essay, entitled Discovery of an

Excellent Predecessor,9 Goethe comments on certain views of the botanist,
K. F. Wolff, regarding the relationships between the different plant organs,
which seemed to be similar to his own, and at which Wolff had arrived in
his own way.

Wolff had risen up as an opponent of the so-called preformation theory, still
widespread at that time, according to which the entire plant with all its
different parts is already present in embryonic physical form in the seed,
and simply grows out into space through physical enlargement. Such a
mode of thought seemed inadmissible to Wolff, for it made use of an
hypothesis 'resting on an extra-sensible conception, which was held to be
thinkable, although it could never be demonstrated from the sense world.
Wolff laid it down as a fundamental principle of all research that 'nothing
may be assumed, admitted or asserted that has not been actually seen and
cannot be made similarly visible to others'. Thus in Wolff we meet with a
phenomenologist who in his way tried to oppose certain trends of
contemporary biological thinking. As such, Wolff had made certain
observations which caused him to ascribe to the plant features quite similar
to those which Goethe had grasped under the conception of progressive and
regressive metamorphosis. In this way Wolff had grown convinced that all
plant organs are transformed leaves. True to his own principle, he had then
turned to the microscope for his eyes to confirm what his mind had already
recognized.

The microscope gave him the confirmation he expected by showing that all
the different organs of the plant develop out of identical embryonic
beginnings. In his absolute reliance on physical observation, however, he
tried to go further than this and to detect in this way the reason why the
plant does not always bring forth the same organ. He saw that the vegetative
strength in the plant diminishes in proportion as its organism enters upon its
later stages. He therefore attributed the differentiated evolution of plant
organs from identical beginnings to an ever weaker process of development
in them.

Despite his joy in Wolff as someone who in his own fashion had arrived at
certain truths which he himself had also discovered, and despite his
agreement with Wolff's phenomenalistic principle, Goethe could in no way

accept his explanation of why metamorphosis took place in plants. He said:
'In plant metamorphosis Wolff saw how the same organ continuously draws
together, makes itself smaller; he did not see that this contraction alternates
with an expansion. He saw that the organ diminishes in volume, but not that
at the same time it ennobles itself, and so, against reason, he attributed
decline to the path towards perfection.' What was it, then, which had
prevented Wolff from seeing things aright? 'However admirable may be
Wolff's method, through which he has achieved so much, the excellent man
never thought that there may be a difference between seeing and seeing,
that the eyes of the spirit have to work in perpetual living connection with
those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing and yet seeing past a thing
(zu sehen und doch vorbeizusehen).'

Wolff's case was to Goethe a symptom of the danger which he saw arising
for science from the rapidly increasing use of the microscope (and similarly
the telescope), if thinking was not developed correspondingly but left at the
mercy of these instruments. His concern over the state of affairs speaks
from his utterance: 'Microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse
man's innate clarity of mind.'

When we follow Goethe in this way he comes before us in characteristic
contrast to Robert Hooke. We remember Hooke's microscopic 'proof of the
unrelatedness of human thought to outer reality (Chapter III). There can be
no doubt how Goethe, if the occasion had arisen, would have commented
on Hooke's procedure. He would have pointed out that there would be no
such thing as a knife with its line-like edge unless man were able to think
the concept 'line', nor a needle with its point-like end unless he were able to
think the concept 'point'. In fact, knife and needle are products of a human
action which is guided by these two concepts respectively. As such they are
embodiments, though more or less imperfect ones, of these concepts. Here
too, therefore, just as Goethe had discovered it through his way of
observing the plant, we see Ideas with our very eyes. What distinguishes
objects of this kind from organic entities, such as the plant, is the different
relationship between Object and Idea. Whereas in the case of an organism
the Idea actively indwells the object, its relationship to a man-made thing
(and similarly to nature's mineral entities) is a purely external one.

Hooke, so Goethe would have argued, allowed the microscope to confuse
his common sense. He would have seen in him an example confirming his
verdict that he who fails to let the eye of the spirit work in union with the
eye of the body 'risks seeing yet seeing past the thing'.

*

'Thus not through an extraordinary spiritual gift, not through momentary
inspiration, unexpected and unique, but through consistent work did I
eventually achieve such satisfactory results.' These words of Goethe - they
occur in his essay, History of my Botanical Studies, which he wrote in later
life as an account of his labours in this field of science - show how anxious
he was that it should be rightly understood that the faculty of reading in the
Book of Nature, as he knew it, was the result of a systematic training of his
mind. It is important for our further studies to make clear to ourselves at
this point the nature of the change which man must bring to pass within
himself in order to brave Kant's 'adventure of reason'. Goethe's concept for
the newly acquired faculty of cognition, exact sensorial fantasy, can give us
the lead.

We remember that, to form this faculty, two existing functions of the soul,
as such polarically opposite, had to be welded together - memory based on
exact sense-perception and the freely working fantasy; one connected with
the nervous system of the body, the other with the blood. We also know
from earlier considerations (Chapter II) that in the little child there is not yet
any such polarization, in body or soul, as there is in man's later life. Thus
we see that training on Goethe's lines aims at nothing less than restoring
within oneself a condition which is natural in early childhood.

In saying this we touch on the very foundations of the new pathway to
science discovered by Goethe. We shall hear more of it in the following
chapter.
1 Critique of Judgment, II, 11, 27. Goethe chose the title of his essay so as to refute Kant by its very

wording. Kant, through his inquiry into man's Urteilskraft, arrived at the conclusion that man is
denied the power of Anschauung (intuition). Against this, Goethe puts his Anschauende Urteilskraft.

CHAPTER VI

Except We Become ...

In this chapter we shall concern ourselves with a number of personalities
from the more or less recent past of the cultural life of Britain, each of
whom was a spiritual kinsman of Goethe, and so a living illustration of the
fact that the true source of knowledge in man must be sought, and can be
found, outside the limits of his modern adult consciousness. Whilst none of
them was a match for Goethe as regards universality and scientific lucidity,
they are all characteristic of an immediacy of approach to certain essential
truths, which in the sense we mean is not found in Goethe. It enabled them
to express one or the other of these truths in a form that makes them
suitable as sign-posts on our own path of exploration. We shall find
repeated opportunity in the later pages of this book to remember just what
these men saw and thought.

The first is Thomas Reid (1710-96), the Scottish philosopher and advocate
of common sense as the root of philosophy.1 After having served for some
years as a minister in the Church of Scotland, Reid became professor of
Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, whence he was called to
Glasgow as the successor of Adam Smith. Through his birth in Strachan,
Kincardine, he belonged to the same part of Scotland from which Kant's
ancestors had come. Two brief remarks of Goethe show that he knew of the
Scotsman's philosophy, and that he appreciated his influence on
contemporary philosophers.2

Reid, like his contemporary Kant, felt his philosophical conscience stirred
by Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, and, like Kant, set himself the task of
opposing it. Unlike Kant, however, whose philosophic system was designed
to arrest man's reason before the abyss into which Hume threatened to cast
it, Reid contrives to detect the bridge that leads safely across this abyss.
Even though it was not granted to him actually to set foot on this bridge

(this, in his time, only Goethe managed to do), he was able to describe it in
a manner especially helpful for our own purpose.

The first of the three books in which Reid set out the results of his labours
appeared in 1764 under the title, Inquiry into the Human Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense. The other two, Essays on the Intellectual
Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man, appeared twenty
years later. In these books Reid had in view a more all-embracing purpose
than in his first work. The achievement of this purpose, however, required a
greater spiritual power than was granted to him. Comparing his later with
his earlier work, Reid's biographer, A. Campbell Fraser, says:

'Reid's Essays form, as it were, the inner court of the temple of which the
Aberdonian Inquiry is the vestibule. But the vestibule is a more finished
work of constructive skill than the inner court, for the aged architect
appears at last as if embarrassed by accumulated material. The Essays,
greater in bulk, perhaps less deserve a place among modern philosophical
classics than the Inquiry, notwithstanding its narrower scope, confined as it
is to man's perception of the extended world, as an object lesson on the
method of appeal to common sense.'

Whilst the ideas of Kant, by which he tried in his way to oppose Hume's
philosophy, have become within a short space of time the common
possession of men's minds, it was the fate of Reid's ideas to find favour
among only a restricted circle of friends. Moreover, they suffered decisive
misunderstanding and distortion through the efforts of well-meaning
disciples. This was because Kant's work was a late fruit of an epoch of
human development which had lasted for centuries and in his time began to
draw to its close, while Reid's work represents a seed of a new epoch yet to
come. Here lies the reason also for his failure to develop his philosophy
beyond the achievements contained in his first work. It is on the latter,
therefore, that we shall chiefly draw for presenting Reid's thoughts.

*

The convincing nature of Hume's argumentation, together with the
absurdity of the conclusions to which it led, aroused in Reid a suspicion that
the premises on which Hume's thoughts were built, and which he, in

company with all his predecessors, had assumed quite uncritically,
contained some fundamental error. For both as a Christian, a philosopher,
and a man in possession of common sense, Reid had no doubt as to the
absurdity and destructiveness of the conclusions to which Hume's reasoning
had led him.

'For my own satisfaction, I entered into a serious examination of the
principles upon which this sceptical system is built; and was not a little
surprised to find that it leans with its whole weight upon a hypothesis,
which is ancient indeed, and hath been very generally received by
philosophers, but of which I could find no solid proof. The hypothesis I
mean is, That nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives
it: That we do not really perceive the things that are external, but only
certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are
called impressions and ideas.

'If this be true, supposing certain impressions and ideas to exist presently in
my mind, I cannot, from their existence, infer the existence of anything
else; my impressions and ideas are the only existences of which I can have
any knowledge or conception; and they are such fleeting and transitory
beings, that they can have no existence at all, any longer than I am
conscious of them. So that, upon this hypothesis, the whole universe about
me, bodies and spirits, sun, moon, stars, and earth, friends and relations, all
things without exception, which I imagined to have a permanent existence
whether I thought of them or not vanish at once:

'And, like the baseless fabric of this vision ... Leave not a rack behind.

'I thought it unreasonable, upon the authority of philosophers, to admit a
hypothesis which, in my opinion, overturns all philosophy, all religion and
virtue, and all common sense: and finding, that all the systems which I was
acquainted with, were built upon this hypothesis, I resolved to enquire into
this subject anew, without regard to any hypothesis.'

The following passage from the first chapter of the Inquiry reveals Reid as a
personality who was not dazzled to the same extent as were his
contemporaries by the brilliance of the onlooker-consciousness:

'If it [the mind] is indeed what the Treatise of Human Nature makes it, I
find I have been only in an enchanted castle, imposed upon by spectres and
apparitions. I blush inwardly to think how 1 have been deluded; I am
ashamed of my frame, and can hardly forbear expostulating with my
destiny: Is this thy pastime, O Nature, to put such tricks upon a silly
creature, and then to take off the mask, and show him how he hath been
befooled? If this is the philosophy of human nature, my soul enter thou not
into her secrets. It is surely the forbidden tree of knowledge; I no sooner
taste it, than I perceive myself naked, and stript of all things - yea even of
my very self. I see myself, and the whole frame of nature, shrink into
fleeting ideas, which, like Epicurus's atoms, dance about in emptiness.

'But what if these profound disquisitions into the first principles of human
nature, do naturally and necessarily plunge a man into this abyss of
scepticism? May we not reasonably judge from what hath happened? Des
Cartes no sooner began to dig in this mine, than scepticism was ready to
break in upon him. He did what he could to shut it out. Malebranche and
Locke, who dug deeper, found the difficulty of keeping out this enemy still
to increase; but they laboured honestly in the design. Then Berkeley, who
carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an
expedient: By giving up the material world, which he thought might be
spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped by an impregnable
partition to secure the world of spirits. But, alas! the Treatise of Human
Nature wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition and drowned all in
one universal deluge.' (Chapter I, Sections vi-vii.)

What Reid so pertinently describes here as the 'enchanted castle' is nothing
else than the human head, which knows of no occurrence beyond its
boundaries, because it has forgotten that it is only the end-product of a
living existence outside of, and beyond, itself. We see here that Reid is
gifted with the faculty of entering this castle without forfeiting his memory
of the world outside; and so even from within its walls, he could recognize
its true nature. To a high degree this helped him to keep free of those
deceptions to which the majority of his contemporaries fell victim, and to
which so many persons are still subject to-day.

It is in this way that Reid could make it one of the cardinal principles of his
observations to test all that the head thinks by relating it to the rest of
human nature and to allow nothing to stand, which does not survive this
test. In this respect the argument he sets over against the Cartesian, 'cogito
ergo sum' is characteristic: ' "I am thinking," says he, "therefore I am": and
is it not as good reasoning to say, I am sleeping, therefore I am? If a body
moves, it must exist, no doubt; but if it is at rest, it must exist likewise.'

The following summarizes the position to which Reid is led when he
includes the whole human being in his philosophical inquiries.

Reid admits that, when the consciousness that has become aware of itself
surveys that which lies within its own horizon, it finds nothing else there
but transient pictures. These pictures in themselves bring to the mind no
experience of a lasting existence outside itself. There is no firm evidence of
the existence of either an outer material world to which these pictures can
be related, or of an inner spiritual entity which is responsible for them. To
be able to speak of an existence in either realm is impossible for a
philosophy which confines its attention solely to the mere picture-content of
the waking consciousness.

But man is not only a percipient being; he is also a being of will, and as
such he comes into a relationship with the world which can be a source of
rich experience. If one observes this relationship, one is bound to notice that
it is based on the self-evident assumption that one possesses a lasting
individuality, whose actions deal with a lasting material world. Any other
way of behaviour would contradict the common sense of man; where we
meet with it we are faced with a lunatic.

Thus philosophy and common sense seem to stand in irreconcilable
opposition to each other. But this opposition is only apparent. It exists so
long as philosophy thinks it is able to come to valid conclusions without
listening to the voice of common sense, believing itself to be too exalted to
need to do so. Philosophy, then, does not realize 'that it has no other root but
the principles of Common Sense; it grows out of them, and draws its
nourishment from them: severed from this root, its honours wither, its sap is
dried up, it dies and rots.' (I, 5.)

At the moment when the philosophical consciousness ceases to regard itself
as the sole foundation of its existence and recognizes that it can say nothing
about itself without considering the source from which it has evolved, it
attains the possibility of seeing the content of its experience in a new light.
For it is no longer satisfied with considering this content in the completed
form in which it presents itself. Rather does it feel impelled to investigate
the process which gives rise to this content as an end-product (the
'impressions' and 'ideas' of Hume and his predecessors).

Reid has faith in the fact - for his common sense assures him of it - that a
lasting substantiality lies behind the world of the senses, even if for human
consciousness it exists only so long as impressions of it are received via the
bodily senses. Similarly, he has faith in the fact that his consciousness,
although existing but intermittently, has as its bearer a lasting self. Instead
of allowing this intuitively given knowledge to be shaken by a mere staring
at fugitive pictures, behind which the real existence of self and world is
hidden, he seeks instead in both directions for the origin of the pictures and
will not rest until he has found the lasting causes of their transient
appearances.

In one direction Reid finds himself led to the outer boundary of the body,
where sense perception has its origin. This prompts him to investigate the
perceptions of the five known senses: smelling, tasting, hearing, touching
and seeing, which he discusses in this order. In the other direction he finds
himself led - and here we meet with a special attribute of Reid's whole
philosophical outlook - to the realm of human speech. For speech depends
upon an inner, intelligent human activity, which, once learnt, becomes a
lasting part of man's being, quite outside the realm of his philosophizing
consciousness, and yet forming an indispensable instrument for this
consciousness.

The simplest human reasoning, prompted only by common sense, and the
subtlest philosophical thought, both need language for their expression.
Through his ability to speak, man lifts himself above an instinctive animal
existence, and yet he develops this ability at an infantile stage, when, in so
far as concerns the level of his consciousness and his relationship to the
world, he hardly rises above the level of the animal. It requires a highly

developed intelligence to probe the intricacies of language, yet complicated
tongues were spoken in human history long before man awoke to his own
individual intelligence. Just as each man learns to think through speaking,
so did humanity as a whole. Thus speech can become a means for acquiring
insight into the original form of human intelligence. For in speech the
common sense of man, working unconsciously within him, meets the fully
awakened philosophical consciousness.3

The way in which the two paths of observation have here been set out must
not give rise to the expectation that they are discussed by Reid in a similarly
systematic form. For this, Reid lacked the sufficient detachment from his
own thoughts. As he presents his observations in the Inquiry they seem to
be nothing but a systematic description of the five senses, broken into
continually by linguistic considerations of the kind indicated above. So, for
example, many of his more important statements about language are found
in his chapter on 'Hearing'.

Our task will be to summarize Reid's work, taking from his description, so
often full of profound observations, only what is essential to illustrate his
decisive discoveries. This requires that (keeping to Mr. Eraser's picture) we
consider separately the two pillars supporting the roof of the temple's
forecourt: speech and sense-impressions. We will start with speech.

*

Reid notes as a fundamental characteristic of human language that it
includes two distinct elements: first, the purely acoustic element,
represented by the sheer succession of sounds, and secondly the variety of
meanings represented by various groups of sounds, meanings which seem
to have nothing to do with the sounds as such. This state of language, where
the sound-value of the word and its value as a sign to denote a thing
signified by it, have little or nothing to do with one another, is certainly not
the primeval one. In the contemporary state of language, which Reid calls
artificial language, we must see a development from a former condition,
which Reid calls natural language. So long as this latter condition obtained,
man expressed in the sound itself what he felt impelled to communicate to
his fellows. In those days sound was not merely an abstract sign, but a

gesture, which moreover was accompanied and supported by the gestures of
the limbs.

Even to-day man, at the beginning of his life, still finds himself in that
relationship to language which was natural to all men in former times. The
little child acquires the ability to speak through the imitation of sounds,
becoming aware of them long before it understands the meaning accorded
to the various groups of sounds in the artificial state of contemporary adult
speech. That the child's attention should be directed solely to the sound, and
not to the abstract meaning of the individual words, is indeed the
prerequisite of learning to speak. If, says Reid, the child were to understand
immediately the conceptual content of the words it hears, it would never
learn to speak at all.

When the adult of to-day uses language in its artificial state, words are only
signs for things signified by them. As he speaks, his attention is directed
exclusively towards this side of language; the pure sound of the words he
uses remains outside the scope of his awareness. The little child, on the
other hand, has no understanding of the meaning of words and therefore
lives completely in the experience of pure sound. In the light of this, Reid
comes to the conclusion, so important for what follows, that with the
emergence of a certain form of consciousness, in this case that of the
intellectual content of words, another form submerges, a form in which the
experience of the pure sound of words prevails. The adult, while in one
respect ahead of the child, yet in another is inferior, for the effect of this
change is a definite impoverishment in soul-experience. Reid puts this as
follows:

'It is by natural signs chiefly that we give force and energy to language; and
the less language has of them, it is the less expressive and persuasive. ...
Artificial signs signify, but they do not express; they speak to the
understanding, as algebraic characters may do, but the passions and the
affections and the will hear them not: these continue dormant and inactive,
till we speak to them in the language of nature, to which they are all
attention and obedience.'

We have followed Reid so far in his study of language, because it is along
this way that he came to form the concepts that were to serve him as a key

for his all-important findings in the realm of sense-experience. These are
the concepts which bear on the connexion between the sign and the thing
signified; the distinction between the artificial and the natural state of
language; and the disappearance of certain primeval human capacities for
experience, of which Reid says that they are brought by the child into the
world, but fade as his intellectual capacities develop.

*

As soon as one begins to study Reid's observations in the realm of sense-
experience, one meets with a certain difficulty, noticeable earlier but not so
strikingly. The source of it is that Reid was obliged to relate the results of
his observations only to the five senses known in his day, whereas in fact
his observations embrace a far greater field of human sense-perception.
Thus a certain disharmony creeps into his descriptions and makes his
statements less convincing, especially for someone who does not penetrate
to its real cause.

However this may be, it need not concern us here; what matter to us are
Reid's actual observations. For these led him to the important distinction
between two factors in our act of acquiring knowledge of the outer world,
each of which holds an entirely different place in ordinary consciousness.
Reid distinguishes them as 'sensation' and 'perception'. It is through the
latter that we become aware of the object as such. But we are mistaken if
we regard the content of this perception as identical with the sum total of
the sensations which are caused in our consciousness by the particular
object. For these sensations are qualitatively something quite different, and,
although without them no perception of the object is possible, they do not
by themselves convey a knowledge of the thing perceived. Only, because
our attention is so predominantly engaged by the object under perception,
we pay no heed to the content of our sensation.

To take an example, the impressions of roundness, angularity, smoothness,
roughness, colour, etc., of a table contain, all told, nothing that could assure
us of the existence of the object 'table' as the real content of an external
world. How, then, do we receive the conviction of the latter's existence?
Reid's answer is, by entering into an immediate intuitive relationship with
it. It is true that to establish this relationship we need the stimuli coming

from the impressions which our mind receives through the various senses.
Yet this must not induce us to confuse the two.

When nature speaks to man through his senses, something occurs exactly
analogous to the process when man communicates with man through the
spoken word. In both cases the perception, that is, the result of the process
of perception, is something quite other than the sum of sensations
underlying it. Per-ceiving by means of the senses is none other than a re-
ceiving of nature's language; and this language, just like human language,
bears two entirely different elements within it. According as one or the
other element prevails in man's intercourse with nature, this intercourse will
be either 'natural' or 'artificial' - to use the terms by which Reid
distinguished the two stages of human speech.

Just as every human being must once have listened only to the pure sound
of the spoken word on a wholly sentient level in order to acquire the faculty
of speaking, so also, in order to learn nature's language, the soul must once
have been totally surrendered to the pure impressions of the senses. And
just as with time the spoken word becomes a symbol for that which is
signified by it, the consciousness turning to the latter and neglecting the
actual sound-content of the word, so also in its intercourse with nature the
soul, with its growing interest in the thing signified, turns its attention more
and more away from the actual experiences of the senses.

From this it follows that a philosophy which seeks to do justice to man's
whole being must not be satisfied with examining the given content of
human consciousness, but must strive to observe the actual process to
which this content owes its emergence. In practice this means that a
philosopher who understands his task aright must strive to reawaken in
himself a mode of experience which is naturally given to man in his early
childhood. Reid expresses this in the Inquiry in the following way:

'When one is learning a language, he attends to the sounds, but when he is
master of it, he attends only to the sense of what he would express. If this is
the case, we must become as little children again, if we will be
philosophers: we must overcome habits which have been gathering strength
ever since we began to think; habits, the usefulness of which atones for the

difficulty it creates for the philosopher in discovering the first principles of
the human mind.'

'We must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers!' The
phrase appears here almost in passing, and Reid never came back to it
again. And yet in it is contained the Open Sesame which gives access to the
hidden spirit-treasures of the world. In this unawareness of Reid's of the
importance of what he thus had found we must see the reason for his
incapacity to develop his philosophy beyond its first beginnings. This
handicap arose from the fact that in all his thinking he was guided by a
picture of the being of man which - as a child of his time, dominated by the
contemporary religious outlook - he could never realize distinctly. Yet
without a clear conception of this picture no justice can be done to Reid's
concept of common sense. Our next task, therefore, must be to evoke this
picture as clearly as we can

The following passage in Reid's Inquiry provides a key for the
understanding of his difficulty in conceiving an adequate picture of man's
being. In this passage Reid maintains that all art is based on man's
experience of the natural language of things, and that in every human being
there lives an inborn artist who is more or less crippled by man's growing
accustomed to the state of artificial language in his intercourse with the
world. In continuation of the passage quoted on page 99 Reid says:

'It were easy to show, that the fine arts of the musician, the painter, the
actor, and the orator, so far as they are expressive; although the knowledge
of them requires in us a delicate taste, a nice judgment, and much study and
practice; yet they are nothing else but the language of nature, which we
brought into the world with us, but have unlearned by disuse and so find the
greatest difficulty in recovering it.

'Abolish the use of articulate sounds and writing among mankind for a
century, and every man would be a painter, an actor, and an orator. We mean
not to affirm that such an expedient is practicable; or if it were, that the
advantage would counterbalance the loss; but that, as men are led by nature
and necessity to converse together they will use every means in their power
to make themselves understood; and where they cannot do this by artificial
signs, they will do it as far as possible by natural ones: and he that

understands perfectly the use of natural signs, must be the best judge in all
expressive arts.'

When Reid says that there are certain characteristics - and these just of the
kind whose development truly ennobles human life - which the soul brings
with it into the world, a picture of man is evoked in us in which the
supersensible part of his being appears as an entity whose existence reaches
further back than the moment of birth and even the first beginnings of the
body. Now such a conception of man is in no way foreign to humanity, in
more ancient times it was universally prevalent, and it still lives on to-day,
if merely traditionally, in the eastern part of the world. It is only in the West
that from a certain period it ceased to be held. This was the result of a
change which entered into human memory in historical times, just as the re-
dawning of the old knowledge of man's pre-existence, of which Reid is a
symptom, is a result of another corresponding alteration in the memory-
powers of man in modern times.

For men of old it was characteristic that alongside the impressions they
received in earthly life through the senses (which in any case were far less
intense than they are to-day), they remembered experiences of a purely
supersensible kind, which gave them assurance that before the soul was knit
together with a physical body it had existed in a cosmic state purely
spiritual in nature. The moment in history when this kind of memory
disappeared is that of the transition from the philosophy of Plato to that of
Aristotle. Whereas Plato was convinced by clear knowledge that the soul
possesses characteristics implanted in it before conception, Aristotle
recognized a bodiless state of the soul only in the life after death. For him
the beginning of the soul's existence was identical with that of the body.

The picture of man, taught for the first time by Aristotle, still required about
twice four hundred years - from the fourth pre-Christian to the fourth post-
Christian century - before it became so far the common possession of men
that the Church Father Augustine (354-430) could base his teaching on it - a
teaching which moulded man's outlook on himself for the coming centuries
right up to our own time.

The following passage from Augustine's Confessions shows clearly how he
was compelled to think about the nature of the little child:

'This age, whereof I have no remembrance, which I take on others' words,
and guess from other infants that I have passed, true though the guess be, I
am yet loath to count in this life of mine which I live in this world. For no
less than that which I lived in my mother's womb, is it hid from me in the
shadows of forgetfulness. But if I was shapen in iniquity and in sin my
mother did conceive me, where, I beseech thee, O my God, where, Lord, or
when, was I thy servant guiltless? But lo! that period I pass by; and what
have I to do with that of which I can recall no vestige?'4

On the grounds of such experience, Augustine was unable to picture man's
being in any other way than by seeing him, from the first moment of his
life, as subject to the condition of the human race which resulted from the
Fall. Thus he exclaims in his Confessions: 'Before Thee, O God, no-one is
free from sin, not even the child which has lived but a single day on the
earth.' In so far as there was any question of the soul's arising from this
fallen state, it was deemed unable to attain this by any effort of its own, but
to depend on the gifts of grace which the Church was able to dispense
through the Sacraments.

Compare with this the present-day scientific conception of human nature, as
it dominates the thought of specialist and layman alike. Here man appears,
both in body and soul, as a sum of inherited characteristics, of
characteristics, that is to say, which have been passed on by way of sexual
propagation and gradually emerge into full manifestation as the individual
grows up. Apart from this inherited predestination the soul is held to present
itself, in Locke's classical phrase, as a tabula rasa upon which are stamped
all manner of external impressions.

The similarity between this modern picture of man and the earlier
theological one is striking. In both cases the central assumption is that
human development from child to man consists in the unfolding of certain
inherited characteristics which are capable of further specific modification
under influences proceeding from outside. The only difference between the
two pictures is that in the modern one the concepts of heredity and
adaptation have been formed without special application to the ethical
characteristics of the soul.

It is clear that from both Augustine's and the modern scientific viewpoint
there is no sense in requiring - as Reid did - those who seek the truth about
themselves and the world to recover a condition which had been theirs as
children. Nor from this point of view is there any justification to call on a
Common Sense, innate in man, to sit in judgment on the philosophical
efforts of the adult reason.

*

That even in the days of Augustine the original conception of human nature
had not disappeared entirely, is shown by the appearance of Augustine's
opponent Pelagius, called the 'arch-heretic'. To consider him at this point in
our discussion will prove helpful for our understanding of Reid's historic
position in the modern age.

What interests us here in Pelagius's doctrine (leaving aside all questions
concerning the meaning of the Sacraments, etc.), is the picture of man
which must have lived in him for him to teach as he did.

Leaving his Irish-Scottish homeland and arriving about the year 400 in
Rome, where on account of the unusual purity of his being he soon came to
be held in the highest esteem, Pelagius found himself obliged to come out
publicly against Augustine, for he felt that Augustine's teachings denied all
free will to man. In the purely passive surrender of man to the will of God,
as Augustine taught it, he could not but see danger for the future
development of Christian humanity. How radically he diverged from
Augustine in his view of man we may see from such of his leading thoughts
as follow:

'Each man begins his life in the same condition as Adam.'
'All good or evil for which in life we are deserving of praise or blame is
done by ourselves and is not born with us.'
'Before the personal will of man comes into action there is nothing in him
but what God has placed there.'
'It is therefore left to the free will of man whether he falls into sin, as also
whether through following Christ he raises himself out of it again.'

Pelagius could think in this way because he came from a part of Europe
where the older form of human memory, already at that time almost extinct
in the South, was in some degree still active. For him it was therefore a
matter of direct experience that the development of man from childhood
onwards was connected with a diminution of certain original capacities of
the soul. Yet he was so far a child of his age as to be no longer capable of
seeing whence these capacities originated.

To provide the necessary corrective to Augustine's doctrine of inheritance,
Pelagius would have had to be able to see in the first years of life both a
beginning of the earthly and a termination of the pre-earthly existence of
the soul. The imperfections of his picture of man, however, led him to
underestimate, even to deny, the significance of heredity and so of original
sin in human life. For an age which no longer had any direct experience of
the soul's pre-natal life, the doctrines of Augustine were undoubtedly more
appropriate than those of Pelagius; Augustine was in fact the more modern
of the two.

And now, if we move forward a dozen centuries and compare Thomas Reid
and Immanuel Kant from this same point of view, we find the same
conception of man again triumphant. But there is an essential difference:
Kant carried all before him because he based himself on an age-old view of
human nature, whereas Reid, uncomprehended up to our own day, pointed
to a picture of man only just then dawning on the horizon of the future. Just
as through Pelagius there sounded something like a last call to European
humanity not to forget the cosmic nature of the soul, so through Reid the
memory of this nature announced its first faint renewal. It is common to
both that their voices lacked the clarity to make themselves heard among
the other voices of their times; and with both the reason was the same:
neither could perceive in fullness - the one no longer, the other not yet - the
picture of man which ensouled their ideas.

The certainty of Reid's philosophical instinct, if such an expression be
allowed, and at the same time his tragic limitations, due to an inability fully
to understand the origin of this instinct, come out clearly in the battle he
waged against the 'idea' as his immediate predecessors understood it. We
know that Plato introduced this word into the philosophical language of

mankind. In Greek ιδέα (from ιδεá¿Î½, to see) means something of
which one knows that it exists, because one sees it. It was therefore possible
to use the word 'to see' as Plato did, because in his day it covered both
sensible and supersensible perception. For Plato, knowing consisted in the
soul's raising itself to perceiving the objective, world-forming IDEAS, and
this action comprised at the same time a recollection of what the soul had
seen while it lived, as an Idea among Ideas, before its appearance on earth.

As long as Plato's philosophy continued to shape their thought, men went
on speaking more or less traditionally of Ideas as real supersensible beings.
When, however, the Aristotelian mode of thinking superseded the Platonic,
the term 'Idea' ceased to be used in its original sense; so much so that, when
Locke and other modern philosophers resorted to it in order to describe the
content of the mind, they did so in complete obliviousness of its first
significance.

It is thus that in modern philosophy, and finally in ordinary modern usage,
'idea' came to be a word with many meanings. Sometimes it signifies a
sense-impression, sometimes a mental representation, sometimes the
thought, concept or essential nature of a thing. The only thing common to
these various meanings is an underlying implication that an idea is a purely
subjective item in human consciousness, without any assured
correspondence to anything outside.

It was against this view of the idea that Reid took the field, going so far as
to label the philosophy holding it the 'ideal system'. He failed to see,
however, that in attacking the abstract use of the term he was actually in a
position to restore to it its original, genuine meaning. If, instead of simply
throwing the word overboard, he had been able to make use of it in its real
meaning, he would have expressed himself with far greater exactitude and
consistency.5 He was prevented from doing this by his apparent ignorance
of the earlier Greek philosophers, Plato included. All he seems to have
known of their teachings came from inferior, second-hand reports of a later
and already decadent period.
* *
*

There are two historic personalities, both in England, who witness to the
fact that the emergence of Reid's philosophy on the stage of history was by
no means an accidental event but that it represents a symptom of a general
reappearance of the long-forgotten picture of man, in which birth no more
than death sets up an absolute limit to human existence. They are Thomas
Traherne (1638-74) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Wordsworth's work and character are so well known that there is no need to
speak of them here in detail.6 For our purpose we shall pay special attention
only to his Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood, where he shows himself in possession of a memory (at any rate
at the time when he wrote the poem) of the pre-natal origin of the soul, and
of a capacity for experiencing, at certain moments, the frontier which the
soul crosses at birth.

If, despite the widespread familiarity of the Ode, we here quote certain
passages from it, we do so because, like many similar things, it has fallen a
victim to the intellectualism of our time in being regarded merely as a piece
of poetic fantasy. We shall take the poet's words as literally as he himself
uttered them. We read:

'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended."

And later:

'Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.''

The fact that Wordsworth in his later years gave no further indication of
such experiences need not prevent us from taking quite literally what he
says here. The truth is that an original faculty faded away with increasing
age, somewhat as happened with Reid when he could no longer continue his
philosophical work along its original lines. Wordsworth's Ode is the
testament of the childhood forces still persisting but already declining
within him; it is significant that he set it down in about the same year of life
(his thirty-sixth) as that in which Traherne died and in which Goethe,
seeking renewal of his being, took flight to Italy.7

*

Of Traherne, too, we shall say here only as much as our present
consideration and the further aims of this book require. We cannot concern
ourselves with the remarkable events which led, half a century ago, to the
discovery and identification of his long-lost writings by Bertram Dobell.
Nor can we deal with the details of the eventful life and remarkable spiritual
development of this contemporary of the Civil War. These matters are dealt
with in Dobell's introduction to his edition of Traherne's poems, as also by
Gladys I. Wade in her work, Thomas Traherne. Our gratitude for the
labours of these two writers by which they have provided mankind with the
knowledge of the character and the work of this unique personality cannot
hinder us, however, from stating that both were prevented by the premises
of their own view of the world from rightly estimating that side of Traherne

which is important for us in this book, and with which we shall specially
concern ourselves in the following pages.

Later in this chapter we shall discuss Dobell's philosophical
misinterpretation of Traherne, to which he fell victim because he
maintained his accustomed spectator standpoint in regard to his object of
study. Miss Wade has, indeed, been able to pay the right tribute to Traherne,
the mystic, whose inner (and also outer) biography she was able to detect
by taking seriously Traherne's indications concerning his mystical
development. Her mind, however, was too rigidly focused on this side of
Traherne's life - his self-training by an iron inner discipline and his toilsome
ascent from the experience of Nothingness to a state of Beatific Vision. This
fact, combined with her disinclination to overcome the Augustinian picture
of man in herself, prevented her from taking Traherne equally seriously
where he speaks as one who is endowed with a never interrupted memory
of his primeval cosmic consciousness - notwithstanding the fact that
Traherne himself has pointed to this side of his nature as the most
significant for his fellow-men.

Of the two works of Traherne which Dobell rescued from oblivion, on both
of which we shall draw for our exposition, one contains his poems, the
other his prose writings. The title of the latter is Centuries of Meditations.
The title page of one of the two manuscripts containing the collection of the
poetical writings introduces these as Poems of Felicity, Containing Divine
Reflections on the Native Objects of an Infant-Eye. As regards the title
'Centuries of Meditations' we are ignorant of the meaning Traherne may
have attached to it, and what he meant by calling the four parts of the book,
'First', 'Second', etc., Century. The book itself represents a manual of
devotion for meditative study by the reader.

Let our first quotation be one from the opening paragraph of the third
'Century' in which Traherne introduces himself as the bearer of certain
uncommon powers of memory and, arising from these powers, a particular
mission as a teacher:

'Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the womb, and that divine
light wherewith I was born are the best unto this day, wherein I can see the
Universe. By the gift of God they attended me into the world, and by His

special favour I remember them till now. Verily they seem the greatest gifts
His wisdom could bestow, for without them all other gifts had been dead
and vain. They are unattainable by books, and therefore I will teach them by
experience.' (Ill, 1.)

The picture thus remaining with him of his nature of soul in his earliest
years on earth he describes as follows:

'Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions
of the world, than I when I was a child. All appeared new, and strange at
first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger,
which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with
innumerable joys. My knowledge was Divine. I knew by intuition those
things which since my Apostacy, I collected again by the highest reason. I
was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and
glory, I saw all in the peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my
Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam, than to me.
All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an
infant should be the heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which
the books of the learned never unfold?' (Ill, 1, 2.)

In a different form the same experience comes to expression in the opening
lines of Traherne's poem, Wonder:

'How like an Angel came I down!
How bright are all things here I
When first among his Works I did appear
O how their GLORY did me crown!
The World resembled his ETERNITIE,
In which my Soul did Walk;
And evry Thing that I did see
Did with me talk.'8

The picture of man thus sketched by Traherne is as close to Reid's as it is
remote from Augustine's. This remoteness comes plainly to expression in
the way Traherne and Augustine regard the summons of Christ to His
disciples to become as little children, a summons to which Reid was led, as

we have seen, on purely philosophical grounds. Let us first of all recall the
words of Christ as recorded by Matthew in his 18th and 19th chapters:

'And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
and said: Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Whosoever
therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in
the kingdom of Heaven.' (xviii, 2-4.)

'Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such
is the kingdom of Heaven.' (xix, 14.)

Augustine refers to these words when he concludes that examination of his
childhood memories which he undertook in order to prove the depravity of
the soul from its first day on earth. He says: 'In the littleness of children
didst Thou, our king, give us a symbol of humility when Thou didst say: Of
such is the kingdom of Heaven.'

If we glance back from what Augustine says here to the original passages in
the Gospel just quoted, we see what a remarkable alteration he makes. Of
the first passage only the last sentence is taken, and this in Augustine's mind
is fused into one with the second passage. Thereby the admonition of Christ
through one's own effort to become as one once was as a child disappears
completely. The whole passage thus takes on a meaning corresponding to
that passive attitude to the divine will inculcated by Augustine and opposed
by Pelagius, and it is in this sense that the words of Christ have sunk into
the consciousness of Western Christianity and are usually taken to-day.

We may see how differently this injunction of Christ lived in Traherne's
consciousness from the following passage out of his Centuries:

'Our Saviour's meaning, when He said, ye must be born again and become a
little child that will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, is deeper far than is
generally believed. It is not only in a careless reliance upon Divine
Providence, that we are to become little children, or in the feebleness and
shortness of our anger and simplicity of our passions, but in the peace and
purity of all our soul. Which purity also is a deeper thing than is commonly
apprehended.' (Ill, 5.)

With Traherne also the passage in question has been fused together with
another utterance of Christ, from John's account of Christ's conversation
with Nicodemus:

'Verily, verily I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the
Kingdom of God.' (John iii, 3.)

What conception of the infant condition of man must have existed in a soul
for it to unite these two passages from the Gospels in this way? Whereas for
Augustine it is because of its small stature and helplessness that the child
becomes a symbol for the spiritual smallness and helplessness of man as
such, compared with the overwhelming power of the divine King, for
Traherne it is the child's nearness to God which is most present to him, and
which must be regained by the man who strives for inner perfection.

Traherne could bear in himself such a picture of man's infancy because, as
he himself emphasizes, he was in possession of an unbroken memory of the
experiences which the soul enjoys before it awakens to earthly sense-
perception. The following passage from the poem, My Spirit, gives a
detailed picture of the early state in which the soul has experiences and
perceptions quite different from those of its later life. (We may recall Reid's
indication of how the child receives the natural language of things.)

'An Object, if it were before
Mine Ey, was by Dame Nature's Law
Within my Soul: Her Store
Was all at once within me; all her Treasures
Were my immediat and internal Pleasures;
Substantial Joys, which did inform my Mind.

'... I could not tell
Whether the Things did there
Themselvs appear,
Which in my Spirit truly seem'd to dwell:
Or whether my conforming Mind
Were not ev'n all that therein shin'd.'

Further detail is added to this picture by the description, given in the poem
The Praeparative, of the soul's non-experience of the body at that early
stage. The description is unmistakably one of an experience during the time
between conception and birth.

'My Body being dead, my Limbs unknown;
Before I skill'd to prize
Those living Stars, mine Eys;
Before or Tongue or Cheeks I call'd mine own,
Before I knew these Hands were mine,
Or that my Sinews did my Members join;
When neither Nostril, Foot, nor Ear,
As yet could be discerned or did appear;
I was within
A House I knew not; newly cloath'd with Skin.

Then was my Soul my only All to me,
A living endless Ey,
Scarce bounded with the Sky,
Whose Power, and Act, and Essence was to see;
I was an inward Sphere of Light,
Or an interminable Orb of Sight,
Exceeding that which makes the Days,
A vital Sun that shed abroad its Rays:
All Life, all Sense,
A naked, simple, pure Intelligence.''

In the stanza following upon this, Traherne makes a statement which is of
particular importance in the context of our present discussion. After some
additional description of the absence of all bodily needs he says:

'Without disturbance then I did receiv
The tru Ideas of all Things'

The manuscript of this poem shows a small alteration in Traherne's hand in
the second of these two lines. Where we now read 'true Ideas', there
originally stood 'fair Ideas'. 'Fair' described Traherne's experience as he
immediately remembered it; the later alteration to 'true' shows how well

aware he was that his contemporaries might miss what he meant by 'Idea',
through taking it in the sense that had already become customary in his
time, namely, as a mere product of man's own mental activity.

This precaution, however, has not saved Traherne from being misinterpreted
in our own day in precisely the way he feared - indeed, by no less a person
than his own discoverer, Dobell. It is the symptomatic character of this
misinterpretation which prompts us to deal with it here.

*

In his attempt to classify the philosophical mode of thought behind
Traherne's writings, Dobell, to his own amazement, comes to the conclusion
that Traherne had anticipated Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753). They seemed
to him so alike that he does not hesitate to call Traherne a 'Berkeleyan
before Berkeley was born'. In proof of this he refers to the poems, The
Praeparative and My Spirit, citing from the latter the passage given above
(page 112), and drawing special attention to its two concluding lines.
Regarding this he says: 'I am much mistaken if the theory of non-existence
of independent matter, which is the essence of Berkeley's system, is not to
be found in this poem. The thought that the whole exterior universe is not
really a thing apart from and independent of man's consciousness of it, but
something which exists only as it is perceived, is undeniably found in My
Spirit:

The reader who has followed our exposition in the earlier parts of this
chapter can be in no doubt that, to find a philosophy similar to Traherne's,
he must look for it in Reid and not in Berkeley. Reid himself rightly placed
Berkeley amongst the representatives of the 'ideal system' of thought. For
Berkeley's philosophy represents an effort of the onlooker-consciousness,
unable as it was to arrive at certainty regarding the objective existence of a
material world outside itself, to secure recognition for an objective Self
behind the flux of mental phenomena. Berkeley hoped to do this by
supposing that the world, including God, consists of nothing but 'idea'-
creating minds, operating like the human mind as man himself perceives it.
His world picture, based (as is well known) entirely on optical experiences,
is the perfect example of a philosophy contrived by the one-eyed,
colourblind world-spectator.

We shall understand what in Traherne's descriptions reminded Dobell of
Berkeley, if we take into account the connexion of the soul with the body at
the time when, according to Traherne, it still enjoys the untroubled
perception of the true, the light-filled, Ideas of things.

In this condition the soul has only a dim and undifferentiated awareness of
its connexion with a spatially limited body ('I was within a house I knew
not, newly clothed with skin') and it certainly knows nothing at all of the
body as an instrument, through which the will can be exercised in an
earthly-spatial way ('My body being dead, my limbs unknown'). Instead of
this, the soul experiences itself simply as a supersensible sense-organ and as
such united with the far spaces of the universe ('Before I skilled to prize
those living stars, mine eyes. ... Then was my soul my only All to me, a
living endless eye, scarce bounded with the sky').

At the time when the soul has experiences of the kind described by
Traherne, it is in a condition in which, as yet, no active contact has been
established between itself and the physical matter of the body and thereby
with gravity. Hence there is truth in the picture which Traherne thus
sketches from actual memory. The same cannot be said of Berkeley's world-
picture. The fact that both resemble each other in certain features need not
surprise us, seeing that Berkeley's picture is, in its own way, a pure 'eye-
picture' of the world. As such, however, it is an illusion - for it is intended
for a state of man for which it is not suited, namely for adult man going
upright on the earth, directing his deeds within its material realm, and in
this way fashioning his own destiny.

Indeed, compared with Berkeley's eye-picture of the world, that of Reid is
in every respect a 'limb-picture'. For where he seeks for the origin of our
naïve assurance that a real material world exists, there he reverts - guided
by his common sense - to the experiences available to the soul through the
fact that the limbs of the body meet with the resistant matter of the world.
And whenever he turns to the various senses in his search, it is always the
will-activity of the soul within the sense he is investigating - and so the
limb-nature within it - to which he first turns his attention. Because, unlike
Berkeley, he takes into account the experiences undergone by the soul when
it leaves behind its primal condition, Reid does not fall into illusion, but

discovers a fundamental truth concerning the nature of the world-picture
experienced by man in his adult age. This, in turn, enables him to discover
the nature of man's world picture in early childhood and to recognize the
importance of recovering it in later life as a foundation for a true
philosophy.

Assuredly, the philosopher who discovered that we must become as little
children again if we would be philosophers, is the one to whom we may
relate Traherne, but not Berkeley. And if we wish to speak of Traherne, as
Dobell tried to do, we speak correctly only if we call him a 'Reidean before
Reid was born'.
* *
*

A little more than a hundred years after Thomas Traherne taught his fellow-
men 'from experience' that there is an original condition of man's soul,
before it is yet able to prize 'those living stars, mine eyes', in which it is
endowed with the faculty to see 'the true (fair) Ideas of all things', Goethe
was led to the realization that he had achieved the possibility of 'seeing
Ideas with the very eyes'. Although he was himself not aware of it, the
conception of the Idea was at this moment restored through him to its true
and original Platonic significance.

The present chapter has shown us how this conception of the Idea is bound
up with the view that is held of the relationship between human nature in
early childhood and human nature in later life. We have seen that, when
Plato introduced the term Idea as an expression for spiritual entities having
a real and independent existence, men were still in possession of some
recollection of their own pre-earthly existence. We then found Traherne
saying from his recollections that in the original form of man's
consciousness his soul is endowed with the faculty of seeing 'true' Ideas,
and we found Reid on similar grounds fighting the significance which the
term 'idea' had assumed under his predecessors. By their side we see Goethe
as one in whom the faculty of seeing Ideas appears for the first time in adult
man as a result of a systematic training of observation and thought.

If our view of the interdependence of the Platonic conception of the Idea
with the picture man has of himself is seen rightly, then Goethe must have
been the bearer of such a picture. Our expectation is shown to be right by
the following two passages from Goethe's autobiography, Truth and Fiction.

In that part of his life story where Goethe concludes the report of the first
period of his childhood (Book II), he writes:

'Who is able to speak worthily of the fullness of childhood? We cannot
behold the little creatures which flit about before us otherwise than with
delight, nay, with admiration; for they generally promise more than they
perform and it seems that nature, among the other roguish tricks that she
plays us, here also especially designs to make sport of us. The first organs
she bestows upon children coming into the world, are adapted to the nearest
immediate condition of the creature, which, unassuming and artless, makes
use of them in the readiest way for its present purposes. The child,
considered in and for itself, with its equals, and in relations suited to its
powers, seems so intelligent and rational, and at the same time so easy,
cheerful and clever, that one can hardly wish it further cultivation. If
children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but
geniuses.'9

We find further evidence in Goethe's account of an event in his seventh
year, which shows how deeply his soul was filled at that time with the
knowledge of its kinship with the realm from which nature herself receives
its existence. This knowledge led him to approach the 'great God of Nature'
through an act of ritual conceived by himself. The boy took a four-sectioned
music stand and arranged on it all kinds of natural specimens, minerals and
the like, until the whole formed a kind of pyramidal altar. On the top of this
pyramid he placed some fumigating candles, the burning of which was to
represent the 'upward yearning of the soul for its God'. In order to give
nature herself an active part in the ritual, he contrived to kindle the candles
by focusing upon them through a magnifying-glass the light of the rising
sun. Before this symbol of the unity of the soul with the divine in nature the
boy then paid his devotions.

'Unity of the soul with the divine in nature' - this was what lived vividly as a
conviction in the seven-year-old boy, impelling him to act as 'nature's priest'
(Wordsworth). The same impulse, in a metamorphosed form, impelled the
adult to go out in quest of an understanding of nature which, as Traherne
put it, was to bring back through highest reason what once had been his by
way of primeval intuition.
1 The present writer's interest in Reid was first aroused by a remark of Rudolf Steiner, in his book A

Theory of 'Knowledge according to Goethe's World Conception.

2 In a comment on a letter Carlyle had written to him, and in a note dealing with the contemporary

philosophy in Germany.

3 This observation of Reid's shows that the origin of language is very different from what the

evolutionists since Darwin have imagined it to be.

4 Confessions, Book I, Chapter 8.

5 As we have seen, the word had better luck with Goethe.

6 Wordsworth, with all his limitations, had a real affinity with Goethe in his view of nature. Mr.

Norman Lacey gives some indication of this in his recent book, Wordsworth's View of Nature.

7 This same period of life played a decisive part in the spiritual evolution of Rudolf Steiner, as may

be seen in his autobiography, The Story of My Life.

8 The difference in spelling between the prose and poetry excerpts arises from the fact that whereas

we can draw on Miss Wade's new edition of the poems for Traherne's original spelling, we have as
yet only Dobell's edition of the Centuries, in which the spelling is modernized.

9
Oxenford's translation.

CHAPTER VII

'Always Stand by Form'

Immediacy of approach to certain essentials of nature as a result of their
religious or artistic experience of the sense-world, is the characteristic of
two more representatives of British cultural life. They are Luke Howard
(1772-1864) and John Ruskin (1819-1900), both true readers in the book of
nature. Like those discussed in the previous chapter they can be of especial
help to us in our attempt to establish an up-to-date method of apprehending
nature's phenomena through reading them.

At the same time we shall find ourselves led into another sphere of Goethe's
scientific work. For we cannot properly discuss Howard without
recognizing the importance of his findings for Goethe's meteorological
studies or without referring to the personal connexion between the two men
arising out of their common interest and similar approach to nature. We
shall thus come as a matter of course to speak of Goethe's thoughts about
meteorology, and this again will give opportunity to introduce a leading
concept of Goethean science in addition to those brought forward already.

Of Ruskin only so much will appear in the present chapter as is necessary to
show him as an exemplary reader in the book of nature. He will then be a
more or less permanent companion in our investigations.

The following words of Ruskin from The Queen of the Air reveal him at
once as a true reader in the book of nature:

'Over the entire surface of the earth and its waters, as influenced by the
power of the air under solar light, there is developed a series of changing
forms, in clouds, plants and animals, all of which have reference in their
action, or nature, to the human intelligence that perceives them.' (II, 89.)

Here Ruskin in an entirely Goethean way points to form in nature as the
element in her that speaks to human intelligence - meaning by form, as
other utterances of his show, all those qualities through which the natural
object under observation reveals itself to our senses as a whole.

By virtue of his pictorial-dynamic way of regarding nature, Ruskin was
quite clear that the scientists' one-sided seeking after external forces and the

mathematically calculable interplay between them can never lead to a
comprehension of life in nature. For in such a search man loses sight of the
real signature of life: form as a dynamic element. Accordingly, in his Ethics
of the Dust, Ruskin does not answer the question: 'What is Life?' with a
scientific explanation, but with the laconic injunction: 'Always stand by
Form against Force.' This he later enlarges pictorially in the words: 'Discern
the moulding hand of the potter commanding the clay from the merely
beating foot as it turns the wheel.' (Lect. X.)

In thus opposing form and force to each other, Ruskin is actually referring
to two kinds of forces. There exist those forces which resemble the potter's
foot in producing mere numerically regulated movements (so that this part
of the potter's activity can be replaced by a power-machine), and others,
which like the potter's hand, strive for a certain end and so in the process
create definite forms. Ruskin goes a step further still in The Queen of the
Air, where he speaks of selective order as a mark of the spirit:

'It does not merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to limited
portions of matter the power of gathering, selectively, other elements proper
to them, and binding these elements into their own peculiar and adopted
form. ...

'For the mere force of junction is not spirit, but the power that catches out of
chaos, charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens them into given form,
is properly called "spirit"; and we shall not diminish, but strengthen our
cognition of this creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower states
of matter than our own.' (II, 59.)1

When Ruskin wrote this passage, he could count on a certain measure of
agreement from his contemporaries that the essence of man himself is spirit,
though certainly without any very exact notion being implied. This
persuaded him to fight on behalf of the spirit, lest its activity on the lower
levels of nature should not be duly acknowledged. To-day, when the purely
physical conception of nature has laid hold of the entire man, Ruskin might
have given his thought the following turn: '... and we shall certainly attain to
no real insight into this creative force (of the spirit) at the level of man,

unless we win the capacity to recognize its activity in lower states of
matter.'

What Ruskin is really pointing towards is the very thing for which Goethe
formed the concept 'type'. And just as Ruskin, like Goethe, recognized the
signature of the spirit in the material processes which work towards a goal,
so he counted as another such signature what Goethe called Steigerung,
though certainly without forming such a universally valid idea of it:

'The Spirit in the plant - that is to say, its power of gathering dead matter out
of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen shape - is of course
strongest in the moment of flowering, for it then not only gathers, but
forms, with the greatest energy.' It is characteristic of Ruskin's conception
of the relationship between man's mind and nature that he added: 'And
where this life is in it at full power, its form becomes invested with aspects
that are chiefly delightful to our own senses.' (II, 60.)

Obviously, a mind capable of looking at nature in this way could not accept
such a picture of evolution as was put forward by Ruskin's contemporary,
Darwin. So we find Ruskin, in The Queen of the Air, opposing the
Darwinistic conception of the preservation of the species as the driving
factor in the life of nature:

'With respect to plants as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object
of life were only the bequeathing of itself. The flower is the end and proper
object of the seeds, not the seed of the flower. The reason for the seed is that
flowers may be, not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. The flower
itself is the creature which the spirit makes; only, in connection with its
perfectedness, is placed the giving birth to its successor.' (II, 60.)

For Ruskin the true meaning of life in all its stages lay not in the
maintenance of physical continuity from generation to generation, but in the
ever-renewed, ever more enhanced revelation of the spirit.

He was never for a moment in doubt regarding the inevitable effect of such
an evolutionary theory as Darwin's on the general social attitude of
humanity. Men would be led, he realized, to see themselves as the
accidental products of an animal nature based on the struggle for existence

and the preservation of the species. Enough has been said to stamp Ruskin
as a reader in the book of nature, capable of deciphering the signature of the
spirit in the phenomena of the sense-world.

*

Outwardly different from Ruskin's and yet spiritually comparable, is the
contribution made by his older contemporary, Luke Howard, to the
foundation of a science of nature based on intuition. Whereas Ruskin
throws out a multitude of aphoristic utterances about many different aspects
of nature, which will provide us with further starting-points for our own
observation and thought, Howard is concerned with a single sphere of
phenomena, that of cloud formation. On the other hand, his contribution
consists of a definite discovery which he himself methodically and
consciously achieved, and it is the content of this discovery, together with
the method of research leading to it, which will supply us ever and again
with a model for our own procedure. At the same time, as we have
indicated, he will help us to become familiar with another side of Goethe,
and to widen our knowledge of the basic scientific concepts formed by him.

Anyone interested to-day in weather phenomena is acquainted with the
terms used in cloud classification - Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, and Nimbus.
These have come so far into general use that it is not easy to realize that,
until Howard's paper, On the Modification of Clouds, appeared in 1803, no
names for classifying clouds were available. Superficially, it may seem that
Howard had done nothing more than science has so often done in grouping
and classifying and naming the contents of nature. In fact, however, he did
something essentially different.

In the introduction to his essay, Howard describes the motives which led
him to devote himself to a study of meteorological phenomena:

'It is the frequent observation of the countenance of the sky, and of its
connexion with the present and ensuing phenomena, that constitutes the
ancient and popular meteorology. The want of this branch of knowledge
renders the prediction of the philosopher (who in attending his instruments
may be said to examine the pulse of the atmosphere), less generally
successful than those of the weather-wise mariners and husbandmen.'

When he thus speaks of studying 'the countenance of the sky', Howard is
not using a mere form of speech; he is exactly describing his own
procedure, as he shows when he proceeds to justify it as a means to
scientific knowledge. The clouds with their ever-moving, ever-changing
forms are not, he says, to be regarded as the mere 'sport of the winds', nor is
their existence 'the mere result of the condensation of vapour in the masses
of the atmosphere which they occupy'. What comes to view in them is
identical, in its own realm, with what the changing expression of the human
face reveals of 'a person's state of mind or body'. It would hardly be
possible to represent oneself more clearly as a genuine reader in the book of
nature than by such words. What is it but Ruskin's 'Stand by Form against
Force' that Howard is here saying in his own way?

*

Before entering into a further description of Howard's system, we must
make clear why we disregard the fact that modern meteorology has
developed the scale of cloud-formation far beyond Howard, and why we
shall keep to his own fourfold scale.

It is characteristic of Goethe that, on becoming acquainted with Howard's
work, he at once gave a warning against subdividing his scale without limit.
Goethe foresaw that the attempt to insert too many transitory forms between
Howard's chief types would result only in obscuring that view of the
essentials which Howard's original classification had opened up. Obviously,
for a science based on mere onlooking there is no objection to breaking up
an established system into ever more subdivisions in order to keep it in line
with an increasingly detailed outer observation. This, indeed, modern
meteorology has done with Howard's system, with the result that, to-day,
the total scale is made up of ten different stages of cloud-formation.

Valuable as this tenfold scale may be for certain practical purposes, it must
be ignored by one who realizes that through Howard's fourfold scale nature
herself speaks to man's intuitive judgment. Let us, therefore, turn to
Howard's discovery, undisturbed by the extension to which modern
meteorology has subjected it.

Luke Howard, a chemist by profession, knew well how to value the results
of scientific knowledge above traditional folk-knowledge. He saw the
superiority of scientifically acquired knowledge in the fact that it was
universally communicable, whereas folk-wisdom is bound up with the
personality of its bearer, his individual observations and his memory of
them. Nevertheless, the increasing mathematizing of science, including his
own branch of it, gave him great concern, for he could not regard it as
helpful in the true progress of man's understanding of nature. Accordingly,
he sought for a method of observation in which the practice of 'the
weatherwise mariner and husbandman' could be raised to the level of
scientific procedure. To this end he studied the changing phenomena of the
sky for many years, until he was able so to read its play of features that it
disclosed to him the archetypal forms of cloud-formation underlying all
change. To these he gave the now well-known names (in Latin, so that they
might be internationally comprehensible):

Cirrus: Parallel, flexuous or divergent fibres extensible in any and all
directions.

Cumulus: Convex or conical heaps, increasing upwards from a horizontal
base.

Stratus: A widely extended, continuous, horizontal sheet, increasing from
below.

Nimbus: The rain cloud.

Let us, on the background of Howard's brief definitions, try to form a more
exact picture of the atmospheric dynamics at work in each of the stages he
describes.2

Among the three formations of cirrus, cumulus and stratus, the cumulus has
a special place as representing in the most actual sense what is meant by the
term 'cloud'. The reason is that both cirrus and stratus have characteristics
which in one or the other direction tend away from the pure realm of
atmospheric cloud-formation. In the stratus, the atmospheric vapour is
gathered into a horizontal, relatively arched layer around the earth, and so
anticipates the actual water covering below which extends spherically

around the earth's centre. Thus the stratus arranges itself in a direction
which is already conditioned by the earth's field of gravity. In the language
of physics, the stratus forms an equipotential surface in the gravitational
field permeating the earth's atmosphere.

As the exact opposite of this we have the cirrus. If in the stratus the form
ceases to consist of distinct particulars, because the entire cloud-mass runs
together into a single layer, in the cirrus the form begins to vanish before
our eyes, because it dissolves into the surrounding atmospheric space. In the
cirrus there is present a tendency to expand; in the stratus to contract.

Between the two, the cumulus, even viewed simply as a form-type,
represents an exact mean. In how densely mounded a shape does the
majestically towering cumulus appear before us, and yet how buoyantly it
hovers aloft in the heights! If one ever comes into the midst of a cumulus
cloud in the mountains, one sees how its myriads of single particles are in
ceaseless movement. And yet the whole remains stationary, on windless
days preserving its form unchanged for hours. More recent meteorological
research has established that in many cumulus forms the entire mass is in
constant rotation, although seen from outside, it appears as a stable,
unvarying shape. Nowhere in nature may the supremacy of form over
matter be so vividly observed as in the cumulus cloud. And the forms of the
cumuli themselves tell us in manifold metamorphoses of a state of
equilibrium between expansive and contractive tendencies within the
atmosphere.

Our description of the three cloud-types of cirrus, cumulus and stratus,
makes it clear that we have to do with a self-contained symmetrical system
of forms, within which the two outer, dynamically regarded, represent the
extreme tendencies of expansion and contraction, whilst in the middle
forms these are held more or less in balance. By adding Howard's nimbus
formation to this system, we destroy its symmetry. Actually, in the nimbus
we have cloud in such a condition that it ceases to be an atmospheric
phenomenon in any real sense of the word; for it now breaks up into single
drops of water, each of which, under the pull of gravity, makes its own
independent way to the earth. (The symmetry is restored as soon as we
realize that the nimbus, as a frontier stage below the stratus, has a

counterpart in a corresponding frontier stage above the cirrus. To provide
insight into this upper frontier stage, of which neither Howard nor Goethe
was at that time in a position to develop a clear enough conception to deal
with it scientifically, is one of the aims of this book.)

*

In order to understand what prompted Goethe to accept, as he did, Howard's
classification and terminology at first glance, and what persuaded him to
make himself its eloquent herald, we must note from what point Goethe's
labours for a natural understanding of nature had originated.

In his History of my Botanical Studies Goethe mentions, besides
Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus as one who had most influenced his
own development. Concerning Linnaeus, however, this is to be understood
in a negative sense. For when Goethe, himself searching for a way of
bringing the confusing multiplicity of plant phenomena into a
comprehensive system, met with the Linnaean system, he was, despite his
admiration for the thoroughness and ingenuity of Linnaeus's work, repelled
by his method. Thus by way of reaction, his thought was brought into its
own creative movement: 'As I sought to take in his acute, ingenious
analysis, his apt, appropriate, though often arbitrary laws, a cleft was set up
in my inner nature: what he sought to hold forcibly apart could not but
strive for union according to the inmost need of my own being.'

Linnaeus's system agonized Goethe because it demanded from him 'to
memorize a ready-made terminology, to hold in readiness a certain number
of nouns and adjectives, so as to be able, whenever any form was in
question, to employ them in apt and skilful selection, and so to give it its
characteristic designation and appropriate position.' Such a procedure
appeared to Goethe as a kind of mosaic, in which one ready-made piece is
set next to another in order to produce out of a thousand details the
semblance of a picture; and this was 'in a certain way repugnant' to him.
What Goethe awoke to when he met Linnaeus's attempt at systematizing the
plant kingdom was the old problem of whether the study of nature should
proceed from the parts to the whole or from the whole to the parts.

Seeing, therefore, how it became a question for Goethe, at the very
beginning of his scientific studies, whether a natural classification of
nature's phenomena could be achieved, we can understand why he was so
overjoyed when, towards the end of his life, in a field of observation which
had meanwhile caught much of his interest, he met with a classification
which showed, down to the single names employed, that it had been read
off from reality.

*

The following is a comprehensive description of Goethe's meteorological
views, which he gave a few years before his death in one of his
conversations with his secretary, Eckermann:

'I compare the earth and her hygrosphere3 to a great living being perpetually
inhaling and exhaling. If she inhales, she draws the hygrosphere to her, so
that, coming near her surface, it is condensed to clouds and rain. This state I
call water-affirmative (WasserBejahung). Should it continue for an
indefinite period, the earth would be drowned. This the earth does not
allow, but exhales again, and sends the watery vapours upwards, when they
are dissipated through the whole space of the higher atmosphere. These
become so rarefied that not only does the sun penetrate them with its
brilliancy, but the eternal darkness of infinite space is seen through them as
a fresh blue. This state of the atmosphere I call water-negative
(WasserVerneinung). For just as, under the contrary influence, not only does
water come profusely from above, but also the moisture of the earth cannot
be dried and dissipated - so, on the contrary, in this state not only does no
moisture come from above, but the damp of the earth itself flies upwards;
so that, if this should continue for an indefinite period, the earth, even if the
sun did not shine, would be in danger of drying up.' (llth April 1827.)

Goethe's notes of the results of his meteorological observations show how
in them, too, he followed his principle of keeping strictly to the
phenomenon. His first concern is to bring the recorded measurements of
weather phenomena into their proper order of significance. To this end he
compares measurements of atmospheric temperature and local density with
barometric measurements. He finds that the first two, being of a more local

and accidental nature, have the value of 'derived' phenomena, whereas the
variations in the atmosphere revealed by the barometer are the same over
wide areas and therefore point to fundamental changes in the general
conditions of the earth. Measurements made regularly over long periods of
time finally lead him to recognize in the barometric variations of
atmospheric pressure the basic meteorological phenomenon.

In all this we find Goethe carefully guarding himself against 'explaining'
these atmospheric changes by assuming some kind of purely mechanical
cause, such as the accumulation of air-masses over a certain area or the like.
Just as little would he permit himself lightly to assume influences of an
extra-terrestrial nature, such as those of the moon. Not that he would have
had anything against such things, if they had rested on genuine observation.
But his own observations, as far as he was able to carry them, told him
simply that the atmosphere presses with greater or lesser intensity on the
earth in more or less regular rhythms. He was not abandoning the
phenomenal sphere, however, when he said that these changes are results of
the activity of earthly gravity, or when he concluded from this that
barometric variations were caused by variations in the intensity of the field
of terrestrial gravity, whereby the earth sometimes drew the atmosphere to
it with a stronger, and sometimes with a weaker, pull.

He was again not departing from the realm of the phenomenal when he
looked round for other indications in nature of such an alternation of
drawing in and letting forth of air, and found them in the respiratory
processes of animated beings. (To regard the earth as a merely physical
structure was impossible for Goethe, for he could have done this only by
leaving out of account the life visibly bound up with it.) Accordingly,
barometric measurements became for him the sign of a breathing process
carried out by the earth.

Alongside the alternating phases of contraction and expansion within the
atmosphere, Goethe placed the fact that atmospheric density decreases with
height. Observation of differences in cloud formation at different levels, of
the boundary of snow formation, etc., led him to speak of different
'atmospheres', or of atmospheric circles or spheres, which when undisturbed

are arranged concentrically round the earth. Here also he saw, in space,
phases of contraction alternating with phases of expansion.

*

At this point in our discussion it is necessary to introduce another leading
concept of Goethean nature-observation, which was for him - as it will be
for us - of particular significance for carrying over the Goethean method of
research from the organic into the inorganic realm of nature. This is the
concept of the ur-phenomenon (Urphänomen). In this latter realm, nature
no longer brings forth related phenomena in the ordering proper to them;
hence we are obliged to acquire the capacity of penetrating to this ordering
by means of our own realistically trained observation and thought.

From among the various utterances of Goethe regarding his general
conception of the ur-phenomenon, we here select a passage from that part
of the historical section of his Theory of Colour where he discusses the
method of investigation introduced into science by Bacon. He says:

'In the range of phenomena all had equal value in Bacon's eyes. For
although he himself always points out that one should collect the particulars
only to select from them and to arrange them, in order finally to attain to
Universals, yet too much privilege is granted to the single facts; and before
it becomes possible to attain to simplification and conclusion by means of
induction (the very way he recommends), life vanishes and forces get
exhausted. He who cannot realize that one instance is often worth a
thousand, bearing all within itself; he who proves unable to comprehend
and esteem what we called ur-phenomena, will never be in a position to
advance anything, either to his own or to others' joy and profit.'

What Goethe says here calls for the following comparison. We can say that
nature seen through Bacon's eyes appears as if painted on a two-
dimensional surface, so that all its facts are seen alongside each other at
exactly the same distance from the observer. Goethe, on the other hand,
ascribed to the human spirit the power of seeing the phenomenal world in
all its three-dimensional multiplicity; that is, of seeing it in perspective and
distinguishing between foreground and background.4 Things in the
foreground he called ur-phenomena. Here the idea creatively determining

the relevant field of facts comes to its purest expression. The sole task of
the investigator of nature, he considered, was to seek for the ur-phenomena
and to bring all other phenomena into relation with them; and in the
fulfilment of this task he saw the means of fully satisfying the human
mind's need to theorize. He expressed this in the words, 'Every fact is itself
already theory'. In Goethe's meteorological studies we have a lucid example
of how he sought and found the relevant ur-phenomenon. It is the
breathing-process of the earth as shown by the variations of barometric
pressure.

*

Once again we find Thomas Reid, along his line of intuitively guided
observation, coming quite close to Goethe where he deals with the question
of the apprehension of natural law by the human mind. He, too, was an
opponent of the method of 'explaining' phenomena by means of abstract
theories spun out of sheer thinking, and more than once in his writings he
inveighs against it in his downright, humorous way.5

His conviction that human thinking ought to remain within the realm of
directly experienced observation is shown in the following words: 'In the
solution of natural phenomena, all the length that the human faculties can
carry us is only this, that from particular phenomena, we may, by induction,
trace out general phenomena, of which all the particular ones are necessary
consequences.'6 As an example of this he takes gravity, leading the reader
from one phenomenon to the next without ever abandoning them, and
concluding the journey by saying: 'The most general phenomena we can
reach are what we call laws of nature. So that the laws of nature are nothing
else but the most general facts relating to the operations of nature, which
include a great many particular facts under them.'

*

It was while on his way with the Grand Duke of Weimar to visit a newly
erected meteorological observatory that Goethe, in the course of informing
his companion of his own meteorological ideas, first heard of Howard's
writings about the formation of clouds. The Duke had read a report of them

in a German scientific periodical, and it seemed to him that Howard's cloud
system corresponded with what he now heard of Goethe's thoughts about
the force relationships working in the different atmospheric levels. He had
made no mistake. Goethe, who immediately obtained Howard's essay,
recognized at first glance in Howard's cloud scale the law of atmospheric
changes which he himself had discovered. He found here, what he had
always missed in the customary practice of merely tabulating the results of
scientific measurements. And so he took hold of the Howard system with
delight, for it 'provided him with a thread which had hitherto been lacking'.

Moreover, in the names which Howard had chosen for designating the basic
cloud forms, Goethe saw the dynamic element in each of them coming to
immediate expression in human speech.7 He therefore always spoke of
Howard's system as a 'welcome terminology'.

All this inspired Goethe to celebrate Howard's personality and his work in a
number of verses in which he gave a description of these dynamic elements
and a paraphrase of the names, moulding them together into an artistic
unity. In a few accompanying verses he honoured Howard as the first to
'distinguish and suitably name' the clouds.8

The reason why Goethe laid so much stress on Howard's terminology was
because he was very much aware of the power of names to help or hinder
men in their quest for knowledge. He himself usually waited a long time
before deciding on a name for a natural phenomenon or a connexion
between phenomena which he had discovered. The Idea which his spiritual
eye had observed had first to appear so clearly before him that he could
clothe it in a thought-form proper to it. Seeing in the act of name - giving an
essential function of man (we are reminded of what in this respect the
biblical story of creation says of Adam),9 Goethe called man 'the first
conversation which Nature conducts with God'.

It is characteristic of Goethe that he did not content himself with knowing
the truth which someone had brought forward in a field of knowledge in
which he himself was interested, but that he felt his acquaintance with this
truth to be complete only when he also knew something about the
personality of the man himself. So he introduces his account of his

endeavours to know more about Howard, the man, with the following
words: 'Increasingly convinced that everything occurring through man
should be regarded in an ethical sense, and that moral value is to be
estimated only from a man's way of life, I asked a friend in London to find
out if possible something about Howard's life, if only the simplest facts.'
Goethe was uncertain whether the Englishman was still alive, so his delight
and surprise were considerable when from Howard himself he received an
answer in the form of a short autobiographical sketch, which fully
confirmed his expectations regarding Howard's ethical personality.

Howard's account of himself is known to us, as Goethe included a
translation of it in the collection of his own meteorological studies. Howard
in a modest yet dignified way describes his Christian faith, his guide
through all his relationships, whether to other men or to nature.10 A man
comes before us who, untroubled by the prevailing philosophy of his day,
was able to advance to the knowledge of an objective truth in nature,
because he had the ability to carry religious experience even into his
observation of the sense-world.

*

In view of all this, it is perhaps not too much to say that in the meeting
between Howard and Goethe by way of the spiritual bridge of the clouds,
something happened that was more than a mere event in the personal
history of these two men.
1 These words should be weighed with the fact in mind that they were written at the time when

Crookes was intent on finding the unknown land of the spirit by means of just such 'a mere force of
junction'.

2 See also Goethe's sketch of the basic cloud forms on Plate IV.

3 Goethe's Dunstkreis - meaning the humidity contained in the air and, as such, spherically

surrounding the earth. I had to make up the word 'hygrosphere' (after hygrometer, etc.) to keep clear
the distinction from both atmosphere and hydrosphere. Except for this term in the first two sentences,
the above follows Oxenford's translation (who, following the dictionaries, has rendered Goethe's term
inadequately by 'atmosphere').

4 We may here recall Eddington's statement concerning the restriction of scientific observation to

'non-stereoscopic vision'.

5 An example of this is Reid's commentary on existing theories about sight as a mere activity of the

optic nerve. (Inq., VI, 19.)

6 See Inq., VI, 13. This is precisely what Kant had declared to be outside human possibility.

7 Stratus means layer, cumulus - heap, cirrus - curl.

8 There exists no adequate translation of these verses.

9 Genesis ii, 19, 20.

10 A fact which Howard did not mention, and which presumably remained unknown to Goethe, was

the work he had done as chairman of a relief committee for the parts of Germany devastated by the
Napoleonic wars. For this work Howard received a series of public honours.

CHAPTER VIII

Dynamics versus Kinetics

At the present time the human mind is in danger of confusing the realm of
dynamic events, into which modern atomic research has penetrated, with
the world of the spirit; that is, the world whence nature is endowed with
intelligent design, and of which human thinking is an expression in terms of
consciousness. If a view of nature as a manifestation of spirit, such as
Goethe and kindred minds conceived it, is to be of any significance in our
time, it must include a conception of matter which shows as one of its
attributes its capacity to serve Form (in the sense in which Ruskin spoke of
it in opposition to mere Force) as a means of manifestation.

The present part of this book, comprising Chapters VIII-XI, will be devoted
to working out such a conception of matter. An example will thereby be

given of how Goethe's method of acquiring understanding of natural
phenomena through reading the phenomena themselves may be carried
beyond his own field of observation. There are, however, certain theoretical
obstacles, erected by the onlooker-consciousness, which require to be
removed before we can actually set foot on the new path. The present
chapter will in particular serve this purpose.

*

Science, since Galileo, has been rooted in the conviction that the logic of
mathematics is a means of expressing the behaviour of natural events. The
material for the mathematical treatment of sense data is obtained through
measurement. The actual thing, therefore, in which the scientific observer is
interested in each case, is the position of some kind of pointer. In fact,
physical science is essentially, as Professor Eddington put it, a 'pointer-
reading science'. Looking at this fact in our way we can say that all pointer
instruments which man has constructed ever since the beginning of science,
have as their model man himself, restricted to colourless, non-stereoscopic
observation. For all that is left to him in this condition is to focus points in
space and register changes of their positions. Indeed, the perfect scientific
observer is himself the arch-pointer-instrument.

The birth of the method of pointer-reading is marked by Galileo's
construction of the first thermometer (actually, a thermoscope). The
conviction of the applicability of mathematical concepts to the description
of natural events is grounded in his discovery of the so-called Parallelogram
of Forces. It is with these two innovations that we shall concern ourselves
in this chapter.

Let it be said at once that our investigations will lead to the unveiling of
certain illusions which the spectator-consciousness has woven round these
two gifts of Galileo. This does not mean that their significance as
fundamentals of science will be questioned. Nor will the practical uses to
which they have been put with so much success be criticized in any way.
But there are certain deceptive ideas which became connected with them,
and the result is that to-day, when man is in need of finding new
epistemological ground under his feet, he is entangled in a network of

conceptual illusions which prevent him from using his reason with the
required freedom.

A special word is necessary at this point regarding the term illusion, as it is
used here and elsewhere. In respect of this, it will be well to remember what
was pointed out earlier in connexion with the term 'tragedy' (Chapter II). In
speaking of 'illusion', we neither intend to cast any blame on some person or
another who took part in weaving the illusion, nor to suggest that the
emergence of it should be thought of as an avoidable calamity. Rather
should illusion be thought of as something which man has been allowed to
weave because only by his own active overcoming of it can he fulfil his
destiny as the bearer of truth in freedom. Illusion, in the sense used here,
belongs to those things in man's existence which are truly to be called
tragic. It loses this quality, and assumes a quite different one, only when
man, once the time has come for overcoming an illusion, insists on clinging
to it.

As our further studies will show, the criticism to be applied here does not
only leave the validity of measurement and the mathematical treatment of
the data thus obtained fully intact, but by giving them their appropriate
place in a wider conception of nature it opens the way to an ever more
firmly grounded and, at the same time, enhanced

application of both.

*

Our primary knowledge of the existence of something we call 'warmth' or
'heat' is due to a particular sense of warmth which modern research has
recognized as a clearly definable sense. Naturally, seen from the spectator-
standpoint, the experiences of this sense appear to be of purely subjective
value and therefore useless for obtaining an objective insight into the nature
of warmth and its effects in the physical world. In order to learn about
these, resort is had to certain instruments which, through the change of the
spatial position of a point, allow the onlooker-observer to register changes
in the thermal condition of a physical object. An instrument of this kind is
the thermometer. In the following way an indubitable proof seems to be
given of the correctness of the view concerning the subjectivity of the

impressions obtained through the sense of warmth, and of the objectivity of
thermometrical measurement. A description of it is frequently given in
physical textbooks as an introduction to the chapter on Heat.

To begin with, the well-known fact is cited that if one plunges one's hands
first into two different bowls, one filled with hot water and the other with
cold, and then plunges them together into a bowl of tepid water, this will
feel cold to the hand coming from the hot water and warm to the hand
coming from the cold. Next, it is pointed out that two thermometers which
are put through the same procedure will register an equal degree of
temperature for the tepid water. In this way the student is given a lasting
impression of the superiority of the 'objective' recording of the instrument
over the 'subjective' character of the experiences mediated by his sense of
warmth.

Let us now test this procedure by carrying out the same experiment with the
help of thermometrical instruments in their original form, that is, the form
in which Galileo first applied them. By doing so we proceed in a truly
Goethean manner, because we divest the experiment of all accessories
which prevent the phenomenon from appearing in its primary form.

To turn a modern thermometer into a thermoscope we need only remove the
figures from its scale. If we make the experiment with two such
thermoscopes we at once become aware of something which usually
escapes us, our attention being fixed on the figures recorded by the two
instruments. For we now notice that the two instruments, when transferred
from the hot and cold water into the tepid water, behave quite differently. In
one the column will fall, in the other it will rise.

It is important to note that by this treatment of the two instruments we have
not changed the way in which they usually indicate temperature. For
thermometrical measurement is in actual fact never anything else than a
recording of the movement of the indicator from one level to another. We
choose merely to take a certain temperature level - that of melting ice or
something else - as a fixed point of reference and mark it once for all on the
instrument. Because we find this mark clearly distinguished on our
thermometers, and the scales numbered accordingly, we fail to notice what

lies ideally behind this use of the same zero for every new operation we
undertake.

What the zero signifies becomes clear directly we start to work with
thermometers not marked with scales. For in order to be used in this form as
real thermometers, they must be exposed on each occasion first of all to
some zero level of temperature, say, that of melting ice. If we then take
them into the region of temperature we want to measure, we shall discern
the difference of levels through the corresponding movement of the column.
The final position of the column tells us nothing in itself. It is always the
change from one level to another that the thermometer registers - precisely
as does the sense of warmth in our hands in the experiment just described.

Hence we see that in the ordinary operation with the thermometers, and
when we use our hands in the prescribed manner, we are dealing with the
zero level in two quite different ways. While in the/two instruments the zero
level is the same, in accordance with the whole idea of thermometric
measurement, we make a special arrangement so as to expose our hands to
two different levels. So we need not be surprised if these two ways yield
different results. If, after placing two thermometers without scales in hot
and cold water, we were to assign to each its own zero in accordance with
the respective height of its column, and then graduate them from this
reference point, they would necessarily record different levels when
exposed to the tepid water, in just the same way as the hands do. Our two
hands, moreover, will receive the same sense-impression from the tepid
water, if we keep them in it long enough.

Seen in this light, the original experiment, designed to show the subjective
character of the impressions gained through the sense of warmth, reveals
itself as a piece of self-deception by the onlooker-consciousness. The truth
of the matter is that, in so far as there is any subjective element in the
experience and measurement of heat, it does not lie on the side of our sense
of warmth, but in our judgment of the significance of thermometrical
readings. In fact, our test of the alleged proof of the absolute superiority of
pointer-readings over the impressions gained by our senses gives us proof
of the correctness of Goethe's statement, quoted earlier, that the senses do
not deceive, but the judgment deceives.

Let it be repeated here that what we have found in this way does not lead to
any depreciation of the method of pointer-reading. For the direct findings of
the senses cannot be compared quantitatively. The point is that the idea of
the absolute superiority of physical measurement as a means of scientific
knowledge, in all circumstances, must be abandoned as false.

*

We now turn to Galileo's discovery known as the theorem of the
Parallelogram of Forces. The illusion which has been woven round this
theorem expresses itself in the way it is described as being connected
ideally with another theorem, outwardly similar in character, known as the
theorem of the Parallelogram of Movements (or Velocities), by stating that
the former follows logically from the latter. This statement is to be found in
every textbook on physics at the outset of the chapter on dynamics
(kinetics), where it serves to establish the right to treat the dynamic
occurrences in nature in a purely kinematic fashion, true to the requirements
of the onlooker-consciousness.1

The following description will show that, directly we free ourselves from
the onlooker-limitations of our consciousness in the way shown by Goethe -
and, in respect of the present problem, in particular also by Reid - the ideal
relationship between the two theorems is seen to be precisely the opposite
to the one expressed in the above statement. The reason why we take pains
to show this at the present point of our discussion is that only through
replacing the fallacious conception by the correct one, do we open the way
for forming a concrete concept of Force and thereby for establishing a truly
dynamic conception of nature.

*

Let us begin by describing briefly the content of the two theorems in
question. In Fig. 1, a diagrammatical representation is given of the
parallelogram of movements. It sets out to show that when a point moves
with a certain velocity in the direction indicated by the arrow a, so that in a
certain time it passes from P to A, and when it simultaneously moves with a
second velocity in the direction indicated by

b, through which alone it would pass to B in the same time, its actual
movement is indicated by c, the diagonal in the parallelogram formed by a
and b. An example of the way in which this

theorem is practically applied is the well-known case of a rower who sets
out from P in order to cross at right angles a river indicated by the parallel
lines. He has to overcome the velocity a of the water of the river flowing to
the right by steering obliquely left towards B in order to arrive finally at C.

It is essential to observe that the content of this theorem does not need the
confirmation of any outer experience for its discovery, or to establish its
truth. Even though the recognition of the fact which it expresses may have
first come to men through practical observation, yet the content of this
theorem can be discovered and proved by purely logical means. In this
respect it resembles any purely geometrical statement such as, that the sum
of the angles of a triangle is two right angles (180°). Even though this too
may have first been learnt through outer observation, yet it remains true that
for the discovery of the fact expressed by it - valid for all plane triangles -
no outer experience is needed. In both cases we find ourselves in the
domain of pure geometric conceptions (length and direction of straight
lines, movement of a point along these), whose reciprocal relationships are
ordered by the laws of pure geometric logic. So in the theorem of the
Parallelogram of Velocities we have a strictly geometrical theorem, whose
content is in the narrowest sense kinematic. In fact, it is the basic theorem
of kinematics.

We now turn to the second theorem which speaks of an outwardly similar
relationship between forces. As is well nown, this states that

two forces of different magnitude and direction, when they apply at the
same point, act together in the manner of a single force whose magnitude
and direction may be represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram whose
sides express in extent and direction the first two forces. Thus in Fig. 2, R
exercises upon P the same effect as F1 and F2 together.

Expressed in another way, a force of this magnitude working in the reverse
direction (R') will establish an equilibrium with the other two forces. In
technical practice, as is well known, this theorem is used for countless
calculations, in both statics and dynamics, and indeed more frequently not
in the form given here but in the converse manner, when a single known
force is resolved into two component forces. (Distribution of a pressure
along frameworks, of air pressure along moving surfaces, etc.)

It will now be our task to examine the logical link which is believed to
connect one theorem with the other. This link is found in the well-known
definition of physical force as a product of 'mass' and 'acceleration' - in
algebraic symbols F=ma. We will discuss the implications of this definition

in more detail later on. Let us first see how it is used as a foundation for the
above assertion.

The conception of 'force' as the product of 'mass' and 'acceleration' is based
on the fact - easily experienced by anyone who cycles along a level road -
that it is not velocity itself which requires the exertion of force, but the
change of velocity - that is, acceleration or retardation ('negative
acceleration' in the sense of mathematical physics); also that in the case of
equal accelerations, the force depends upon the mass of the accelerated
object. The more massive the object, the greater will be the force necessary
for accelerating it. This mass, in turn, reveals itself in the resistance a
particular object offers to any change of its state of motion. Where different
accelerations and the same mass are considered, the factor m in the above
formula remains constant, and force and acceleration are directly
proportional to each other. Thus in the acceleration is discovered a measure
for the magnitude of the force which thereby acts.

Now it is logically evident that the theorem of the parallelogram of
velocities is equally valid for movements with constant or variable
velocities. Even though it is somewhat more difficult to perceive mentally
the movement of a point in two different directions with two differently
accelerated motions, and to form an inner conception of the resulting
movement, we are nevertheless still within a domain which may be fully
embraced by thought. Thus accelerated movements and movements under
constant velocity can be resolved and combined according to the law of the
parallelogram of movements, a law which is fully attainable by means of
logical thought.

With the help of the definition of force as the product of mass and
acceleration it seems possible, indeed, to derive the parallelogram of forces
from that of accelerations in a purely logical manner. For it is necessary
only to extend all sides of an a parallelogram by means of the same factor m
in order to turn it into an F parallelogram. A single geometrical figure on
paper can represent both cases, since only the scale needs to be altered in
order that the same geometrical length should represent at one time the
magnitude a and on another occasion ma. It is in this way that present-day
scientific thought keeps itself convinced that the parallelogram of forces

follows with logical evidence from the parallelogram of accelerations, and
that the discovery of the former is therefore due to a purely mental process.

Since the parallelogram of forces is the prototype of each further
mathematical representation of physical force-relationships in nature, the
conceptual link thus forged between it and the basic theorem of kinematics
has led to the conviction that the fact that natural events can be expressed in
terms of mathematics could be, and actually has been, discovered through
pure logical reasoning, and thus by the brain-bound, day-waking
consciousness 'of the world-spectator. Justification thereby seemed to be
given for the building of a valid scientific world-picture, purely kinematic
in character.

*

The line of consideration we shall now have to enter upon for carrying out
our own examination of what is believed to be the link between the two
theorems may seem to the scientifically trained reader to be of an all too
elementary kind compared with the complexities of thought in which he is
used to engage in order to settle a scientific problem. It is therefore
necessary to state here that anyone who wishes to help to overcome the
tangle of modern theoretical science must not be shy in applying thoughts
and observations of seemingly so simple a nature as those used both here
and on other occasions. Some readiness, in fact, is required to play where
necessary the part of the child in Hans Andersen's fairy-story of The
Emperor's New Clothes, where all the people are loud in praise of the
magnificent robes of the Emperor, who is actually passing through the
streets with no clothes on at all, and a single child's voice exclaims the truth
that 'the Emperor has nothing on'. There will repeatedly be occasion to
adopt the role of this child in the course of our own studies.

*

In the scientific definition of force given above force appears as the result
of a multiplication of two other magnitudes. Now as is well known, it is
essential for the operation of multiplication that of the two factors forming
the product at least one should exhibit the properties of a pure number. For
two pure numbers may be multiplied together - e.g. 2 and 4 - and a number

of concrete things can be multiplied by a pure number - e. g. 3 apples and
the number 4 - but no sense can be attached to the multiplication of 3 apples
by 4 apples, let alone by 4 pears! The result of multiplication is therefore
always either itself a pure number, when both factors have this property; or
when one of the two factors is of the nature of a concrete object, the result
is of the same quality as the latter. An apple will always remain an apple
after multiplication, and what distinguishes the final product (apples) from
the original factor (apples) is only a pure number.

If we take seriously what this simple consideration tells us of the nature of
multiplication, and if we do not allow ourselves to deviate from it for
whatever purpose we make use of this algebraic operation, then the various
concepts we connect with the basic measurements in physics undergo a
considerable change of meaning.

Let us test, in this respect, the well-known formula which, in the conceptual
language of physics, connects 'distance' (s), 'time' (t), and 'velocity' (c). It is
written
c = s / t, or s = ct.

In this formula, s has most definitely the meaning of a 'thing', for it
represents measured spatial distance. Of the two factors on the other side of
the second equation, one must needs have the same quality as s: this is c.
Thus for the other factor, t, there remains the property of a pure number. We
are, therefore, under an illusion if we assume the factor c to represent
anything of what velocity implies in outer cosmic reality. The truth is that c
represents a spatial distance just as s does, with the difference only that it is
a certain unit-distance. Just as little does real time enter into this formula -
nor does it into any other formula of mathematical physics. 'Time', in
physics, is always a pure number without any cosmic quality. Indeed, how
could it be otherwise for a purely kinematic world-observation?

We now submit the formula F=ma to the same scrutiny. If we attach to the
factor a on the right side of the equation a definite quality, namely an
observable acceleration, the other factor in the product is permitted to have
only the properties of a pure number; F, therefore, can be only of the same
nature as a and must itself be an acceleration. Were it otherwise, then the

equation F=ma could certainly not serve as a logical link between the
Velocity and Force parallelograms.

Our present investigation has done no more than grant us an insight into the
process of thought whereby the consciousness limited to a purely kinematic
experience has deprived the concept of force of any real content. Let us
look at the equation F=ma as a means of splitting of the magnitude F into
two components m and a. The equation then tells us that F is reduced to the
nature of pure acceleration, for that which resides in the force as a factor not
observable by kinematic vision has been split away from it as the factor m.
For this factor, however, as we have seen, nothing remains over but the
property of a pure number.

Let us note here that the first thinker to concern himself with a
comprehensive world-picture in which the non-existence of a real concept
of force is taken in earnest-namely, Albert Einstein - was also the first to
consider mass as a form of energy and even to predict correctly, as was
proved later, the amount of energy represented by the unit of mass, thereby
encouraging decisively the new branch of experimental research which has
led to the freeing of the so-called atomic energy. Is it then possible that pure
numbers can effect what took place above and within Nagasaki, Hiroshima,
etc.? Here we are standing once again before one of the paradoxes of
modern science which we have found to play so considerable a part in its
development.

To find an interpretation of the formula F=ma, which is free from illusion,
we must turn our attention first of all to the concepts 'force' and 'mass'
themselves. The fact that men have these two words in their languages
shows that the concepts expressed by them must be based on some
experience that has been man's long before he was capable of any scientific
reflexion. Let us ask what kind of experience this is and by what part of his
being he gathers it.

The answer is, as simple self-observation will show, that we know of the
existence of force through the fact that we ourselves must exert it in order
to move our own body. Thus it is the resistance of our body against any
alteration of its state of motion, as a result of its being composed of inert
matter, which gives us the experience of force both as a possession of our

own and as a property of the outer world. All other references to force, in
places where it cannot be immediately experienced, arise by way of analogy
based on the similarity of the content of our observation to that which
springs from the exertion of force in our own bodies.

As we see, in this experience of force that of mass is at once implied. Still,
we can strengthen the latter by experimenting with some outer physical
object. Take a fairly heavy object in your hand, stretch out your arm lightly
and move it slowly up and down, watching intently the sensation this
operation rouses in you.2 Evidently the experience of mass outside
ourselves, as with that of our own body, comes to us through the experience
of the force which we ourselves must exert in order to overcome some
resisting force occasioned by the mass. Already this simple observation - as
such made by means of the sense of movement and therefore outside the
frontiers of the onlooker-consciousness - tells us that mass is nothing but a
particular manifestation of force.

Seen in the light of this experience, the equation F=ma requires to be
interpreted in a manner quite different from that to which scientific logic
has submitted it. For if we have to ascribe to F and m the same quality, then
the rule of multiplication allows us to ascribe to a nothing but the character
of a pure number. This implies that there is no such thing as acceleration as
a self-contained entity, merely attached to mass in an external way.

What we designate as acceleration, and measure as such, is nothing else
than a numerical factor comparing two different conditions of force within
the physical-material world.

Only when we give the three factors in our equation this meaning, does it
express some concrete outer reality. At the same time it forbids the use of
this equation for a logical derivation of the parallelogram of forces from
that of pure velocities.

*

The same method which has enabled us to restore its true meaning to the
formula connecting mass and force will serve to find the true source of

man's knowledge of the parallelogram of forces. Accordingly, our procedure
will be as follows.

We shall engage two other persons, together with whom we shall try to
discover by means of our respective experiences of force the law under
which three forces applying at a common point may hold themselves in
equilibrium. Our first step will consist in grasping each other by the hand
and in applying various efforts of our wills to draw one another in different
directions, seeing to it that we do this in such a way that the three joined
hands remain undisturbed at the same place. By this means we can get as
far as to establish that, when two persons maintain a steady direction and
strength of pull, the third must alter his applied force with every change in
his own direction in order to hold the two others in equilibrium. He will
find that in some instances he must increase his pull and in other instances
decrease it.

This, however, is all that can be learnt in this way. No possibility arises at
this stage of our investigation of establishing any exact quantitative
comparison. For the forces which we have brought forth (and this is valid
for forces in general, no matter of what kind they are) represent pure
intensities, outwardly neither visible nor directly measurable. We can
certainly tell whether we are intensifying or diminishing the application of
our will, but a numerical comparison between different exertions of will is
not possible.

In order to make such a comparison, a further step is necessary. We must
convey our effort to some pointer-instrument - for instance, a spiral spring
which will respond to an exerted pressure or pull by a change in its spatial
extension. (Principle of the spring balance.) In this way, by making use of a
certain property of matter - elasticity - the purely intensive magnitudes of
the forces which we exert become extensively visible and can be presented
geometrically. We shall therefore continue our investigation with the aid of
three spring balances, which we hook together at one end while exposing
them to the three pulls at the other.

To mark the results of our repeated pulls of varying intensities and
directions, we draw on the floor on which we stand three chalk lines
outward from the point underneath the common point of the three

instruments, each in the direction taken up by one of the three persons.
Along these lines we mark the extensions corresponding to those of the
springs of the instruments.

By way of this procedure we shall arrive at a sequence of figures such as is
shown in Fig. 3.

This is all we can discover empirically regarding the mutual relationships of
three forces engaging at a point.

Let us now heed the fact that nothing in this group of figures reveals that in
each one of these trios of lines there resides a definite and identical
geometrical order; nor do they convey anything that would turn our
thoughts to the parallelogram of velocities with the effect of leading us to
expect, by way of analogy, a similar order in these figures. And this result,
we note, is quite independent of our particular way of procedure, whether
we use, right from the start, a measuring instrument, or whether we proceed
as described above.

*

Having in this way removed the fallacious idea that the parallelogram of
forces can, and therefore ever has been, conceived by way of logical
derivation from the parallelogram of velocities, we must then ask ourselves
what it was, if not any act of logical reason, that led Galileo to discover it.

History relates that on making the discovery he exclaimed: 'La natura è
scritta in lingua matematica!' ('Nature is recorded in the language of

mathematics.') These words reveal his surprise when he realized the
implication of his discovery. Still, intuitively he must have known that
using geometrical lengths to symbolize the measured magnitudes of forces
would yield some valid result. Whence came this intuition, as well as the
other which led him to recognize from the figures thus obtained that in a
parallelogram made up of any two of the three lines, the remaining line
came in as its diagonal? And, quite apart from the particular event of the
discovery, how can we account for the very fact that nature - at least on a
certain level of her existence - exhibits rules of action expressible in terms
of logical principles immanent in the human mind?

*

To find the answer to these questions we must revert to certain facts
connected with man's psycho-physical make-up of which the considerations
of Chapter II have already made us aware.

Let us, therefore, transpose ourselves once more into the condition of the
child who is still entirely volition, and thus experiences himself as one with
the world. Let us consider, from the point of view of this condition, the
process of lifting the body into the vertical position and the acquisition of
the faculty of maintaining it in this position; and let us ask what the soul,
though with no consciousness of itself, experiences in all this. It is the
child's will which wrestles in this act with the dynamic structure of external
space, and what his will experiences is accompanied by corresponding
perceptions through the sense of movement and other related bodily senses.
In this way the parallelogram of forces becomes an inner experience of our
organism at the beginning of our earthly life. What we thus carry in the
body's will-region in the form of experienced geometry - this, together with
the freeing and crystallizing of part of our will-substance into our
conceptual capacity, is transformed into our faculty of forming geometrical
concepts, and among them the concept of the parallelogram of movements.

Looked at in this way, the true relationship between the two parallelogram-
theorems is seen to be the very opposite of the one held with conviction by
scientific thinking up to now. Instead of the parallelogram of forces
following from the parallelogram of movements, and the entire science of
dynamics from that of kinematics, our very faculty of thinking in kinematic

concepts is the evolutionary product of our previously acquired intuitive
experience of the dynamic order of the world.

If this is the truth concerning the origin of our knowledge of force and its
behaviour on the one hand, and our capacity to conceive mathematical
concepts in a purely ideal way on the other, what is it then that causes man
to dwell in such illusion as regards the relationship between the two? From
our account it follows that no illusion of this kind could arise if we were
able to remember throughout life our experiences in early childhood. Now
we know from our considerations in Chapter VI that in former times man
had such a memory. In those times, therefore, he was under no illusion as to
the reality of force in the world. In the working of outer forces he saw a
manifestation of spiritual beings, just as in himself he experienced force as
a manifestation of his own spiritual being. We have seen also that this form
of memory had to fade away to enable man to find himself as a self-
conscious personality between birth and death. As such a personality,
Galileo was able to think the parallelogram of forces, but he was unable to
comprehend the origin of his faculty of mathematical thinking, or of his
intuitive knowledge of the mathematical behaviour of nature in that realm
of hers where she sets physical forces into action.

Deep below in Galileo's soul there lived, as it does in every human being,
the intuitive knowledge, acquired in early childhood, that part of nature's
order is recordable in the conceptual language of mathematics. In order that
this intuition should rise sufficiently far into his conscious mind to guide
him, as it did, in his observations, the veil of oblivion which otherwise
separates our waking consciousness from the experiences of earliest
childhood must have been momentarily lightened. Unaware of all this,
Galileo was duly surprised when in the onlooker-part of his being the truth
of his intuition was confirmed in a way accessible to it, namely through
outer experiment. Yet with the veil immediately darkening again the
onlooker soon became subject to the illusion that for his recognition of
mathematics as a means of describing nature he was in need of nothing but
what was accessible to him on the near side of the veil.

Thus it became man's fate in the first phase of science, which fills the
period from Galileo and his contemporaries up to the present time, that the

very faculty which man needed for creating this science prevented him from
recognizing its true foundations. Restricted as he was to the building of a
purely kinematic world-picture, he had to persuade himself that the order of
interdependence of the two parallelogram-theorems was the opposite of the
one which it really is.

*

The result of the considerations of this chapter is of twofold significance for
our further studies. On the one hand, we have seen that there is a way out of
the impasse into which modern scientific theory has got itself as a result of
the lack of a justifiable concept of force, and that this way is the one shown
by Reid and travelled by Goethe. 'We must become as little children again,
if we will be philosophers', is as true for science as it is for philosophy. On
the other hand, our investigation of the event which led Galileo to the
discovery that nature is recorded in the language of mathematics, has shown
us that this discovery would not have been possible unless Galileo had in a
sense become, albeit unconsciously, a little child again. Thus the event that
gave science its first foundations is an occurrence in man himself of
precisely the same character as the one which we have learnt to regard as
necessary for building science's new foundations. The only difference is
that we are trying to turn into a deliberate and consciously handled method
something which once in the past happened to a man without his noticing it.

Need we wonder that we are challenged to do so in our day, when mankind
is several centuries older than it was in the time of Galileo?
1 As to the terms 'kinetic' and 'kinematic', see Chapter II, page 30, footnote.

2 For the sake of our later studies it is essential that the reader does not content himself with merely

following the above description mentally, but that he carries out the experiment himself.

CHAPTER IX

Pro Levitate

(a) ALERTNESS contra INERTNESS

In the preceding chapter we gained a new insight into the relationship
between mass and force. We have come to see that our concept of force is
grounded on empirical observation in no less a degree than is usually
assumed for our concept of number, or size, or position, provided we do not
confine ourselves to non-stereoscopic, colourless vision for the forming of
our scientific world-picture, but allow other senses to contribute to it. As to
the concept mass, our discussion of the formula F=ma showed that force
and mass, as they occur in it, are of identical nature, both having the quality
of force. The factors F and m signify force in a different relationship to
space (represented by the factor a). This latter fact now requires some
further elucidation.

In a science based on the Goethean method of contemplating the world of
the senses, concepts such as 'mass in rest' and 'mass in motion' lack any
scientific meaning (though for another reason than in the theory of
Relativity). For in a science of this kind the universe - in the sense
propounded lately by Professor Whitehead and others - appears as one
integrated whole, whose parts must never be considered as independent
entities unrelated to the whole. Seen thus, there is no mass in the universe
of which one could say with truth that it is ever in a state of rest. Nor is
there any condition of movement which could be rightly characterized by
the attributes 'uniform' and 'straight line' in the sense of Newton's first law.
This does not mean that such conditions never occur in our field of
observation. But as such they have significance only in relation to our
immediate surroundings as a system of reference. Even within such limits
these conditions are not of a kind that would allow us to consider them as
the basis of a scientific world-picture. For as such they occur naturally only
as ultimate, never as primeval conditions. All masses are originally in a
state of curvilinear movement whose rates change continuously. To picture

a mass as being in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, as
the result of no force acting on it, and to picture it undergoing a change in
the rate and direction of its motion as the result of some outer force working
on it, is a sheer abstraction. In so far as mass appears in our field of
observation as being in relative rest or motion of the kind described, this is
always the effect of some secondary dynamic cause.

If we wish to think with the course of the universe and not against it, we
must not start our considerations with the state of (relative) rest or uniform
motion in a straight line and derive our definition of force from the
assumption that there is a primary 'force-free' state which is altered under
the action of some force, but we must arrange our definitions in such a way
that they end up with this state. Thus Newton's first law, for instance, would
have to be restated somewhat as follows: No physical body is ever in a state
of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless its natural condition is
interfered with by the particular action of some force.

Seen dynamically, and from the aspect of the universe as an interrelated
whole, all aggregations of mass are the manifestation of certain dynamic
conditions within the universe, and what appears to us as a change of the
state of motion of such a mass is nothing but a change in the dynamic
relationship between this particular aggregation and the rest of the world.
Let us now see what causes of such a change occur within the field of our
observation.

*

In modern textbooks the nature of the cause of physical movement is
usually defined as follows: 'Any change in the state of movement of a
portion of matter is the result of the action on it of another portion of
matter.' This represents a truth if it is taken to describe a certain kind of
causation. In the axiomatic form in which it is given it is a fallacy. The kind
of causation it describes is, indeed, the only one which has been taken into
consideration by the scientific mind of man. We are wont to call it
'mechanical' causation. Obviously, man's onlooker-consciousness is unable
to conceive of any other kind of causation. For this consciousness is by its
very nature confined to the contemplation of spatially apparent entities
which for this reason can be considered only as existing spatially side by

side. For the one-eyed, colour-blind spectator, therefore, any change in the
state of movement of a spatially confined entity could be attributed only to
the action of another such entity outside itself. Such a world-outlook was
bound to be a mechanistic one.

We cannot rest content with this state of affairs if we are sincerely searching
for an understanding of how spirit moves, forms, and transforms matter. We
must learn to admit non-mechanical causes of physical effects, where such
causes actually present themselves to our observation. In this respect our
own body is again a particularly instructive object of study. For here
mechanical and non-mechanical causation can be seen working side by side
in closest conjunction. Let us therefore ask what happens when we move,
say, one of our limbs or a part of it.

The movement of any part of our body is always effected in some way by
the movement of the corresponding part of the skeleton. This in turn is set
in motion by certain lengthenings and contractions of the appropriate part of
the muscular system. Now the way in which the muscles cause the bones to
move falls clearly under the category of mechanical causation. Certain
portions of matter are caused to move by the movement of adjacent portions
of matter. The picture changes when we look for the cause to which the
muscles owe their movements. For the motion of the muscles is not the
effect of any cause external to them, but is effected by the purely spiritual
energy of our volition working directly into the physical substance of the
muscles. What scientific measuring instruments have been able to register
in the form of physical, chemical, electrical, etc., changes of the muscular
substance is itself an effect of this interaction.

To mark the fact that this type of causation is clearly distinguished from the
type called mechanical, it will be well to give it a name of its own. If we
look for a suitable term, the word 'magical' suggests itself. The fact that this
word has gathered all sorts of doubtful associations must not hinder us from
adopting it into the terminology of a science which aspires to understand
the working of the supersensible in the world of the senses. The falling into
disrepute of this word is characteristic of the onlooker-age. The way in
which we suggest it should be used is in accord with its true and original
meaning, the syllable 'mag' signifying power or might (Sanskrit maha,

Greek megas, Latin magnus, English might, much, also master). Henceforth
we shall distinguish between 'mechanical' and 'magical' causation, the latter
being a characteristic of the majority of happenings in the human, animal
and plant organisms.1

*

Our next step in building up a truly dynamic picture of matter must be to try
to obtain a direct experience of the condition of matter when it is under the
sway of magical causation.

Let us first remember what is the outstanding attribute with which matter
responds to mechanical causation. This is known to be inertia. By this term
we designate the tendency of physical matter to resist any outwardly
impressed change of its existing state of movement. This property is closely
linked up with another one, weight. The coincidence of the two has of late
become a puzzle to science, and it was Albert Einstein who tried to solve it
by establishing his General Theory of Relativity. The need to seek such
solutions falls away in a science which extends scientific understanding to
conditions of matter in which weight and inertia are no longer dominant
characteristics. What becomes of inertia when matter is subject to magical
causation can be brought to our immediate experience in the following way.
(The reader, even if he is already familiar with this experiment, is again
asked to carry it out for himself.)

Take a position close to a smooth wall, so that one arm and hand, which are
left hanging down alongside the body, are pressed over their entire length
between body and wall. Try now to move the arm upward, pressing it
against the wall as if you wanted to shift the latter. Apply all possible effort
to this attempt, and maintain the effort for about one minute. Then step
away quickly from the wall by more than the length of the arm, while
keeping the arm hanging down by the side of the body in a state of
complete relaxation. Provided all conditions are properly fulfilled, the arm
will be found rising by itself in accordance with the aim of the earlier effort,
until it reaches the horizontal. If the arm is then lowered again and left to
itself, it will at once rise again, though not quite so high as before. This can

be repeated several times until the last vestige of the automatic movement
has faded away.

Having thus ascertained by direct experience that there is a state of matter
in which inertia is, to say the least, greatly diminished, we find ourselves in
need of giving this state (which is present throughout nature wherever
material changes are brought into existence magically) a name of its own,
as we did with the two types of causation. A word suggests itself which,
apart from expressing adequately the peculiar self-mobility which we have
just brought to our experience, goes well alongside the word 'inert' by
forming a kind of rhyme with it. This is the term 'alert'. With its help we
shall henceforth distinguish between matter in the inert and alert conditions.
We shall call the latter state 'alertness', and in order to have on the other side
a word as similar as possible in outer form to alertness, we suggest
replacing the usual term inertia by 'inertness'. Thus we shall speak of matter
as showing the attribute of 'inertness', when it is subject to mechanical
causation, of 'alertness', when it is subject to magical causation.

Anyone who watches attentively the sensation produced by the rising arm
in the above experiment will be duly impressed by the experience of the
alertness prevailing in the arm as a result of the will's magical intervention.

*

In our endeavour to find a modern way of overcoming the conception of
matter developed and held by science in the age of the onlooker-
consciousness, we shall be helped by noticing how this conception first
arose historically. Of momentous significance in this respect is the
discovery of the gaseous state of matter by the Flemish physician and
experimenter, Joh. Baptist van Helmont (1577-1644). The fact that the
existence of this state of ponderable matter was quite unknown up to such a
relatively recent date has been completely forgotten to-day. Moreover, it is
so remote from current notions that anyone who now calls attention to van
Helmont's discovery is quite likely to be met with incredulity. As a result,
there is no account of the event that puts it in its true setting. In what
follows pains are taken to present the facts in the form in which one comes
to know them through van Helmont's own account, given in his Ortus
Medicinae.

For reasons which need not be described here, van Helmont studied with
particular interest the various modifications in which carbon is capable of
occurring in nature - among them carbon's combustion product, carbon
dioxide. It was his observations of carbon dioxide which made him aware
of a condition of matter whose properties caused him the greatest surprise.
For he found it to be, at the same time, 'much finer than vapour and much
denser than air'. It appeared to him as a complete 'paradox', because it
seemed to unite in itself two contradictory qualities, one appertaining to the
realm of 'uncreated things', the other to the realm of 'created things'. Unable
to rank it with either 'vapour' or 'air' (we shall see presently what these
terms meant in van Helmont's terminology), he found himself in need of a
special word to distinguish this new state from the other known states, both
below and above it. Since he could not expect any existing language to
possess a suitable word, he felt he must create one. He therefore took, and
changed slightly, a word signifying a particular cosmic condition which
seemed to be imaged in the new condition he had just discovered. The word
was CHAOS. By shortening it a little, he derived from it the new word
GAS. His own words explaining his choice are: 'Halitum ilium GAS vocavi
non longe a Chaos veterum secretum.' ('I have called this mist Gas, owing
to its resemblance to the Chaos of the ancients.')2

Van Helmont's account brings us face to face with a number of riddles.
Certainly, there is nothing strange to us in his describing carbon dioxide gas
as being 'finer than vapour and denser than air'; but why did he call this a
'paradox'? What prevented him from ranking it side by side with air? As to
air itself, why should he describe it as belonging to the realm of the
'uncreated things'? What reason was there for giving 'vapour' the rank of a
particular condition of matter? And last but not least, what was the ancient
conception of Chaos which led van Helmont to choose this name as an
archetype for the new word he needed?

To appreciate van Helmont's astonishment and his further procedure, we
must first call to mind the meaning which, in accordance with the prevailing
tradition, he attached to the term Air. For van Helmont, Air was one of the
four 'Elements', EARTH, WATER, AIR, and FIRE. Of these, the first two
were held to constitute the realm of the 'created things', the other two that of
the 'uncreated things'. A brief study of the old doctrine of the Four Elements

is necessary at this point in order to understand the meaning of these
concepts.

*

The first systematic teaching about the four elementary constituents of
nature, as they were experienced by man of old, was given by Empedocles
in the fifth century B.C. It was elaborated by Aristotle. In this form it was
handed down and served to guide natural observation through more than a
thousand years up to the time of van Helmont. From our earlier descriptions
of the changes in man's consciousness it is clear that the four terms, 'earth',
'water', 'air', 'fire', must have meant something different in former times. So
'water' did not signify merely the physical substance which modern
chemistry defines by the formula H2O; nor was 'air' the mixture of gases
characteristic of the earth's atmosphere. Man in those days, on account of
his particular relationship with nature, was impressed in the first place by
the various dynamic conditions, four in number, which he found prevailing
both in his natural surroundings and in his own organism. With his
elementary concepts he tried to express, therefore, the four basic conditions
which he thus experienced. He saw physical substances as being carried up
and down between these conditions.

At first sight some relationship seems to exist between the concept 'element'
in this older sense and the modern view of the different states of material
aggregation, solid, liquid, aeriform. There is, however, nothing in this
modern view that would correspond to the element Fire. For heat in the
sense of physical science is an immaterial energy which creates certain
conditions in the three material states, but from these three to heat there is
no transition corresponding to the transitions between themselves. Heat,
therefore, does not rank as a fourth condition by the side of the solid, liquid
and aeriform states, in the way that Fire ranks in the older conception by the
side of Earth, Water and Air.

If we were to use the old terms for designating the three states of
aggregation plus heat, as we know them to-day, we should say that there is
a border-line dividing Fire from the three lower elements. Such a border-
line existed in the older conception of the elements as well. Only its

position was seen to be elsewhere - between Earth and Water on the one
hand, Air and Fire on the other. This was expressed by saying that the
elements below this line constituted the realm of the 'created things', those
above it that of the 'uncreated things'. Another way of expressing this was
by characterizing Earth and Water with the quality Cold; Air and Fire with
the quality Warm. The two pairs of elements were thus seen as polar
opposites of one another.

The terms 'cold' and 'warm' must also be understood to have expressed
certain qualitative experiences in which there was no distinction as yet
between what is purely physical and what is purely spiritual. Expressions
such as 'a cold heart', 'a warm heart', to 'show someone the cold shoulder',
etc., still witness to this way of experiencing the two polar qualities, cold
and warm. Quite generally we can say that, wherever man experienced
some process of contraction, whether physical or non-physical, he
designated it by the term 'cold', and where he experienced expansion, he
called it 'warm'. In this sense he felt contractedness to be the predominant
characteristic of Earth and Water, expansiveness that of Air and Fire.

With the help of these qualitative concepts we are now in a position to
determine more clearly still the difference between the older and the
modern conceptions: in particular the difference between the aeriform
condition of matter, as we conceive of it to-day, and the element Air.
Contractedness manifests as material density, or the specific weight of a
particular substance. We know that this characteristic of matter diminishes
gradually with its transition from the solid to the liquid and aeriform states.
We know also that this last state is characterized by a high degree of
expansiveness, which is also the outstanding property of heat. Thus there is
reason to describe also from the modern point of view the solid and liquid
states as essentially 'cold', and the aeriform state as 'warm'. But aeriform
matter still has density and weight, and this means that matter in this state
combines the two opposing qualities. Contrary to this, Air, as the second
highest element in the old sense, is characterized by the pure quality, warm.
Thus, when man of old spoke of 'air', he had in mind something entirely
free from material density and weight.3

By comparing in this way the older and newer conceptions of 'air', we come
to realize that ancient man must have had a conception of gravity
essentially different from ours. If we take gravity in the modern scientist's
sense, as a 'descriptive law of behaviour', then this behaviour is designated
in the older doctrine by the quality 'cold'. If, however, we look within the
system of modern science for a law of behaviour that would correspond to
the quality 'warm', we do so in vain. Polarity concepts are certainly not
foreign to the scientific mind, as the physics of electricity and magnetism
show. Yet there is no opposite pole to gravity, as there is negative opposite
to positive electricity, etc.4

In the older conception, however, the gravitational behaviour 'cold' was
seen to be counteracted by an autonomous anti-gravitational behaviour
'warm'. Experience still supported the conviction that as a polar opposite to
the world subject to gravity, there was another world subject to levity.

We refrain at this point from discussing how far a science which aspires to a
spiritual understanding of nature, including material processes, needs a
revival - in modern form - of the old conception of levity. In our present
context it suffices to realize that we understand man's earlier view of nature,
and with it the one still held by van Helmont, only by admitting levity
equally with gravity into his world-picture. For the four elements, in
particular, this meant that the two upper ones were regarded as representing
Levity, the two lower ones Gravity.

In close connexion with this polar conception of the two pairs of elements,
there stands their differentiation into one realm of created, another of
uncreated, things. To understand what these terms imply, we must turn to
the ancient concept, Chaos, borrowed by van Helmont.

To-day we take the word Chaos to mean a condition of mere absence of
order, mostly resulting from a destruction of existing forms, whether by
nature or by the action of man. In its original sense the word meant the
exact opposite. When in ancient times people spoke of Chaos, they meant
the womb of all being, the exalted realm of uncreated things, where indeed
forms such as are evident to the eye in the created world are not to be
found, but in place of them are the archetypes of all visible forms, as though

nurtured in a spiritual seed-condition. It is the state which in the biblical
narration of the creation of the world is described as 'without form and
void'.

From this Chaos all the four elements are born, one by one, with the two
upper ones retaining Chaos's essential characteristic in that they are 'without
form' and tend to be omnipresent, whilst the two lower ones constitute a
realm in which things appear in more or less clearly outlined space-bound
forms. This is what the terms 'uncreated' and 'created' imply.

How strictly these two realms were distinguished can be seen by the
occurrence of the concept 'vapour'. When with the increasing interest in the
realm of created things - characteristic of the spectator-consciousness
which, in view of our earlier description of it, we recognize as being itself a
'created thing' - the need arose for progressive differentiation within this
realm, the simple division of it into 'earth' and 'water' was no longer felt to
be satisfactory. After all, above the liquid state of matter there was another
state, less dense than water and yet presenting itself through more or less
clearly distinguishable space-bound objects, such as the mists arising from
and spreading over ponds and meadows, and the clouds hovering in the sky.
For this state of matter the term 'vapour' had become customary, and it was
used by van Helmont in this sense. By its very properties, Vapour belonged
to the realm of the created things, whereas Air did not. It was the
intermediary position of the newly discovered state of matter between
Vapour and Air, that is, between the created and the uncreated world, which
caused van Helmont to call it a paradox; and it was its strange resemblance,
despite its ponderable nature, to Chaos, which prompted him to name it -
Gas.

*

Since it could not have been the gaseous state of matter in the form
discovered by van Helmont, what particular condition of nature was it to
which the ancients pointed when using the term Air? Let us see how the
scriptures of past human cultures speak of air.

In all older languages, the words used to designate the element bound up
with breathing, or the act of breathing, served at the same time to express

the relationship of man to the Divine, or even the Divine itself. One need
think only of the words Brahma and Atma of the ancient Indians, the
Pneuma of the Greeks, the Spiritus of the Romans. The Hebrews expressed
the same idea when they said that Jehovah had breathed the breath of life
into man and that man in this way became a living soul.

What lies behind all these words is the feeling familiar to man in those
times, that breathing was not only a means of keeping the body alive, but
that a spiritual essence streamed in with the breath. So long as this
condition prevailed, people could expect that by changing their manner of
breathing they had a means of bringing the soul into stronger relationship
with spiritual Powers, as is attempted in Eastern Yoga.

Remembering the picture of man's spiritual-physical evolution which we
have gained from earlier chapters, we are not astonished to find how
different this early experience of the breathing process was from our own.
Yet, together with the recognition of this difference there arises another
question. Even if we admit that man of old was so organized that the
experience of his own breathing process was an overwhelmingly spiritual
one, it was, after all, the gaseous substance of the earth's atmosphere which
he inhaled, and exhaled again in a transformed condition. What then was it
that prevented men - apparently right up to the time of van Helmont - from
gaining the slightest inkling of the materiality of this substance? To find an
answer to this question, let us resort once more to our method of observing
things genetically, combined with the principle of not considering parts
without considering the whole to which they organically belong.

In modern science the earth is regarded as a mineral body whereon the
manifold forms of nature appear as mere additions, arising more or less by
chance; one can very well imagine them absent without this having any
essential influence on the earth's status in the universe. The truth is quite
different. For the earth, with everything that exists on it, forms a single
whole, just as each separate organism is in its own way a whole.

This shows that we have no right to imagine the earth without men, and to
suppose that its cosmic conditions of being would then remain unaltered -
any more than we can imagine a human being deprived of some essential-
organ and remaining human. Mankind, and all the other kingdoms of

nature, are bound up organically with the earth from the start of its
existence. Moreover, just as the highest plants, seen with Goethe's eyes, are
the spiritual originators of the whole realm of plants - the creative Idea
determining their evolution - so we see man, the highest product of earth
evolution, standing behind this evolution as its Idea from the first, and
determining its course. The evolutionary changes which we observe in the
earth and in man are in fact a single process, working through a variety of
manifested forms.

From this conception of the parallel evolution of earth and man light falls
also on the historic event represented by van Helmont's discovery. Besides
being a symptom of a revolution in man's way of experiencing the
atmosphere, it speaks to us of some corresponding change in the spiritual-
physical condition of the atmosphere itself. It was then that men not only
came to think differently about air, but inhaled and exhaled an air that
actually was different. To find out what kind of change this was, let us turn
once more to man's own organism and see what it has to say concerning the
condition under which matter is capable of being influenced by mechanical
and magical causation respectively, in the sense already described.

What is it in the nature of the bones that makes them accessible to
mechanical causation only, and what is it in the muscles that allows our will
to rouse them magically? Bones and muscles stand in a definite genetic
relationship to each other, the bones being, in relation to the muscles, a late
product of organic development. This holds good equally for everything
which in the body of living nature takes the form of mineralized deposits or
coverings. Every kind of organism consists in its early stages entirely of
living substance; in the course of time a part of the organism separates off"
and passes over into a more or less mineralized condition. Seen in this light,
the distinction between bones and muscles is that the bones have evolved
out of a condition in which the muscles persist, though to a gradually
waning degree, throughout the life-time of the body. The substance of the
muscles, remaining more or less 'young', stands at the opposite pole from
the 'aged' substance of the bones. Hence it depends on the 'age' of a piece of
matter whether it responds to magical or mechanical causation.

Let us state here at once, that this temporal distinction has an essential
bearing on our understanding of evolutionary processes in general. For if
mineral matter is a late product of evolution - and nothing in nature
indicates the contrary - then to explain the origins of the world (as scientific
theories have always done) with the aid of events similar in character to
those which now occur in the mineral realm, means explaining them against
nature's own evidence. To find pictures of past conditions of the earth in
present-day nature, we must look in the regions where matter, because it is
still 'youthful', is played through by the magical working of purposefully
active spiritual forces. Thus, instead of seeing in them the chance results of
blind volcanic and similar forces, we must recognize in the formation and
layout of land and sea an outcome of events more closely resembling those
which occur during the embryonic development of a living organism.

What, then, does van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter tell
us, if we regard it in the light of our newly acquired insight into the trend of
evolution both within and without man? When, in the course of its growing
older, mankind had reached the stage which is expressed by the emergence
of the spectator-consciousness-consciousness, that is, based on a nervous
system which has grown more or less independent of the life forces of the
organism - the outer elements had, in their way, arrived at such a state that
man began to inhale an air whose spiritual-physical constitution
corresponded exactly to that of his nervous system: on either side, Spirit
and Matter, in accordance with the necessities of cosmic evolution had lost
their primeval union.

*

Our extension of the concept of evolution to the very elements of nature,
whether these are of material or non-material kind, and our recognition of
this evolution as leading in general from a more alert to a more inert
condition, at once open the possibility of including in our scientific world-
picture certain facts which have hitherto resisted any inclusion. We mean
those manifold events of 'miraculous' nature, of which the scriptures and the
oral traditions of old are full. What is modern man to make of them?

The doubts which have arisen concerning events of this kind have their
roots on the one hand in the apparent absence of such occurrences in our

day, on the other in the fact that the laws of nature derived by science from
the present condition of the world seem to rule them out.5 In the light of the
concept of the world's 'ageing' which we have tried to develop here, not
only do the relevant reports become plausible, but it also becomes
understandable why, if such events have taken place in the past, they fail to
do so in our own time.

To illustrate this, let us take a few instances which are symptomatic of the
higher degree of youthfulness which was characteristic in former times in
particular of the element of Fire.

The role which Fire was capable of playing in man's life at a time when
even this element, in itself the most youthful of all, was more susceptible to
magic interference than of late, is shown by the manifold fire-rites of old. In
those days, when no easy means of fire-lighting were available, it was usual
for the needs of daily life to keen a fire burning all the time and to kindle
other fires from it. Only in cases of necessity was a new fire lit, and then the
only way was by the tedious rubbing together of two pieces of dry wood.

Then both the maintenance of fires, and the deliberate kindling of a new
fire, played quite a special role in the ceremonial ordering of human society.
Historically, much the best known is the Roman usage in the Temple of
Vesta. On the one hand, the unintentional extinction of the fire was regarded
as a national calamity and as the gravest possible transgression on the part
of the consecrated priestess charged with maintaining the fire. On the other
hand, it was thought essential for this 'everlasting' fire to be newly kindled
once a year. This took place with a special ritual at the beginning of the
Roman year (1st March).

The conception behind such a ritual of fire-kindling will become clear if we
compare with it certain other fire-rites which were practised in the northern
parts of Europe, especially in the British Isles, until far on in the Christian
era. For example, if sickness broke out among the cattle, a widespread
practice was to extinguish all the hearth-fires in the district and then to
kindle with certain rites a new fire, from which all the local people lit their
own fires once more. Heavy penalties were prescribed for anyone who
failed to extinguish his own fire - a failure usually indicated by the non-

manifestation of the expected healing influence. In Anglo-Saxon speaking
countries, fires of this kind were known as 'needfires'.

The spiritual significance of these fires cannot be expressed better than by
the meaning of the very term 'needfire'. This word does not derive, as was
formerly believed, from the word 'need', meaning a 'fire kindled in a state of
need', but, as recent etymological research has shown, from a root which
appears in the German word nieten - to clinch or rivet. 'Needfire' therefore
means nothing less than a fire which was kindled for 'clinching' anew the
bond between earthly life and the primal spiritual order at times when for
one reason or another there was a call for this.

This explanation of the 'needfire' throws light also on the Roman custom of
re-kindling annually the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta. For the Romans
this was a means of reaffirming year by year the connexion of the nation
with its spiritual leadership; accordingly, they chose the time when the sun
in its yearly course restores - 're-clinches' - the union of the world-spirit
with earthly nature, for the rebirth of the fire which throughout the rest of
the year was carefully guarded against extinction.

Just as men saw in this fire-kindling a way of bringing humanity into active
relation with spiritual powers, so on the other hand were these powers held
to use the fire element in outer nature for the purpose of making themselves
actively known to mankind. Hence we find in the records of all ancient
peoples a unanimous recognition of lightning and thunder on the one hand,
and volcanic phenomena on the other, as means to which the Deity resorts
for intervening in human destiny. A well-known example is the account in
the Bible of the meeting of Moses with God on Mount Sinai. As occurrence
in the early history of the Hebrews it gives evidence that even in historical
times the fire element of the earth was sufficiently 'young' to serve the
higher spiritual powers as an instrument for the direct expression of their
will.

(b) LEVITY contra GRAVITY

We said earlier in this chapter that a science which aspires to a spiritual
understanding of the physical happenings in nature must give up the idea
that inertness and weight are absolute properties of matter. We were able at

once to tackle the question of inertness by bringing to our immediate
observation matter in the state of diminished inertness, or, as we proposed
to say, of alertness. We are now in a position to go into the other question,
that of weight or gravity. Just as we found inertness to have its counterpart
in alertness, both being existing conditions of matter, so we shall now find
in addition to the force of gravity another force which is the exact opposite
of it, and to which therefore we can give no better name than 'levity'.

*

Already, indeed, the picture of nature which we gained from following
Goethe's studies both of the plant and of meteorological happenings has
brought us face to face with certain aspects of levity. For when Goethe
speaks of systole and diastole, as the plant first taught him to see them and
as later he found them forming the basic factors of weather-formation, he is
really speaking of the ancient concepts, 'cold' and 'warm'. Goethe's way of
observing nature is, in fact, a first step beyond the limits of a science which
kept itself ignorant of levity as a cosmic counterpart to terrestrial gravity. To
recognize the historical significance of this step, let us turn our glance to the
moment when the human mind became aware that to lay a proper
foundation for the science it was about to build, it had to exclude any idea
of levity as something with a real existence.

Many a conception which is taken for granted by modern man, and is
therefore assumed to have been always obvious, was in fact established
quite deliberately at a definite historical moment. We have seen how this
applies to our knowledge of the gaseous state of matter; it applies also to
the idea of the uniqueness of gravity. About half a century after van
Helmont's discovery a treatise called Contra Levitatem was published in
Florence by the Accademia del Cimento. It declares that a science firmly
based on observation has no right to speak of Levity as something claiming
equal rank with, and opposite to, Gravity.

This attitude was in accord with the state into which human consciousness
had entered at that time. For a consciousness which is itself of the quality
'cold', because it is based on the contracting forces of the body, is naturally
not in a position to take into consideration its very opposite. Therefore, to

speak of a force of levity as one felt able to speak of gravity was indeed
without meaning.

Just as there was historical necessity in this banishing of levity from science
at the beginning of the age of the spectator-consciousness, so was there
historical necessity in a renewed awareness of it arising when the time came
for man to overcome the limitations of his spectator - relationship to the
world. We find this in Goethe's impulse to search for the action of polarities
in nature. As we shall see later, it comes to its clearest expression in
Goethe's optical conceptions.

Another witness to this fact is Ruskin, through a remark which bears in
more than one sense on our present subject. It occurs in his essay, The
Storm-Cloud of the Ninteenth Century. In its context it is meant to warn the
reader against treating science, which Ruskin praises as a fact-finding
instrument, as an interpreter of natural facts. Ruskin takes Newton's
conception of gravity as the all-moving cause of the universe, and turns
against it in the following words:

'Take the very top and centre of scientific interpretation by the greatest of its
masters: Newton explained to you - or at least was once supposed to
explain, why an apple fell; but he never thought of explaining the exact
correlative but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got up
there.'

This remark shows Ruskin once again as a true reader in nature's book.
Looking with childlike openness and intensity of participation into the
world of the senses, he allows nature's phenomena to impress themselves
upon his mind without giving any preconceived preference to one kind or
another. This enables him not to be led by the phenomenon of falling bodies
to overlook the polarically opposite phenomenon of the upward movement
of physical matter in the living plant. Ruskin's remark points directly to the
new world-conception which must be striven for to-day - the conception in
which death is recognized as a secondary form of existence preceded by
life; in which levity is given its rightful place as a force polar to gravity; and
in which, because life is bound up with levity as death is with gravity, levity
is recognized as being of more ancient rank than gravity.

*

In proceeding now to a study of levity we shall not start, as might be
expected, with plants or other living forms. We are not yet equipped to
understand the part played by levity in bringing about the processes of life;
we shall come to this later. For our present purpose we shall look at certain
macrotelluric events - events in which large areas of the earth are engaged -
taking our examples from meteorology on the one hand and from seismic
(volcanic) processes on the other.

In pursuing this course we follow a method which belongs to the
fundamentals of a Goetheanistic science. A few words about this method
may not be out of place.

When we strive to read the book of nature as a script of the spirit we find
ourselves drawn repeatedly towards two realms of natural phenomena. They
are widely different in character, but studied together they render legible
much that refuses to be deciphered in either realm alone. These realms are,
on the one hand, the inner being of man, and, on the other, the phenomena
of macrotelluric and cosmic character. The fruitfulness of linking together
these two will become clear if we reflect on the following.

The field of the inner life of man allows us, as nothing else does, to
penetrate it with our own intuitive experience. For we ourselves are always
in some sense the cause of the events that take place there. In order to make
observations in this region, however, we need to bring about a certain
awakening in a part of our being which - so long as we rely on the purely
natural forces of our body - remains sunk in more or less profound
unconsciousness.

If this realm of events is more intimately related than any other to our
intuitive experience, it has also the characteristic of remaining closed to any
research by external means. Much of what lies beyond the scope of external
observation, however, reveals itself all the more clearly in the realms where
nature is active on the widest scale. Certainly, we must school ourselves to
read aright the phenomena which come to light in those realms. And once
more we must look to the way of introspection, previously mentioned, for
aid in investing our gaze with the necessary intuitive force. If we succeed in

this, then the heavens will become for us a text wherein secrets of human
nature, hidden from mere introspection, can be read; while at the same time
the introspective way enables us to experience things which we cannot
uncover simply by observing the outer universe.

Apart from these methodological considerations, there is a further reason
for our choice. Among the instances mentioned earlier in this chapter as
symptoms of a greater 'youthfulness' prevailing in nature, and particularly
in the element Fire, at a comparatively recent date, were the manifestations
of the Divine-Spiritual World to man reported in the Bible as the event on
Mount Sinai. There, thunder and lightning from above and volcanic action
from below form the setting for the intercourse of Jehovah with Moses. To-
day the function of these types of phenomena, though metamorphosed by
the altered conditions of the earth, is not essentially different. Here, more
than in any other sphere of her activities, nature manifests that side of her
which we are seeking to penetrate with understanding.

*

Let us start with an observation known to the present writer from a visit to
the Solfatara, a volcanic region near Naples.

The Solfatara itself is a trough surrounded by hilly mounds; its smooth,
saucepan-like bottom, covered with whitish pumice-sand, is pitted with
craters containing violently boiling and fuming mud - the so-called fango,
famous for its healing properties. All around sulphurous fumes issue from
crevices in the rocks, and in one special place the Solfatara reveals its
subterranean activity by the emergence of fine, many-coloured sand, which
oozes up like boiling liquid from the depths below. The whole region gives
the impression of being in a state of labile balance. How true this is
becomes apparent if one drops pieces of burning paper here and there on the
ground: immediately a cloud of smoke and steam rises. The effect is even
more intense if a burning torch is moved about over one of the boiling
fango holes. Then the deep answers instantly with an extraordinary
intensification of the boiling process. The hot mud seems to be thrown into
violent turmoil, emitting thick clouds of steam, which soon entirely envelop
the spectator near the edge.

The scientific mind is at first inclined to see in this phenomenon the
mechanical effect of reduced air-pressure, due to the higher temperatures
above the surface of the boiling mud, though doubts are raised by the
unusual intensity of the reaction. The feeling that the physical explanation is
inadequate is strengthened when the vapours have thinned out and one is
surprised to see that every crack and cranny in the Solfatara, right up to the
top of the trough, shows signs of increased activity. Certainly, this cannot be
accounted for by a cause-and-effect nexus of the kind found in the realm of
mechanical causation, where an effect is propagated from point to point and
the total effect is the sum of a number of partial effects. It looks rather as if
the impulse applied in one spot had called for a major impulse which was
now acting on the Solfatara as a whole.

As observers who are trying to understand natural phenomena by
recognizing their significance as letters in nature's script, we must look now
for other phenomena which can be joined with this one to form the relevant
'word' we have set out to decipher.

All scientific theories concerning the causes of seismic occurrences, both
volcanic and tectonic, have been conceived as if the spatial motion of
mineral matter were the only happening that had to be accounted for. No
wonder that none of these theories has proved really satisfactory even to
mechanistically orientated thinking. Actually there are phenomena of a
quite different kind connected with the earth's seismic activities, and these
need to be taken into equal account.

There is, for instance, the fact that animals often show a premonition of
volcanic or tectonic disturbances. They become restive and hide, or, if
domestic, seek the protection of man. Apparently, they react in this way to
changes in nature which precede the mechanical events by which man
registers the seismic occurrence.

Another such phenomenon is the so-called earthquake-sky, which the
present writer has had several occasions to witness. It consists of a peculiar,
almost terrifying, intense discoloration of the sky, and, to those acquainted
with it, is a sure sign of an imminent or actual earthquake somewhere in the
corresponding region of the earth. This phenomenon teaches us that the
change in the earth's condition which results in a violent movement of her

crust, involves a region of her organism far greater than the subterranean
layers where the cause of the purely mechanical events is usually believed
to reside.6

That man himself is not excluded from experiencing directly the super-
spatial nature of seismic disturbances is shown by an event in Goethe's life,
reported by his secretary Eckermann, who himself learnt the story from an
old man who had been Goethe's valet at the time.7

This is what the old man, whom Eckermann met by accident one day near
Weimar, told him: 'Once Goethe rang in the middle of the night and when I
entered his room I found he had rolled his iron bed to the window and was
lying there, gazing at the heavens. "Have you seen nothing in the sky?"
asked he, and when I answered "No", he begged me to run across to the
sentry and inquire of the man on duty if he had seen nothing. He had not
noticed anything and when I returned I found the master still in the same
position, gazing at the sky. "Listen," he said, "this is an important moment;
there is now an earthquake or one is just going to take place." Then he made
me sit down on the bed and showed me by what signs he knew this.' When
asked about the weather conditions, the old man said: 'It was very cloudy,
very still and sultry.' To believe implicitly in Goethe was for him a matter of
course, 'for things always happened as he said they would'. When next day
Goethe related his observations at Court, the women tittered: 'Goethe
dreams' ('Goethe schwärmt'), but the Duke and the other men present
believed him. A few weeks later the news reached Weimar that on that night
(5th April, 1783) part of Messina had been destroyed by an earthquake.

There is no record by Goethe himself of the nature of the phenomenon
perceived by him during that night, except for a brief remark in a letter to
Mme de Stein, written the following day, in which he claims to have seen a
'northern light in the south-east' the extraordinary character of which made
him fear that an earthquake had taken place somewhere. The valet's report
makes us inclined to think that there had been no outwardly perceptible
phenomenon at all, but that what Goethe believed he was seeing with his
bodily eyes was the projection of a purely supersensible, but not for that
reason any less objective, experience.

In a picture of the seismic activities of the earth which is to comprise
phenomena of this kind, the volcanic or tectonic effects cannot be attributed
to purely local causes. For why, then, should the whole meteorological
sphere be involved, and why should living beings react in the way
described? Clearly, we must look for the origin of the total disturbance not
in the interior of the earth but in the expanse of surrounding space. Indeed,
the very phenomenon of the Solfatara, if seen in this light, can reveal to us
that at least the volcanic movements of the earth's crust are not caused by
pressure from within, but by suction from without - that is, by an
exceptional action of levity.

We recall the fact that the whole Solfatara phenomenon had its origin in a
flame being swayed over one of the fango holes. Although it remains true
that the suction arising from the diminished air pressure over the hole
cannot account for the intense increase of ebullition in the hole itself, not to
speak of the participation of the entire region in this increase, there is the
fact that the whole event starts with a suctional effect. As we shall see in the
next chapter, any local production of heat interferes with the gravity
conditions at that spot by shifting the balance to the side of levity. That the
response in a place like the Solfatara is what we have seen it to be, is the
result of an extraordinary lability of the equilibrium between gravity and
levity, a characteristic appertaining to the earth's volcanism in general.

For the people living near the Solfatara it is indeed common knowledge
that there are times when this lability is so great that the slightest local
disturbance of the kind we have described can provoke destructive
eruptions of great masses of subterranean mud. (At such times access to the
Solfatara is prohibited.) We shall understand such an eruption rightly if we
picture it as the counter-pole of an avalanche. The latter may be brought
about by a fragment of matter on a snow-covered mountain, perhaps a little
stone, breaking loose and in its descent bringing ever-accumulating masses
of snow down with it. The levity-process polar to this demonstration of
gravity is the production of a mightily growing 'negative avalanche' by
comparatively weak local suction, caused by a small flame.

*

Earlier in this chapter (page 150) we said that if we want to understand how
spirit moves, forms and transforms matter, we must recognize the existence
of non-mechanical (magical) causes of physical effects. We have now found
that the appearance of such effects in nature is due to the operations of a
particular force, levity, polar to gravity. Observation of a number of natural
happenings has helped us to become familiar in a preliminary way with the
character of this force. Although these happenings were all physical in
appearance, they showed certain definitely non-physical features,
particularly through their peculiar relationship to three-dimensional space.
More characteristics of this kind will appear in the following pages.

In this way it will become increasingly clear that in levity we have to do
with something which, despite its manifesting characteristics of a 'force' not
unlike gravity and thereby resembling the latter, differs essentially from
anything purely physical. It is only by its interactions with gravity that
levity brings about events in the physical world-events, however, which are
themselves partly of a physical, partly of a superphysical kind. Seeing
things in this aspect, we are naturally prompted to ask what causes there are
in the world which make gravity and levity interact at all. This question will
find its answer in due course. First, we must make ourselves more fully
acquainted with the various appearances of the gravity-levity interplay in
nature.
1 In this sense Ruskin's description of the working of the spirit in the plant as one that 'catches from

chaos water, etc., etc., and fastens them into a given form' points to magical action.

2 For Van Helmont, owing to the Flemish pronunciation of the letter G, the two words sounded more

alike than their spelling suggests.

3 In a later chapter we shall have opportunity to determine what distinguishes Air from Fire, on the

one hand, and Water from Earth on the other.

4 It is this apparent uni-polarity of gravity which has given Professor Einstein so much trouble in his

endeavour to create a purely gravitational world-picture with bipolar electricity and magnetism fitting
into it mathematically.

5 See the 'Bishop Barnes' controversy of recent date.

6 To the same category belong the mighty thunderstorms which in some parts of the world are known

to occur in conjunction with earthquakes.

7 See Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann (translated by J. Oxenford), 13th November, 1823.

CHAPTER X

The Fourth State of Matter

When William Crookes chose as one of the titles of his paper on the newly
discovered properties of electricity, 'The Fourth State of Matter', it was to
express his belief that he had found a state of matter, additional to the three
known ones, which represented 'the borderland where matter and force
seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between known and
unknown' for which his soul had been longing ever since the death of his
beloved brother.1 All that has followed from his discovery, down to the
transformation of matter itself into freely working energy, shows that he
was right in thinking he had reached some borderland of nature. But the
character of the forces which are thus liberated makes it equally clear that
this is not the borderland he was looking for. Nature - by which we mean
physical nature - has in fact two borders, one touching the realm of the
intramaterial energies which are liberated by disrupting the structure of
atomic nuclei, the other leading over into creative Chaos, the fountain-head
of all that appears in nature as intelligent design.

It was Crookes's fate to open the road which has brought man to nature's
lower border and even across it, although he himself was in search of her
upper border. What he was denied, we are in a position to achieve to-day,
provided we do not expect to succeed by methods similar to those of atomic
physics, and do not look for similar results.

To show that there is a fourth state of matter, rightly so called, which
represents in actual fact the upper border of nature, and to point the way
that leads to it and across it, is the purpose of this chapter.

*

From our previous comparison of the older conception of the four
elementary conditions of nature with that now held of the three states of
ponderable matter, we may expect that the fourth state will have something
in common with heat. Heat is indeed the energy which transforms matter by
carrying it from the solid to the liquid and gaseous states. Not so obvious is
the fact that heat, apart from being an agent working at matter in this way,
is the very essence underlying all material existence, out of which matter in
its three ponderable states comes into being and into which it is capable of
returning again. Such a conception of matter was naturally absent from the
age of the Contra-Levitatem orientation of the human mind. To create this
conception, a new Pro-Levitate orientation is required.

Apart from producing liquefaction and vaporization, heat has also the
property of acting on physical matter so that its volume increases. Both
facts are linked together by science through the thermodynamic conception
of heat. As this conception firmly blocks the road to the recognition of the
role of heat as the fourth state of matter, our first task will be to determine
our own standpoint with regard to it. Further obstacles on our way are the
so-called Laws of Conservation, which state that no matter and no energy -
which for present-day science have become one and the same thing - can
ever disappear into 'nothing' or come into being out of 'nothing'. This idea,
also, will therefore require our early attention.2

*

In the light of our previous studies we shall not find it difficult to test the
reality-value of the thermodynamic conception of heat.

As we know of mass through a definite sense-perception, so we know of
heat. In the latter case we rely on the sense of warmth. In Chapter VIII we
took the opportunity to test the objectivity of the information received
through this sense. Still, one-eyed, colour-blind observation is naturally
unable to take account of these sense-messages. To this kind of observation
nothing is accessible, we know, except spatial displacements of single
point-like entities. Hence we find Bacon and Hooke already attributing the
sensation of warmth to minute fast-moving particles of matter impinging on

the skin. Some time later we find Locke taking up the same picture. We see
from this how little the mechanical theory of heat owes to empirical facts.
For even in Locke's time the connexion between heat and mechanical
action, as recognized to-day, was completely unknown.

With this idea firmly rooted in his mind, modern man had no difficulty in
using it to explain both thermal expansion and the effect of heat on the
different states of matter, and so, finally, these states themselves. Thermal
expansion was thus attributed to an increase in the average distance
between the assumed minute particles, caused by an increase in their rate of
movement; the liquid state was held to differ from the solid, and similarly
the gaseous from the liquid, by the interspaces between the particles
becoming relatively so great that the gravitational pull between them
became too weak to hold them together.

Tested from a view-point outside the onlooker-consciousness, this whole
picture of the interaction between matter and heat appears to run counter to
the cosmic order of things in a way typical of other spectator-theories.
Ancient man, if confronted with this picture, would have said that it means
explaining the element Fire by the quality Cold. For each of those minute
particles, in its solidity and state of spatial separation from the others,
represents an effigy of the earth and thereby the element Earth itself. He
would be unable to understand why phenomena of the 'warm' element Fire
should be explained by its very opposite. Moreover, Fire forms part of the
ever 'youthful' realm of the world, whereas anything which exists as a
spatially discernible entity, capable of being moved about mechanically,
must have grown cosmically 'old'.

That Ruskin was as much on the alert in regard to this theory as he was in
regard to Newton's theory of gravitation, is shown by the following
utterance from his The Queen of the Air. Obviously stirred by Tyndall's
newly published treatise, Heat as a Mode of Motion, Ruskin felt the need to
criticize the endeavour of contemporary science 'to simplify the various
forms of energy more and more into modes of one force, or finally into
mere motion, communicable in various states, but not destructible', by
declaring that he would himself 'like better in order of thought3 to consider
motion as a mode of heat than heat as a mode of motion'.

These words of Ruskin touch also on the law of conservation of energy, of
which we said that it also called for a preliminary examination. What we
now have to find out is the factual basis on which this law rests.

*

The conception of the law of conservation of energy arose from the
discovery of the constant numerical relation between heat and mechanical
work, known as the mechanical equivalent of heat. This discovery was
made at about the same time by Joule in England and J. R. Mayer in
Germany, although by entirely different routes. Joule, a brewer, was a man
of practical bent. Trained by Dalton, the founder of the atomic theory, in
experimental research, he continued Rumford's and Davy's researches
which they had undertaken to prove that heat is not, as it was for a time
believed to be, a ponderable substance, but an imponderable agent. As a
starting-point he took the heating effect of electric currents. The fact that
these could be generated by turning a machine, that is, by the expenditure of
mechanical energy, gave him the idea of determining the amount of work
done by the machine and then comparing this with the amount of heat
generated by the current. A number of ingenious experiments enabled him
to determine with increasing exactitude the numerical relation between
work and heat, as well as to establish the absolute constancy of the relation.

This he regarded as proof of the mechanical theory of heat, which he had
taken from Rumford and Davy. What simpler explanation could there be for
the constant numerical relation between work and heat than the conception
that transformation of one form of energy into another was simply a
transmission of motion from one object to another? From the quantitative
equality of expended and generated energy was it not natural to argue the
qualitative similarity of the two forms of energy, which only externally
seemed different?

It was by quite a different path that the Heilbronn doctor, Mayer, arrived at
his results. To escape from the narrowness of his South German home town,
he went, while still a youth, as doctor to a Dutch ship sailing to Java. When
in the tropics he treated a number of sailors by blood-letting, he observed
that the venous blood was much nearer in colour to the paler arterial blood
than was usual at home. This change in the colour he attributed to the

diminished intensity of bodily combustion, due, he believed, to the higher
temperature of the tropics.

Scarcely had this thought passed through his mind than it induced another -
that of a universal interrelationship between all possible forms of energy.
This last idea so took possession of him that during the return voyage, as he
himself related, he could scarcely think of anything but how to prove the
correctness of his idea and what the consequences would be for the general
view of nature. From the moment of his return he devoted his life to
practical research into the connexion between the various manifestations of
energy. It was in this way that he was led to the determination of the so-
called mechanical equivalent of heat, shortly before the same discovery was
made in a quite different manner by Joule.

If one considers how slender a connexion there was between Mayer's
observation on the sailors in Java and the idea of the quantitative
equilibrium of all physical nature-forces, and if one contrasts this with the
fanaticism he showed during the rest of his life in proving against all
obstacles the correctness of his idea, one must feel that the origin of the
thought in Mayer's mind lay elsewhere than in mere physical observations
and logical deductions. Confirmation of this may be found in what Mayer
himself declared to be his view concerning the actual grounds for the
existence of a constant numerical association between the various
manifestations of natural energy.

So far as science allowed Mayer any credit for his work, this was based on
the opinion that through his discovery he had provided the final vindication
of the mechanical theory of heat. This judgment, however, was only piling
one wrong upon another. Mayer's destiny was truly tragic. When he began
to publicize his conviction of the numerical equilibrium between spent and
created energy, he met with so much scepticism, even derision, that from
sheer despair his mind at times became clouded. When at last toward the
end of his life he received the recognition his discovery deserved (not
before being dragged through a painful priority dispute which Joule forced
upon him and lost), the scientists had begun to use his idea for bolstering up
a hypothesis directly counter to the idea which had led him to his discovery,
and for the sake of which he had accepted so much suffering.

Mayer's spiritual kin are not to be found among the heat-theorists of his
time, such as Helmholtz and others, but among thinkers of the stamp of
Goethe, Howard and Ruskin. His basic idea of the inner connexion between
all forms of energy in nature corresponds entirely with Goethe's idea of
metamorphosis. Just as Goethe saw in the ur-plant the Idea common to all
plant-forms or, in the various plant-organs, the metamorphosis of one and
the same ur-organ, so was Mayer convinced of the existence of an ur-force
which expressed itself in varying guises in the separate energy-forms of
nature. In the picture of the physical universe which hovered before him,
the transformation of one form of energy into another - such as mechanical
energy into electrical, this into chemical and so on - was somewhat similar
to Goethe's picture of the organic life of the earth, in which the
metamorphosis of one living form into another constantly occurred. 'There
is in nature', said Mayer, 'a specific dimension of immaterial constitution
which preserves its value in all changes taking place among the objects
observed, whereas its form of appearance alters in the most manifold ways.'

For the physicist, accustomed to a purely quantitative observation of nature,
it is difficult to comprehend that Mayer could have arrived at the thought of
a constant quantitative relation between the various manifestations of
natural energy, without deriving from it the conviction of their qualitative
indentity - i.e., without concluding from the existence of the mechanical
heat - equivalent that heat is itself nothing else than a certain form of spatial
movement. Mayer actually had a picture directly contrary to the
mechanistic conception. For him, the arising of heat represented a
disappearance of mechanical energy.

If this, then, was Mayer's belief, what was it that convinced him of the
existence of a numerical balance between appearing and vanishing energy,
even before he had any experimental proof?

Later in this book there will be occasion to introduce a concept of number
in tune with our qualitative world-outlook. What led Mayer to look upon
number as an expression of existing spiritual associations in nature will then
become clear. Let this much be said here, that number in the universe has
quite different functions from that of serving merely as an expression for a
total of calculable items, or as a means of comparing spatial distances. It is

in the nature of the onlooker-consciousness that it is unable to interpret
numerical equality between natural phenomena save as indicating the
presence of an equal number of calculable objects or of spatial movements
of equal magnitude. It was therefore consistent for such a consciousness to
regard the discovery by Mayer of the mechanical heat-equivalent as a
confirmation of the existing mechanical conception of heat.

For Mayer such an interpretation was not necessary. His conviction of the
existence of an ur-force, manifesting through metamorphosis in all natural
forces, led him to expect a constant numerical relation amongst these,
without requiring him to deny the objective existence of qualitative
differences, as these displayed themselves in the field of phenomena. He
was spiritually akin to Goethe, also, in that he guarded himself strictly
against substituting for the contents of our perception conveyed by nature
purely hypothetical entities which, while fashioned after the world of the
senses, are, in principle, imperceptible. Mayer sought after a truly
empirically founded concept of force, and his method was that of reading
from all the various manifestations of force which were open to sense
observation. One such manifestation, capable of empirical determination,
was the balance between appearing and disappearing energy.

Science treated Mayer in the same way as it treated Howard. It took from
him what it wanted for its purpose without concerning itself with the
epistemological principle which had led him to his discovery. Thus it was
that Mayer's discovery led to most important consequences for the
development of modern technical devices, whereas it was the fate of his
guiding idea to be first derided, then misunderstood and finally forgotten.
The consequence was that the knowledge of the numerical equilibrium
between created and expended energy in the economy of nature has
widened more and more the abyss separating spirit and matter in human
life, instead of leading, as indeed it might have done, to a bridging of the
abyss. The thought, therefore, regarding the appearing and disappearing of
measurable cosmic substance, to which we are led when following Goethe's
method of observing nature, stands in no sort of contradiction to what
Mayer himself conceived as the relation of the various forms of energy to
one another, and the maintenance of the numerical balance between them.

*

Having thus determined our standpoint with regard to the thermodynamic
theory of heat and the law of conservation, we may proceed to the study,
first of the phenomenon of thermal expansion, and then of the effect of heat
on the various states of physical matter, by applying to them, unimpeded by
any preconceived mechanistic idea, what we have learnt through our
previous studies. We must start by developing a proper picture of the
dynamic condition of matter in the solid state.

In a solid body the material substance is centred on an inner point, the so-
called centre of gravity - a characteristic which such a body shares with the
earth as a whole. Likewise, two such bodies exert on one another the same
influence that the earth exerts on each of them: they try to assume the
shortest possible distance from each other. Since the days of Faraday
science has been accustomed to ascribe these phenomena to the existence of
certain fields of force, connected with each body and working on one
another through the intermediary space. It is to this concept of the field of
force that we must now give special attention. For the field-concept, in the
form introduced by Faraday into scientific thinking, is one of the few
scientific concepts which have been obtained by being 'read' from the
corresponding phenomena themselves, and which therefore retain their
validity in a science which is based on the method of reading.

According to the field-concept, terrestrial manifestations of gravity are due
to the earth's being the bearer of a gravitational field centred within the
globe, and extending thence in all directions through space, across and
beyond the earth's body. Every point in space, both inside and outside the
earth, is characterized by a definite intensity of this field, the so-called
gravitational potential. This is subject to variations due to the presence of
other physical masses, which carry their own fields of gravity. What
happens between such masses and that of the earth, as well as mutually
between such masses themselves, is brought about by the particular
conditions in space resulting from the interpenetration of the various fields.

It is essential to realize that all fields dealt with by physical science, the
gravitational, electric, magnetic - however much they differ otherwise -
have this one characteristic in common, that they have a centre where the

field is at its highest intensity, diminishing as the distance from the centre
increases. Motion in such a field naturally takes place from regions of lower
to those of higher intensity - in other words, it follows the rising potential of
the field. This accounts for the tendency of physical masses to arrive at the
shortest possible distance between them.

It was natural for the modern mind to picture a dynamic condition of the
kind just described, that is, one in which the centre and source, as it were, is
a point round which the dynamic condition spreads with steadily
diminishing strength as the distance from the point grows. For such is the
condition of man's head-bound consciousness. The locus from which
modern man watches the world is a point within the field of this
consciousness, and the intensity with which the world acts on it diminishes
with increasing spatial distance from this point. This is the reason why
levity was banished from scientific inquiry, and why, when the field-
concept was created by the genius of Faraday, it did not occur to anyone
that with it the way was opened to comprehend field-types other than the
centric one characteristic of gravity and kindred forces. To make use of the
field-concept in this other way is one of the tasks we have to undertake if
we are to overcome the impasse in which present-day scientific cognition
finds itself.

To develop a picture of the type of field represented by levity, let us recall
certain results from the observations of the last chapter.

There the volcanic phenomenon, when taken in its wider implications,
made us realize that the upward movement of physical masses, in itself part
of the total phenomenon, is due to a dynamic cause which we had to
describe, in contrast to centripetally working pressure, as peripherally
working suction. Of this concept of suction we must now observe that we
may apply it with justification only if we realize that suction can be caused
in two different ways. In the sense in which we are wont to use the term,
suction is the result of a difference of pressure in adjacent parts of space,
the action taking place in the direction of the minor pressure. Apart from
this, however, suction can occur also as a result of the outward-bound
increase of the strength of a levity-field.

It is in this sense that we may speak of the seismic movements of the earth
as being caused by suction acting from without. In the same sense we may
say that the upward movement of the saps in the plant (to which Ruskin
pointed as being responsible for the apple appearing at the top of the tree)
and with it the entire growth-phenomenon in the plant world, is due to
peripheral suction.

Considerations of this kind lead one to a picture in which the earth is seen
to be surrounded and penetrated by a field of force which is in every respect
the polar opposite of the earth's gravitational field. As the latter has its
greatest intensity at its centre, which is identical with the centre of the
earth's globe, so has the levitational field its greatest intensity at its
circumference which is somewhere in the width of the universe. (Later
considerations will enable us to locate its position more precisely.)

As the gravity-field decreases in strength with increasing distance from the
centre of the field, that is, in the outward direction, so does the levity-field
decrease in strength with increasing distance from its periphery, or in the
inward direction. In both fields the direction of movement is from regions
of lower to those of higher intensity. This is why things 'fall' under the
influence of gravity and 'rise' under the influence of levity.4

*

How does thermal expansion read as a letter in nature's script when seen in
the light of the two contrasting field-concepts?

Let us, for simplicity's sake, imagine a spherically shaped metallic body,
say, a ball of copper, which we expose to the influence of heat. As we have
seen, it is the centrically orientated gravity-field which gives the ball its
permanency of shape. Consequently, the dynamic orientation of the material
constituting its body is directed towards the interior of the body itself.

Now, the moment we bring heat to bear on the body we find its surface
moving in the outward direction. The whole mass is clearly under the
influence of some suction which is directed on to the body from outside.
Just as the plants grow in the anti-gravitational direction as a result of the
suctional effect of levity (other factors which account for its growing into a

particular shape, etc., being left out of consideration), so our copper ball
grows in volume by being sucked away from its centre of gravity. It is the
action of heat which has changed the ratio between gravity and levity at this
spot in such a way as to allow levity to produce this effect.5

What we have thus found to be the true nature of the event perceived as a
body's growth in volume under the influence of heat has a definite effect on
our conception of spatially extended matter as such. For a physical body is
always in some thermal state which may be regarded as higher than another,
and it may therefore be regarded as being at all times thermally expanded to
some extent. Hence, it is all the time under the sway of both gravitational
pressure and anti-gravitational suction. In fact, we may say ideally that, if
there were no field working inwards from the cosmic periphery, the entire
material content of the earthly realm would be reduced by gravitation to a
spaceless point; just as under the sole influence of the peripheral field of
levity it would dissipate into the universe.

To ordinary scientific thinking this may sound paradoxical, but in reality it
is not. Observation of the nature of solid matter has led atomistic thought to
regard a physical body as a heap of molecules so far apart that by far the
greater part of the volume occupied by the body is just 'empty' space. In the
scientific picture of molecules constituting a physical body, of atoms
constituting the molecules, of electrons, protons, etc., constituting the
atoms, all separated by spaces far exceeding the size of the elementary
particles themselves, we find reflected, in a form comprehensible to the
onlooker-consciousness, the fact that matter, even in the solid state, is kept
in spatial extension by a field of force relating it to the cosmic periphery.

*

With this picture of solid matter as being held in spatial extension by its
subjection to gravity and levity alike, we proceed to a study of the liquid
and gaseous states of matter, while taking into account the role of heat in
bringing these states about.

Following out our method of seeking to gain knowledge of a phenomenon
by regarding it as part of a greater whole, let us ask what sort of change a
portion of physical substance undergoes in its relation to the earth as a

whole when, for instance, through the influence of heat, it passes from a
solid to a liquid state. Here we must keep in mind that it is part of the nature
of a liquid to have no form of its own. The only natural boundary of a liquid
substance is its upper surface. Since this surface always lies parallel with
the surface of the earth it forms part of a sphere, the centre point of which is
identical with that of the gravitational centre of the earth. The passage of a
portion of matter from solid to liquid thus signifies that it ceases to possess
a centre of gravity of its own and is now merely obedient to the general
gravity-field of the earth. We can thus speak of a transition of matter from
the individual to the planetary condition. This is what heat brings about
when a solid body melts.

A large part of the heat used in melting is known to be absorbed by the
substance during the process of melting. This is indicated by the
thermometer remaining at the temperature of the melting-point once this
has been reached, until the whole of the melting substance has liquefied.
Physics here speaks of 'free' heat becoming 'latent'. From the Goethean
point of view we see heat passing through a metamorphosis. Whereas,
previously, heat was perceptible to our sense of warmth, it now manifests as
a gravity-denying property of matter.

In order to obtain an idea of the liquid state of matter corresponding to
reality, we must take into account yet another of its characteristics. When
the heat becomes latent, it goes even further in contradicting gravity than by
robbing matter of its own point of gravity and relating it to the earth's centre
of gravity. This effect is shown in the well-known urge of all liquids to
evaporate. Hence we must say that even where matter in a liquid state
preserves its own surface, this does not by any means represent an absolute
boundary. Above the surface there proceeds a continuous transition of
substance into the next higher condition through evaporation. We see here
the activity of heat going beyond the mere denial of gravity to a positive
affirmation of levity.

With the help of this conception of the integration of the liquid state within
the polarity of gravity and levity, we are now able to draw a picture of the
earth which, once obtained, answers many a question left unanswered by

current scientific notions, among them the question why the earth's volcanic
activity is confined to maritime regions.

Regarding the distribution of land and water on the earth's surface, we may
say that to an observer in cosmic space the earth would not look at all like a
solid body. Rather would it appear as a gigantic 'drop' of water, its surface
interspersed with solid formations, the continents and other land masses.
Moreover, the evidence assembled ever since Professor A. Wegener's first
researches suggests that the continents are clod-like formations which 'float'
on an underlying viscous substance and are able to move (very slowly) in
both the vertical and horizontal directions. The oceanic waters are in fact
separated from the viscous substratum by no more than a thin layer of solid
earth, a mere skin in comparison with the size of the planet. Further, this
'drop' of liquid which represents the earth is in constant communication
with its environment through the perpetual evaporation from the ocean, as
well as from every other body of water.

This picture of the earth shows it lying under the twofold influence of the
compressive force of gravity and the sucking force of levity. Wherever land
meets sea, there levity tends to prevail over gravity. It is in maritime
regions, accordingly, that the inner strata of the earth succumb most readily
to those sudden changes in the gravity-levity tension wherein we have
recognized the origin of seismic occurrences.

*

Turning to the gaseous condition, we realize that although even here matter
retains traces of a connexion with terrestrial gravity, levity is now the
dominant factor. There are three characteristics of the gaseous condition
which bring this out. One is the extreme readiness of gases to expand when
heated; we see here how much easier than with solid substances it is for
heat to overcome the influence of gravity. The second characteristic is the
property of gases, peculiar to them, of expanding spontaneously, even when
not heated. Here we find gaseous matter displaying a dynamic behaviour
which at lower stages occurs only under the stimulus of heat. The third
characteristic is shown by the fact that all gases, unlike solids or liquids,
respond with the same increase of volume to a given rise of temperature,
however diverse their other qualities may be. Once gases are mixed,

therefore, they cannot be separated merely by raising or lowering the
temperature. Here we find the unifying effect of the cosmic periphery
prevailing over the differentiating effect of terrestrial gravity.

At this point we may recall Goethe's reply to the botanist, Wolff, who had
ascribed the metamorphosis of plant-organs from root to blossom to a
gradual stunting or atrophy of their vegetative force, whereas it was clear to
Goethe that simultaneously with a physical retrogression, there is a spiritual
progress in the development of the plant. The fact that all Wolff's efforts to
see clearly did not save him from 'seeing past the thing' seemed to Goethe
an inevitable result of Wolff's failure to associate with the eyes of the body
those of the spirit.

Exactly the same thing holds good for the sequence of physical states of
matter which we are considering here. Observation of this sequence with
the bodily eyes alone will show nothing but a reduction of the specific
gravity of the material concerned. He who is at pains to observe also with
the eye of the spirit, however, is aware of a positive increase of lightness
going hand in hand with a decrease of heaviness. Regarded thus, the three
ponderable conditions form what Goethe would have called a 'spiritual
ladder'. As 'rungs' of such a ladder they clearly point to a fourth rung - that
is, a fourth state in which levity so far prevails over gravity that the
substance no longer has any weight at all. This picture of the fourfold
transformation of matter calls for an inquiry into the transition between the
third and fourth states, corresponding to the well-known transitions between
the

three ponderable states.

*

Our observations have led us to a concept of heat essentially different from
that held by modern science. Science looks on heat simply as a condition of
ponderable matter. We, on the contrary, are led to recognize in heat a fourth
condition into which matter may pass on leaving the three ponderable
conditions, and out of which it may emerge on the way to ponderability.

Before showing that such transitions are actually known in nature, it may be
well to discuss here an objection which the customary way of thinking
might plausibly advance against our whole method. It could be said that to
assume a continuation of the sequence of the three ponderable conditions in
the manner suggested is justified only if, as solids can be turned into liquids
and these into gases, so gases could be transformed into a fourth condition
and, conversely, be produced from the latter.

In reply it can be said that the fact of our not being able at present to change
gases artificially into pure heat does not justify the conclusion that this is in
principle impossible. We know from previous considerations that the earth
has reached an evolutionary stage at which all elements, including fire, have
in certain degree grown 'old'. This applies in quite a special degree to the
manipulations to which man, led by his death-bound consciousness, has
learnt to submit matter in his laboratories. To decide what is possible or not
possible in nature, therefore, can by no means be left to the judgment of
laboratory research. As is shown by the following instance, taken from the
realm of vegetable life, a case of the creation of matter 'out of nothing' is
already known to biology - though biology, bound in its concepts to the
Law of Conservation, shows some natural reluctance to recognize the true
significance of the phenomenon.

The plant which performs this strange feat is the Tillandsia usneoides,
indigenous to tropical America, and generally known as 'Spanish Moss'. Its
peculiarity is that it grows and flourishes without taking from its support
any material whatsoever for the building up of its substance. Its natural
habitat is the dry bark of virgin forest trees. Since civilization invaded its
home it has acquired the habit of growing even on telegraph wires, which
has given it the popular name of 'telegraph tresses'. Chemical analysis of
this plant shows the presence of an average of 17 per cent iron, 36 per cent
silicic acid and 1·65 per cent phosphoric acid. This applies to samples
taken from districts where the rainwater - the only source from which the
plant could extract these substances in physical form - contains at most
1·65 per cent iron, 0·01 per cent silicic acid and no phosphoric acid at
all.

The Tillandsia phenomenon is to a certain extent reminiscent of another
well-known plant activity. This is the process of assimilation of carbon from
the carbon dioxide of the air. If we leave aside the change in the chemical
combination which the carbon undergoes, there remains the picture of the
plant drawing this matter to itself from its environment and at the same time
subjecting it to a spatial condensation. A similar but even more far-reaching
process is exhibited by the Tillandsia as regards the three substances
referred to above. From the conditions given, it follows that the plant
cannot possibly get these substances elsewhere than out of the surrounding
atmosphere, and that in drawing upon them it submits them to a high degree
of condensation. A special role, however, is played by the phosphorus,
which shows that the assimilative power of the plant is sufficient to
transform phosphorus from a physically not traceable state into one of
spatially bounded materiality. Following Goethe in his coining of the
concept of 'spiritual anastomosis' for the pollinating process of plants, we
can here speak of 'spiritual assimilation'.

In this respect Tillandsia provides an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all
within itself. For what nature here unmistakably demonstrates serves as an
eye-opener to a universal fact of the plant kingdom and of nature in general.
The problem of the so-called trace-elements may serve as an illustration of
this.

Modern agricultural chemistry has found of a number of chemical elements
that their presence in the soil in scarcely traceable amounts is necessary in
order to enable the plant to unfold healthily its latent characteristics. All
sorts of deficiencies in cultivated plants have led to a recognition that the
soil is impoverished of certain elements by intensive modern cultivation,
and that it is to the lack of these elements that the deficiencies are due.
Much work has meanwhile been done in classifying the various deficiencies
and in devising ways of giving the soil chemical substitutes for what is
lacking.

A large part of the work here involved could be saved were it only to be
acknowledged that the soil owes the natural occurrence of the proper
elements to a process which the plants themselves bring about in the soil, if

men refrain from hindering them by cleverly thought-out methods of
cultivation which fail to reckon with the nature of a living organism.

Let us be clear what it is that occurs when a plant exhibits any of the
observed abnormalities. Expressed in a Goethean manner, these are the
consequence of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the
plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. That which Ruskin
called the 'spirit' of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his
aphorism 'Stand by Form against Force' (by 'form' all the peculiar qualities
of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure.
Now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane,
spirit requires 'young' matter - that is, matter which is either in, or has just
emerged from, a purely dynamic state. Normally a definite spiritual type co-
ordinates the dynamic functions present in the superphysical sphere of
nature in the manner required to give the plant-organism its appropriate
form. As, through the action of the type, these functions are brought down
from the sphere of levity into that of gravity, they condense to the
corresponding material elements and thus reach the soil in material form via
the physical organism of the plant.

The pattern as usually seen is now reversed; the presence of the various
elements in the soil no longer appears as the origin of one or another
function in the building up of the plant-body, but quite the reverse. The
functions appear now as the cause, and the soil-elements as the effect. We
may thus recognize the value of the latter as symptoms from which we can
read the existence of a healthy connexion between the plant and the
corresponding form-creating functions working on it from its surroundings.

With this reversal of the relationship between cause and effect it is not,
however, intended to represent the commonly accepted order of things as
entirely incorrect. In the realm of life, cause and effect are not so onesidedly
fixed as in the realm of mechanical forces. We may therefore admit that a
reverse effect of the soil-elements upon the plant does take place. This is
plainly demonstrable in the case of phosphorus which, however, by reason
of its appearance in the soil in proportions hardly to be called a mere 'trace',
represents a borderline case. What may apply within limits to phosphorus is

wholly valid for the trace-elements - namely, that they are playing their
essential role while they are themselves about to assume ponderable form.

It thus becomes clear how mistaken it is to attempt to cure deficiencies in
plants by adding to the soil chemical substitutes for the trace-elements. In
the condition in which this material is offered to the plant, it is truly 'old'
material. In order to be able to use it functionally, the plant has first to
convert it into the 'young' condition. This indeed happens whilst the
material is rising in the plant combined with the juices drawn by the plant
from the soil under the influence of levity-force. Only when this has
occurred are the chemical elements able to serve the plant functionally.
Thus, by trying to give help to the plant in this way, we injure it at the same
time. For by forcing it to perform the operation described, its general life-
forces are diminished. A seeming success brought about in this manner,
therefore, will not last long.6

There is, nevertheless, a way of helping the plant by adding to the soil
certain material substances, provided these are first brought into a purely
dynamic condition. That this can be done is a fact long since known, even if
not recognized in its true significance. So far then, as serves the purpose of
this book, we shall deal with it here.

*

The method in question is associated with the school of medicine known as
Homoeopathy, founded by the German doctor, Hahnemann. The word
'homoeopathy' means 'healing through like'; the basic principle is to treat
disease symptoms with highly diluted substances which produce similar
symptoms if ingested in normal quantity. Experience has in fact shown that
the physiological effect of a substance taken from external nature is
reversed when the substance is highly diluted.

The method of diluting, or 'potentizing', is as follows: A given volume of
the material to be diluted is dissolved in nine times its volume of distilled
water. The degree of dilution thus arrived at is 1:10, usually symbolized as
Ix. A tenth part of this solution is again mixed with nine times its bulk of
water. The degree of dilution is now 1:100, or 2x. This process is continued
as far as is found necessary for a given purpose. Insoluble substances can be

dealt with in the same manner by first grinding them together with
corresponding quantities of a neutral powder, generally sugar of milk. After
a certain number of stages the powder can be dissolved in water; the
solution may then be diluted further in the manner described. Here we have
to do with transfer of the quality of a substance, itself insoluble, to the
dissolving medium, and then with the further treatment of the latter as if it
were the original bearer of the quality concerned.

This fact alone shows that potentization leads into a realm of material
effects at variance with the ordinary scientific conception of matter.
Moreover, we can carry the dilutions as far as we please without destroying
the capacity of the substance to produce physiological reactions. On the
contrary, as soon as its original capacity is reduced to a minimum by
dilution, further dilution gives it the power to cause actually stronger
reactions, of a different and usually opposite kind. This second capacity
rises through stages to a variable maximum as dilution proceeds.

A simple calculation shows - if we accept the ordinary scientific view as to
the size of a molecule - that not a single molecule of the original substance
will remain in the solution after a certain degree of dilution has been
reached. Yet the biological and other reactions continue long after this, and
are even enhanced.

What this potentizing process shows is that, by repeated expansions in
space, a substance can be carried beyond the ponderable conditions of
matter into the realm of pure functional effect. The potentizing of physical
substances thus gains a significance far wider than that of its medical use.7
There opens up, for example, the possibility of stimulating deficient
functions in the plant by giving it the corresponding elements in
homoeopathic doses. By this means the plant is brought into direct
connexion with the relevant spiritual energy, and then left to carry out for
itself the necessary process of materialization, instead of being forced by
mere chemical additions to the soil first to potentize the substance itself.8

The same principle holds good for man and beast. They also need 'young
material' for their nourishment, so that the type active in them - which in
animals is the group-soul of the species and in man is the single individual -

can express its true form and character. (We saw earlier that the will
requires 'young' material in order to penetrate into the material layers of the
muscles, as happens when the limbs are set in motion). In this respect, the
difference between ensouled creatures and plants is that, what is harmful to
plants is natural for men and animals: when taking nourishment the latter
are able to bring about quickly and purposefully a transformation of matter
into the purely dynamic state. Their metabolic system is designed to enable
them to take alien material from outer nature and to transform it through the
forces of the various digestive enzymes; in the course of this process the
material passes through a condition of complete 'chaos'.

*

Having in this way established the existence of certain processes of
materialization and dematerialization in single organisms within the earth's
vegetable and other kingdoms, we shall now turn to the earth as a whole to
find out where - organic being that she herself is - she manipulates
corresponding processes on a macrotelluric scale.

In an age following van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter
and the statement of the Contra Levitatem maxim, men were bound to think
that the circulation of atmospheric moisture was limited to the three stages
of liquid, vaporous (peculiar to the clouds, etc.) and the invisible aeriform
condition. Yet the role played by clouds in the myths of early peoples shows
that they were once given a quite different status, between the 'created' and
'uncreated' worlds. Our observations lead to a corresponding conception,
but along the path of knowledge, guided by sense-perception, as befits our
own age.

In discussing Howard's discovery of the stages of cloud-formation we found
something lacking, for it was clear that the three stages of cloud proper -
stratus, cumulus and cirrus - have a symmetry which is disturbed by the
addition of a fourth stage, represented by the nimbus. This showed that
there was need for a fifth stage, at the top of the series, to establish a
balanced polarity. We can now clear up this question of a fifth stage, as
follows.

In the three actual cloud-forms, gravity and levity are more or less in
equilibrium, but in the nimbus gravity predominates, and the atmospheric
vapour condenses accordingly into separate liquid bodies, the drops of rain.
The polar opposite of this process must therefore be one in which cloud-
vapour, under the dominating influence of levity, passes up through a
transitional condition into a state of pure heat.

Such a conception by no means contradicts the findings of external
research. For meteorology has come to know of a heat-mantle surrounding
the earth's atmosphere for which various hypothetical explanations have
been advanced. Naturally, none of them envisages the possibility of
atmospheric substance changing into the heat-condition and back again. But
if we learn to look on the chain of cloud-forms as a 'spiritual ladder', then
we must expect the chain to conclude with a stage of pure heat, lying above
the cirrus-sphere.9

The line of consideration pursued in the last part of this chapter has led us
from certain observations in the plant kingdom, concerning the coming into
being of ponderable matter from 'nothing', to a corresponding picture of the
earth's meteorological sphere. When discussing the plant in this respect we
found as an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself the case of
Tillandsia and more particularly the surprising appearance of phosphorus in
it. Now, in the meteorological realm it is once more phosphorus which
gives us an instance of this kind. For there is the well-known fact of the
presence of phosphorus in conspicuous quantities in snow without a source
being traceable in the atmosphere whence this substance can have
originated in ponderable condition. The phosphorus appearing in snow,
therefore, brings before our very eyes the fact that the heights of the
atmosphere are a realm of procreation of matter. (In our next chapter we
shall learn what it is in phosphorus that makes it play this particular role in
both fields of nature. What interests us in the present context is the fact
itself.)

*

The knowledge we have now gained concerning the disappearance and
appearance of physical water in the heights of the atmosphere will enable us

to shake off one of the most characteristic errors to which the onlooker-
consciousness has succumbed in its estimation of nature. This is the
interpretation of thunderstorms, and particularly of lightning, which has
held sway since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

Before developing our own picture of a thunderstorm let us recognize that
science has found it necessary to reverse the explanation so long in Vogue.
Whereas it was formerly taken for granted - and the assumption was
supposed to rest upon experimental proof - that the condensing of
atmospheric vapour which accompanied lightning was the consequence of a
release of electrical tension by the lightning, the view now held is that the
electrical tension responsible for the occurrence of lightning is itself the
effect of a sudden condensing process of atmospheric moisture.

The reason for this uncertainty is that the physical conditions in the sphere
where lightning occurs, according to other experiences of electric
phenomena, actually exclude the formation of such high tensions as are
necessary for the occurrence of discharges on the scale of lightning. If we
look at this fact without scientific bias we are once again reminded of the
Hans Andersen child. We cannot help wondering how this child would
behave in a physics class if the teacher, after vainly trying to produce a
lightning-flash in miniature with the help of an electrical machine,
explained that the moisture prevalent in the air was responsible for the
failure of the experiment, and that he would have to postpone it to a day
when the air was drier. It would scarcely escape the Hans Andersen child
that the conditions announced by the teacher as unfavourable to the
production of an electric spark by the machine, prevail in a much higher
degree exactly where lightning, as a supposed electric spark, actually does
occur.

To conclude from the presence of electric tensions in the earth's atmosphere
as an accompaniment of lightning, in the way first observed by Franklin,
that lightning itself is an electrical process, is to be under the same kind of
illusion that led men to attribute electrical characteristics to the human soul
because its activity in the body was found to be accompanied by electrical
processes in the latter. The identification of lightning with the electric spark
is a case of a confusion between the upper and lower boundaries of nature,

characteristic of the onlooker-consciousness. As such, it has stood in the
way of a real understanding both of non-electrical natural phenomena and
of electricity itself.

What we observe in lightning is really an instantaneous execution of a
process which runs its course continually in the atmosphere, quietly and
unnoticed. It is the process by which water reverts from the imponderable to
the ponderable condition, after having been converted to the former through
levity set in action by the sun (as usually happens in a high degree just
before a thunderstorm). We form a true picture of the course of a storm if
we say that nature enables us to witness a sublime display of the sudden
bringing to birth of matter in earthbound form. What falls to the ground as
rain (or hail) is substantially identical with what was perceptible to the eye,
a moment before, as a majestic light-phenomenon. The accompanying
electrical occurrence is the appropriate counter-event at nature's lower
boundary. Since the two form part of a larger whole they necessarily occur
together; but the electrical occurrence must not be identified with the event
in the heavens. The reason for their conjunction will become clear later,
when we shall show how electrical polarity arises from the polarity between
gravity and levity.

If one learns to view a thunderstorm in this way, its spiritual connexion with
the earth's volcanic processes becomes manifest; there is in fact a polar
relationship between them. For just as in volcanic activity heavy matter is
suddenly and swiftly driven heavenwards under the influence of levity, so
in a storm does light matter stream earthwards under the influence of
gravity.

It is this combination of kinship and polar opposition which led people of
old to regard both lightning in the heights and seismic disturbances in the
depths as signs of direct intervention by higher powers in the affairs of men.
A trace of this old feeling lingers in the Greek word θειον (theion),
divine, which was used to denote both lightning and sulphur. Influenced by
the same conception, the Romans regarded as holy a spot where lightning
had struck the earth; they even fenced it off to protect it from human
contact. Note in this respect also the biblical report of the event on Mount
Sinai, mentioned before, telling of an interplay of volcanic and

meteorological phenomena as a sign of the direct intervention of the
Godhead.
1 See Chapter IV. The other title of the paper, 'Radiant Matter', will gain significance for us in a later

context.

2 Since the above was written, certain conclusions drawn from modern subatomic research have led

some astro-physicists to the idea that hydrogen is continuously created in the cosmos 'out of nothing'.
This does not affect the considerations of the present chapter.

3 Note the expression!

4
For a vivid description of the interplay of both types of force in nature, see
E. Carpenter's account of his experience of a tree in his Pagan and
Christian Creeds.
5 Note how this picture of thermal expansion fits in with the one obtained for the Solfatara

phenomenon when we took into account all that is implicit in the latter,

6 This throws light also on the problem of the use of chemicals as artificial fertilizers.

7 See L. Kolisko: Wirksamkeit kleinster Entitäten ('Effects of Smallest Entities'), Stuttgart, 1922, an

account of a series of experiments undertaken by the author at the Biological Institute of the
Goetheanum following suggestions by Rudolf Steiner. Her aim was to examine the behaviour of
matter on the way to and beyond the boundary of its ponderable existence.

8 Instead of using the trace-elements in mineral form, it is still better to use parts of certain plants

with a strong 'functional tendency', specially prepared. This is done in the so-called Bio-Dynamic
method of farming and gardening, according to Rudolf Steiner's indications.

9 Note, in this respect, the close of Goethe's poem dedicated to the cirrus-formation and the poem

inspired by his sight of a waterfall in the Bernese Alps as indications of the fact that he was himself
aware of the water-rejuvenating process in the higher reaches of the atmosphere.

CHAPTER XI

Matter as Part of Nature's Alphabet

In the preceding chapter we drew attention to the fact that any spatially
extended mass is under the sway of both gravity and levity. We then saw
that with the transition of matter from the solid via the liquid to the gaseous
state, not only does the specific gravity of the substance decrease, but at the
same time an increase takes place of what we might call 'specific levity'. In
the gaseous state, therefore, we find gravity-bound matter becoming so far
levity-bound that it assumes the property of actively expanding in space.

Having once adopted the Goethean way of thinking-in-polarities, we may
feel sure that there is somewhere in nature a phenomenon which represents
the polar opposite of the levity-gravity relationship peculiar to the gaseous
state. In this latter state we find ponderable matter so far brought under the
sway of levity that its behaviour is of a kind which van Helmont, when he
first observed it, could not help describing as 'paradoxical'. Where, we must
now ask, do we find imponderable essence so much under the sway of
gravity that it shows the correspondingly paradoxical features? In other
words, where does nature show levity concentrated in a limited part of
space - that is, in a condition characteristic of ponderable matter?

Such concentrations of levity do indeed exist in varied forms. One is the
'warmth-body' represented by the blood-heat of the higher animals and man.
There is, however, an occurrence of this kind also on the purely mineral
level of nature, and it is this which has particular significance for our
present study of matter. We meet it in all physical substances which have
the peculiarity of being combustible.

Our next task is to study certain fundamentals in regard to the different
ways in which levity and gravity are found to be intertwined in combustible
substances, manifesting through the difference of their relation to the
process of combustion - that is, the process by which levity is restored to its
original condition. It is the aim of the present chapter to show that by doing

justice to the imponderable aspect of combustion, the way is opened to a
view of the 'elements', as scientific chemistry understands them, which will
be in line with our dynamic conception of matter.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that a new conception of the chemical
element can arise from a re-study of the process of combustion, if we
remember that it was the picture of combustion, characteristic of the
spectator-consciousness, which determined the conception of the chemical
element as it prevails in modern science. Let us see how this conception
came to pass historically in order to find where we stand to-day.

*

With the establishment of the knowledge of a state of physical matter
which, as the definition ran, 'neither results from a combination of other
physical substances nor is resolvable into such', the conviction arose that
man's searching mind had reached 'rock-bottom'. This conviction, however,
was shaken when, with the discovery of radium, an element became known
whose property it is to disintegrate into two other elements, helium and
lead. Although this did not force science to abandon the element-concept
altogether, it became necessary to find a new definition for it.

This definition was established by Professor W. Ostwald at the beginning of
the present century, when he stated that the chemical element represents a
condition of physical matter in which 'any chemical change results in an
increase of weight'. In this way, the chemical concept of the element
achieved a meaning which had actually been implicit in it from its first
conception. For its very formation had been the outcome of the Contra-
Levitatem maxim. The following glance over the history of chemistry will
show this.

The birth of chemistry as a science, in the modern sense, is closely
connected with a revolutionary change in the conception of what can be
called the chemical arch-process-combustion, or, to use a more scientific
term, oxidation. This change arose out of the Contra-Levitatem maxim and
the new conception of heat which this maxim required. In the old doctrine
of the four Elements, Heat had been conceived as a manifestation of the
element of Fire, and so, together with Air, as belonging to the realm of the

'uncreated things'. Hence the release of heat from created substance was
always felt to be a sacred act, as is shown by the fire rites of old.

Modern man's conception of the same process is revealed in the answer one
invariably receives from both layman and scientist when they are asked
what they understand by combustion. It is described as a process through
which oxygen combines with the combustible substance. And yet this side
of combustion, first observed by J. Priestley (1771), is neither the one for
the sake of which man produces combustion in the service of his everyday
life, nor is it at all observed by ordinary sense-perception. Nevertheless, to
describe the obvious fact, that combustion is liberation of heat from the
combustible substance, will hardly occur to anyone to-day. This shows to
what extent even the scientifically untrained consciousness in our time turns
instinctively to the tangible or weighable side of nature, so that some effort
is required to confess simply to what the eye and the other senses perceive.

During the first hundred years after the establishment of the Contra-
Levitatem maxim, man's situation was in a certain sense the opposite of this.
Then, people were struggling hard to get away from the old concept which
saw in combustion nothing but the liberation of a super-terrestrial element
from earthly fetters. This struggle found expression in a theory of heat
which at that time greatly occupied scientific thinking. It is the so-called
phlogiston-theory first proposed by the chemist Stahl (1660-1734).

This theory reveals the great uncertainty into which man's thinking about
the world of the senses had arrived at that time. Clinging to ideas inherited
from antiquity, man's consciousness was already so far restricted to the
forming of pure matter-bound concepts that he was tempted to conceive
heat as a material element. To this heat-substance the name 'phlogiston' was
given. At the same time, under the Contra-Levitatem maxim, it was
impossible to conceive of substance except as ponderable substance. This
led to the conviction that whenever heat appears as a result of some
treatment of matter (combustion or friction), the material substance subject
to this treatment must lose weight.

The experiments of Lavoisier (1743-94), which he undertook following
Priestley's discovery of the role of oxygen in combustion, put an end to this
theory. These experiments are rightly regarded as the actual beginning of

modern chemistry. In Lavoisier we find an observer of nature who was
predominantly interested in what the scales could tell about changes in
substances. It was from this aspect that he investigated the process of
oxidation. What had already been observed by a few others, though without
being taken seriously by them, he found confirmed - that, contrary to the
phlogiston - theory, matter does not lose weight through oxidation but gains
weight. Further experiments proved beyond doubt that in all chemical
reactions the total weight of the components remained constant. However
much the substance resulting from the chemical reaction of others might
differ from these, its weight always proved to be the same as their total
weight. What else could be concluded from the apparent unchangeability of
weight throughout all the chemical happenings in nature than that the
ponderable world-content was of eternal duration? We see here how much
modern chemistry and its concept of the chemical element has been ruled
right from the start by the one-sided gravity concept of the onlooker-
consciousness.

Together with the overcoming of the fallacy that heat is a ponderable
substance (full certainty was indeed established only some time later
through the investigations of Davy and Rumford into heat generated by
friction) - human thinking was led into a one-sided conception of
combustion which was merely the opposite of the one held earlier. Whereas
formerly man's mind was pre-eminently occupied by the liberation of the
imponderable element through combustion, it now turned entirely to what
goes on in the ponderable realm.

As we have seen, one outcome of this one-sided view of combustion was
the modern concept of the chemical element. To-day our task is to
overcome this concept by taking a step corresponding to the one that led to
it, that is, by a study of combustibility which does justice to both sides of
the process involved.

*

As objects of our observation we choose three chemical elements all of
which have the property of combustibility: Sulphur, Phosphorus, and
Carbon. As will become clear, our choice of these three is determined by the

fact that together they represent an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all
within itself.

We begin by comparing Sulphur and Phosphorus. In their elementary state
they have in common the fact that any chemical change is bound up with an
increase in their weight. In this state both are combustible. Apart from this
similarity, there is a great difference between them, as the way of storing
them illustrates. For while elementary sulphur needs only an ordinary
container, phosphorus has to be kept under cover of water in order to
prevent the atmospheric oxygen from touching it. The reason is that the
combustible state is natural for sulphur, but not for phosphorus, the latter's
natural state being the oxidized one. This different relationship of sulphur
and phosphorus to the oxidizable (reduced) and the oxidized state manifests
itself in all their chemical reactions.

To object here that the different reactions of the two substances are due only
to the difference of their respective temperatures of ignition, and that above
these temperatures the difference will more

or less disappear (all combustible substances at a sufficiently high
temperature becoming more or less similar to phosphorus), would not meet
the argument. For what matters here is just how the particular substance
behaves at that level of temperature on which the earth unfolds her normal
planetary activity. To ignore this would be to violate one of the principles
we have adopted from Goethe, which is never to derive fundamental
concepts of nature from observations obtained under artificial conditions.

Sulphur and phosphorus are thus seen to represent two polarically opposite
tendencies with regard to the levity-gravity coherence which breaks up
when combustion occurs. In the case of sulphur, the ponderable and
imponderable entities appear to cling together; in the case of phosphorus,
they seem to be anxious to part. These two different tendencies - which are
characteristic of many other substances and represent a basic factor in the
chemical happenings of the earth - are in their own way a pair of opposites.
Since each of them represents in itself a relationship between two poles of a
polarity-gravity and levity - so in their mutual relationship they represent a

'polarity of polarities'. In Fig. 4 an attempt has been made to represent this
fact by a symbolic diagram.

In this figure the shaded part represents the imponderable, the black part the
ponderable entity. In the left-hand symbol both are shown in a relationship
corresponding to the one characteristic of sulphur; in the right-hand figure
the relationship is characteristic of phosphorus.

Here we have an instance of a kind of polarity which belongs to the
fundamentals of nature as much as does the levity-gravity polarity itself.
Wherever two poles of a polarity meet, they have the possibility of being
connected in two ways which in themselves are again polarically opposite.
Our further studies will bring up various other instances of this kind, and
will show us that part of the epistemological trouble in which science finds
itself to-day results from the fact that the scientific mind has been unable to
distinguish between the two kinds of polarity - that is, as we shall say
henceforth, between polarities of the first order (primary polarities) and
polarities of the second order (secondary polarities).

In actual fact, the distinction between the two orders of polarity has been
implicit in the descriptions given in this book right from the start.
Remember, in this respect, how the picture of the threefold psycho-physical
structure of man, which has proved a master-key for unlocking the most
varied scientific problems, was first built up. There, 'body' and 'soul'
represented a polarity which is obviously one of the first order. By our
observation of the human organism, in relation both to the different
functions of the soul and to the different main organic systems, we further
recognized the fact that the ways in which body and soul are interrelated are
polarically opposite in the region of the brain and nerves and in the region
of the metabolic processes, which again results in two polarically opposite
activities of the soul, mental on the one hand, and volitional on the other. In
what we called the pole-of-consciousness and the pole-of-life we therefore
have a clear polarity of the second order, and so in everything that is
connected with these two, as our further discussions will show.

Remembering that our first occasion to concern ourselves overtly with the
concept of polarity was in connexion with the four elements, we may now
ask whether the old doctrine did not embrace some conception of secondary

polarity as well as of primary polarity, and if so, whether this might not
prove as helpful in clarifying our own conceptions as was the primary
polarity, cold-warm. That this is indeed so, the following description will
show.

Beside the two qualities cold and warm the doctrine of the four elements
pointed to two further qualities forming in themselves a pair of opposites,
namely, dry and moist. Just as the four elements were seen as grouping
themselves in two pairs, Fire-Air on the one hand,

Water-Earth on the other, the first being characterized by the quality warm,
the second by cold, so were they seen to form two opposing groups, Fire-
Earth and Air-Water, of which one was characterized by the quality dry, the
other by the quality moist. Fig. 5 shows how the four elements in their
totality were seen to arise out of the various combinations of the four
qualities.

In this diagram the element Earth appears as a combination of the qualities
Dry and Cold; Water of Cold and Moist; Air of Moist and Warm; Fire of
Warm and Dry. As a result, Earth and Fire, besides representing opposite
poles, are also neighbours in the diagram. Here we encounter a picture
characteristic of all earlier ways of looking at the world: the members of a
system of phenomena, when ranked in

due order of succession, were seen to turn back on themselves circle-wise -
or, more precisely, spiral-wise.

In what way do the qualities dry and moist form a polarity of the second
order, and how do they represent the chemical polarity characteristic of
sulphur and phosphorus as well as all the other secondary polarities dealt
with in this book? To understand this we must submit the couple dry-moist
to the same scrutiny as we applied to cold and warm in our earlier
discussion of the four elements.

It lies in the nature of things that we instinctively associate these qualities
with the solid and liquid states of matter respectively. This certainly agrees
with the diagram given above, where the elements Earth and Water are
distinguished precisely by their connexion with these two characteristics.
Yet, in addition to this, the qualities dry and moist are found to be
characteristic also of Fire and Air respectively, though with the difference
that they are linked not with the quality cold, as in the case of the lower
elements, but with the quality warm. So we see that the concepts Dry and
Moist, as they lived in the old picturing of them, mean a good deal more
than we understand by them to-day.

That these two respective attributes do not belong exclusively to the solid
and the liquid states of matter can be seen at once by observing the different
reactions of certain liquids to a solid surface which they touch. One need
only recall the difference between water and quicksilver. If water runs over
a surface it leaves a trail; quicksilver does not. Water clings to the side of a
vessel; again, quicksilver does not. A well-known consequence of this
difference is that in a narrow tube the surface of the liquid - the so-called
meniscus - stands higher at the circumference than at the centre in the case
of water; with quicksilver it is just the reverse. In the sense of the two
qualities, dry and moist, water is a 'moist' liquid; quicksilver a 'dry' one. On
the other hand, the quality of moistness in a solid substance appears in the
adhesive power of glue.

Let us now see how, in accordance with the scheme given in Fig. 5, the four
qualities in their respective combinations constitute the four elements. From
the description we shall give here it will be realized how little such ancient
schemes were based on abstract thoughts, and how much they were read
from the facts of the world. Moreover, a comparison with our description of
the four stages of matter, given in the previous chapter, would show how far
the conceptual content of the old doctrine covers the corresponding facts
when they are read by the eye of the modern reader in nature,
notwithstanding the changes nature has undergone in the meantime.

The element Fire reveals its attributes of warm and dry in a behaviour
which combines a tendency to dynamic expansion with a disinclination to
enter into lasting combination with the other elements. Correspondingly, the
behaviour of the element Earth unites a tendency to contraction with an
inclination to fall out of conjunction with the other elements. Thus the
attribute, dry, belongs equally to pure flame and sheer dust, though for
opposite reasons. Distinct from both these elements are the middle elements
Water and Air; with them the attribute, moist, comes to expression in their
tendency both to interpenetrate mutually and to absorb their neighbours -
the liquid element absorbing solid matter and the aeriform element taking
up heat. What distinguishes them is that water has a 'cold' nature, from
which it gains its density; while air has a 'warm' nature, to which it owes its
tendency to expand.

In the most general sense, the quality 'moist' applies wherever two different
entities are drawn into some kind of intimate relationship with one another;
'dry' applies where no such relationship prevails. Seen thus, they reveal
themselves as a true polarity of the second order, for they describe the
relationship between two entities which already exists, and, in the case of
the four elements, are themselves a polarity. As such, they characterize
precisely those polar relationships of the second order on which the
threefold structure of man, we found, is based. For from the physical, as
much as from the superphysical aspect the nerve-system represents the 'dry'
part, and the metabolic system the 'moist' part of man's being. The same is
true of the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world at both
poles. Here we have the antithesis between the 'dry' onlooker-relationship of
the intellect to the world, conceived as a mere picture whose essence
remains outside the boundaries of the soul, and the 'moist' intermingling of
the will-force with the actual forces of the world.

*

It needs no further explanation to realize that sulphur and phosphorus, by
the way in which levity and gravity are interlinked in each of them, are
representatives of these very qualities 'moist' and 'dry'. As such they are
universally active bearers of these qualities in every realm of nature's varied
activities, as their physical presence in such cases confirms. Consequently,
sulphur is found in the protein-substances of the human body wherever they
are bearers of metabolic processes, while the presence of phosphorus is
characteristic of the nerves and bones. (Although its full significance will
become clear to us only later, the fact may here be mentioned that the
composition of the bone-material in the different parts of man's skeleton, as
scientific analysis has shown, is such that the content of phosphate of
calcium in proportion to carbonate of calcium is higher in all those parts
which are spherically shaped, such as the upper parts of the skull and the
upper ends of the limb-bones.)

In particular the plant reveals clearly the functional significance of
phosphorus as the bearer of the quality 'dry'. For its healthy growth the plant
needs the quality 'dry' in two places: at the root, where it unites with the
element earth, and in the flower, where it opens itself to the fire element.

Root and flower as distinct from the middle parts of the plant are both 'dry'
formations. In a still higher degree this applies to the seed, which must
separate itself from the mother plant to produce a separate new organism.
All these are functions in the plant which, as was mentioned in the last
chapter, require phosphorus for their healthy performance.

Our examination of phosphorus and sulphur from the functional point of
view throws light also on their effect on the alternating conditions of
waking and sleeping, necessary for the life of the higher organisms. This
rhythmic change, which affects especially the nervous system, is an
alternation between the qualities dry and moist. Disturbance of this
alternation in one direction or the other makes it difficult for the organism
to react in full wakefulness or normal sleep. It follows that treatment with
phosphorus or sulphur in suitable preparations, according to the nature of
the disturbance, can be beneficial.

If we study the functional properties of such substances we see that they can
teach us a rational understanding of therapeutic practices, which otherwise
must remain mere results of trial and error. The same applies to phosphorus
and sulphur treatment in cases where in the functionally 'dry' bone system
or in the functionally 'moist' metabolic system of the organism the wrong
quality predominates. If the bones remain too 'moist' there is a tendency to
rickets; against this, certain fish-oils are a well-known remedy on account
of their highly phosphoric nature. Conversely, the application of sulphur
can help where weakness of the metabolic forces produces rheumatic or
gouty sediments in parts of the body whose function is to serve by their
mobility the activities of the will. In this case the abnormal predominance
of the quality 'dry' can be counteracted by the medical application of
sulphur.

*

Having observed the action of sulphur and phosphorus in the laboratory and
in living organisms, we will now turn to phenomena of a macrotelluric
nature which reveal the participation of sulphur and phosphorus. There,
sulphur points unmistakably to the earth's volcanism. It is a fact that,
wherever mineral sulphur occurs in the earth, there we find a spot of former
or present volcanic activity. Similarly, there is no such spot on the earth

without sulphur being present in one form or another. Hence the name
Solfatara for the fumarole described in Chapter IX.

Once again it is the Solfatara which offers us a phenomenon, this time in
connexion with the special role sulphur plays in its activities, which,
regarded with the eye of the spirit, assumes the significance of an instance
'worth a thousand'.

In spite of the very high temperature of the sulphurous fumes emitted from
various crevices on the edge of the Solfatara, it is possible, thanks to the
complete dryness of the fumes, to crawl a little way into the interior of these
crevices. Not far away from the opening of the crevice, where the hot fumes
touch the cooler rock surface, one is met by a very beautiful spectacle -
namely, the continual forming, out of nothing as it seems, of glittering
yellow sulphur crystals, suspended in delicate chains from the ceiling.

In this transformation of sulphurous substance from a higher material state,
nearer to levity, to that of the solid crystal, we may behold an image of the
generation of matter. For every physical substance and, therefore, every
chemical element, exists originally as a pure function in the dynamic
processes of the universe. Wherever, as a result of the action of gravity,
such a function congeals materially, there we meet it in the form of a
physical-material substance. In the same sense, sulphur and phosphorus, in
their real being, are pure functions, and where they occur as physical
substances, there we meet these functions in their congealed state.

One of the characteristics of the volcanic regions of the earth is the healing
effect of substances found there. Fango-mud, for instance, which was
mentioned in the last chapter, is a much-used remedy against rheumatism.
This is typical of functional sulphur. We may truly characterize the earth's
volcanism as being qualitatively sulphurous. It is the sulphur-function
coming to expression through a higher degree of 'moistness' in the
relationship between gravity and levity which distinguishes volcanic
regions from the rest of the otherwise 'dry' earth's crust.

*

To develop a corresponding picture of the function of phosphorus, we must
try to find the macrotelluric sphere where this function operates similarly to
that of sulphur in volcanism. From what has been said in the last chapter it
will be evident that we must look to the atmosphere, as the site of snow-
formation. It is this process which we must now examine more closely.

In the atmosphere, to begin with, we find water in a state of vapour, in
which the influence of the terrestrial gravity-field is comparatively weak.
Floating in this state, the vapour condenses and crystallization proceeds.
Obeying the pull of gravity, more and more crystals unite in their descent
and gradually form flakes of varying sizes. The nearer they come to earth,
the closer they fall, until at last on the ground they form an unbroken, more
or less spherical, cover.

Imagine a snow-covered field glistening in the sun on a clear, quiet winter's
day. As far as we can see, there is no sign of life, no movement. Here water,
which is normally fluid and, in its liquid state, serves the ever-changing life-
processes, covers the earth in the form of millions of separate crystals
shaped with mathematical exactitude, each of which breaks and reflects in a
million rays the light from the sun (Plate V). A contrast, indeed, between
this quiet emergence of forms from levity into gravity, and the form-
denying volcanism surging up out of gravity into levity, as shown by the
ever-restless activity of the Solfatara. As we found volcanism to be a
macrotelluric manifestation of functional sulphur, we find in the process of
snow-formation a corresponding manifestation of functional phosphorus.

In the formation of snow, nature shows us in statu agendi a process which
we otherwise meet in the earth only in its finished results, crystallization.
We may, therefore, rightly look upon snow-formation as an ur-phenomenon
in this sphere of nature's activities. As such it allows us to learn something
concerning the origin in general of the crystalline realm of the earth; and,
vice versa, our insight into the 'becoming' of this realm will enable us to see
more clearly the universal function of which phosphorus is the main
representative among the physical substances of the earth.

It has puzzled many an observer that crystals occur in the earth with
directions of their main axes entirely independent of the direction of the
earthly pull of gravity. Plate VI shows the photograph of a cluster of Calcite

crystals as an example of this phenomenon. It tells us that gravity can have
no effect on the formation of the crystal itself. This riddle is solved by the
phenomenon of snow-formation provided we allow it to speak to us as an
ur-phenomenon. For it then tells us that matter must be in a state of
transition from lightness into heaviness if it is to appear in crystalline form.
The crystals in the earth, therefore, must have originated at a time when the
relation between levity and gravity on the earth was different from what it
is, in this sphere, to-day.

The same language is spoken by the property of transparency which is so
predominant among crystals. One of the fundamental characteristics of
heavy solid matter is to resist light - in other words, to be opaque. Exposed
to heat, however, physical substance loses this feature to the extent that at
the border of its ponderability all matter becomes pervious to light. Now, in
the transparent crystal matter retains this kinship to light even in its solid
state.

A similar message comes from the, often so mysterious, colouring of the
crystals. Here again nature offers us an instance which, 'worth a thousand',
reveals a secret that would otherwise remain veiled. We refer to the pink
crystals of tourmaline, whose colour comes from a small admixture of
lithium. This element, which belongs to the group of the alkaline metals,
does not form coloured salts (a property only shown by the heavier metals).
If exposed to a flame, however, it endows it with a definite colour which is
the same as that of the lithium-coloured tourmaline. Read as a letter in
nature's script, this fact tells us that precious stones with their flame-like
colours are characterized by having kept something of the nature that was
theirs before they coalesced into ponderable existence. In fact, they are
'frozen flames'.

It is this fact, known from ancient intuitive experience, which prompted
man of old to attribute particular spiritual significance to the various
precious stones of the earth and to use them correspondingly in his rituals.

Crystallization, seen thus in its cosmic aspect, shows a dynamic orientation
which is polarically opposite to that of the earth's seismic activities. Just as
in the latter we observe levity taking hold of ponderable matter and moving
it in a direction opposite to the pull of gravity, so in crystallization we see

imponderable matter passing over from levity into gravity. And just as we
found in volcanism and related processes a field of activity of 'functional
sulphur', so we found in snow-formation and related processes a field of
activity of 'functional phosphorus'. Both fields are characterized by an
interaction between gravity and levity, this interaction being of opposite
nature in each of them.

Here, again, sulphur and phosphorus appear as bearers of a polarity of the
second order which springs from the two polarically opposite ways of
interaction between the poles of the polarity of the first

order: levity-gravity.

*

As in man there is a third system, mediating between the two polar systems
of his organism, so between sulphur and phosphorus there is a third element
which in all its characteristics holds a middle place between them and is the
bearer of a corresponding function. This element is carbon.

To see this we need only take into consideration carbon's relationship to
oxidation and reduction respectively. As it is natural for sulphur to be in the
reduced state, and for phosphorus to be in the oxidized state, so it is in the
nature of carbon to be related to both states and therefore to oscillate
between them. By its readiness to change over from the oxidized to the
reduced state, it can serve the plant in the assimilation of light, while by its
readiness to make the reverse change it serves man and animal in the
breathing process. We breathe in oxygen from the air; the oxygen circulates
through the blood-stream and passes out again in conjunction with carbon,
as carbon dioxide, when we exhale. In the process whereby the plants
reduce the carbon dioxide exhaled by man and animal, while the latter again
absorb with their food the carbon produced in the form of organic matter by
the plant, we see carbon moving to and fro between the oxidized and the
reduced conditions.

Within the plant itself, too, carbon acts as functionary of the alternation
between oxidation and reduction. During the first half of the year, when
vegetation is unfolding, there is a great reduction process of oxidized

carbon, while in the second half of the year, when the withering process
prevails, a great deal of the previously reduced carbon passes into the
oxidized condition. As this is connected with exhaling and inhaling of
oxygen through carbon, carbon can be regarded as having the function of
the lung-organ of the earth. Logically enough, we find carbon playing the
same role in the middle part of the threefold human organism.

Another indication of the midway position of carbon is its ability to
combine as readily with hydrogen as with oxygen, and, in these polar
combinations, even to combine with itself. In this latter form it provides the
basis of the innumerable organic substances in nature, and serves as the
'building stones' of the body-substances of living organisms. Among these,
the carbohydrates produced by the plants show clearly the double function
of carbon in the way it alternates between the states of starch and sugar.

When the plant absorbs through its leaves carbonic acid from the air and
condenses it into the multiple grains of starch with their peculiar structure

characteristic for each plant species, we have a biological event which
corresponds to the formation of snow in the meteorological realm. Here we
see carbon at work in a manner functionally akin to that of phosphorus.
Sugar, on the other hand, has its place in the saps of the plants which rise
through the stems and carry up with them the mineral substances of the
earth. Here we find carbon acting in a way akin to the function of sulphur.

This twofold nature of carbon makes itself noticeable down to the very
mineral sphere of the earth. There we find it in the fact that carbon occurs
both in the form of the diamond, the hardest of all mineral substances, and
also in the form of the softest, graphite. Here also, in the diamond's brilliant
transparency, and in the dense blackness of graphite, carbon reveals its
twofold relation to light.

In Fig. 6 an attempt has been made to represent diagrammatically the
function of Carbon in a way corresponding to the previous representation of
the functions of Sulphur and Phosphorus.

*

By adding carbon to our observations on the polarity of sulphur and
phosphorus we have been led to a triad of functions each of which
expresses a specific interplay of levity and gravity. That we encounter three
such functions is not accidental or arbitrary. Rather is it based on the fact
that the interaction of forces emanating from a polarity of the first order,
produces a polarity of the second order, whose poles establish between
them a sphere of balance.

Through our study of levity and gravity in the matter-processes of the earth,
a perspective thus opens up into a structural principle of nature which is
actually not new to us. We encountered it at the very beginning of this book
when we discussed the threefold psycho-physical order of man's being.

In the days of an older intuitive nature-wisdom man knew of a basic triad of
functions as well as he knew of the four elementary qualities. We hear a last
echo of this in the Middle Ages, when people striving for a deeper
understanding of nature spoke of the trinity of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur.
What the true alchemists, as these seekers of knowledge called themselves,

meant by this was precisely the same as the conception we have here
reached through our own way of studying matter ('Salt' standing for
'functional phosphorus', 'Mercury' for 'functional carbon'). Only the
alchemist's way was a different one.

This is not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning and
value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not be
confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name). Only
this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an impulse which,
at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose, led to the foundation
of a school for the development of an intuitive relationship of the soul with
the world of the senses. This was to enable man to resist the effects of the
division which evolution was about to set up in his soul-life - the division
which was to give him, on the one hand, an abstract experience of his own
self, divorced from the outer world, and on the other a mere onlooker's
experience of that outer world. As a result of these endeavours, concepts
were formed which in their literal meaning seemed to apply merely to
outwardly perceptible substances, while in truth they stood for the spiritual
functions represented by those substances, both within and outside the
human organism.

Thus the alchemist who used these concepts thought of them first as
referring to his own soul, and to the inner organic processes corresponding
to the various activities of his soul. When speaking of Salt he meant the
regulated formative activity of his thinking, based on the salt-forming
process in his nervous system. When he spoke of Mercury he meant the
quickly changing emotional life of the soul and the corresponding activities
of the rhythmic processes of the body. Lastly, Sulphur meant the will
activities of his soul and the corresponding metabolic processes of the body.
Only through studying these functions within himself, and through re-
establishing the harmony between them which had been theirs in the
beginning, and from which, he felt, man had deviated in the course of time,
did the alchemist hope to come to an understanding of their counterparts in
the external cosmos.

Older alchemical writings, therefore, can be understood only if
prescriptions which seem to signify certain chemical manipulations are read

as instructions for certain exercises of the soul, or as advices for the
redirection of corresponding processes in the body. For instance, if an
alchemist gave directions for a certain treatment of Sulphur, Mercury and
Salt, with the assertion that by carrying out these directions properly, one
would obtain Aurum (gold), he really spoke of a method to direct the
thinking, feeling and willing activities of the soul in such a way as to gain
true Wisdom.1

*

As in the case of the concepts constituting the doctrine of the four elements,
we have represented here the basic alchemical concepts not only because of
their historical significance, but because, as ingredients of a still functional
conception of nature, they assume new significance in a science which
seeks to develop, though from different starting-points, a similar
conception. As will be seen in our further studies, these concepts prove a
welcome enrichment of the language in which we must try to express our
readings in nature.
1 Roger Bacon in the thirteenth, and Berthold Schwartz in the fourteenth century, are reputed to have

carried out experiments by mixing physical salt (in the form of the chemically labile saltpetre) with
physical sulphur and - after some initial attempts with various metals - with charcoal, and then
exposing the mixture to the heat of physical fire. The outcome of this purely materialistic
interpretation of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or, as Schwartz
certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder!

CHAPTER XII

Space and Counter-Space

With the introduction, in Chapter X, of the peripheral type of force-field
which appertains to levity as the usual central one does to gravity, we are
compelled to revise our conception of space. For in a space of a kind we are
accustomed to conceive, that is, the three-dimensional, Euclidean space, the
existence of such a field with its characteristic of increasing in strength in
the outward direction is a paradox, contrary to mathematical logic.

This task, which in view of our further observations of the actions of the
levity-gravity polarity in nature we must now tackle, is, however, by no
means insoluble. For in modern mathematics thought-forms are already
present which make it possible to develop a space-concept adequate to
levity. As referred to in Chapter I, it was Rudolf Steiner who first pointed to
the significance in this respect of the branch of modern mathematics known
as Projective Geometry. He showed that Projective Geometry, if rightly
used, carries over the mind from the customary abstract to a new concrete
treatment of mathematical concepts. The following example will serve to
explain, to start with, what we mean by saying that mathematics has hitherto
been used abstractly.

One of the reasons why the world-picture developed by Einstein in his
Theory of Relativity deserves to be acknowledged as a step forward in
comparison with the picture drawn by classical physics, lies in the fact that
the old conception of three-dimensional space as a kind of 'cosmic
container', extending in all directions into infinity and filled, as it were, with
the content of the physical universe, is replaced by a conception in which the
structure of space results from the laws interrelating this content. Our further
discussion will show that this indeed is the way along which, to-day,
mathematical thought must move in order to cope with universal reality.

However, for reasons discussed earlier, Einstein was forced to conceive all
events in the universe after the model of gravity as observable on the earth.

In this way he arrived at a space-structure which possesses neither the three-
dimensionality nor the rectilinear character of so-called Euclidean space - a
space-picture which, though mathematically consistent, is incomprehensible
by the human mind. For nothing exists in our mind that could enable us to
experience as a reality a space-time continuum of three dimensions which is
curved within a further dimension.

This outcome of Einstein's endeavours results from the fact that he tried by
means of gravity-bound thought to comprehend universal happenings of
which the true causes are non-gravitational. A thinking that has learnt to
acknowledge the existence of levity must indeed pursue precisely the
opposite direction. Instead of freezing time down into spatial dimension, in
order to make it fit into a world ruled by nothing but gravity, we must
develop a conception of space sufficiently fluid to let true time have its place
therein. We shall see how such a procedure will lead us to a space-concept
thoroughly conceivable by human common sense, provided we are prepared
to overcome the onlooker-standpoint in mathematics also.

Einstein owed the possibility of establishing his space-picture to a certain
achievement of mathematical thinking in modern times. As we have seen,
one of the peculiarities of the onlooker-consciousness consists in its being
devoid of all connexion with reality. The process of thinking thereby gained
a degree of freedom which did not exist in former ages. In consequence,
mathematicians were enabled in the course of the nineteenth century to
conceive the most varied space-systems which were all mathematically
consistent and yet lacked all relation to external existence. A considerable
number of space-systems have thus become established among which there
is the system that served Einstein to derive his space-time concept. Some of
them have been more or less fully worked out, while in certain instances all
that has been done is to show that they are mathematically conceivable.
Among these there is one which in all its characteristics is polarically
opposite to the Euclidean system, and which is destined for this reason to
become the space-system of levity. It is symptomatic of the remoteness from
reality of mathematical thinking in the onlooker-age that precisely this
system has so far received no special attention.1

For the purpose of this book it is not necessary to expound in detail why
modern mathematical thinking has been led to look for thought-forms other