Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of Antiquity — John Shaqi
Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of AntiquitySteiner, Rudolf
Religion
Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of Antiquity
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Christianity and other religions; Mysteries, Religious; Mysticism
It would certainly be a dreary outlook if natural science itself
compelled us to accept the creed proclaimed by many of its modern
prophets. Most dreary of all for one who has gained, from the content
of natural science, the conviction that in its own sphere its mode of
thought holds good and its methods are unassailable. For he is driven
to make the admission that, however much people may dispute about
individual questions, though volume after volume may be written, and
thousands of observations accumulated about the struggle for existence
and its insignificance, about the omnipotence or powerlessness of
natural selection, natural science itself is moving in a direction
which, within certain limits, must find acceptance in an
ever-increasing degree.
But are the demands made by natural science really such as they are
described by some of its representatives? That they are not so is
proved by the method employed by these representatives themselves. The
method they use in their own sphere is not such as is often described,
and claimed for other spheres of thought. Would Darwin and Ernst
Haeckel ever have made their great discoveries about the evolution of
life if, instead of observing life and the structure of living beings,
they had shut themselves up in a laboratory and there made chemical
experiments with tissue cut out of an organism? Would Lyell have been
able to describe the development of the crust of the earth if, instead
of examining strata and their contents, he had scrutinised the
chemical qualities of innumerable rocks? Let us really follow in the
footsteps of these investigators who tower like giants in the domain
of modern science. We shall then apply to the higher regions of
spiritual life the methods they have used in the study of nature. We
shall not then believe we have understood the nature of the "divine"
tragedy of Hamlet by saying that a wonderful chemical process
transformed a certain quantity of food into that tragedy. We shall
believe it as little as an investigator of nature could seriously
believe that he has understood the mission of heat in the evolution of
the earth, when he has studied the action of heat on sulphur in a
retort. Neither does he attempt to understand the construction of the
human brain by examining the effect of liquid potash on a fragment of
it, but rather by inquiring how the brain has, in the course of
evolution, been developed out of the organs of lower organisms.
It is therefore quite true that one who is investigating the nature of
spirit can do nothing better than learn from natural science. He need
only do as science does, but he must not allow himself to be misled by
what individual representatives of natural science would dictate to
him. He must investigate in the spiritual as they do in the physical
domain, but he need not adopt the opinions they entertain about the
spiritual world, confused as they are by their exclusive
contemplation of physical phenomena.
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