The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface (1909)

[ 1 ] Whoever hands over a book such as the present one to the public should be able to imagine with composure any kind of evaluation of its statements that is possible in the present. For example, someone who has thought about these things in accordance with the results of scientific research might begin to read the account given here of this or that thing. And he might come to the following conclusion: "It is astonishing how such assertions are even possible in our time. The simplest scientific concepts are handled in a way that suggests an almost incomprehensible unfamiliarity with even elementary knowledge. The author uses terms such as 'heat' in a way that can only be done by someone who has not been exposed to the entire modern way of thinking in physics. Anyone who knows even the basics of this science could show him that what he is saying does not even deserve to be called dilettantism, but can only be described as absolute ignorance..." Many more such sentences could be added to such a possible assessment. But one could also think of the following conclusion after the above statements: "Anyone who has read a few pages of this book will, depending on his temperament, put it down with a smile or indignation and say to himself: 'It is strange what excesses a wrong direction of thought can drive in the present time. It is best to place these remarks alongside many other curious things that one now encounters'." - But what would the author of this book say if he were really to experience such an assessment? Must he not simply, from his point of view, consider the assessor to be a reader incapable of judgment or one who does not have the good will to come to an understanding judgment? - Let us answer this question: No, this author does not always do this. He is able to imagine that his evaluator can be a very clever person, a capable scientist and someone who forms a judgment in a very conscientious manner. For this author is able to think his way into the soul of such a personality and into the reasons which can lead him to such a judgment. In order to make clear what the author is really saying, it is necessary to do something that often seems inappropriate to him, but which is an urgent necessity in this book: namely, to talk about some personal matters. However, nothing should be said in this regard that is not connected with the decision to write this book. What is said in such a book would certainly have no right to exist if it had only a personal character. It must contain statements that any person can come to, and it must be said in such a way that no personal coloring is noticeable, as far as this is at all possible. In this respect, therefore, the personal is not meant. It should only refer to making it understandable how the author can find the above-mentioned assessment of his statements comprehensible and still be able to write this book. There would, however, be something that could make the presentation of such a personal statement superfluous: if one were to assert, in a detailed manner, all the details that show how the presentation of this book in reality corresponds to all the advances of contemporary science. However, this would require many volumes as an introduction to the book. Since these cannot be supplied at the moment, it seems necessary for the author to say by what personal circumstances he believes himself entitled to consider such a correspondence possible in a satisfactory manner. - He would certainly never have undertaken to publish anything that is said in this book, for example with regard to heat processes, if he had not been allowed to confess the following: Thirty years ago he was in a position to study physics, which branched out into the various fields of this science. In the field of thermal phenomena, the explanations belonging to the so-called "mechanical theory of heat" were at the center of his studies. And he was particularly interested in this "mechanical theory of heat". The historical development of the corresponding explanations, which at the time were linked to names such as Jul. Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, Joule, Clausius and so on, were part of his ongoing studies. As a result, during the period of his studies he created a sufficient basis and opportunity to be able to follow all the actual progress in the field of physical thermodynamics up to the present day and to find no obstacles when he tries to penetrate everything that science has achieved in this field. If the author had to say to himself: he cannot do this, this would be a reason for him to leave the things presented in the book unsaid and unwritten. He has really made it his principle to speak or write only about those things in the field of spiritual science where he would also be able to say, in a way that seems sufficient to him, what current science knows about them. He does not mean to say something that should be a general requirement for all people. Anyone can rightly feel compelled to communicate and publish what his powers of judgment, his healthy sense of truth and his feelings lead him to do, even if he does not know what can be said about the matters in question from the point of view of contemporary science. Only the author of this book wishes to adhere to what has been said above. He would not, for example, make the few sentences about the human glandular system or the human nervous system which are found in this book, if he were not in a position to make an attempt to speak about these things in the forms in which a contemporary natural scientist speaks about the glandular or nervous system from the standpoint of science. - Although, therefore, it is possible to judge that he who speaks, as he does here, of "heat" knows nothing of the beginnings of contemporary physics, it is nevertheless true that the author of this book believes himself fully justified in what he has done, because he really endeavors to know contemporary research, and that he would refrain from speaking thus if it were foreign to him. He knows how the motive behind such a principle can easily be mistaken for immodesty. It is, however, necessary to say so in relation to this book, so that the author's true motives are not confused with quite different ones. And this confusion could be far worse than the one with immodesty.

[ 2 ] Now, however, an assessment from a philosophical point of view would also be possible. It could take the following form. Anyone who reads this book as a philosopher will ask himself: "Has the author slept through all the epistemological work of the present? Has he never learned that a Kant lived and that, according to him, it is simply philosophically inadmissible to say such things?" - Again, we could proceed in this direction. But the assessment could also conclude: "For the philosopher, such uncritical, naïve, amateurish stuff is intolerable, and to go into it further would be a waste of time." - Despite all the misunderstandings that can arise from this, the author would like to make a personal statement here too, for the same reason as described above. His study of Kant began in his sixteenth year; and today he truly believes that he can judge everything that is presented in this book quite objectively from a Kantian point of view. From this point of view, too, he would have had a reason to leave the book unwritten if he did not know what could induce a philosopher to find it naive when the critical standard of the present is applied. But one can really know how, in Kant's sense, the limits of possible knowledge are transgressed here; one can know how Herbart would find "naive realism" that has not brought it to the "working out of concepts" etc. etc.; one can even know how the modern pragmatism of James, Schiller and so on would find the measure of what "true ideas" are, which "we appropriate, which we can assert, put into effect and verify", transgressed. ^{1One may even have seriously considered and studied the philosophy of "as if", Bergsonism and the "Critique of Language". (Note added in the fourth edition, 1913.)} One can know all this and still, indeed for this very reason, feel justified in writing these remarks. The author of this book has dealt with philosophical schools of thought in his writings "Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung", "Wahrheit und Wissenschaft", "Philosophie der Freiheit", "Goethes Weltanschauung", "Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert", "Die Rätsel der Philosophie." ^{2This work is mentioned from the seventh edition, 1920 onwards.}

[ 3 ] Many types of possible assessments could still be cited. There could also be someone who has read one of the author's earlier writings, for example "Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert" or his little pamphlet: "Haeckel und seine Gegner". One such person could say: "It is almost incomprehensible how one and the same person can write these writings and also, in addition to his already published 'Theosophy', this book. How can one advocate Haeckel in this way and then again slap everything in the face that follows as healthy 'monism' from Haeckel's research? One could understand that the author of this 'Secret Science' would take up arms against Haeckel with 'fire and sword'; the fact that he defended him, indeed that he even dedicated 'Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert' to him, is probably the most monstrous thing imaginable. Haeckel would probably have thanked him for this dedication 'with incomprehensible rejection' if he had known that Widmer would one day write the kind of stuff contained in this 'secret science' with its more than clumsy dualism." - The author of this book is now of the opinion that one can understand Haeckel quite well and yet need not believe that one only understands him if one considers everything to be nonsense that does not flow from Haeckel's own ideas and presuppositions. He is also of the opinion, however, that Haeckel cannot be understood by fighting him with "fire and sword", but rather by considering what he has done for science. And least of all does the author believe that Haeckel's opponents are in the right, against whom he defended the great natural thinker, for example in his essay "Haeckel and his opponents". Truly, if the author of this work goes far beyond Haeckel's premises and places the spiritual view of the world alongside Haeckel's purely natural one, he need not therefore agree with the latter's opponents. Anyone who makes an effort to look at the matter properly will already be able to notice the harmony of the author's present writings with his earlier ones.

[ 4 ] Even such an assessor is completely understandable to the author, who generally regards the remarks in this book without further ado as outpourings of a wildly imaginative or dreamy mind game. But everything that needs to be said in this respect is contained in the book itself. It is shown there how rational thinking can and should become the touchstone of what is depicted. Only those who apply the rational test to this representation in the same way as it is applied appropriately to the facts of natural science, for example, will be able to decide what reason says in such a test.

[ 5 ] After so much has been said about those personalities who may initially reject this book, a word may also be said to those who have reason to agree with it. For them, however, the most essential information is contained in the first chapter "Character of Secret Science". But a few things should be said here. Although the book deals with research which cannot be investigated by the intellect bound to the world of the senses, there is nothing in it which cannot be understood by the unbiased reason and healthy sense of truth of every personality who wants to use these gifts of man. The author says it bluntly: he wants above all readers who are not willing to accept the things put forward on blind faith, but who endeavor to test what is communicated against the insights of their own souls and the experiences of their own lives. ^{3What is meant here is not only the spiritual-scientific examination by means of supersensible research methods, but above all the possible examination from healthy, unprejudiced thinking and common sense. (Note added in the fourth edition, 1913.)} Above all, he wants cautious readers who only accept what is logically justifiable. The author knows that his book would be worth nothing if it relied only on blind faith; it is only useful to the extent that it can justify itself to unbiased reason. Blind faith can so easily confuse the foolish and superstitious with the true. Some who are content with mere belief in the "supernatural" will find that too much is expected of the mind in this book. However, the information given here is not merely a matter of communicating something, but of presenting it in a way that is appropriate to a conscientious view of the relevant area of life. After all, this is the area where the highest things meet with unscrupulous charlatanry, where knowledge and superstition so easily come into contact in real life and where, above all, they can also be so easily confused.

[ 6 ] Whoever is familiar with supersensible research will probably notice when reading the book that an attempt has been made to keep the boundaries sharply between what can and should be communicated from the field of supersensible knowledge at present and what should be presented at a later time or at least in a different form.

Written in December 1909
Rudolf Steiner