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Chance, Necessity and Providence
GA 163

23 August 1915, Dornach

1. Probability and Chance, Fritz Mauthner's Studies of Improbability

My task today will be to discuss how hard it is for people to keep to the truth of a situation in their ordinary trains of thought. I want to convey to you how far from easy it is in thinking to keep all the factors involved so before us that the course of our thoughts doesn't go astray from reality, that we follow the thread of reality.

The theme proposed for us today is certainly more difficult than others we might choose. But there is inner moral value to be derived from the realization that truth is hard to get at and that it is very easy to go astray as we forge ahead in a train of thought in the attempt to arrive at the truth by means of strict logical reasoning.

You will find that what I am going to tell you today will make it easier to understand certain matters that will occupy us in the next lecture. I will be speaking then about the important concepts chance, necessity, and providence. And I want to begin today with an introduction that, though it has its difficulties, will nevertheless contribute something vital and significant, not only to our theoretical understanding, but to the feeling we will then be able to develop for the way to seek truth.

I have often had occasion to mention the fact that there is a contemporary philosopher by the name of Fritz Mauthner who has written a Critique of Language.1Fritz Mauthner, 1849–1923, German philosopher and writer. Critique of Language, 1901. This Critique of Language was intended to provide our period with something better suited to it than Kant provided for his time with his Critique of Pure Reason.2Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804, German philosopher of the Enlightenment, Published Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. For Mauthner no longer believes—if that expresses it—that people seek knowledge in the form of concepts. It is rather his conviction that it is fundamentally just language to which people attach their insights. He believes that they don't really have true concepts when they are thinking, but merely have what words convey, and that words simply suggest this or that to them. He pictures people as having certain inner experiences in connection with words, putting their faith in words, jumbling them up, putting them together, and deriving insights from these processes. This is a total misconception of the entire cognitive process, but one that was bound to emerge eventually in an age working its way through to the worst consequences of materialism.

I want to convey just a sense of how Mauthner came to hold this view by quoting a passage from his Dictionary of Philosophy,3Fritz Mauthner, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1909. written after his Critique of Language. Since we will be concerning ourselves with chance, necessity and providence, I will quote a passage from his article on the word “chance.” As I read it you will see that the materialistic age has gradually learned to talk about certain things. I am not so much interested in touching on any theoretical aspects involved in what I'll be reading you as I am in getting you to examine your feelings as you are exposed to what a materialistic philosopher of the present has to say on such a subject. I'd like to have you try to sense the way he speaks. He says of chance in his treatise on it “And it would be like going back to childhood and taking out of a magic package the surprises some kindly merchant has concealed in it.” He believes that looking at all the things that happen by chance is like becoming a child again and taking out of a magic package all the surprises put into it by a kindly merchant! “As though one were to keep on making God responsible, as Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer did ...” is his sense of it. Trying to explain the world by ascribing everything to a kindly God would, in his opinion, be to regress to the state of a child gradually discovering what some kind merchant has hidden in a surprise packet. The child explores its content and comes upon one lovely thing after another. That is how Mauthner sees anyone who, attempting to find a wise explanation of the phenomena of the world, makes God responsible by regarding Him as the world's Creator. And he goes on to say, “... if one wanted to follow the example of Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer in making Schopenhauer's elderly Jew” (he calls Him that because the term “God of the Christians” strikes him as unsuitable) “responsible for unscrambling this confusion of chance and purpose.”

You see the type of expression into which a materialist lapses if he takes himself seriously. Of course it is true that many people do not take materialism (which inevitably is also atheism) any more seriously than did the man who exclaimed “As surely as God is in heaven I am an atheist!” But anyone who takes it seriously today has to ridicule providence and similar matters; there is really no other possibility for those who have adopted materialism.

Though Fritz Mauthner is bound to give deep offense to our feelings and our sense of the fitness of things, I have brought him up because he is an honest, upright seeker after truth in the current materialistic sense. It is not my intention to do battle with individuals who are philosophers by profession, but rather with someone who comes to philosophy out of inner necessity from a quite different professional background and attains a certain degree of competency in it. For what one misses so greatly today in the way world views are evolved is a really serious coming to grips with what the various branches of science have brought forth up to the present. Fritz Mauthner has really grown into a learned gentleman, enabling me, as I take him for my point of departure and describe the difficulties inherent in the search for truth, to base my commentary on the thoughts developed by a very learned, very brilliant man. I am not basing it on what just any person thinks, but on the thinking of a very scholarly, clever man.

To begin with, I must take a very simple concept to show you at hand of a very special example from Mauthner's work how hard the search for truth is. You all know that there has long been what is called in mathematics the calculus of probability. It's quite easy to grasp the principle involved. Let's assume, for example, that you have some dice. I don't want to lead you astray into gambling with them, but let us say you have some dice. You know that they are so arranged that there is a single dot on one side, two on another, and so on, up to six dots on one of the six sides. If you roll these dice, they can turn up any one of the six sides; there are six possibilities. Now we can ask what the chances are of turning up a \(6\). You might really want to know what the chances are of getting a \(6\) when you shake the dice cup and throw the dice. The mathematician makes his calculation and says there are six possibilities; there is thus one-sixth of a chance of turning up a \(6\) on a single throw. You see how unlikely this possibility is. You would have to run through all six possibilities to be certain of a particular outcome. The numerator and the denominator would have to be identical, since certainty would equal \(1\) (\(\frac{6}{6} = 1\)). Probability is therefore six times smaller than certainty in throwing dice.

Now we can pursue the matter further and ask what the chance is of throwing two sixes if two dice are thrown. This can also be calculated. You will get one divided by thirty-six if you calculate as follows: Throwing a \(2\) with one dice, you can get anything from a \(1\) to a \(6\) with the second. Getting a \(2\) with the first throw, you can also get anything from a \(2\) to a \(6\) with the second, and so on, until you have counted thirty-six different possible throws. The probability of getting any particular outcome is thus \(1\) in \(3\)6, or \(\frac{1}{36}\). If you wanted to calculate probability with \(3\) dice, you would get \(\frac{1}{6} \times \frac{1}{6} \times \frac{1}{6}\), or \(\frac{1}{216}\), a very unlikely event indeed. The probability gets smaller and smaller the more dice are involved. The more possibilities there are, the less probable is any particular outcome.

You see, then, that it is possible to express in mathematical formulas the degree of probability of any particular outcome, and calculations of this kind can be applied to all sorts of cases. But I don't need to explain more than this principle to you; you see that it is possible to express in mathematical formulas what one feels. One can always feel that there is a certain degree of improbability that a \(6\) will be thrown, but the actual probability is \(\frac{1}{6}\), with two dice \(\frac{1}{36}\), and so on. Such feelings can, in a sense, be expressed in mathematical terms.

Now there is a certain way of thinking about divine providence. Materialists say something like this about it: We want to examine the reasoning of those who believe in God and providence; what are their thoughts? Believers in providence say, Let us take a work like Goethe's Faust or Homer's epics. What is Goethe's Faust in the last analysis? If we think as the materialists do, picturing the world as composed of atoms or molecules, we would really have to conceive Faust in its entirety as composed of letters, of single letters, unless we wished to go deeper. People who believe in providence and also believe in atoms and molecules formulate the situation more or less like this: Let's imagine that we have a container of type and in it all the letters that make up Faust, and some machinery—not some intelligence—spreads out these letters. The believers in providence could now ask how great the probability is of Goethe's Faust emerging from a typesetting machine that simply put the letters one after the other as they happened to fall on being thrown out of the container. They ask the question, perhaps, but have to admit that the probability of such a thing happening is so slight as to be nonexistent. One cannot assume that a haphazard scattering of type could possibly result in a chance (Voltaire's “His Majesty, Chance”) printing of Goethe's Faust. Since that can't be the case with Goethe's Faust, we can scarcely think that this world, which is much, much more gloriously put together, could have been flung down so thoughtlessly and simply.

This is approximately how a person with the current atomistic outlook would think if he could not avoid accepting providence as necessary in the scheme of things because of the impossibility of the world's having put itself together out of chaos.

Now Fritz Mauthner is a thorough gentleman, so he has let himself in not just for producing this train of thought but for correctly calculating how improbable it is that, for example, Goethe's Faust could have originated from a mere scattering of the letters it consists of. He has really figured it out, and I want to show you how he did it. He makes a fairly thorough job of it. He says,

God's existence is proved by the fact that the world's beauty and order are just as improbably the product of pure chance, achieved without purpose on the part of a creator, as we would regard the production of Faust as a consequence of upsetting a huge container of type and an accidental arranging of the letters and punctuation in the sequence found in Faust. The improbability of such a production is truly vast, beyond anything fantasy could conjure up, even if one disregards the utterly nonsensical assumption that letters could arrange themselves into sentences, and assumes the probability of an immeasurably favorable special case—something, say, along the lines of a German typewriter or typesetting machine getting into the hands of a Chinaman who, totally unfamiliar with the German language and letter-symbols, nevertheless experiments tirelessly with the keys for weeks or months, handling the machine correctly, with the result of this mere experimenting producing Faust!

Mauthner goes on to say:

I entertained myself working out an approximate calculation of the probability of a chance emergence of Goethe's Faust from this experiment. There was no need to bother about a few decimal places in the decimal part of the logarithm, and I magnanimously upped the probability by allowing for one hundred typographical errors and still recognizing the product as genuinely Faust, thus giving it a more than generous benefit of the doubt. Faust contains approximately \(300,000\) letters. Now the probability of striking the right key at every touch is not exactly small; it is almost \(1\) out of \(100\), since there are about \(100\) different symbols.

So one can light upon \(100\) symbols. Blindly tapping away, the probability of getting the right one is \(1\) in \(100\), according to the principle explained at hand of the dice. Thus the probability of the Chinaman totally ignorant of the language in which Faust is written striking the right key is \(\frac{1}{100}\). “But since, according to elementary rules, the chance of accidentally producing the whole of Faust with its \(300,000\) letters equals the product of \(300,000\) partial probabilities, the probability of an accidental production of Faust must be calculated as \(1:{100}^{300,000}\).”

You see, the probability of Faust coming into existence in the above way is not \(\frac{1}{6}\) or \(\frac{1}{36}\), and so on, but equals the fraction obtained by dividing \(1\) by \(100 \times 100 \times 100\), and so on, until we have done it \(300,000\) times. That is a fraction with a gigantic denominator, as you can see; in other words, the probability is exceedingly tiny. Mauthner continues, “We have here a fraction whose numerator is \(\)1, whose denominator consists of \(600,000\) digits. Even the conceptual power of the Indians,” (which Mauthner rates very highly), “even the mathematical genius of Archimedes is not up to grasping so vast a denominator. There is not even a name for such a number. The Greeks and the Romans were right, then, when they considered the chance production of any organized whole as extremely improbable. Here we reach the limits of the possible”—but only for human conceiving, he means. One cannot obtain Faust this way.

And the Greeks and Romans would also have concluded that the meaningful production of a Faust on the part of a creator could most probably—or even quite certainly—equally prove the existence of a world-creator if the whole proof or metaphor or line of reasoning were not so unspeakably foolish. I could never even bring myself to believe that the marvelous build of a mosquito could be the product of chance in a materialistic sense. The chance material production of a mosquito is just as improbable as that of Faust. Darwinism has not really lessened the incomprehensibilities. But the headwork on the part of a God Who would have had to organize not merely \(3\) times \(100,000\) elements or letters (with repetitions) but all the elements that make up the cosmos an endless number of times (with repetitions) is, if possible, even more improbable for human conceiving (and we really have no other!) than a chance production of Faust. I have no wish to extend my calculations to figuring out the degree of the improbability of a world- dominion and providence.

You see what tremendously learned reflections one can engage in. You will have thought them quite learned enough to arrive at the logical conclusion: what must God not have had to keep in mind, if He wanted to put the world together out of all its elements, if producing Faust out of an upset typecase or the chance striking of typewriter keys represents such an improbability as to be practically out of the question? Therefore, says Mauthner, both the concept of chance and that of divine providence are inconceivable. For if the degree of probability in the case of Faust is so minuscule, one can certainly not presuppose in the world's case that it could have been the chance creation of an upsetting of a cosmic typecase, so to speak. But then, one can just as little presuppose God—for what wisdom would He not have had to possess to have built the world out of all its elements!

So one can take neither God nor “His Majesty, Chance” for granted. Mauthner therefore maintains that neither has validity, that all that is involved here is just concepts in language, and people deal with them as they do with languages themselves and with translations. And he calls this a Critique of Language! We have here a truly incisive train of thought indeed, pursued with a great deal of effort. It leads to two alternatives: one has either to presuppose that the world came into being by chance—an exceedingly tiny probability, of course—or, still less credibly, to conceive of a kind God with a head so full of wisdom that He could use it to build a world out of chaos.

Now, since we are concerned in spiritual science not only with getting to know things but with thinking correctly, taking into account all the factors involved in developing a sound train of thought, let us examine this particular train of thought in a way commensurate with the serious approach of spiritual science. Let us review again the proposition that the probability of Goethe's Faust resulting from a jumbling up of the contents of a typecase is so infinitesimal as to be represented by a fraction with a numerator of 1 over a denominator consisting of 600,000 digits. The probability of the world's coming into being as the result of a similar accident would, of course, be infinitely smaller. But the fact is that Faust did come into being in its entirety! Now did this happen because the good Goethe—not the good God in this case—had in his head the laws whereby, according to the principles of typesetting, \(300,000\) letters taken from the typecase could be set in soldierly rows to eventuate in Faust? Was Goethe thinking of the right way to reach into that container to get hold of the right letters?

Certainly not! When we think of the origin of Faust, we don't picture it as having anything to do with selecting type. The creator of Faust proceeded quite differently. It would never have occurred to him that Faust could have resulted from the placement of 300,000 letters. It was totally unnecessary for Goethe to know that Faust could be composed of 300,000 letters, and yet he composed it! We might, on the one hand—and indeed we even must—picture a chaos, with things in a state of utter disorder, but conceive on the other of a good God with all the various laws in mind according to which He would arrange the world, exactly as Goethe would have done if he had been set before a typecase to bring forth his Faust. But neither God nor Goethe went to work in this fashion. What we have to picture going on in God's soul has nothing whatever to do with the whole train of thought about composition, any more than such an incredibly cleverly conceived composition applies in the case of the creation of Goethe's Faust. In other words, this whole train of thought leads to absurdity. It is brilliant, it is well reasoned, it is conscientious—all these things; yet it ends in absurdity. That comes of a conscientious person engaging in a train of thought and pursuing it, but losing sight of the actual factors that could have led to a sound conclusion.

This is a much more important matter than we might suppose, for it demonstrates how extraordinarily difficult it can be, no matter how scientifically one proceeds, to avoid losing sight of reality as we pursue a train of thought. We must imbue our feelings with this realization and learn a great deal from just such an example. Two things are required as we mull it over. One is that we educate ourselves through an outstanding example of this kind to an awareness that the search for truth is far from easy, and that we badly need to develop a feeling for the fact that not just any thought sequence that strikes us at first glance as correct is actually a sound one. The more we can imbue ourselves with the feeling that we could err, that even at our most conscientious we might be wrong, the more easily will we avoid a rigid clinging to our own opinions, to a stubborn belief in the correctness of our views.

It is a very common thing, these days, to encounter people who declare that they think this or that to be a fact. The typical reaction one has in such encounters is how fortunate and at the same time how simple-minded such people are—fortunate, because they have no idea what it really means to believe in something they have figured out, and simple-minded because they don t have a glimmering of how far removed from reality their thoughts may be. But we should be aware that we mustn't allow this realization to depress us. It will make us very modest indeed, but not to the point of driving us into melancholia, to a sense of despair about human life because of the great difficulty of achieving truth. For we know that the life of the human soul is unending and must be a quest, that it may even be due to a wise ordaining that the quest for truth is so difficult. And we will find that life rests upon this fact.

It would be the death of our souls if the quest for truth were easy, if those people who say they have found out how to arrange things in a way to make the whole world happy were right. If, confronted by the world's complexity, it were such a simple matter to discover truth as most individuals believe it to be, that would mean the death of the soul. For the soul's life depends on our inability to find any access to the totality of truth; it requires a long slow search for truth, and the preservation of a profound degree of modesty as one progresses in it, step by step. Error is the more likely the more comprehensive the truth we seek. So it was natural for even one of the most learned men to fall into childish error such as that demonstrated in connection with solving the cosmic problem of chance and providence.

But dismay and depression over the fact that truth can be discovered only with such difficulty cannot touch us if we bear in mind that life derives from our having to seek truth. The quest is what matters. You might say, Well, if it were to mean the death of the soul not to have to search for truth, that fate is surely going to claim us now, for we have currently reached a high point in human evolution in the lack of feeling for a true quest for truth. In the whole course of history there have never been more people with programs, more individuals who believe that they can solve the whole cosmic riddle with a word or two. So we do have the very outlook right now that can be described as leading to the death of the soul. And it would indeed mean the death of the soul if what these program-people think were true. But it is not true, fortunately!

The thinking of people like Fritz Mauthner is more typical than one might assume, and there are many of them. The volumes of his Philosophical Dictionary are a perfect example of the current outlook. They really reflect the way most people think who aren't interested enough in freeing themselves from the trend of contemporary thought to move in a direction such as spiritual science has taken. People like Mauthner say, We come, on the one hand, to the untenable concept of a world that has come into being by chance (for this has the degree of improbability I have been demonstrating). But the alternative concept of an all-wise God is just as untenable since our human minds find it impossible to credit the existence of a god, a good God, who created in His head everything He needed to assemble out of initial chaos the various “letters” that compose the universe. Mauthner believes that people used to make do with concepts like chance and providence, but that we have now advanced beyond them since we realize today that they have no cosmic significance, no objective meaning; as mere figments of our human minds they hold meaning for ourselves alone. They are judged entirely on the basis of whether they are presently applicable to the world at large. People like this always say, Look how childish people used to be! They talked on the one hand of “divine providence and on the other of the concept “chance.” We must recognize the fact that both concepts exist only in the thoughts of human beings and are not even remotely applicable to the world.

And on what do they base this judgment? They say, When we survey the whole range of philosophical thought, the philosophical procedure followed by many philosophers (and Mauthner has really sat down and studied the world's philosophers and is as familiar with all of them as anyone can be in a single lifetime), we see what trouble they took to arrive at concepts. But all these are just human concepts; they can't be applied to reality. There is no reality in the concept of divine providence. And Mauthner's article on chance ends with the statement that divine providence, the cosmic order, cosmic harmony, and the beauty of the world used to be looked upon as concepts in the following context: “Yes, there are elements of chance in the world, but the world is also endowed with order and beauty.” And Mauthner ends: “But we realize that the concept of chance is man-made, and so are the concepts of beauty and order, of God, of causality.” We know, in other words, that they are all of human origin and lack objective applicability. “Thus it is the height of literal-mindedness even to ask the question whether chance or God is the origin of universal order and beauty, and worse to try to answer it with a childish simile.”

Now what have Mauthner and all the other philosophers who agree with him done to arrive at the insight that the concepts of God and chance and order are human products, and that neither order nor beauty and so on really exist outside us? You needn't believe me, but they have demonstrated with all possible philosophical incisiveness how profoundly human reason goes to work to produce such concepts and how true it is that they are human products. They have demonstrated this. He has offered proof when he says, “But we know ...” etc. He has proved it! But if we look at how he proved it, we have to say, Yes, dear Mr. Mauthner, you are right. But we are familiar with the fact that the concepts of chance, beauty, God, and the June bug are all the work of man. That is true, looked at in the right light. Now you would have to spend years making a really thorough study of it, but if you were to examine the penetrating thinking that has gone into demonstrating how all the concepts mentioned above are the fruits of human thinking, you would find trains of thought that can very properly be applied to the assertion that the June bug concept is also man-made. That is certainly true, but does that say anything about whether June bugs can fly around outside there and are real? What is childish is to say that the concept of the June bug is just a human product. One can think really penetratingly and be totally convinced of the correctness of one's conclusions, and yet have lost the thread on which the true facts are strung. All the proofs adduced in support of the finding that the above concepts are simply fruits of human thinking do not say anything about the objective existence of these things; just as calling the June bug concept a human product does not help us when its objective existence is in question.

You see what tremendous certainty the modern scientific way of thinking generates. It is reflected in such a statement as “We know that the concepts of chance, beauty, order, God, and causality are all man-made. So it seems to us to be the very height of literal-mindedness even to ask the question whether chance or God is the origin of universal order and beauty.”

Well, then, one must comment, you believe—since you can prove that the June bug concept is man-made—that it is being childish, being a victim of literal-mindedness to apply the June bug concept to an insect flying around there outside the window? It is all exactly the same thing, you simply don't notice the similarity.

What is the point of bringing up such matters? Why, to call attention to how difficult it is to get at truth by stringing logical concepts together; to show what the outcome can be, no matter how penetratingly one proceeds; to illustrate how thoroughly we must imbue ourselves with a sense of the difficulty of the quest for truth, both in great and small concerns. The more you develop a feeling for this as a result of what has been discussed today, the better it will be.

On Hegel's birthday, August 27, we will build on the foundation laid today in a spiritual scientific approach to the concepts chance, necessity, and providence.

Erster Vortrag

Es wird heute meine Aufgabe sein, davon zu sprechen, inwiefern es für den Menschen schwierig ist, im gewöhnlichen menschlichen Gedankengang den Faden der Wahrheit aufrechtzuerhalten. Ich möchte eine Vorstellung davon hervorrufen, wie es einem nicht leicht gelingt, wenn man einen Gedankengang fortspinnt, wirklich alle Faktoren so ins Auge zu fassen, daß die Art, wie man den Gedankengang verfolgt, nicht abirrt von der Richtigkeit, wie leicht einem gleichsam der Faden des Richtigen entschlüpft, indem man einen Gedankengang fortspinnt. Es wird ja gewiß eine solche Betrachtung, wie ich sie heute anzustellen gedenke, für uns zu den schwierigeren gehören. Aber es hat für uns auch in gewisser Beziehung einen inneren moralischen Wert, sich einmal klar zu sein darüber, daß das Auffinden der Wahrheit schwierig ist, und daß man sehr leicht abirren kann, wenn man einen Gedanken fortsetzt, um durch strenge logische Schlußfolgerung zur Wahrheit zu kommen. Sie werden sehen, daß dasjenige, was ich Ihnen heute zu sagen habe, uns leichter machen wird, gewisse Dinge, die wir im zweiten Vortrage werden zu besprechen haben, zu verstehen. Ich werde dann zu Ihnen zu sprechen haben über die wichtigen Begriffe Zufall, Notwendigkeit und Vorsehung. Und da möchte ich heute eine Einleitung geben, die, wenn sie auch schwieriger ist, uns doch etwas wird geben können, was nicht nur wichtig und bedeutungsvoll ist dadurch, daß wir uns theoretisch hineinfinden, sondern auch insofern, als wir uns dadurch gewissermaßen ein Gefühl von der Art des Suchens nach der Wahrheit verschaffen können.

Ich habe schon öfter in Anknüpfung an verschiedenes erwähnt, daß es in unserer Zeit einen Philosophen gibt, Fritz Mauthner, der eine «Kritik der Sprache» geschrieben hat. Es sollte durch diese «Kritik der Sprache» für unsere Zeit etwas noch Richtigeres geschaffen werden, als was schon seinerzeit Kant durch seine «Kritik der reinen Vernunft» geschaffen hat. Denn Fritz Mauthner glaubt - so könnte man das ausdrücken - nicht mehr daran, daß die Menschen ihre Erkenntnisse suchen durch Begriffe, sondern er glaubt, daß es im Grunde genommen nur die Sprache ist, an deren Faden die Menschen ihre Erkenntnisse spinnen, daß die Menschen, indem sie denken, eigentlich nicht wirkliche Begriffe haben, sondern die Überlieferung der Worte, und daß sie bei den Worten gewissermaßen Hinweise haben auf dies oder jenes. Mauthner glaubt, daß die Menschen bei den Worten ein gewisses inneres Erlebnis haben, wortgläubig werden, ihre Worte gewissermaßen zusammenwürfeln, zusammensetzen, und sich Erkenntnisse verschaffen durch dieses Würfeln der Worte. Das ist eine vollständige Verkennung des ganzen Erkenntnisprozesses, aber etwas, was ganz notwendig einmal herauskommen mußte in einem Zeitalter, das so wie das unsere zu der ärgsten Konsequenz des Materialismus sich hindurcharbeitet.

Wodurch Fritz Mauthner zu einer solchen Ansicht kommt, davon möchte ich Ihnen heute eigentlich nur ein Gefühl geben, das ich dadurch hervorrufen will, daß ich Ihnen eine Stelle vorlese aus Fritz Mauthners «Wörterbuch der Philosophie», das er später geschrieben hat als seine «Kritik der Sprache», und zwar eine Stelle aus der Abhandlung über das Wort «Zufall» ; denn wir werden ja gerade über «Zufall, Notwendigkeit und Vorsehung» zu sprechen haben. Sie können an der Stelle, die ich Ihnen vorlese, sehen, wie das Zeitalter des Materialismus über gewisse Dinge allmählich, ich möchte sagen, sprechen gelernt hat. Ich möchte, indem ich diese Stelle zunächst vorlese, in Ihnen weniger irgendein Theoretisches nach der einen oder anderen Seite anschlagen, sondern ich möchte, daß Sie Ihr Fühlen, Ihr Empfinden fragen, wie eben so etwas sich erleben läßt, was ein matetialistischer Philosoph der Gegenwart in einem solchen Zusammenhange sagt. Ich möchte, daß Sie sich ein Gefühl verschaffen von der Art, wie er spricht. Er sagt in dem Artikel «Zufall» : «Und es hieße wahrhaftig zum Kinde werden, das aus seinem Wunderknäuel die Überraschungen abwickelt, die ein gütiger Fabrikant hineingewickelt hat.» Er meint, wenn man so alles Zufällige ansieht, so hieße das zum Kinde werden, das wie aus einem Wunderknäuel die Überraschungen abwickelt, die ein gütiger Fabrikant hineingewickelt hat! «Wollte man nach Spinoza, Hume, Kant und Schopenhauer immer noch den lieben Gott bemühen... .», meint er. Wollte man die Welt so erklären, daß man dabei den lieben Gott bemüht, so gliche man heute dem Kinde, das von einem Wunderknäuel so nach und nach abwickelt dasjenige, was ein gütiger Fabrikant ihm in denselben hineingewoben hat. Es wickelt ab; da kommt ein Schönes nach dem anderen heraus. So also kommt einem, meint Mauthner, derjenige vor, der den lieben Gott bemüht, indem er ihn der Welt zugrunde legt, um die Welterscheinungen weisheitsvoll zu erklären. Und er redet in folgender Weise: «Wollte man nach Spinoza, Hume, Kant und Schopenhauer den lieben Gott bemühen, Schopenhauers alten Juden» - also, er nennt den lieben Gott «Schopenhauers alten Juden», weil schon die Bezeichnung «Gott der Christen» ihm unrichtig erscheint - «um diese Verwirrung von Zufall und Zweck zu entwirren.»

Sie sehen, in welche Sprache der Materialist allmählich verfällt, wenn er sich ernst nimmt. Es ist ja gewiß, daß sehr viele den Materialismus, der immer zugleich Atheismus sein muß, nicht viel ernster nehmen als derjenige, der gesagt hat: So wahr ein Gott im Himmel ist, bin ich ein Atheist! — Aber diejenigen, die ernst nehmen den Atheismus, die müssen zu gleicher Zeit alles dasjenige, was eine Vorsehung oder dergleichen bemüht, eigentlich heute schon verspotten. Denn es gibt kaum eine andere Möglichkeit, wenn man auf dem Boden des Materialismus steht.

Nun möchte ich Ihnen den Fritz Mauthner aus dem Grunde vorführen, weil er, trotzdem er unsere Empfindungen, unsere Gefühle in der tiefsten Weise verletzen muß, doch im heutigen materialistischen Sinne ein ehrlicher, aufrichtiger Wahrheitssucher ist, weil das alles, was er da macht, ehrlich ist. Ich will also nicht irgendeinen bekämpfen, der von Amts wegen philosophiert oder dergleichen, sondern einen, der wenigstens das Philosophieren innerlich zu seinem Beruf gemacht hat aus einem ganz anderen äußeren Beruf heraus, und der sich auch eine gewisse Gelehrsamkeit angeeignet hat. Denn dasjenige, was man heute so sehr vermißt, wenn Weltanschauungen aufgebaut werden, das ist ja der Ernst, der darin bestehen würde, sich wirklich zu vertiefen in die Leistungen, die die verschiedenen Wissenschaften bis zur Gegenwart herauf zustande gebracht haben. Dieser Fritz Mauthner ist wirklich ein gelehrter Herr geworden, so daß ich imstande bin, indem ich von ihm ausgehe, indem ich Ihnen die Schwierigkeiten des Wahrheitssuchens darlegen werde, immerhin zu fußen auf dem Gedankengange eines sehr gelehrten und sehr gescheiten Menschen. Also, ich möchte nicht jeden Beliebigen aufrufen, sondern einen sehr gelehrten und sehr gescheiten Menschen.

Ich muß nun, indem ich Ihnen gerade an einem sehr bestimmten Falle bei Fritz Mauthner zeige, wie schwer sozusagen das Wahrheitssuchen ist, von einem einfachen Begriffe ausgehen. Sie wissen ja alle, daß es jetzt schon seit langer Zeit dasjenige gibt, was man die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung nennt. Man kann in ganz einfacher Weise begreifen, welches Prinzip die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung verfolgt. Nehmen Sie zum Beispiel an, Sie haben einen Würfel. Ich will gewiß niemand zum Würfelspiel verleiten, aber nehmen Sie an, Sie haben einen Würfel. Sie wissen: ein Würfel ist so angeordnet, daß auf einer Seite ein Auge steht, auf der anderen Seite zwei Augen stehen und so weiter bis zu sechs Augen, denn der Würfel hat sechs Seiten. Nun, wenn man einen solchen Würfel nimmt und mit ihm würfelt, so kann er zunächst jede Seite zeigen. Sechs Fälle sind also möglich. Man kann nun die Frage aufwerfen: Wie groß ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß eine bestimmte Seite, sagen wir also die Sechs, fällt? Man kann diese Frage wirklich aufwerfen: Wie groß ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß gerade eine Sechs fällt, wenn ich einen Würfelbecher umkehre und den Würfel hinwerfe? — Nun rechnet der Mathematiker so und sagt: Sechs Fälle sind möglich. Daß auf einem hingeworfenen Würfel eine Sechs fällt, davon ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit ein Sechstel. — Sie sehen, um wieviel kleiner die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist als eine Gewißheit. Damit irgendein Ereignis gewiß sein würde, da müßten sechs Fälle möglich sein, sechs Fälle wirklich werden können; da müßten der Zähler und der Nenner gleich sein. Die Gewißheit würde gleich sein der Eins (6/6 = 1). Also sechsmal kleiner ist bei einem bloß hingeworfenen Würfel die Wahrscheinlichkeit als die Gewißheit. — Man kann nun weiter fragen: Wenn ich aber zwei Würfel habe in dem Würfelbecher, wie groß ist denn dann die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß, indem ich die zwei Würfel hinwerfe, zwei Sechs geworfen werden? Diese Wahrscheinlichkeit kann man auch ausrechnen. Sie ist 1 gebrochen durch 36 (durch 6 x 6). Die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist also 1/36, weil nämlich 36 Fälle möglich sind. Diese 36 Fälle bekommen Sie heraus, wenn Sie so denken: Mit einem Würfel kann eine 1 geworfen werden, mit einer 1 des anderen Würfels zusammen, mit einer 2, 3, 4, 5 oder 6 zusammen, das gibt schon sechs Möglichkeiten. Jetzt kann die zweite Seite des Würfels mit der 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 zusammen geworfen werden und so weiter; dann bekommen Sie 36 mögliche Würfe heraus. Daß Sie gerade einen bestimmten herauskriegen, davon ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit 1/36. Würden Sie die Wahrscheinlichkeit ausrechnen wollen, mit drei Würfeln drei Sechs zu werfen, dann würden Sie diese Wahrscheinlichkeit so bekommen: l/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/216. Das ist also schon eine sehr kleine Wahrscheinlichkeit. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit wird immer geringer, je mehr Fälle möglich sind; daß ein Fall wirklich wird, das ist um so unwahrscheinlicher, je mehr Fälle möglich sind.

Sie sehen also, daß es möglich ist, in einer gewissen Weise mathematisch formelhaft auszudrücken, wie groß die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist, daß irgendein Ereignis eintritt. Man kann nun das auf alles mögliche anwenden. Ich brauche Ihnen aber nicht mehr als dieses Prinzip hier zu erklären; Sie sehen, daß man in mathematischen Formeln ausdrücken kann, was man fühlt. Fühlen kann man immer, daß es in einem gewissen Grade unwahrscheinlich ist, daß da eine Sechs geworfen wird, aber die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist 1/6, und mit zwei Würfeln ist sie 1/38 und so weiter. Also man kann gewissermaßen solche Gefühle, solche Empfindungen mathematisch ausdrücken.

Nun gibt es einen gewissen Gedankengang, der sich bezieht auf die göttliche Vorsehung. Die Materialisten sagen nämlich etwa das Folgende: Wir wollen den Gedankengang der Gottgläubigen, der Vorsehungsgläubigen einmal vor uns hinstellen. Wie ist der Gedankengang der Vorsehungsgläubigen? Der ist mit Bezug auf die Vorsehung der Welt manchmal der folgende. Die Vorsehungsgläubigen sagen: Nehmen wir etwa den Goetheschen «Faust» oder auch Homers Dichtungen, darauf kommt es nicht an. Der Goethesche «Faust» — was ist er denn zuletzt? -— Wenn man nach Art der Materialisten denkt, die die Welt aus Atomen oder Molekülen zusammensetzen, so müßte man eigentlich den ganzen «Faust» zusammengesetzt denken aus Buchstaben, wenn man nicht weiter gehen wollte, aus einzelnen Buchstaben. Nun formulieren solche Leute, die vorsehungsgläubig sind, und die dennoch an Atome und Moleküle glauben, etwa so: Nehmen wir einmal den ganzen «Faust», der besteht aus Buchstaben. Nun denke man sich, man hätte in einem Setzerkasten darinnen alle die Buchstaben, aus denen der ganze «Faust» besteht. Und durch irgendeine Maschinerie — nicht durch irgendeine Weisheit -— würden diese Buchstaben hingeworfen. Da fragt nun der Vorsehungsgläubige: Wenn man diese Buchstaben hinwürfe und eine Maschinerie da wäre, die diese Buchstaben so, wie sie hingefallen sind, nebeneinandersetzte, wie groß ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß da gerade der Goethesche «Faust» zum Vorschein käme? - So fragen sie. Diese Wahrscheinlichkeit ist doch eine wirklich verschwindend geringe, sagen sie. Man kann nicht annehmen, daß, wenn die Buchstaben so beliebig hingeworfen würden, durch irgendeinen Zufall - sehen Sie, da haben wir «seine Majestät den Zufall », wie Voltaire sagt - der Goethesche«Faust» sich auf diese Weise aufzeichnete. Also da das bei Goethes «Faust» nicht der Fall ist, die Welt aber denn doch viel, viel herrlicher zusammengefügt ist, so kann man nicht denken, daß diese Welt ohne Weisheit einfach so hingeworfen wäre. Also muß es eine Vorsehung geben.

Das wäre etwa der Gedankengang eines zugleich mit dem Atomismus der Gegenwart lebenden Menschen, der aber doch gerade wegen der Unmöglichkeit, daß aus einem beliebigen Chaos des Raumes sich selbst die Welt zusammengewürfelt haben sollte, auf die Notwendigkeit einer Vorsehung schließt.

Fritz Mauthner ist nun ein gründlicher Herr, und er hat sich sogar darauf eingelassen, nun nicht bloß den Gedankengang so einfach hinzustellen, sondern richtig zu berechnen, wie unwahrscheinlich es ist, daß zum Beispiel der Goethesche «Faust» auf diese Weise durch ein einfaches Hinwerfen der Buchstaben, die in ihm vorkommen, entstanden wäre. Er hat also die Rechnung wirklich angestellt, und das möchte ich Ihnen also vorführen. Er ist hier wirklich mit einer gewissen Gründlichkeit vorgegangen. Fritz Mauthner sagt: «Das Dasein Gottes soll daraus bewiesen werden, daß die Schönheit und Ordnung der Welt ohne absichtsvollen Schöpfer, durch reinen Zufall also ebenso höchst unwahrscheinlich sei, wie die Herstellung der FaustDichtung etwa dadurch, daß ein ungeheurer Setzerkasten umgeworfen würde und die Lettern und andere Satzzeichen sich zufällig in der Reihenfolge von Goethes «Faust» geordnet hätten. Die Unwahrscheinlichkeit für eine solche Herstellung des «Faust: ist wirklich ungeheuer groß. Größer, als die Phantasie sich vorstellen kann. Auch wenn man die übertolle Annahme, die Lettern könnten sich im Raume auch noch zu Zeilen ordnen, beiseite läßt und an die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines unendlich günstiger liegenden Extrazufalles denkt. So etwa: eine deutsche Schreibmaschine oder Setzmaschine gelangt in die Hände eines Chinesen, der von der deutschen Sprache und von deutschen Buchstaben keine Ahnung hat, der aber unverdrossen auf den Tasten herumtippt, wochenlang oder monatelang, und die Maschine auch sonst richtig bedient» —, daß der also durch dieses bloße Herumtippen den Goetheschen «Faust» zusammenbringt! Mauthner fährt fort: «Ich habe mir nun den Spaß gemacht, die Wahrscheinlichkeit für den Zufall näherungsweise zu berechnen, daß bei diesem blinden Herumtippen just Goethes « Faust) herauskomme. Auf einige Dezimalstellen in der Mantisse des Logarithmus kommt es nicht an. Auch habe ich großmütig die Wahrscheinlichkeit dadurch erhöht, daß ich einen «Faust» mit 100 Druckfehlern noch als «Faust» anerkannte, also überaus zahlreiche günstige Fälle anstatt eines einzigen theoretisch geforderten annahm. Zum «Faust» sind etwa 300 000 Buchstaben nötig. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit nun, bei jedesmaligem Tippen gerade den richtigen Buchstaben zufällig zu treffen, ist nicht ganz klein, fast 1/1oo, weil gegen 100 verschiedene Zeichen im ganzen vorhanden sind.» Also man kann hundert Zeichen greifen. Wenn man blind hintappt, so ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß man eines richtig greift, 1/100 nach dem Prinzip, das ich Ihnen vorher bei dem Würfel vorgeführt habe. Demnach ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß dieser Chinese, der von der «Faust» -Sprache keine Ahnung hat, einmal richtig hintappt, 1/100. «Da aber nach elementaren Regeln die Wahrscheinlichkeit, so zufällig den ganzen «Faust» herzustellen, bei 300000 Buchstaben gleich ist dem Produkte von 300 000 Partial-Wahrscheinlichkeiten, so berechnet sich die Wahrscheinlichkeit einer zufälligen Entstehung des «Faust» 1:100 300000.»

Sie sehen, die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß der «Faust» auf diese Weise hervorgeht, ist nicht 1/6 oder 1/36 und so weiter, sondern sie ist gleich dem Bruch, der entsteht, wenn ich 1 dividiere durch 100 mal 100 mal 100 und so weiter, und das 300000mal mache; das ist ein Bruch mit einem, wie Sie sich vorstellen können, riesigen Nenner; das heißt, diese Wahrscheinlichkeit ist eine ungeheuer winzige. Mauthner sagt weiter: «Das ist auf einen Bruch, dessen Zähler 1 ist, dessen Nenner eine ganze Zahl von 600 000 Ziffern. Auch die Einbildungskraft der Inder» — die Mauthner für sehr groß hält -, «auch das mathematische Genie des Archimedes könnte diesen Nenner nicht fassen. Seine Zahl ist namenlos. Also waren die Griechen und Römer im Recht, wenn sie die zufällige Herstellung eines wohlgeordneten Ganzen für äußerst unwahrscheinlich erklärten. Die Grenze der Unmöglichkeit ist erreicht.» Aber nur für das menschliche Vorstellen — meint er. Man kann sich das nicht vorstellen, daß der «Faust» auf diese Weise entstände. «Und die Griechen und Römer hätten auch den Schluß, daß also die sinnreiche Herstellung des «Faust» durch einen Schöpfer höchstwahrscheinlich oder so gut wie gewiß sei, mit dem gleichen Rechte auf die Existenz eines Weltschöpfers übertragen können, wenn nur diese Übertragung oder Metapher, wenn nur die ganze Fragestellung nicht so unsäglich albern wäre. Nichts liegt mir ja ferner als der Glaube an die zufällige Entstehung auch nur des Wunderbaues einer Mücke im Sinne des Materialismus. Durch materiellen Zufall ist die Entstehung einer Mücke ebenso unwahrscheinlich, wie die des «Faust». Der Darwinismus hat an den Unbegreiflichkeiten wirklich nicht viel geändert. Aber die Kopfarbeit des lieben Gottes, der nicht dreimal hunderttausend Elemente oder Buchstaben (mit Wiederholungen), sondern die Elemente der Welt unendlich mal (mit Wiederholungen) zu ordnen gehabt hätte, ist für Menschenvorstellung — wir haben wirklich keine andere — doch womöglich noch unwahrscheinlicher als eine zufällige Entstehung des «Faust». Ich mag meine Rechnerei nicht auf den Grad der Unwahrscheinlichkeit einer Weltregierung und einer Vorsehung ausdehnen.»

Sie sehen, man kann eine ungeheuer gelehrte Betrachtung anstellen - Sie werden doch wohl die Betrachtung hinreichend genug gelehrt gefunden haben -, die zu dem logischen Schluß führt: Was müßte der liebe Gott alles im Kopfe haben, wenn er aus all den Elementen der Welt nun die Welt zusammensetzen wollte; denn schon aus einem Setzerkasten oder einer Schreibmaschine durch Zufall etwa den «Faust» zu machen, würde zu einer solchen Unwahtscheinlichkeit führen, die geradezu an eine Unmöglichkeit grenzt. So, sagt also Mauthner, ist sowohl der Begriff des Zufalls, wie auch der Begriff der göttlichen Vorsehung unmöglich, denn man kann bei einer Welt erst recht nicht annehmen, daß diese aus einem großen Setzerkasten zufällig wohlgeordnet herausfällt, wenn beim «Faust» schon die Wahrscheinlichkeit so klein ist; aber einen Gott kann man ebensowenig annehmen, denn was müßte in dem Gott für eine Weisheit sein, wenn er nun aus all den Elementen der Welt die Welt zusammenzusetzen hätte!

Man kann also weder einen Gott, noch «seine Majestät, den Zufall» annehmen. Deshalb will Mauthner, daß das alles ungültig ist, daß das alles nur Sprachbegriffe sind, mit denen sich die Menschen eben wie mit Sprachen, wie mit Übersetzungen betätigen. «Kritik der Sprache» nennt er das!

Wir haben also — daran wollen wir festhalten - einen wirklich scharfsinnigen Gedankengang, der mit sehr viel Mühe vollzogen ist, der nun dazu führt, daß die Alternative aufgeworfen wird: Entweder müßte man annehmen, die Welt wäre durch Zufall entstanden — diese Wahrscheinlichkeit ist natürlich unendlich klein -, oder man müßte daran denken, daß ein «Lieber Gott» alle diese Weisheiten einmal im Kopf gehabt hat, um aus dem Chaos heraus weisheitsvoll die Welt zu bilden; das ist noch weniger anzunehmen.

Versuchen wir jetzt, die wir in der Geisteswissenschaft nicht bloß danach streben, dies oder jenes zu erkennen, sondern auch richtig zu denken, das heißt, überall die Faktoren in Betracht zu ziehen, die zu einem richtigen Gedankengang führen können, entsprechend dem Ernste der Geisteswissenschaft uns mit diesem Gedankengang auseinanderzusetzen. Nehmen wir den Satz noch einmal auf: Die Wahruscheinlichkeit, daß zufällig aus einem Setzerkasten heraus der Goethesche «Faust» entstehe, ist so klein, daß sie sich als 1 gebrochen durch eine Zahl von 600 000 Ziffern darstellt. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß die Welt durch einen solchen Urzufall entstanden ist, wäre selbstverständlich unsäglichmal kleiner. Aber der ganze «Faust» ist doch entstanden! Ist er denn auf die Weise entstanden, daß Goethe — sagen wir jetzt statt «der liebe Gott» «der liebe Goethe» - in seinem Kopfe die Gesetze gehabt hat, die aus dem Setzerkasten heraus nach den Prinzipien des Setzens die 300 000 Buchstaben zusammenordneten, so daß sie nun soldatenmäßig, reihenweise den «Faust» bildeten? Hat er denn an die Gesetze gedacht, wie man da hineingreifen muß, daß man die richtigen Buchstaben findet? - Nein! Wenn wir an die Entstehung der Goetheschen «Faust» denken, so hat die gar nichts zu tun mit dem Zusammenwürfeln! Der tut etwas ganz anderes, der den Goetheschen «Faust» entstehen läßt! Der käme gar nicht dazu, daran zu denken, daß sich aus 300000 Buchstaben der «Faust» zusammenwürfelt! Goethe brauchte nicht im entferntesten irgend etwas zu wissen, wie sich aus 300000 Buchstaben zusammenwürfeln ließe der «Faust», und er machte ihn doch! So könnten und müßten wir uns einerseits das Chaos denken, in dem meinetwillen die Dinge in wilder Weise durcheinandergewürfelt sind, und andererseits, daß der liebe Gott im Kopf all die verschiedenen Gesetze hätte, wenn er die Welt in der Weise zusammenwürfeln würde, wie Goethe den «Faust» zusammengewürfelt hätte, wenn er sich vor den Setzerkasten gestellt hätte! Aber der liebe Gott machte das ja ebensowenig, wie Goethe seinen «Faust» eben nicht zusammengewürfelt hat. Es hat das, was wir uns in der Seele des Gottes zu denken haben, gar nichts zu tun mit dem ganzen Gedankengang vom Zusammenwürfeln, ebensowenig wie die Entstehung von Goethes «Faust» etwas zu tun hat mit dieser ganzen ungeheuer gelehrt gedachten Art des Zusammenwürfelns. Das heißt: Dieser ganze Gedankengang führt auf eine absolute Unmöglichkeit! Er ist geistvoll, er ist richtig, er ist gewissenhaft, alles das ist er, aber er führt auf eine Unmöglichkeit! Das beruht darauf, daß hier ein gewissenhafter Mensch einen Gedankengang aufnimmt, ihn weiterspinnt, aber während des Gedankenganges verliert er die realen Faktoren, die ihn zu einem wirklichen, richtigen Ende kommen ließen.

Die Sache ist viel wichtiger, als man zunächst denken mag, denn sie zeigt uns eben, daß es außerordentlich schwierig ist zuweilen, selbst wenn man noch so wissenschaftlich arbeitet, während eines Gedankenganges nicht die Möglichkeit zu verlieren, richtig zu denken. Und das müssen wir in unsere Empfindungen, in unsere Gefühle aufnehmen. Wir müssen wirklich gerade an einer solchen Sache viel, viel lernen. Zweierlei ist für uns notwendig, wenn wir uns eine solche Sache vor die Seele führen. Das eine ist, daß wir an solch eklatantem Beispiel uns erziehen zu einem Wissen davon, daß Wahrheitssuchen schwierig ist, und daß der Mensch wirklich sehr, sehr nötig hat, sich ein Gefühl davon zu verschaffen, daß nicht jeder beliebige Gedankengang, der uns auf den ersten Anhieb noch so richtig erscheint, auch wirklich schon ein wahrer Gedankengang ist. Je mehr wir uns durchdringen können damit, daß wir die Empfindung haben: Wir können irren, wir können bei der größten Gewissenhaftigkeit irren, desto mehr werden wir abkommen von dem heute so vielfach verbreiteten Prinzip des Sich-Versteifens auf seine eigene Meinung, des, ich möchte sagen, starrköpfigen Festhaltens des einen oder des anderen, das wir als richtig angesehen haben. Heute trifft man ja nichts öfter als den Fall, daß Menschen auftreten, die sagen: Dies und dies halte ich für richtig! — Und das ausschlaggebende Gefühl, das man oftmals gegenüber solchen Menschen hat, ist das: Wie glücklich und wie einfältig ist der Mensch zugleich! Glücklich, weil er gar keine Ahnung davon hat, was es heißt, an irgend etwas, was man sich ausgedacht hat, zu glauben; und wie einfältig, weil er keine Ahnung davon hat, wie weit abstehend dabei etwas von der wahren Wirklichkeit sein kann. Auf der anderen Seite muß es uns aber klar sein, daß diese Erkenntnis uns nicht deprimieren darf. Ganz bescheiden wird uns diese Erkenntnis machen; aber sie wird uns auch nicht zur Melancholie treiben, etwa zu einer Verzweiflung an dem Menschenleben, weil doch die Erkenntnis der Wahrheit so schwierig ist. Denn wir wissen, daß dieses Leben der menschlichen Seele ein unendliches ist, und daß dieses Leben der menschlichen Seele ein Suchen sein muß, daß es daher sogar einer guten, weisen Einrichtung entsprechen könnte, daß das Wahrheitssuchen schwierig ist. Und wir werden sehen, daß darauf das Leben beruht. Der Tod würde sogleich da sein für unsere Seele, wenn das Wahrheitssuchen leicht wäre, wenn es wirklich so wäre, wie viele Menschen glauben, daß man die Wahrheit leicht finden könnte; wenn es so wäre, wie manche Menschen glauben, die da herkommen und sagen: Ich habe jetzt erkannt, man muß das Leben so und so einrichten, dann kann die ganze Welt beglückt werden! Wenn das so wäre, daß man in bezug auf die Differenziertheit der ganzen Welt so leicht die Wahrheit finden könnte, wie die meisten Menschen glauben, dann würde das der Tod der Seele sein; denn das Leben der Seele beruht eben darauf, daß man nicht in solcher Totalität die Wahrheit finden kann, sondern daß man die Wahrheit langsam suchen muß und daß man höchst bescheiden bleiben muß beim langsamen, stückweisen Verfolgen des Wahren. Der Irrtum ist um so mehr möglich, je umfassender die Wahrheiten sein sollen, die wir suchen. Daher ist natürlich hier einem der gelehrtesten Herren, ich möchte sagen, ein kindlicher Irrtum unterlaufen, den ich Ihnen ja gezeigt habe, indem das Weltproblem geradezu auf Zufall und Vorsehung hin gedeutet werden sollte.

Aber die Depression, das Bestürztsein darüber, daß man die Wahrheit nur so schwierig finden kann, kann uns nicht ergreifen, wenn wir bedenken, daß das Leben darin besteht, daß wir die Wahrheit suchen müssen. Im Suchen liegt dasjenige, um was es sich handelt. Man könnte sagen: Wenn der Tod der Seele eintreten würde, weil die Wahrheit nicht zu suchen wäre, da müßte er ja jetzt wirklich eintreten; denn jetzt sind wir in bezug auf das mangelnde Gefühl des wirklichen Wahrheitssuchens wirklich in der Menschheitsentwickelung auf einem Höhepunkt. Niemals hat es mehr «Programm-Menschen» gegeben, mehr Menschen, welche glauben, mit ein paar Worten das ganze Welträtsel gelöst zu haben, als in unserer Zeit. Also es gibt schon gerade heute die Anschauungsweise, von der gesagt werden kann, daß sie den seelischen Tod bedeutet. Sie würde den seelischen Tod bedeuten, wenn das richtig wäre, was diese Programm-Menschen alle finden. Aber sie ist eben falsch; sie ist glücklicherweise falsch!

So ein Mann wie Fritz Mauthner -— und es sind viele, die heute in seinem Sinne denken - denkt viel typischer, als man glauben könnte. Im Sinne der heutigen Anschauungsweise sind die Bände des «Philosophischen Wörterbuches» mustergültig. Sie geben wirklich die Sache so, wie eben die meisten heute denken, die von dem heutigen Denken nicht abkommen wollen, etwa in der Richtung, wie die Geisteswissenschaft davon abkommen will. Solche Leute wie Fritz Mauthner sagen: Wir bekommen nach der einen Seite die unmögliche Idee heraus, daß durch Zufall die Welt entstanden ist —, denn dies hat eine so geringe Wahtrscheinlichkeit, wie ich Ihnen angedeutet habe. Aber der andere Begriff, der Begriff eines allweisen Gottes, ist ebenso unmöglich; denn das ist für unsere Menschenköpfe unmöglich zu fassen, daß es einen Gott gibt, einen lieben Gott, der nun dies alles in seinem Kopfe bildet, was er braucht, um aus dem Chaos heraus die einzelnen Buchstaben der Welt zusammenzufügen. Früher, meint Fritz Mauthner, waren die Menschen so, daß sie mit Begriffen wie «Zufall» und «Vorsehung» gewirtschaftet haben. Aber wir, meint er, sind nun über diese Dinge hinaus, denn wir wissen ja heute, daß solche Begriffe wie «Zufall» und «Vorsehung» überhaupt keine Weltbedeutung, keine objektive Bedeutung haben, sondern nur Begriffe des menschlichen Kopfes sind, nur für den Menschen eine Bedeutung haben. Darin wird gerade die Kritik gesehen, daß man solche Begriffe nicht mehr auf die Welt anwendet. Diese Leute sagen immer: Seht, früher waren die Menschen so kindisch; sie haben auf der einen Seite von «göttlicher Vorsehung», auf der anderen Seite von dem Begriff «Zufall» gesprochen. Sowohl den Begriff des Zufalls wie den Begriff einer göttlichen Vorsehung müssen wir als nur im menschlichen Denken liegend, als auf die Welt gar nicht anwendbar, annehmen! — Auf welchem Boden stehen denn diese Kritiker? Sie sagen: Wenn wir die ganze philosophische Entwickelung, diese ganze philosophische Art, die viele Philosophen getrieben haben, überschauen - und Mauthner hat sich wirklich fest hingesetzt und die Philosophen der Welt studiert, er kennt sie alle, soweit man sie kennen kann in einem Menschenleben -, so sehen wir, wie sie sich bemüht haben, Begriffe zu finden. Aber das sind alles nur Menschenbegriffe, die nicht anwendbar sind auf die Wirklichkeit! Dem Begriff von göttlicher Vorsehung entspricht keine Wirklichkeit. Und so schließt denn der Artikel «Zufall» damit, daß er etwa sagt: Früher hat man göttliche Vorsehung, Weltordnung, Weltharmonie, Weltschönheit als Begriffe angesehen, die man etwa so aufgefaßt hat: Es gibt etwas Zufälliges in der Welt -; aber die Welt zeigt eine Ordnung, die Welt zeigt auch eine Schönheit. Und Mauthner schließt den Artikel «Zufall» : «Wir aber wissen, daß der Zufallsbegriff Menschenwerk ist. Menschenwerk auch der Schönheitsbegriff und der Ordnungsbegriff. Menschenwerk der Gottesbegriff. Menschenwerk der Ursachbegriff.» Das heißt: Wir wissen alle, daß diese wichtigen Begriffe Menschenwerk sind, keine objektive Bedeutung haben. «Da ist es für uns der Gipfel wortabergläubischer Menschlichkeit, die Frage auch nur zu stellen und sie nun gar durch ein kindisches Gleichnis beantworten zu wollen: ob der Zufall oder Gott die Ursache der Weltordnung und der Weltschönheit sei.»

Was hat denn Fritz Mauthner getan, um zu dieser Erkenntnis zu kommen, daß der Gottesbegriff Menschenwerk, der Zufallsbegriff Menschenwerk, der Ordnungsbegriff Menschenwerk sei, so daß weder die Ordnung draußen existiert, sondern nur der Mensch sich die Vorstellung macht, es existiere eine Ordnung, es existiere eine Schönheit und so weiter? Was hat er denn gemacht, der Fritz Mauthner und die anderen Philosophendenker, die zu dieser Erkenntnis gekommen sind? Sie haben wirklich - Sie brauchen mir das nicht zu glauben — mit allem möglichen philosophischen Scharfsinn nachgewiesen, wie weise der Menschenverstand arbeitet, um zu diesen Begriffen zu kommen, und wie diese Begriffe wirklich Menschenwerk sind; das haben sie nachgewiesen! Also, das ist bewiesen, was er da sagt: «Wir aber wissen...», und so weiter. Das ist bewiesen! Wenn man aber zusieht, wie es bewiesen ist, dann sagt man: Ja, du hast wirklich Recht, mein lieber Fritz Mauthner. Wir aber wissen, daß der Zufallsbegriff Menschenwerk ist; Menschenwerk auch der Schönheitsbegriff, Menschenwerk auch der Gottesbegriff, der Zufallsbegriff, der Maikäferbegriff! So nämlich steht die Sache, sobald wir sie ins richtige Licht rücken! Wenn Sie all den großen Scharfsinn, es ist wirklich ein ungeheurer Scharfsinn, nun durchnehmen würden - Sie hätten viele Jahre damit zu tun, wenn Sie alles studieren wollten -, der aufgewendet worden ist, um nachzuweisen, daß der Gottesbegriff Menschenwerk, der Ursachenbegriff, der Zufallsbegriff Menschenwerk, der Schönheitsbegriff Menschenwerk ist, so liegen darin Gedankengänge, die ganz und gar auch anwendbar sind auf die Behauptung: der Maikäferbegriff ist Menschenwerk. - Gewiß, der Maikäferbegriff ist Menschenwerk, aber entscheidet denn dies darüber etwas, daß der Maikäfer auch draußen fliegt, daß er auch real ist? Der Maikäferbegriff ist Menschenwerk - hier liegt die Kindlichkeit! Man kann ungeheuer scharfsinnig zu Werke gehen und glauben, etwas ungeheuer richtig zu finden, und der Faden ist einem verlorengegangen, an dem die Dinge sich aufhängen, die zu dem Richtigen führen. Alle die Beweise, die geführt worden sind dafür, daß diese Begriffe Menschenwerk sind, die entscheiden nämlich nichts darüber, ob dem Begriff eine Objektivität entspricht, geradesowenig wie der Maikäferbegriff als Menschenwerk etwas darüber entscheidet, daß der Maikäfer objektiv ist, das heißt, draußen fliegt.

Sie sehen, die moderne naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise gibt eine ungeheure Sicherheit. Und man kann sagen, daß dies in dem Satze zum Ausdruck kommt: «Wir aber wissen, daß der Zufallsbegriff Menschenwerk ist. Menschenwerk auch der Schönheitsbegriff und der Ordnungsbegriff. Menschenwerk auch der Gottesbegriff. Menschenwerk der Ursachbegriff. Da ist es für uns der Gipfel wortabergläubischer Menschlichkeit, die Frage auch nur zu stellen, ob der Zufall oder Gott die Ursache der Weltordnung und Weltschönheit sei.»

O ja - muß man sagen -, du glaubst, weil du beweisen kannst, daß der Maikäferbegriff Menschenwerk ist, es sei eine Kindlichkeit, eine Wortabergläubigkeit, den Maikäferbegriff jetzt auf etwas anzuwenden, was draußen fliegt? Das ist dasselbe, ganz dasselbe! Nur merkt man es nicht, daß es ganz dasselbe ist.

Was kann man denn durch alle diese Dinge wollen? Das will man durch alle diese Dinge: darauf aufmerksam machen, wie man schwierig zur Wahrheit kommen kann, wenn diese Wahrheit gesucht werden soll nach dem Faden logischer Begriffe, die man aneinanderreiht; darauf aufmerksam zu machen, was alles passieren kann, wenn man mit noch so großem Scharfsinn die Wahrheit sucht, und wie man sich ganz durchdringen muß von dem Gefühl, daß Wahrheitssuchen schwierig ist, schwierig im Großen, schwierig im Kleinen. Und je mehr sich das, was ich versuchte heute anzudeuten, bei Ihnen in ein Gefühl verwandeit, desto besser wird es sein.

Wir wollen nun auf Grundlage dieser Voraussetzungen dann demnächst, an Hegels Geburtstag, am 27. August, von unserem geisteswissenschaftlichen Standpunkte über die Begriffe «Zufall, Vorsehung und Notwendigkeit» sprechen.

First Lecture

Today, it will be my task to speak about how difficult it is for human beings to maintain the thread of truth in ordinary human thinking. I would like to give you an idea of how difficult it is, when you continue a train of thought, to really take all the factors into account in such a way that the way you follow the train of thought does not stray from the truth, how easily the thread of truth slips away, as it were, when you continue a train of thought. Certainly, the kind of consideration I intend to engage in today will be one of the more difficult ones for us. But in a certain sense, it also has an inner moral value for us to be clear about the fact that finding the truth is difficult and that it is very easy to stray when one continues a thought in order to arrive at the truth through strict logical conclusions. You will see that what I have to say today will make it easier for us to understand certain things that we will discuss in the second lecture. I will then talk to you about the important concepts of chance, necessity, and providence. And today I would like to give an introduction which, although more difficult, will give us something that is not only important and meaningful in that it allows us to find our way into the theory, but also in that it gives us a sense of the nature of the search for truth.

I have often mentioned in connection with various topics that there is a philosopher of our time, Fritz Mauthner, who wrote a “Critique of Language.” This “Critique of Language” was intended to create something even more accurate for our time than what Kant had already created in his “Critique of Pure Reason.” For Fritz Mauthner believes—one could put it this way—that people no longer seek knowledge through concepts, but that it is basically only language that people use to spin their knowledge, that when people think, they do not actually have real concepts, but rather the tradition of words, and that words provide them with references to this or that. Mauthner believes that people have a certain inner experience with words, become literal, jumbled their words together, put them together, and gain knowledge through this jumbled use of words. This is a complete misunderstanding of the entire process of cognition, but it is something that was bound to come out in an age such as ours, which is working its way through the worst consequences of materialism.

I would like to give you an idea of how Fritz Mauthner arrived at this view by reading you a passage from Fritz Mauthner's “Dictionary of Philosophy,” which he wrote later than his “Critique of Language,” namely a passage from the treatise on the word “chance,” because we are about to talk about “chance, necessity, and providence.” In the passage I am going to read to you, you can see how the age of materialism has gradually, I would say, learned to talk about certain things. In reading this passage aloud, I do not wish to strike you with any theoretical argument in one direction or another, but rather I would like you to ask your feelings, your intuition, how something like this can be experienced, what a contemporary materialist philosopher says in such a context. I would like you to get a feel for the way he speaks. In the article “Chance,” he says: “And it would truly mean becoming a child who unwinds the surprises that a benevolent manufacturer has wrapped up in his ball of wonder.” He means that if you look at everything as chance, it would be like becoming a child who unwinds the surprises that a benevolent manufacturer has wrapped up in a ball of wonder! “If, after Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer, one still wanted to invoke the dear Lord...,” he says. If one wanted to explain the world in such a way that one invoked the dear Lord, one would be like a child who gradually unwinds a ball of wonder and finds what a kind manufacturer has woven into it. It unravels, and one beautiful thing after another emerges. This, according to Mauthner, is how those appear who invoke God by making him the basis of the world in order to explain the phenomena of the world wisely. And he speaks in the following manner: “If, according to Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer, one wanted to trouble the dear Lord, Schopenhauer's old Jew”—he calls the dear Lord “Schopenhauer's old Jew” because even the term “God of the Christians” seems incorrect to him—"to untangle this confusion of chance and purpose.”

You see the language the materialist gradually falls into when he takes himself seriously. It is certain that very many people do not take materialism, which must always be atheism, any more seriously than the man who said: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” But those who take atheism seriously must at the same time mock everything that strives for providence or the like, even today. For there is hardly any other possibility if one stands on the ground of materialism.

Now I would like to introduce Fritz Mauthner to you because, although he must hurt our feelings and emotions in the deepest way, he is nevertheless an honest, sincere seeker of truth in today's materialistic sense, because everything he does is honest. So I do not want to fight against someone who philosophizes by virtue of his office or the like, but against someone who has at least made philosophizing his inner vocation out of a completely different outer profession, and who has also acquired a certain erudition. For what is so sorely lacking today when worldviews are constructed is the seriousness that would consist in really delving into the achievements that the various sciences have brought about up to the present day. This Fritz Mauthner has truly become a learned gentleman, so that I am able, starting from him, to explain to you the difficulties of the search for truth, based on the train of thought of a very learned and very intelligent man. So, I do not want to call upon just anyone, but a very learned and very intelligent man.

I must now start from a simple concept, using a very specific example from Fritz Mauthner to show you how difficult the search for truth is, so to speak. You all know that what is known as probability theory has been around for a long time. It is very easy to understand the principle behind probability theory. Take, for example, a dice. I certainly don't want to tempt anyone into gambling, but suppose you have a dice. You know that a dice is designed so that one side shows one dot, the next side shows two dots, and so on up to six dots, because a dice has six sides. Now, if you take such a die and roll it, it can initially show any side. Six cases are therefore possible. You can now ask the question: What is the probability that a certain side, let's say six, will come up? You can really ask this question: What is the probability that a six will come up when I turn a dice cup upside down and throw the die? Now, mathematicians calculate this and say: Six cases are possible. The probability of a six coming up when a die is thrown is one sixth. You can see how much smaller the probability is than a certainty. For any event to be certain, six cases would have to be possible, six cases would have to be able to actually happen; the numerator and denominator would have to be equal. The certainty would be equal to one (6/6 = 1). So the probability is six times smaller than certainty when a die is simply thrown. — One can now ask further: But if I have two dice in the dice cup, how great is the probability that when I throw the two dice, two sixes will be thrown? This probability can also be calculated. It is 1 divided by 36 (by 6 x 6). The probability is therefore 1/36, because there are 36 possible cases. You get these 36 cases if you think about it like this: With one die, you can roll a 1, with a 1 from the other die, with a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, that already gives you six possibilities. Now the second side of the die can be thrown together with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on; this gives you 36 possible throws. The probability of getting a specific one is 1/36. If you wanted to calculate the probability of throwing three sixes with three dice, you would get this probability: 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/216. So that's already a very small probability. The probability becomes smaller and smaller the more cases are possible; the more cases are possible, the less likely it is that a case will actually occur.

So you see that it is possible to express mathematically, in a certain way, how great the probability is that an event will occur. This can now be applied to anything. But I don't need to explain more than this principle to you; you can see that you can express what you feel in mathematical formulas. You can always feel that it is unlikely to a certain degree that a six will be thrown, but the probability is 1/6, and with two dice it is 1/38, and so on. So, in a sense, you can express such feelings, such sensations, mathematically.

Now there is a certain line of thought that relates to divine providence. Materialists say something like the following: Let us consider the line of thought of those who believe in God, who believe in providence. What is the train of thought of those who believe in providence? With regard to the providence of the world, it is sometimes as follows. Those who believe in providence say: Let us take Goethe's Faust or Homer's poems, for example; it does not matter which. Goethe's Faust — what is it ultimately? — If one thinks in the manner of materialists, who believe that the world is composed of atoms or molecules, one would actually have to think of the whole of Faust as being composed of letters, if one did not want to go any further, of individual letters. Now, people who believe in providence and yet believe in atoms and molecules formulate it something like this: Let us take the whole of Faust, which consists of letters. Now imagine that you have all the letters that make up the whole of Faust in a typesetter's case. And by some kind of machinery — not by any kind of wisdom — these letters are thrown down. Now the believer in providence asks: If these letters were thrown down and there was a machine that placed them next to each other in the order in which they fell, how great is the probability that Goethe's Faust would emerge? That is what they ask. They say that the probability is truly negligible. One cannot assume that if the letters were thrown down at random, by some chance—see, there we have “His Majesty Chance,” as Voltaire says—Goethe's Faust would be written in this way. So since this is not the case with Goethe's Faust, but the world is nevertheless much, much more wonderfully put together, one cannot think that this world was simply thrown together without wisdom. So there must be providence.

That would be the train of thought of a person living in the age of atomism, who nevertheless concludes that providence is necessary precisely because it is impossible that the world could have thrown itself together out of arbitrary chaos in space.

Fritz Mauthner is a thorough gentleman, and he has even gone so far as to not merely present this line of thought in such a simple manner, but to calculate exactly how improbable it is that, for example, Goethe's “Faust” could have come into being in this way, simply by throwing together the letters that appear in it. So he has actually done the calculation, and I would like to show it to you. He has really proceeded with a certain thoroughness here. Fritz Mauthner says: “The existence of God is to be proven by the fact that the beauty and order of the world without an intentional creator, i.e., by pure chance, is just as highly improbable as the creation of Faust's poetry, for example, by an enormous typesetting case being knocked over and the letters and other punctuation marks accidentally arranging themselves in the order of Goethe's Faust. The improbability of such a creation of Faust is truly enormous. Greater than the imagination can conceive. Even if one leaves aside the far-fetched assumption that the letters could also arrange themselves into lines in space and considers the probability of an infinitely more favorable extra coincidence. For example: a German typewriter or typesetting machine falls into the hands of a Chinese person who has no idea about the German language or German letters, but who nevertheless types away undeterred for weeks or months, operating the machine correctly in all other respects—that this person, simply by typing away, produces Goethe's Faust! Mauthner continues: “I have now amused myself by calculating the approximate probability of this blind typing producing Goethe's Faust. A few decimal places in the mantissa of the logarithm are irrelevant. I have also generously increased the probability by accepting a “Faust” with 100 printing errors as “Faust,” thus assuming numerous favorable cases instead of a single one required by theory. About 300,000 letters are needed for “Faust.” The probability of hitting the right letter by chance every time you type is not entirely small, almost 1/100, because there are around 100 different characters in total.” So you can take a hundred characters. If you type blindly, the probability of hitting one correctly is 1/100, according to the principle I demonstrated to you earlier with the dice. Accordingly, the probability that this Chinese person, who has no idea about the language of “Faust,” will type it correctly once is 1/100. “But since, according to elementary rules, the probability of randomly producing the entire ”Faust” is equal to the product of 300,000 partial probabilities, the probability of the Faust being created by chance is calculated as 1:100,300,000."

You see, the probability that Faust will emerge in this way is not 1/6 or 1/36 and so on, but it is equal to the fraction that results when I divide 1 by 100 times 100 times 100 and so on, and do that 300,000 times; that is a fraction with, as you can imagine, huge denominator; that is, this probability is incredibly tiny. Mauthner goes on to say: “That is a fraction whose numerator is 1 and whose denominator is a whole number of 600,000 digits. Even the imagination of the Indians” — which Mauthner considers very great — “even the mathematical genius of Archimedes could not comprehend this denominator. Its number is nameless. So the Greeks and Romans were right when they declared the accidental creation of a well-ordered whole to be extremely unlikely. The limit of impossibility has been reached.” But only for the human imagination, he believes. It is impossible to imagine that ‘Faust’ could have come into being in this way. “And the Greeks and Romans could just as well have concluded that the ingenious creation of Faust by a creator was highly probable or virtually certain, and applied this conclusion to the existence of a creator of the world, if only this transfer or metaphor, if only the whole question were not so unspeakably silly. Nothing is further from my mind than the belief in the accidental creation of even the miraculous structure of a mosquito in the materialistic sense. The creation of a mosquito by material chance is just as unlikely as that of Faust. Darwinism has not really changed much in terms of incomprehensibility. But the mental effort required of the dear Lord, who would have had to arrange not three hundred thousand elements or letters (with repetitions), but the elements of the world an infinite number of times (with repetitions), is, for the human imagination—we really have no other—perhaps even more improbable than the accidental creation of “Faust.” I do not wish to extend my calculations to the degree of improbability of a world government and providence."

You see, one can make an enormously learned observation—you will surely have found the observation sufficiently learned—which leads to the logical conclusion: What would God have to have in his head if he wanted to compose the world from all the elements of the world; for even to create Faust by chance from a typesetter's case or a typewriter would lead to such improbability that it would border on impossibility. Thus, says Mauthner, both the concept of chance and the concept of divine providence are impossible, for one cannot assume that the world fell out of a large typeset box in a well-ordered manner by chance, when even in the case of Faust ; but one cannot assume a God either, for what wisdom would there be in God if he now had to compose the world from all the elements of the world!

One cannot therefore assume either a God or “His Majesty, Chance.” That is why Mauthner wants all of this to be invalid, that all of this is just linguistic concepts with which people engage just as they do with languages, as with translations. He calls this “criticism of language”!

So we have—let us hold on to this—a truly astute train of thought, which has been carried out with great effort and now leads to the following alternative: Either one must assume that the world came into being by chance—the probability of which is, of course, infinitesimally small—or one must believe that a “Dear God” once had all this wisdom in his head in order to wisely create the world out of chaos; which is even less likely.

Let us now try to grapple with this line of thought, we who in the humanities strive not only to recognize this or that, but also to think correctly, that is, to consider all the factors that can lead to a correct train of thought, in accordance with the seriousness of the humanities. Let us take up the sentence again: The probability that Goethe's Faust could have arisen by chance from a set of type is so small that it can be represented as 1 divided by 600,000 digits. The probability that the world came into being through such a primordial accident would, of course, be unspeakably smaller. But the whole of Faust did come into being! Did it come into being in such a way that Goethe—let us say “dear Goethe” instead of “the dear Lord”—had in his head the laws that arranged the 300,000 letters from the typeset according to the principles of typesetting, so that they now formed Faust in rows like soldiers? Did he think about the laws governing how one must intervene in order to find the right letters? No! When we think about the creation of Goethe's Faust, it has nothing to do with throwing things together! The person who creates Goethe's Faust does something completely different! He would never have thought of throwing together 300,000 letters to create Faust! Goethe did not need to know in the slightest how 300,000 letters could be thrown together to create Faust, and yet he did it! So, on the one hand, we could and must imagine the chaos in which, for my sake, things are wildly jumbled up, and on the other hand, that God has all the different laws in his head if he jumbled up the world in the way Goethe would have jumbled up Faust if he had stood in front of the typesetter's case! But God did not do that, just as Goethe did not throw together his Faust. What we have to imagine in the soul of God has nothing to do with the whole idea of throwing things together, just as the creation of Goethe's Faust has nothing to do with this whole enormously learned way of throwing things together. This means that this entire train of thought leads to an absolute impossibility! It is ingenious, it is correct, it is conscientious—it is all of these things, but it leads to an impossibility! This is because a conscientious person takes up a train of thought, spins it further, but in the course of the train of thought loses sight of the real factors that would have led it to a real, correct conclusion.

The matter is much more important than one might think at first, because it shows us that it is extremely difficult at times, even when working scientifically, not to lose the ability to think correctly during a train of thought. And we must take this into account in our perceptions and feelings. We really have a lot to learn from something like this. Two things are necessary for us when we consider something like this. The first is that we must use such a striking example to educate ourselves to the knowledge that the search for truth is difficult, and that human beings really have a great need to gain a sense that not every train of thought that seems right to us at first glance is actually a true train of thought. The more we can penetrate this idea that we can be wrong, that we can be wrong even with the greatest conscientiousness, the more we will depart from the principle so widespread today of stubbornly clinging to one's own opinion, of, I would say, stubbornly holding on to one thing or another that we have come to regard as right. Today, one encounters nothing more frequently than people who say: I consider this and that to be right! — And the decisive feeling one often has toward such people is this: How happy and how simple-minded this person is at the same time! Happy because they have no idea what it means to believe in something that has been thought up, and simple-minded because they have no idea how far removed from true reality something can be. On the other hand, however, we must realize that this insight must not depress us. This realization will make us very humble, but it will not drive us into melancholy, or despair about human life, because the realization of truth is so difficult. For we know that this life of the human soul is infinite, and that this life of the human soul must be a search, and that it could therefore even be a good and wise arrangement that the search for truth is difficult. And we will see that this is what life is based on. Death would immediately be upon our soul if the search for truth were easy, if it were really as many people believe, that the truth could be found easily; if it were as some people believe who come here and say: I have now realized that life must be organized in such and such a way, then the whole world can be made happy! If it were so that, in relation to the complexity of the whole world, one could find the truth as easily as most people believe, then that would be the death of the soul; for the life of the soul is based precisely on the fact that one cannot find the truth in such totality, but that one must seek the truth slowly and remain extremely humble in the slow, piecemeal pursuit of the true. The more comprehensive the truths we seek are supposed to be, the more possible it is to err. Therefore, one of the most learned gentlemen has naturally fallen into what I would call a childish error, which I have shown you, in interpreting the world problem as being based on chance and providence.

But the depression, the dismay at the fact that the truth is so difficult to find, cannot overcome us when we consider that life consists in our having to seek the truth. The search itself is what matters. One could say that if the death of the soul were to occur because the truth could not be sought, then it would have to occur now, because we are now at a peak in human development in terms of our lack of a genuine desire to seek the truth. Never have there been more “program people,” more people who believe they have solved the whole mystery of the world with a few words, than in our time. So today there is already a way of looking at things that can be said to mean spiritual death. It would mean spiritual death if what these program people all find were true. But it is wrong; fortunately, it is wrong!

A man like Fritz Mauthner — and there are many who think along the same lines today — thinks much more typically than one might believe. In terms of today's way of thinking, the volumes of the Philosophical Dictionary are exemplary. They really present things as most people think today who do not want to depart from contemporary thinking, for example in the direction in which spiritual science wants to depart from it. People like Fritz Mauthner say: On the one hand, we arrive at the impossible idea that the world came into being by chance — for this has so little probability, as I have indicated to you. But the other concept, the concept of an all-wise God, is just as impossible; for it is impossible for our human minds to comprehend that there is a God, a loving God, who forms in his mind everything he needs to bring the individual letters of the world out of chaos and put them together. In the past, Fritz Mauthner believes, people used concepts such as “chance” and “providence.” But we, he says, have now moved beyond these things, because we know today that concepts such as “chance” and “providence” have no meaning in the world at all, no objective meaning, but are only concepts of the human mind, only have meaning for humans. This is precisely where the criticism lies, that such concepts are no longer applied to the world. These people always say: Look, in the past, people were so childish; on the one hand, they spoke of “divine providence,” and on the other, of the concept of “chance.” We must accept both the concept of chance and the concept of divine providence as existing only in human thought, as not applicable to the world at all! — On what ground do these critics stand? They say: If we look at the whole philosophical development, this whole philosophical approach that many philosophers have pursued — and Mauthner has really sat down and studied the philosophers of the world, he knows them all, as far as one can know them in a human lifetime — then we see how they have struggled to find concepts. But these are all just human concepts that cannot be applied to reality! There is no reality that corresponds to the concept of divine providence. And so the article “Chance” concludes by saying something like this: In the past, divine providence, world order, world harmony, and world beauty were regarded as concepts that were understood in this way: There is something random in the world—but the world shows order, the world also shows beauty. And Mauthner concludes the article “Chance” with: “But we know that the concept of chance is the work of man. The concept of beauty and the concept of order are also the work of man. The concept of God is the work of man. The concept of cause is the work of man.” This means that we all know that these important concepts are human constructs and have no objective meaning. “For us, it is the height of verbal superstition to even ask the question and then attempt to answer it with a childish parable: whether chance or God is the cause of the world order and the beauty of the world.”

What did Fritz Mauthner do to come to the conclusion that the concept of God is the work of man, the concept of chance is the work of man, the concept of order is the work of man, so that order does not exist outside, but only man imagines that there is order, that there is beauty, and so on? What did Fritz Mauthner and the other philosophical thinkers who came to this conclusion do? They really—you don't have to believe me—proved with all kinds of philosophical acumen how wisely human reason works to arrive at these concepts, and how these concepts are truly the work of man; they proved it! So what he says is proven: “But we know...” and so on. It's proven! But when you look at how it is proven, you say: Yes, you are really right, my dear Fritz Mauthner. But we know that the concept of chance is the work of man; the concept of beauty is also the work of man, as is the concept of God, the concept of chance, the concept of the May beetle! That is how things stand as soon as we put them in the right light! If you were to examine all the great acumen—it really is tremendous acumen—that has been expended to prove that the concept of God is the work of man, that the concept of cause is the work of man, that the concept of chance is the work of man, that the concept of beauty is the work of man, you would be busy for many years if you wanted to study everything, and you would find lines of thought that are entirely applicable to the assertion that the concept of the May beetle is the work of man. Certainly, the concept of the May beetle is the work of man, but does this decide anything about the fact that the May beetle also flies outside, that it is also real? The concept of the May beetle is the work of man—this is where the childishness lies! One can go about one's work with tremendous acumen and believe that one has found something tremendously correct, and yet lose sight of the thread that connects things and leads to the truth. All the evidence that has been presented to show that these concepts are human constructs does not decide whether the concept corresponds to an objective reality, just as the concept of the May beetle as a human construct does not decide that the May beetle is objective, that is, that it flies outside.

You see, the modern scientific way of thinking provides tremendous certainty. And one can say that this is expressed in the sentence: “But we know that the concept of chance is the work of human beings. The concept of beauty and the concept of order are also human constructs. The concept of God is also a human construct. The concept of cause is a human construct. For us, it is the height of verbal superstition to even ask whether chance or God is the cause of world order and world beauty.”

Oh yes, one must say, you believe, because you can prove that the concept of the May beetle is the work of man, that it is childish, a superstition, to now apply the concept of the May beetle to something that flies outside? It is the same thing, exactly the same! Only one does not realize that it is exactly the same.

What can one want to achieve with all these things? What one wants to achieve by all these things is to draw attention to how difficult it is to arrive at the truth when this truth is sought by stringing together logical concepts; to draw attention to everything that can happen when one seeks the truth with even the greatest acumen, and how one must be thoroughly imbued with the feeling that the search for truth is difficult, difficult in the big picture and difficult in the small. And the more what I have tried to suggest today becomes a feeling for you, the better it will be.

On the basis of these premises, we will then soon, on Hegel's birthday, August 27, discuss the concepts of “chance, providence, and necessity” from our humanistic point of view.