Man or Matter | Page 9

awareness - has caused this renunciation of all sense-experiences except those which come to man through the sight of a single colour-blind eye. It will then also become clear out of what historic necessity this self-restriction of scientific inquiry arose. The acknowledgment of this necessity, however, must not prevent us from recognizing the fact that, as a result of this restriction, modern scientific research, which has penetrated far into the dynamic substrata of nature, finds itself in the peculiar situation that it is not at all guided by its own concepts, but by the very forces it tries to detect. And in this fact lies the root of the danger which besets the present age.5
He who recognizes this, therefore, feels impelled to look for a way which leads beyond a one-eyed, colour-blind conception of the world. It is the aim of this book to show that such a way exists and how it can be followed. Proof will thereby be given that along this way not only is a true understanding achieved of the forces already known to science (though not really understood by it), but also that other forces, just as active in nature as for example electricity and magnetism, come within reach of scientific observation and understanding. And it will be shown that these other forces are of a kind that requires to be known to-day if we are to restore the lost balance to human civilization.
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There is a rule known to physicians that 'a true diagnosis of a case contains in itself the therapy'. No true diagnosis is possible, however, without investigation of the 'history' of the case. Applied to our task, this means that we must try to find an aspect of human development, both individual and historical, which will enable us to recognize in man's own being the cause responsible for the peculiar narrowing of the scope of scientific inquiry, as described by the scientists cited above.
A characteristic of scientific inquiry, distinguishing it from man's earlier ways of solving the riddles of the world, is that it admits as instruments of knowledge exclusively those activities of the human soul over which we have full control because they take place in the full light of consciousness. This also explains why there has been no science, in the true sense of the word, prior to the beginning of the era commonly called 'modern' - that is, before the fifteenth century. For the consciousness on which man's scientific striving is based is itself an outcome of human evolution.
This evolution, therefore, needs to be considered in such a way that we understand the origin of modern man's state of mind, and in particular why this state of mind cannot of itself have any other relationship to the world than that of a spectator. For let us be clear that this peculiar relationship by no means belongs only to the scientifically engaged mind. Every adult in our age is, by virtue of his psycho-physical structure, more or less a world-spectator. What distinguishes the state of man's mind when engaged in scientific observation is that it is restricted to a one-eyed colour-blind approach.
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'Death is the price man has to pay for his brain and his personality' - this is how a modern physiologist (A. Carrel in his aforementioned book, Man the Unknown) describes the connexion between man's bodily functions and his waking consciousness. It is characteristic of the outlook prevailing in the nineteenth century that thinking was regarded as the result of the life of the body; that is, of the body's matter-building processes. Hence no attention was paid at that time to the lonely voice of the German philosopher, C. Fortlage (1806-81), who in his System of Psychology as Empirical Science suggested that consciousness is really based on death processes in the body. From this fact he boldly drew the conclusion (known to us today to be true) that if 'partial death' gave rise to ordinary consciousness, then 'total death' must result in an extraordinary enhancement of consciousness. Again, when in our century Rudolf Steiner drew attention to the same fact, which he had found along his own lines of investigation, showing thereby the true role of the nervous system in regard to the various activities of the soul, official science turned a deaf ear to his pronouncement.6 To-day the scientist regards it as forming part of 'unknown man' that life must recede - in other words, that the organ-building processes of the body must come to a standstill - if consciousness is to come into its own.
With the recognition of a death process in the nervous system as the bodily foundation of consciousness, and particularly of man's conceptual activities, the question arises as to the nature of those activities which have their foundation in other systems, such as that