Pro Levitate
(a) ALERTNESS contra INERTNESS
In the preceding chapter we gained a new insight into the relationship
between mass and force. We have come to see that our concept of force
is grounded on empirical observation in no less a degree than is
usually assumed for our concept of number, or size, or position,
provided we do not confine ourselves to non-stereoscopic, colourless
vision for the forming of our scientific world-picture, but allow other
senses to contribute to it. As to the concept mass, our discussion of
the formula F=ma showed that force and mass, as they occur in it, are
of identical nature, both having the quality of force. The factors F
and m signify force in a different relationship to space (represented
by the factor a). This latter fact now requires some further
elucidation.
In a science based on the Goethean method of contemplating the world of
the senses, concepts such as 'mass in rest' and 'mass in motion' lack
any scientific meaning (though for another reason than in the theory of
Relativity). For in a science of this kind the universe - in the sense
propounded lately by Professor Whitehead and others - appears as one
integrated whole, whose parts must never be considered as independent
entities unrelated to the whole. Seen thus, there is no mass in the
universe of which one could say with truth that it is ever in a state
of rest. Nor is there any condition of movement which could be rightly
characterized by the attributes 'uniform' and 'straight line' in the
sense of Newton's first law. This does not mean that such conditions
never occur in our field of observation. But as such they have
significance only in relation to our immediate surroundings as a system
of reference. Even within such limits these conditions are not of a
kind that would allow us to consider them as the basis of a scientific
world-picture. For as such they occur naturally only as ultimate, never
as primeval conditions. All masses are originally in a state of
curvilinear movement whose rates change continuously. To picture a mass
as being in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line,
as the result of no force acting on it, and to picture it undergoing a
change in the rate and direction of its motion as the result of some
outer force working on it, is a sheer abstraction. In so far as mass
appears in our field of observation as being in relative rest or motion
of the kind described, this is always the effect of some secondary
dynamic cause.
If we wish to think with the course of the universe and not against it,
we must not start our considerations with the state of (relative) rest
or uniform motion in a straight line and derive our definition of force
from the assumption that there is a primary 'force-free' state which is
altered under the action of some force, but we must arrange our
definitions in such a way that they end up with this state. Thus
Newton's first law, for instance, would have to be restated somewhat as
follows: No physical body is ever in a state of rest or uniform motion
in a straight line, unless its natural condition is interfered with by
the particular action of some force.
Seen dynamically, and from the aspect of the universe as an
interrelated whole, all aggregations of mass are the manifestation of
certain dynamic conditions within the universe, and what appears to us
as a change of the state of motion of such a mass is nothing but a
change in the dynamic relationship between this particular aggregation
and the rest of the world. Let us now see what causes of such a change
occur within the field of our observation.
*
In modern textbooks the nature of the cause of physical movement is
usually defined as follows: 'Any change in the state of movement of a
portion of matter is the result of the action on it of another portion
of matter.' This represents a truth if it is taken to describe a
certain kind of causation. In the axiomatic form in which it is given
it is a fallacy. The kind of causation it describes is, indeed, the
only one which has been taken into consideration by the scientific mind
of man. We are wont to call it 'mechanical' causation. Obviously, man's
onlooker-consciousness is unable to conceive of any other kind of
causation. For this consciousness is by its very nature confined to the
contemplation of spatially apparent entities which for this reason can
be considered only as existing spatially side by side. For the
one-eyed, colour-blind spectator, therefore, any change in the state of
movement of a spatially confined entity could be attributed only to the
action of another such entity outside itself. Such a world-outlook was
bound to be a mechanistic one.
We cannot rest content with this state of affairs if we are sincerely
searching for an understanding of how spirit moves, forms, and
transforms matter. We must learn to admit non-mechanical causes of
physical effects, where such causes actually present themselves to our
observation. In this respect our own body is again a particularly
instructive object of study. For here mechanical and non-mechanical
causation can be seen working side by side in closest conjunction. Let
us therefore ask what happens when we move, say, one of our limbs or a
part of it.
The movement of any part of our body is always effected in some way by
the movement of the corresponding part of the skeleton. This in turn is
set in motion by certain lengthenings and contractions of the
appropriate part of the muscular system. Now the way in which the
muscles cause the bones to move falls clearly under the category of
mechanical causation. Certain portions of matter are caused to move by
the movement of adjacent portions of matter. The picture changes when
we look for the cause to which the muscles owe their movements. For the
motion of the muscles is not the effect of any cause external to them,
but is effected by the purely spiritual energy of our volition working
directly into the physical substance of the muscles. What scientific
measuring instruments have been able to register in the form of
physical, chemical, electrical, etc., changes of the muscular substance
is itself an effect of this interaction.
To mark the fact that this type of causation is clearly distinguished
from the type called mechanical, it will be well to give it a name of
its own. If we look for a suitable term, the word 'magical' suggests
itself. The fact that this word has gathered all sorts of doubtful
associations must not hinder us from adopting it into the terminology
of a science which aspires to understand the working of the
supersensible in the world of the senses. The falling into disrepute of
this word is characteristic of the onlooker-age. The way in which we
suggest it should be used is in accord with its true and original
meaning, the syllable 'mag' signifying power or might (Sanskrit maha,
Greek megas, Latin magnus, English might, much, also master).
Henceforth we shall distinguish between 'mechanical' and 'magical'
causation, the latter being a characteristic of the majority of
happenings in the human, animal and plant organisms.1
*
Our next step in building up a truly dynamic picture of matter must be
to try to obtain a direct experience of the condition of matter when it
is under the sway of magical causation.
Let us first remember what is the outstanding attribute with which
matter responds to mechanical causation. This is known to be inertia.
By this term we designate the tendency of physical matter to resist any
outwardly impressed change of its existing state of movement. This
property is closely linked up with another one, weight. The coincidence
of the two has of late become a puzzle to science, and it was Albert
Einstein who tried to solve it by establishing his General Theory of
Relativity. The need to seek such solutions falls away in a science
which extends scientific understanding to conditions of matter in which
weight and inertia are no longer dominant characteristics. What becomes
of inertia when matter is subject to magical causation can be brought
to our immediate experience in the following way. (The reader, even if
he is already familiar with this experiment, is again asked to carry it
out for himself.)
Take a position close to a smooth wall, so that one arm and hand, which
are left hanging down alongside the body, are pressed over their entire
length between body and wall. Try now to move the arm upward, pressing
it against the wall as if you wanted to shift the latter. Apply all
possible effort to this attempt, and maintain the effort for about one
minute. Then step away quickly from the wall by more than the length of
the arm, while keeping the arm hanging down by the side of the body in
a state of complete relaxation. Provided all conditions are properly
fulfilled, the arm will be found rising by itself in accordance with
the aim of the earlier effort, until it reaches the horizontal. If the
arm is then lowered again and left to itself, it will at once rise
again, though not quite so high as before. This can be repeated several
times until the last vestige of the automatic movement has faded away.
Having thus ascertained by direct experience that there is a state of
matter in which inertia is, to say the least, greatly diminished, we
find ourselves in need of giving this state (which is present
throughout nature wherever material changes are brought into existence
magically) a name of its own, as we did with the two types of
causation. A word suggests itself which, apart from expressing
adequately the peculiar self-mobility which we have just brought to our
experience, goes well alongside the word 'inert' by forming a kind of
rhyme with it. This is the term 'alert'. With its help we shall
henceforth distinguish between matter in the inert and alert
conditions. We shall call the latter state 'alertness', and in order to
have on the other side a word as similar as possible in outer form to
alertness, we suggest replacing the usual term inertia by 'inertness'.
Thus we shall speak of matter as showing the attribute of 'inertness',
when it is subject to mechanical causation, of 'alertness', when it is
subject to magical causation.
Anyone who watches attentively the sensation produced by the rising arm
in the above experiment will be duly impressed by the experience of the
alertness prevailing in the arm as a result of the will's magical
intervention.
*
In our endeavour to find a modern way of overcoming the conception of
matter developed and held by science in the age of the
onlooker-consciousness, we shall be helped by noticing how this
conception first arose historically. Of momentous significance in this
respect is the discovery of the gaseous state of matter by the Flemish
physician and experimenter, Joh. Baptist van Helmont (1577-1644). The
fact that the existence of this state of ponderable matter was quite
unknown up to such a relatively recent date has been completely
forgotten to-day. Moreover, it is so remote from current notions that
anyone who now calls attention to van Helmont's discovery is quite
likely to be met with incredulity. As a result, there is no account of
the event that puts it in its true setting. In what follows pains are
taken to present the facts in the form in which one comes to know them
through van Helmont's own account, given in his Ortus Medicinae.
For reasons which need not be described here, van Helmont studied with
particular interest the various modifications in which carbon is
capable of occurring in nature - among them carbon's combustion
product, carbon dioxide. It was his observations of carbon dioxide
which made him aware of a condition of matter whose properties caused
him the greatest surprise. For he found it to be, at the same time,
'much finer than vapour and much denser than air'. It appeared to him
as a complete 'paradox', because it seemed to unite in itself two
contradictory qualities, one appertaining to the realm of 'uncreated
things', the other to the realm of 'created things'. Unable to rank it
with either 'vapour' or 'air' (we shall see presently what these terms
meant in van Helmont's terminology), he found himself in need of a
special word to distinguish this new state from the other known states,
both below and above it. Since he could not expect any existing
language to possess a suitable word, he felt he must create one. He
therefore took, and changed slightly, a word signifying a particular
cosmic condition which seemed to be imaged in the new condition he had
just discovered. The word was CHAOS. By shortening it a little, he
derived from it the new word GAS. His own words explaining his choice
are: 'Halitum ilium GAS vocavi non longe a Chaos veterum secretum.' ('I
have called this mist Gas, owing to its resemblance to the Chaos of the
ancients.')2
Van Helmont's account brings us face to face with a number of riddles.
Certainly, there is nothing strange to us in his describing carbon
dioxide gas as being 'finer than vapour and denser than air'; but why
did he call this a 'paradox'? What prevented him from ranking it side
by side with air? As to air itself, why should he describe it as
belonging to the realm of the 'uncreated things'? What reason was there
for giving 'vapour' the rank of a particular condition of matter? And
last but not least, what was the ancient conception of Chaos which led
van Helmont to choose this name as an archetype for the new word he
needed?
To appreciate van Helmont's astonishment and his further procedure, we
must first call to mind the meaning which, in accordance with the
prevailing tradition, he attached to the term Air. For van Helmont, Air
was one of the four 'Elements', EARTH, WATER, AIR, and FIRE. Of these,
the first two were held to constitute the realm of the 'created
things', the other two that of the 'uncreated things'. A brief study of
the old doctrine of the Four Elements is necessary at this point in
order to understand the meaning of these concepts.
*
The first systematic teaching about the four elementary constituents of
nature, as they were experienced by man of old, was given by Empedocles
in the fifth century B.C. It was elaborated by Aristotle. In this form
it was handed down and served to guide natural observation through more
than a thousand years up to the time of van Helmont. From our earlier
descriptions of the changes in man's consciousness it is clear that the
four terms, 'earth', 'water', 'air', 'fire', must have meant something
different in former times. So 'water' did not signify merely the
physical substance which modern chemistry defines by the formula H2O;
nor was 'air' the mixture of gases characteristic of the earth's
atmosphere. Man in those days, on account of his particular
relationship with nature, was impressed in the first place by the
various dynamic conditions, four in number, which he found prevailing
both in his natural surroundings and in his own organism. With his
elementary concepts he tried to express, therefore, the four basic
conditions which he thus experienced. He saw physical substances as
being carried up and down between these conditions.
At first sight some relationship seems to exist between the concept
'element' in this older sense and the modern view of the different
states of material aggregation, solid, liquid, aeriform. There is,
however, nothing in this modern view that would correspond to the
element Fire. For heat in the sense of physical science is an
immaterial energy which creates certain conditions in the three
material states, but from these three to heat there is no transition
corresponding to the transitions between themselves. Heat, therefore,
does not rank as a fourth condition by the side of the solid, liquid
and aeriform states, in the way that Fire ranks in the older conception
by the side of Earth, Water and Air.
If we were to use the old terms for designating the three states of
aggregation plus heat, as we know them to-day, we should say that there
is a border-line dividing Fire from the three lower elements. Such a
border-line existed in the older conception of the elements as well.
Only its position was seen to be elsewhere - between Earth and Water on
the one hand, Air and Fire on the other. This was expressed by saying
that the elements below this line constituted the realm of the 'created
things', those above it that of the 'uncreated things'. Another way of
expressing this was by characterizing Earth and Water with the quality
Cold; Air and Fire with the quality Warm. The two pairs of elements
were thus seen as polar opposites of one another.
The terms 'cold' and 'warm' must also be understood to have expressed
certain qualitative experiences in which there was no distinction as
yet between what is purely physical and what is purely spiritual.
Expressions such as 'a cold heart', 'a warm heart', to 'show someone
the cold shoulder', etc., still witness to this way of experiencing the
two polar qualities, cold and warm. Quite generally we can say that,
wherever man experienced some process of contraction, whether physical
or non-physical, he designated it by the term 'cold', and where he
experienced expansion, he called it 'warm'. In this sense he felt
contractedness to be the predominant characteristic of Earth and Water,
expansiveness that of Air and Fire.
With the help of these qualitative concepts we are now in a position to
determine more clearly still the difference between the older and the
modern conceptions: in particular the difference between the aeriform
condition of matter, as we conceive of it to-day, and the element Air.
Contractedness manifests as material density, or the specific weight of
a particular substance. We know that this characteristic of matter
diminishes gradually with its transition from the solid to the liquid
and aeriform states. We know also that this last state is characterized
by a high degree of expansiveness, which is also the outstanding
property of heat. Thus there is reason to describe also from the modern
point of view the solid and liquid states as essentially 'cold', and
the aeriform state as 'warm'. But aeriform matter still has density and
weight, and this means that matter in this state combines the two
opposing qualities. Contrary to this, Air, as the second highest
element in the old sense, is characterized by the pure quality, warm.
Thus, when man of old spoke of 'air', he had in mind something entirely
free from material density and weight.3
By comparing in this way the older and newer conceptions of 'air', we
come to realize that ancient man must have had a conception of gravity
essentially different from ours. If we take gravity in the modern
scientist's sense, as a 'descriptive law of behaviour', then this
behaviour is designated in the older doctrine by the quality 'cold'.
If, however, we look within the system of modern science for a law of
behaviour that would correspond to the quality 'warm', we do so in
vain. Polarity concepts are certainly not foreign to the scientific
mind, as the physics of electricity and magnetism show. Yet there is no
opposite pole to gravity, as there is negative opposite to positive
electricity, etc.4
In the older conception, however, the gravitational behaviour 'cold'
was seen to be counteracted by an autonomous anti-gravitational
behaviour 'warm'. Experience still supported the conviction that as a
polar opposite to the world subject to gravity, there was another world
subject to levity.
We refrain at this point from discussing how far a science which
aspires to a spiritual understanding of nature, including material
processes, needs a revival - in modern form - of the old conception of
levity. In our present context it suffices to realize that we
understand man's earlier view of nature, and with it the one still held
by van Helmont, only by admitting levity equally with gravity into his
world-picture. For the four elements, in particular, this meant that
the two upper ones were regarded as representing Levity, the two lower
ones Gravity.
In close connexion with this polar conception of the two pairs of
elements, there stands their differentiation into one realm of created,
another of uncreated, things. To understand what these terms imply, we
must turn to the ancient concept, Chaos, borrowed by van Helmont.
To-day we take the word Chaos to mean a condition of mere absence of
order, mostly resulting from a destruction of existing forms, whether
by nature or by the action of man. In its original sense the word meant
the exact opposite. When in ancient times people spoke of Chaos, they
meant the womb of all being, the exalted realm of uncreated things,
where indeed forms such as are evident to the eye in the created world
are not to be found, but in place of them are the archetypes of all
visible forms, as though nurtured in a spiritual seed-condition. It is
the state which in the biblical narration of the creation of the world
is described as 'without form and void'.
From this Chaos all the four elements are born, one by one, with the
two upper ones retaining Chaos's essential characteristic in that they
are 'without form' and tend to be omnipresent, whilst the two lower
ones constitute a realm in which things appear in more or less clearly
outlined space-bound forms. This is what the terms 'uncreated' and
'created' imply.
How strictly these two realms were distinguished can be seen by the
occurrence of the concept 'vapour'. When with the increasing interest
in the realm of created things - characteristic of the
spectator-consciousness which, in view of our earlier description of
it, we recognize as being itself a 'created thing' - the need arose for
progressive differentiation within this realm, the simple division of
it into 'earth' and 'water' was no longer felt to be satisfactory.
After all, above the liquid state of matter there was another state,
less dense than water and yet presenting itself through more or less
clearly distinguishable space-bound objects, such as the mists arising
from and spreading over ponds and meadows, and the clouds hovering in
the sky. For this state of matter the term 'vapour' had become
customary, and it was used by van Helmont in this sense. By its very
properties, Vapour belonged to the realm of the created things, whereas
Air did not. It was the intermediary position of the newly discovered
state of matter between Vapour and Air, that is, between the created
and the uncreated world, which caused van Helmont to call it a paradox;
and it was its strange resemblance, despite its ponderable nature, to
Chaos, which prompted him to name it - Gas.
*
Since it could not have been the gaseous state of matter in the form
discovered by van Helmont, what particular condition of nature was it
to which the ancients pointed when using the term Air? Let us see how
the scriptures of past human cultures speak of air.
In all older languages, the words used to designate the element bound
up with breathing, or the act of breathing, served at the same time to
express the relationship of man to the Divine, or even the Divine
itself. One need think only of the words Brahma and Atma of the ancient
Indians, the Pneuma of the Greeks, the Spiritus of the Romans. The
Hebrews expressed the same idea when they said that Jehovah had
breathed the breath of life into man and that man in this way became a
living soul.
What lies behind all these words is the feeling familiar to man in
those times, that breathing was not only a means of keeping the body
alive, but that a spiritual essence streamed in with the breath. So
long as this condition prevailed, people could expect that by changing
their manner of breathing they had a means of bringing the soul into
stronger relationship with spiritual Powers, as is attempted in Eastern
Yoga.
Remembering the picture of man's spiritual-physical evolution which we
have gained from earlier chapters, we are not astonished to find how
different this early experience of the breathing process was from our
own. Yet, together with the recognition of this difference there arises
another question. Even if we admit that man of old was so organized
that the experience of his own breathing process was an overwhelmingly
spiritual one, it was, after all, the gaseous substance of the earth's
atmosphere which he inhaled, and exhaled again in a transformed
condition. What then was it that prevented men - apparently right up to
the time of van Helmont - from gaining the slightest inkling of the
materiality of this substance? To find an answer to this question, let
us resort once more to our method of observing things genetically,
combined with the principle of not considering parts without
considering the whole to which they organically belong.
In modern science the earth is regarded as a mineral body whereon the
manifold forms of nature appear as mere additions, arising more or less
by chance; one can very well imagine them absent without this having
any essential influence on the earth's status in the universe. The
truth is quite different. For the earth, with everything that exists on
it, forms a single whole, just as each separate organism is in its own
way a whole.
This shows that we have no right to imagine the earth without men, and
to suppose that its cosmic conditions of being would then remain
unaltered - any more than we can imagine a human being deprived of some
essential-organ and remaining human. Mankind, and all the other
kingdoms of nature, are bound up organically with the earth from the
start of its existence. Moreover, just as the highest plants, seen with
Goethe's eyes, are the spiritual originators of the whole realm of
plants - the creative Idea determining their evolution - so we see man,
the highest product of earth evolution, standing behind this evolution
as its Idea from the first, and determining its course. The
evolutionary changes which we observe in the earth and in man are in
fact a single process, working through a variety of manifested forms.
From this conception of the parallel evolution of earth and man light
falls also on the historic event represented by van Helmont's
discovery. Besides being a symptom of a revolution in man's way of
experiencing the atmosphere, it speaks to us of some corresponding
change in the spiritual-physical condition of the atmosphere itself. It
was then that men not only came to think differently about air, but
inhaled and exhaled an air that actually was different. To find out
what kind of change this was, let us turn once more to man's own
organism and see what it has to say concerning the condition under
which matter is capable of being influenced by mechanical and magical
causation respectively, in the sense already described.
What is it in the nature of the bones that makes them accessible to
mechanical causation only, and what is it in the muscles that allows
our will to rouse them magically? Bones and muscles stand in a definite
genetic relationship to each other, the bones being, in relation to the
muscles, a late product of organic development. This holds good equally
for everything which in the body of living nature takes the form of
mineralized deposits or coverings. Every kind of organism consists in
its early stages entirely of living substance; in the course of time a
part of the organism separates off" and passes over into a more or less
mineralized condition. Seen in this light, the distinction between
bones and muscles is that the bones have evolved out of a condition in
which the muscles persist, though to a gradually waning degree,
throughout the life-time of the body. The substance of the muscles,
remaining more or less 'young', stands at the opposite pole from the
'aged' substance of the bones. Hence it depends on the 'age' of a piece
of matter whether it responds to magical or mechanical causation.
Let us state here at once, that this temporal distinction has an
essential bearing on our understanding of evolutionary processes in
general. For if mineral matter is a late product of evolution - and
nothing in nature indicates the contrary - then to explain the origins
of the world (as scientific theories have always done) with the aid of
events similar in character to those which now occur in the mineral
realm, means explaining them against nature's own evidence. To find
pictures of past conditions of the earth in present-day nature, we must
look in the regions where matter, because it is still 'youthful', is
played through by the magical working of purposefully active spiritual
forces. Thus, instead of seeing in them the chance results of blind
volcanic and similar forces, we must recognize in the formation and
layout of land and sea an outcome of events more closely resembling
those which occur during the embryonic development of a living
organism.
What, then, does van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter
tell us, if we regard it in the light of our newly acquired insight
into the trend of evolution both within and without man? When, in the
course of its growing older, mankind had reached the stage which is
expressed by the emergence of the
spectator-consciousness-consciousness, that is, based on a nervous
system which has grown more or less independent of the life forces of
the organism - the outer elements had, in their way, arrived at such a
state that man began to inhale an air whose spiritual-physical
constitution corresponded exactly to that of his nervous system: on
either side, Spirit and Matter, in accordance with the necessities of
cosmic evolution had lost their primeval union.
*
Our extension of the concept of evolution to the very elements of
nature, whether these are of material or non-material kind, and our
recognition of this evolution as leading in general from a more alert
to a more inert condition, at once open the possibility of including in
our scientific world-picture certain facts which have hitherto resisted
any inclusion. We mean those manifold events of 'miraculous' nature, of
which the scriptures and the oral traditions of old are full. What is
modern man to make of them?
The doubts which have arisen concerning events of this kind have their
roots on the one hand in the apparent absence of such occurrences in
our day, on the other in the fact that the laws of nature derived by
science from the present condition of the world seem to rule them out.5
In the light of the concept of the world's 'ageing' which we have tried
to develop here, not only do the relevant reports become plausible, but
it also becomes understandable why, if such events have taken place in
the past, they fail to do so in our own time.
To illustrate this, let us take a few instances which are symptomatic
of the higher degree of youthfulness which was characteristic in former
times in particular of the element of Fire.
The role which Fire was capable of playing in man's life at a time when
even this element, in itself the most youthful of all, was more
susceptible to magic interference than of late, is shown by the
manifold fire-rites of old. In those days, when no easy means of
fire-lighting were available, it was usual for the needs of daily life
to keen a fire burning all the time and to kindle other fires from it.
Only in cases of necessity was a new fire lit, and then the only way
was by the tedious rubbing together of two pieces of dry wood.
Then both the maintenance of fires, and the deliberate kindling of a
new fire, played quite a special role in the ceremonial ordering of
human society. Historically, much the best known is the Roman usage in
the Temple of Vesta. On the one hand, the unintentional extinction of
the fire was regarded as a national calamity and as the gravest
possible transgression on the part of the consecrated priestess charged
with maintaining the fire. On the other hand, it was thought essential
for this 'everlasting' fire to be newly kindled once a year. This took
place with a special ritual at the beginning of the Roman year (1st
March).
The conception behind such a ritual of fire-kindling will become clear
if we compare with it certain other fire-rites which were practised in
the northern parts of Europe, especially in the British Isles, until
far on in the Christian era. For example, if sickness broke out among
the cattle, a widespread practice was to extinguish all the
hearth-fires in the district and then to kindle with certain rites a
new fire, from which all the local people lit their own fires once
more. Heavy penalties were prescribed for anyone who failed to
extinguish his own fire - a failure usually indicated by the
non-manifestation of the expected healing influence. In Anglo-Saxon
speaking countries, fires of this kind were known as 'needfires'.
The spiritual significance of these fires cannot be expressed better
than by the meaning of the very term 'needfire'. This word does not
derive, as was formerly believed, from the word 'need', meaning a 'fire
kindled in a state of need', but, as recent etymological research has
shown, from a root which appears in the German word nieten - to clinch
or rivet. 'Needfire' therefore means nothing less than a fire which was
kindled for 'clinching' anew the bond between earthly life and the
primal spiritual order at times when for one reason or another there
was a call for this.
This explanation of the 'needfire' throws light also on the Roman
custom of re-kindling annually the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta.
For the Romans this was a means of reaffirming year by year the
connexion of the nation with its spiritual leadership; accordingly,
they chose the time when the sun in its yearly course restores -
're-clinches' - the union of the world-spirit with earthly nature, for
the rebirth of the fire which throughout the rest of the year was
carefully guarded against extinction.
Just as men saw in this fire-kindling a way of bringing humanity into
active relation with spiritual powers, so on the other hand were these
powers held to use the fire element in outer nature for the purpose of
making themselves actively known to mankind. Hence we find in the
records of all ancient peoples a unanimous recognition of lightning and
thunder on the one hand, and volcanic phenomena on the other, as means
to which the Deity resorts for intervening in human destiny. A
well-known example is the account in the Bible of the meeting of Moses
with God on Mount Sinai. As occurrence in the early history of the
Hebrews it gives evidence that even in historical times the fire
element of the earth was sufficiently 'young' to serve the higher
spiritual powers as an instrument for the direct expression of their
will.
* *
*
(b) LEVITY contra GRAVITY
We said earlier in this chapter that a science which aspires to a
spiritual understanding of the physical happenings in nature must give
up the idea that inertness and weight are absolute properties of
matter. We were able at once to tackle the question of inertness by
bringing to our immediate observation matter in the state of diminished
inertness, or, as we proposed to say, of alertness. We are now in a
position to go into the other question, that of weight or gravity. Just
as we found inertness to have its counterpart in alertness, both being
existing conditions of matter, so we shall now find in addition to the
force of gravity another force which is the exact opposite of it, and
to which therefore we can give no better name than 'levity'.
*
Already, indeed, the picture of nature which we gained from following
Goethe's studies both of the plant and of meteorological happenings has
brought us face to face with certain aspects of levity. For when Goethe
speaks of systole and diastole, as the plant first taught him to see
them and as later he found them forming the basic factors of
weather-formation, he is really speaking of the ancient concepts,
'cold' and 'warm'. Goethe's way of observing nature is, in fact, a
first step beyond the limits of a science which kept itself ignorant of
levity as a cosmic counterpart to terrestrial gravity. To recognize the
historical significance of this step, let us turn our glance to the
moment when the human mind became aware that to lay a proper foundation
for the science it was about to build, it had to exclude any idea of
levity as something with a real existence.
Many a conception which is taken for granted by modern man, and is
therefore assumed to have been always obvious, was in fact established
quite deliberately at a definite historical moment. We have seen how
this applies to our knowledge of the gaseous state of matter; it
applies also to the idea of the uniqueness of gravity. About half a
century after van Helmont's discovery a treatise called Contra
Levitatem was published in Florence by the Accademia del Cimento. It
declares that a science firmly based on observation has no right to
speak of Levity as something claiming equal rank with, and opposite to,
Gravity.
This attitude was in accord with the state into which human
consciousness had entered at that time. For a consciousness which is
itself of the quality 'cold', because it is based on the contracting
forces of the body, is naturally not in a position to take into
consideration its very opposite. Therefore, to speak of a force of
levity as one felt able to speak of gravity was indeed without meaning.
Just as there was historical necessity in this banishing of levity from
science at the beginning of the age of the spectator-consciousness, so
was there historical necessity in a renewed awareness of it arising
when the time came for man to overcome the limitations of his spectator
- relationship to the world. We find this in Goethe's impulse to search
for the action of polarities in nature. As we shall see later, it comes
to its clearest expression in Goethe's optical conceptions.
Another witness to this fact is Ruskin, through a remark which bears in
more than one sense on our present subject. It occurs in his essay, The
Storm-Cloud of the Ninteenth Century. In its context it is meant to
warn the reader against treating science, which Ruskin praises as a
fact-finding instrument, as an interpreter of natural facts. Ruskin
takes Newton's conception of gravity as the all-moving cause of the
universe, and turns against it in the following words:
'Take the very top and centre of scientific interpretation by the
greatest of its masters: Newton explained to you - or at least was once
supposed to explain, why an apple fell; but he never thought of
explaining the exact correlative but infinitely more difficult
question, how the apple got up there.'
This remark shows Ruskin once again as a true reader in nature's book.
Looking with childlike openness and intensity of participation into the
world of the senses, he allows nature's phenomena to impress themselves
upon his mind without giving any preconceived preference to one kind or
another. This enables him not to be led by the phenomenon of falling
bodies to overlook the polarically opposite phenomenon of the upward
movement of physical matter in the living plant. Ruskin's remark points
directly to the new world-conception which must be striven for to-day -
the conception in which death is recognized as a secondary form of
existence preceded by life; in which levity is given its rightful place
as a force polar to gravity; and in which, because life is bound up
with levity as death is with gravity, levity is recognized as being of
more ancient rank than gravity.
*
In proceeding now to a study of levity we shall not start, as might be
expected, with plants or other living forms. We are not yet equipped to
understand the part played by levity in bringing about the processes of
life; we shall come to this later. For our present purpose we shall
look at certain macrotelluric events - events in which large areas of
the earth are engaged - taking our examples from meteorology on the one
hand and from seismic (volcanic) processes on the other.
In pursuing this course we follow a method which belongs to the
fundamentals of a Goetheanistic science. A few words about this method
may not be out of place.
When we strive to read the book of nature as a script of the spirit we
find ourselves drawn repeatedly towards two realms of natural
phenomena. They are widely different in character, but studied together
they render legible much that refuses to be deciphered in either realm
alone. These realms are, on the one hand, the inner being of man, and,
on the other, the phenomena of macrotelluric and cosmic character. The
fruitfulness of linking together these two will become clear if we
reflect on the following.
The field of the inner life of man allows us, as nothing else does, to
penetrate it with our own intuitive experience. For we ourselves are
always in some sense the cause of the events that take place there. In
order to make observations in this region, however, we need to bring
about a certain awakening in a part of our being which - so long as we
rely on the purely natural forces of our body - remains sunk in more or
less profound unconsciousness.
If this realm of events is more intimately related than any other to
our intuitive experience, it has also the characteristic of remaining
closed to any research by external means. Much of what lies beyond the
scope of external observation, however, reveals itself all the more
clearly in the realms where nature is active on the widest scale.
Certainly, we must school ourselves to read aright the phenomena which
come to light in those realms. And once more we must look to the way of
introspection, previously mentioned, for aid in investing our gaze with
the necessary intuitive force. If we succeed in this, then the heavens
will become for us a text wherein secrets of human nature, hidden from
mere introspection, can be read; while at the same time the
introspective way enables us to experience things which we cannot
uncover simply by observing the outer universe.
Apart from these methodological considerations, there is a further
reason for our choice. Among the instances mentioned earlier in this
chapter as symptoms of a greater 'youthfulness' prevailing in nature,
and particularly in the element Fire, at a comparatively recent date,
were the manifestations of the Divine-Spiritual World to man reported
in the Bible as the event on Mount Sinai. There, thunder and lightning
from above and volcanic action from below form the setting for the
intercourse of Jehovah with Moses. To-day the function of these types
of phenomena, though metamorphosed by the altered conditions of the
earth, is not essentially different. Here, more than in any other
sphere of her activities, nature manifests that side of her which we
are seeking to penetrate with understanding.
*
Let us start with an observation known to the present writer from a
visit to the Solfatara, a volcanic region near Naples.
The Solfatara itself is a trough surrounded by hilly mounds; its
smooth, saucepan-like bottom, covered with whitish pumice-sand, is
pitted with craters containing violently boiling and fuming mud - the
so-called fango, famous for its healing properties. All around
sulphurous fumes issue from crevices in the rocks, and in one special
place the Solfatara reveals its subterranean activity by the emergence
of fine, many-coloured sand, which oozes up like boiling liquid from
the depths below. The whole region gives the impression of being in a
state of labile balance. How true this is becomes apparent if one drops
pieces of burning paper here and there on the ground: immediately a
cloud of smoke and steam rises. The effect is even more intense if a
burning torch is moved about over one of the boiling fango holes. Then
the deep answers instantly with an extraordinary intensification of the
boiling process. The hot mud seems to be thrown into violent turmoil,
emitting thick clouds of steam, which soon entirely envelop the
spectator near the edge.
The scientific mind is at first inclined to see in this phenomenon the
mechanical effect of reduced air-pressure, due to the higher
temperatures above the surface of the boiling mud, though doubts are
raised by the unusual intensity of the reaction. The feeling that the
physical explanation is inadequate is strengthened when the vapours
have thinned out and one is surprised to see that every crack and
cranny in the Solfatara, right up to the top of the trough, shows signs
of increased activity. Certainly, this cannot be accounted for by a
cause-and-effect nexus of the kind found in the realm of mechanical
causation, where an effect is propagated from point to point and the
total effect is the sum of a number of partial effects. It looks rather
as if the impulse applied in one spot had called for a major impulse
which was now acting on the Solfatara as a whole.
As observers who are trying to understand natural phenomena by
recognizing their significance as letters in nature's script, we must
look now for other phenomena which can be joined with this one to form
the relevant 'word' we have set out to decipher.
All scientific theories concerning the causes of seismic occurrences,
both volcanic and tectonic, have been conceived as if the spatial
motion of mineral matter were the only happening that had to be
accounted for. No wonder that none of these theories has proved really
satisfactory even to mechanistically orientated thinking. Actually
there are phenomena of a quite different kind connected with the
earth's seismic activities, and these need to be taken into equal
account.
There is, for instance, the fact that animals often show a premonition
of volcanic or tectonic disturbances. They become restive and hide, or,
if domestic, seek the protection of man. Apparently, they react in this
way to changes in nature which precede the mechanical events by which
man registers the seismic occurrence.
Another such phenomenon is the so-called earthquake-sky, which the
present writer has had several occasions to witness. It consists of a
peculiar, almost terrifying, intense discoloration of the sky, and, to
those acquainted with it, is a sure sign of an imminent or actual
earthquake somewhere in the corresponding region of the earth. This
phenomenon teaches us that the change in the earth's condition which
results in a violent movement of her crust, involves a region of her
organism far greater than the subterranean layers where the cause of
the purely mechanical events is usually believed to reside.6
That man himself is not excluded from experiencing directly the
super-spatial nature of seismic disturbances is shown by an event in
Goethe's life, reported by his secretary Eckermann, who himself learnt
the story from an old man who had been Goethe's valet at the time.7
This is what the old man, whom Eckermann met by accident one day near
Weimar, told him: 'Once Goethe rang in the middle of the night and when
I entered his room I found he had rolled his iron bed to the window and
was lying there, gazing at the heavens. "Have you seen nothing in the
sky?" asked he, and when I answered "No", he begged me to run across to
the sentry and inquire of the man on duty if he had seen nothing. He
had not noticed anything and when I returned I found the master still
in the same position, gazing at the sky. "Listen," he said, "this is an
important moment; there is now an earthquake or one is just going to
take place." Then he made me sit down on the bed and showed me by what
signs he knew this.' When asked about the weather conditions, the old
man said: 'It was very cloudy, very still and sultry.' To believe
implicitly in Goethe was for him a matter of course, 'for things always
happened as he said they would'. When next day Goethe related his
observations at Court, the women tittered: 'Goethe dreams' ('Goethe
schwärmt'), but the Duke and the other men present believed him. A few
weeks later the news reached Weimar that on that night (5th April,
1783) part of Messina had been destroyed by an earthquake.
There is no record by Goethe himself of the nature of the phenomenon
perceived by him during that night, except for a brief remark in a
letter to Mme de Stein, written the following day, in which he claims
to have seen a 'northern light in the south-east' the extraordinary
character of which made him fear that an earthquake had taken place
somewhere. The valet's report makes us inclined to think that there had
been no outwardly perceptible phenomenon at all, but that what Goethe
believed he was seeing with his bodily eyes was the projection of a
purely supersensible, but not for that reason any less objective,
experience.
In a picture of the seismic activities of the earth which is to
comprise phenomena of this kind, the volcanic or tectonic effects
cannot be attributed to purely local causes. For why, then, should the
whole meteorological sphere be involved, and why should living beings
react in the way described? Clearly, we must look for the origin of the
total disturbance not in the interior of the earth but in the expanse
of surrounding space. Indeed, the very phenomenon of the Solfatara, if
seen in this light, can reveal to us that at least the volcanic
movements of the earth's crust are not caused by pressure from within,
but by suction from without - that is, by an exceptional action of
levity.
We recall the fact that the whole Solfatara phenomenon had its origin
in a flame being swayed over one of the fango holes. Although it
remains true that the suction arising from the diminished air pressure
over the hole cannot account for the intense increase of ebullition in
the hole itself, not to speak of the participation of the entire region
in this increase, there is the fact that the whole event starts with a
suctional effect. As we shall see in the next chapter, any local
production of heat interferes with the gravity conditions at that spot
by shifting the balance to the side of levity. That the response in a
place like the Solfatara is what we have seen it to be, is the result
of an extraordinary lability of the equilibrium between gravity and
levity, a characteristic appertaining to the earth's volcanism in
general.
For the people living near the Solfatara it is indeed common knowledge
that there are times when this lability is so great that the slightest
local disturbance of the kind we have described can provoke destructive
eruptions of great masses of subterranean mud. (At such times access to
the Solfatara is prohibited.) We shall understand such an eruption
rightly if we picture it as the counter-pole of an avalanche. The
latter may be brought about by a fragment of matter on a snow-covered
mountain, perhaps a little stone, breaking loose and in its descent
bringing ever-accumulating masses of snow down with it. The
levity-process polar to this demonstration of gravity is the production
of a mightily growing 'negative avalanche' by comparatively weak local
suction, caused by a small flame.
*
Earlier in this chapter (page 150) we said that if we want to
understand how spirit moves, forms and transforms matter, we must
recognize the existence of non-mechanical (magical) causes of physical
effects. We have now found that the appearance of such effects in
nature is due to the operations of a particular force, levity, polar to
gravity. Observation of a number of natural happenings has helped us to
become familiar in a preliminary way with the character of this force.
Although these happenings were all physical in appearance, they showed
certain definitely non-physical features, particularly through their
peculiar relationship to three-dimensional space. More characteristics
of this kind will appear in the following pages.
In this way it will become increasingly clear that in levity we have to
do with something which, despite its manifesting characteristics of a
'force' not unlike gravity and thereby resembling the latter, differs
essentially from anything purely physical. It is only by its
interactions with gravity that levity brings about events in the
physical world-events, however, which are themselves partly of a
physical, partly of a superphysical kind. Seeing things in this aspect,
we are naturally prompted to ask what causes there are in the world
which make gravity and levity interact at all. This question will find
its answer in due course. First, we must make ourselves more fully
acquainted with the various appearances of the gravity-levity interplay
in nature.
1 In this sense Ruskin's description of the working of the spirit in
the plant as one that 'catches from chaos water, etc., etc., and
fastens them into a given form' points to magical action.
2 For Van Helmont, owing to the Flemish pronunciation of the letter G,
the two words sounded more alike than their spelling suggests.
3 In a later chapter we shall have opportunity to determine what
distinguishes Air from Fire, on the one hand, and Water from Earth on
the other.
4 It is this apparent uni-polarity of gravity which has given Professor
Einstein so much trouble in his endeavour to create a purely
gravitational world-picture with bipolar electricity and magnetism
fitting into it mathematically.
5 See the 'Bishop Barnes' controversy of recent date.
6 To the same category belong the mighty thunderstorms which in some
parts of the world are known to occur in conjunction with earthquakes.
7 See Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann (translated by J.
Oxenford), 13th November, 1823.