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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.
Already this simple observation as such made by means of the sense of movement and therefore outside the frontiers of the onlooker-consciousness tells us that mass is nothing but a particular manifestation of force. Seen in the light of this experience, the equation F=ma requires to be interpreted in a manner quite different from that to which scientific logic has submitted it.
The reason is that this world is essentially a world of active forces, and the true nature of these is something which modern man, restricted to his onlooker-consciousness, is positively unable to conceive. We have taken a first step in diagnosing man's present spiritual condition. A few more steps are required to lead us to the point where we can conceive the therapy he needs.
Our two hands, moreover, will receive the same sense-impression from the tepid water, if we keep them in it long enough. Seen in this light, the original experiment, designed to show the subjective character of the impressions gained through the sense of warmth, reveals itself as a piece of self-deception by the onlooker-consciousness.
So, with Hume, the onlooker-consciousness came to experience its own utter inability to achieve a knowledge of the objective existence either of a material world be behind all external phenomena, or of a spiritual self behind all the details of its own internal content. Accordingly, human consciousness found itself hurled into the abyss of universal scepticism.
For, as he himself said, it was his becoming acquainted with Hume's Treatise that 'roused him out of his dogmatic slumber' and obliged him to reflect on the foundations of human knowing. We shall understand this apparent paradox, however, if we take it as a symptom of humanity's close imprisonment in recent centuries within the limits of its onlooker-consciousness.
The knowledge we have now gained concerning the disappearance and appearance of physical water in the heights of the atmosphere will enable us to shake off one of the most characteristic errors to which the onlooker-consciousness has succumbed in its estimation of nature.
An example will thereby be given of how Goethe's method of acquiring understanding of natural phenomena through reading the phenomena themselves may be carried beyond his own field of observation. There are, however, certain theoretical obstacles, erected by the onlooker-consciousness, which require to be removed before we can actually set foot on the new path.
The identification of lightning with the electric spark is a case of a confusion between the upper and lower boundaries of nature, characteristic of the onlooker-consciousness. As such, it has stood in the way of a real understanding both of non-electrical natural phenomena and of electricity itself.
Only this we will say that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an impulse which, at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose, led to the foundation of a school for the development of an intuitive relationship of the soul with the world of the senses.
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