Note[1]
Goethe says in his “Faust”: “Reason and science are the greatest gifts possessed by mortal man.” The light of truth absolute, shining in his soul by the power of intuition belongs to a higher and immortal state and not to that which is mortal in man. The reflection of that celestial light is called “reason”; it endows man with his reasoning powers and from their application grows his science, and as everything, when it once becomes the possession of a person, may be used by him or her either for a good or evil purpose, so this power of reasoning may be a means to aid him on his way to perfection, or to degrade him below the level of brutes. As long as he clings to the divine light of wisdom, which is the source of all knowledge, because it is the direct recognition of absolute truth from which all relative knowledge is generated, this holy light will be his guiding star to show him the way out of the darkness of ignorance; but if he turns away from that source of all good and uses his reasoning powers without that superior guidance, his reason, joined by self-conceit, will become a will o‘ the whisp, leading him into the swamps of delusion and by kindling the fires of passion, into the flames of hell.
The foundation stone of all personal knowledge is curiosity. Without the desire to know there would be no attempt at observation and reasoning. It is a legitimate faculty. If the mythical Eve had not been curious to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, primordial man would never have left his paradisiacal state and never stepped upon the ladder to individual development and progress. From curiosity springs the desire for its gratification. This is also perfectly natural, and while its motive power is noble and spiritual, it will be the source of his efforts to penetrate into the mysteries of nature and to study the wonders of the universe. A legitimate pursuit of scientific knowledge cannot be otherwise than elevating; it fills the soul with higher aspiration and with admiration for that divine power which called the universe into objective existence.
But if the spiritual aspect of nature is forgotten and “matter” placed upon the throne to be worshipped as the supreme being; if the divine law of wisdom is disregarded and blind chance considered to rule, then enters the devil of self-conceit and greed for knowledge that seeks gratification at any cost. From this state arises that class of would-be-seekers for truth, who having become lost to God, fancy themselves to be gods; having lost all sense of spirituality, holiness and sanctity or “religious feeling,” are no more capable of recognizing anything spiritual or holy in nature or in any creature, and their greed for the gratification of their scientific curiosity and personal ambition leads them to the desecration of nature, and by doing this they are degrading themselves.
Even in physical matters science would make a far greater progress, if men would consent to recognize the spiritual aspect of all the forces of nature and understand that behind each mechanically acting power is an intelligence from which the physical force takes its origin; but when we come to beings in which sensation and self-conscious life are manifest, this ignorance is the cause of infinite harm. Therefore the greatest degradation of science is to be found among certain anatomists, physiologists, biologists and all those who deal with the phenomena of life after they have lost all regard for its sacredness. The medical student directing his whole attention exclusively to the physical body and its functions and being ignorant of the fact that this body is only the vehicle of the spirit, the dwelling place of the soul and temple of the divine inner man, acquires the habit of dealing with it without respect or reverence and loses all sense of modesty and shame. Having been taught that there is no “soul,” he regards the corpse as a man in whom the functions of life have ceased and after he has once become accustomed to treat such a “dead person” in his dissecting room in the most brutal manner, which differs in no way from unlawful desecration of corpses, he soon finds pleasure in treating living beings in a similar manner. Thus from the desecration of nature to the pleasure of vivisection there is only one step, and only one more from the vivisection of animals to the vivisection of human beings; for the love of cruelty having once grown and the sense of pity and charity paralyzed, there is nothing to stop a degraded person from committing any crime for the purpose of gratifying his desire for knowledge and fame, unless it is the fear of the law of the country.
There is no crime, however horrible it may be, for which not some excuse may be invented, and thus it happens that the abomination of vivisection of animals, in spite of its evident uselessness, it not only tolerated but even publicly patronized under the pretext that something might perhaps be discovered thereby which could be beneficial to the corporeal well-being of mankind, and it would be useless to attempt to convince those, who know nothing about the sacredness of life, that even if the claims of the vivisectors were true, man had no right to sacrifice the higher principle of life to the lower principle of matter.
The vivisection of human beings is at present not openly permitted by law, but it begins to be universally practiced. Occupants of poorhouses and hospitals, orphan children and prisoners are submitted to “scientific experiments” by injecting syphilitic and cancer poisons into their bodies and exposed to different kinds of tortures and death, for the gratification of scientific curiosity. One “doctor of medicine,” whose stupidity we admire, even honestly confesses in one of the medical journals, that in his hospital children of poor people are used for such experiments, “because calves are too expensive.”
From the love of vivisection to the mania for torturing and murder for the sake of the pleasure derived therefrom there is only another step. Perhaps “Jack the Ripper” was only the outgrowth of scientific curiosity, and Giles de Rey, Marechal of France, who, within a couple of years tortured to death in the most horrible manner several hundred women and children, was also in the beginning nothing else but a “scientist,” wishing to come into the possession of forbidden knowledge at any price.
Such are the natural consequences if the thirst for knowledge exceeds the limits drawn by true religion, and there is no other remedy to prevent them, except that science becomes enlightened by the light of religious knowledge and recognizes that higher aspect of man, which is shown by the teachings of Theosophy.
Note:
[1] The Abuses and Downward Ways of Science. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Theosophical Forum 5, no. 6 (October 1899), 102-4 {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}