“You have now seen what is essential in the discovery of spiritual-scientific methods for Agriculture, as it is for other spheres of life. Nature and the working of the Spirit throughout Nature must be recognized on a large scale, in an all-embracing sphere. Materialistic science has tended more and more to the investigation of minute, restricted spheres. True, this is not quite so bad in Agriculture; here they do not always go on at once to the very minute — the microscopically small, with which they are wont to deal in other sciences. Nevertheless, here too they deal with narrow spheres of activity, or rather, with conclusions which they feel able to draw from the investigation of narrow and restricted spheres. But the world in which man and the other earthly creatures live cannot possibly be judged from such restricted aspects.
To deal with the realities of Agriculture as the customary science of to-day would do, is as though one would try to recognize the full being of man, starting from the little finger or from the lobe of the ear and trying to construct from thence the total human being. Here again we must first establish a genuine science — a science that looks to the great cosmic relationships. This is most necessary nowadays. Think how the customary science of to-day, or yesterday, has to correct itself. You need only remember the absurdities that prevailed not long ago in the science of human nutrition, for example. The Statements were “absolutely scientific” — “scientifically proven” — and indeed, if one concentrated on the limited aspects which were brought forward, one could not make objection to the proofs. It was scientifically proven that a human being of average weight (eleven to twelve stone) requires about four-and-one-quarter of protein a day for adequate nourishment. It was, so to speak, an established fact of science. And yet, to-day no man of science believes in this proposition. Science has corrected itself in the meantime. Today as everybody knows, four-and-one-quarter oz. of albuminous food are not only unnecessary but positively harmful, and a man will remain most healthy if he only eats one-and-three-quarter oz. a day.
In this instance, science has corrected itself, and it is well-known that if superfluous protein is consumed, it will create by-products in the intestines — by-products which have a toxic effect. Examine not only the period of life in which the protein is taken, but the whole life of the human being, and you recognize that the arterial sclerosis of old age is largely due to the toxic effect of superfluous protein. In this way scientific investigation are often erroneous — in relation to man, for instance — inasmuch as they only deal with the given moment. A normal human life lasts longer than ten years, and the harmful effects of the seemingly good causes which they mistakenly strive to produce, often do not emerge for a long time. Spiritual Science will not fall so easily into such errors.
I do not wish to join in the facile criticisms which are so frequently made against orthodox science because it has to correct itself as in this instance. One can understand that it cannot be otherwise. No less facile, an the other hand, are the attacks that are made an Spiritual Science when it begins to enter into practical life, recognizing as it does the wider connections. For in these larger relationships of life, Spiritual Science is impressed by those substances and forces which go out eventually into the spiritual realm. It does not merely recognize the coarse material forces and substantialities.”