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. The truth of the matter is that, in so far as there is any subjective element in the experience and measurement of heat, it does not lie on the side of our sense of warmth, but in our judgment of the significance of thermometrical readings. In fact, our test of the alleged proof of the absolute superiority of pointer-readings over the impressions gained by our senses gives us proof of the correctness of Goethe's statement, quoted earlier, that the senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives.

If we take seriously what this simple consideration tells us of the nature of multiplication, and if we do not allow ourselves to deviate from it for whatever purpose we make use of this algebraic operation, then the various concepts we connect with the basic measurements in physics undergo a considerable change of meaning.

To mark the results of our repeated pulls of varying intensities and directions, we draw on the floor on which we stand three chalk lines outward from the point underneath the common point of the three instruments, each in the direction taken up by one of the three persons. Along these lines we mark the extensions corresponding to those of the springs of the instruments.

Let it be repeated here that what we have found in this way does not lead to any depreciation of the method of pointer-reading. For the direct findings of the senses cannot be compared quantitatively. The point is that the idea of the absolute superiority of physical measurement as a means of scientific knowledge, in all circumstances, must be abandoned as false.

Let us test, in this respect, the well-known formula which, in the conceptual language of physics, connects 'distance' (s), 'time' (t), and 'velocity' (c). It is written
c = s / t, or s = ct.

By way of this procedure we shall arrive at a sequence of figures such as is shown in Fig. 3.

At the present time the human mind is in danger of confusing the realm of dynamic events, into which modern atomic research has penetrated, with the world of the spirit; that is, the world whence nature is endowed with intelligent design, and of which human thinking is an expression in terms of consciousness. If a view of nature as a manifestation of spirit, such as Goethe and kindred minds conceived it, is to be of any significance in our time, it must include a conception of matter which shows as one of its attributes its capacity to serve Form (in the sense in which Ruskin spoke of it in opposition to mere Force) as a means of manifestation.

We now turn to Galileo's discovery known as the theorem of the Parallelogram of Forces. The illusion which has been woven round this theorem expresses itself in the way it is described as being connected ideally with another theorem, outwardly similar in character, known as the theorem of the Parallelogram of Movements (or Velocities), by stating that the former follows logically from the latter. This statement is to be found in every textbook on physics at the outset of the chapter on dynamics (kinetics), where it serves to establish the right to treat the dynamic occurrences in nature in a purely kinematic fashion, true to the requirements of the onlooker-consciousness.¹

In this formula, s has most definitely the meaning of a 'thing', for it represents measured spatial distance. Of the two factors on the other side of the second equation, one must needs have the same quality as s: this is c. Thus for the other factor, t, there remains the property of a pure number. We are, therefore, under an illusion if we assume the factor c to represent anything of what velocity implies in outer cosmic reality. The truth is that c represents a spatial distance just as s does, with the difference only that it is a certain unit-distance. Just as little does real time enter into this formula - nor does it into any other formula of mathematical physics. 'Time', in physics, is always a pure number without any cosmic quality. Indeed, how could it be otherwise for a purely kinematic world-observation?