The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Spiritual science—or, as it has come to be called in recent decades, “theosophy”—is either unpopular or, one might even say, unknown in the broadest circles. With the exception of a small circle of our contemporaries—and this circle must indeed be called small today, as it is intensively engaged with this spiritual science—one may well hear all manner of opinions and criticisms regarding this spiritual science, but, when it comes down to it, little that reflects a genuine and serious engagement with it. Among the educated circles of our time, very little is known about the fact that this small group is engaged in the most serious and thoroughly scientific manner with the questions of spiritual life—questions that, so to speak, begin with the most elementary phenomena of this spiritual life and then ascend to the highest questions the human soul can ask: questions about life and death, about the evolution of all humanity, questions even regarding the evolution of our planet or the planetary system. And as soon as one hears in our time of an engagement with such questions, people in the broadest circles form a prejudice against these endeavors—a prejudice that even leads them to believe they are justified in refusing to engage further with such contemporary trends. For what, they ask, can one possibly suspect lies behind this? Some sect based largely on amateurish notions. — People simply know little about the fact that the individuals who belong to this alleged sect—that is, to the circles in question—study these immense questions with scientific seriousness and thoroughness, using methods and sources that are entirely unknown to the broadest circles of our educated public today. And one has no idea that it makes about as much sense to speak of theosophy or spiritual science as something sectarian as it would to call modern chemistry or botany something sectarian. For people certainly believe that genuine scientific methods are not at all possible when it comes to these questions, yet they also believe they can readily dismiss such endeavors, so to speak, based on popular knowledge. People today do admit that, say, in chemistry or botany, one must conduct preliminary studies and go to the sources [to understand anything about them], but they do not admit that it is necessary—or even possible—to do the same with regard to the highest questions of humanity’s spiritual life. However, in the case of spiritual science, one is in a different situation than with chemistry or botany. These sciences deal with things and questions that pertain to specific areas of life, and one can make use of what they provide within these specific contexts of life. But as for what is being pursued today in the field of spiritual science out of scientific rigor—and regarding which those who pursue it have not only hope but also confidence that it will be of great significance for humanity’s future—one must say that it has a profound importance for our entire way of life, for the security, stability, and confidence of our whole existence.

[ 2 ] When we now consider the question of the significance of this spiritual science for the future, it is, of course, necessary to begin by saying a few words about the very nature of this spiritual science. This is necessary, even though I have already had the honor on several occasions of speaking in this very city about precisely these questions and about the method of spiritual science. When people speak of science today, they essentially have in mind the kind of science that is based on the observations of our senses and on everything that can be gained with the help of the intellect, which is bound to the external instrument of the brain. And the question always arises, with regard to the highest realms of existence, to what extent such a science can penetrate these realms, which tell us something about the questions: What is the nature of life? What is the nature of death? What is the nature of humanity in general and of its development?

[ 3 ] The humanities now assert—not simply by claiming so, but by presenting carefully conducted individual studies that, when taken together, form a comprehensive body of knowledge—that that there is not only an external science bound to a very specific stage of human cognitive capacity, but that this human cognitive capacity itself is capable of development, so that, if we so desire, we can develop a higher cognitive capacity than that which observes the sensory-physical world through the senses and comprehends it through the intellect bound to the brain.

[ 4 ] Just as contemporary science points to experimentation—to experiments using external, mechanical means—so spiritual science points to an experiment that can be conducted solely through the means of our own soul. In our normal life in the world, our soul behaves in a very specific way. But this way of behaving can be changed, and this change creates the possibility that we can pose questions to the spiritual world just as we pose questions to natural phenomena and their course through experimentation. We cannot penetrate the spiritual world through external experiments and tools, but we can do so by awakening powers within our soul that otherwise lie dormant—powers that, to speak scientifically, are latent within the soul. There are very specific spiritual exercises—they can only be briefly mentioned here and are discussed in detail in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* —intimate activities of our soul that are suited to strengthening our inner will to a high degree, so that we are enabled to perceive a content within our soul or through our soul where we would otherwise perceive no content in so-called normal life. Through such soul exercises, we then experience moments that, while comparable to a person falling asleep, are in fact something entirely different.

[ 5 ] What do we experience at first—merely for the sake of observation—when a person transitions from a waking state to a state of sleep? If we rely solely on external observation, we experience the dimming of external impressions; the external impressions eventually cease entirely, growing weaker and weaker, and finally, after all pleasure and suffering, all passions, drives, and desires have been silenced, what we usually call unconsciousness spreads throughout the soul. Here, the methodology upon which spiritual science is based shows that in this case of falling asleep, we must speak of unconsciousness solely because, when all external impressions cease, we are no longer able to develop forces within our soul strong enough for that soul to sense its own essence and thus relate to the environment in which it then finds itself—an environment that is spiritual. Now, when a person allows a very specific thought content, a very specific world of sensations, to act upon his soul, he becomes capable of still feeling himself as a being within his soul even when all external impressions have ceased. He is then in a state similar to that of someone falling asleep, and yet radically different from it. He is then able, through conscious will, to exclude all external impressions—as well as everything that otherwise speaks to us through the senses and intellect while we are awake—and yet not to be unconscious, but rather to allow the full content of soul life to shine forth within the soul.

[ 6 ] The spiritual exercises can only be briefly touched upon here. With the ordinary concepts we hold in everyday life, we will never be able to develop such powerful forces. All the concepts we have in the waking state about our world—whether in ordinary life or even in the most sublime science—are unsuitable for awakening the forces that lie dormant in the soul. A completely different kind of concept is necessary to set those forces in our soul in motion, to bring them to life; we can call them symbolic ideas; we can, let’s say, allow an image to take effect on us in such a way that we do not let any external impressions into our soul, silence our memory, detach the soul, as it were, and think of a rose or something else, and let this symbol come alive in my soul as the sole idea to which I surrender myself. This is not suited to conveying to us the ordinary, physical truths to which the majority of people today attach the greatest value; but it is certainly suited to acting like a seed within our soul. Just as a plant seed, when sown in the earth, sends its roots in all directions, so this mental image sends its various branches into the entire life of our soul, and this image grows within us. However, if we wish to engage in such intimate spiritual exercises, our inner life must have a firm foundation; we must not be dreamy, fanciful, or confused in nature. We must know exactly what we are doing and be fully aware that we are holding such a mental image within our soul.

[ 7 ] Let us, for example, try to imagine three instances of such acts, which in life are referred to as acts of compassion, and let us seek, through a comparison of [these acts], not to form a comprehensive concept but rather a comprehensive sense of what compassion is; let us now try to forget everything that constitutes acts of compassion in our world, and simply allow this impulse to be at work in our soul—then we will have a sensation from which, in turn, roots extend to a rich, full content of the soul. Through this, we gradually come to reach that moment which can be compared to falling asleep, and yet is radically different from it. The impressions of everyday life—all the day’s experiences, pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, as well as all the day’s thoughts and ideas—must sink away. Anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher must be able—by training their will through such purely inner experiences—to exclude all external impressions and to bring about what the soul experiences when the body is in a state of unconsciousness. Then states of the soul are created in which entirely different states of consciousness exist—states in which the soul relates to the external world in a completely different way, as if the soul were like a person born blind who has never seen colors before and then, after an operation, sees colors and shapes. In this clairvoyant state, the soul perceives something different from what normally surrounds it in the physical world; it receives new impressions—impressions from the spiritual world that underlies our physical, sensory world.

[ 8 ] Then we come to realize: When a person falls asleep at night, it is not the case that the entire person remains exhausted in what lies in bed, but rather the core of the person’s being—the spiritual-soul aspect—leaves this outer shell, and it is precisely this core of the being that has no organs in normal consciousness, but which, through the soul exercises described earlier, has acquired spiritual-soul organs through which it feels transported into a new world. True experience in the spiritual-soul realm is thus attained; a new world of observation is thereby revealed, and from these elementary facts of spiritual experience we then ascend to the highest truths.

[ 9 ] Now there are certain individuals who engage in ascetic practices in order to transform their own souls into instruments. When they then appear before a small group of people interested in such matters and tell them what they have experienced in altered states of consciousness, those people believe them. For those who are only superficially acquainted with the spiritual current of Theosophy, it is entirely understandable that they believe this, for if one knows only what exists on the surface of life, it is extremely difficult to form a conception of the way in which this spiritual current operates. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that it is misunderstood in the broadest circles. This must be emphasized. It is understandable that such people believe only in revelations from the spiritual world that have been obtained in the manner described. To believe that such people are fantasists, dreamers, enthusiasts, or sectarians is something incredibly obvious—and one might say, for the majority of educated people today, something that goes without saying. Yet one overlooks a very specific fact: Research into the spiritual world and the search for spiritual truths require a developed soul—that is, a developed higher consciousness. Even if today only a few people, through the development of their soul—as I have described in detail in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* , are able to transform their own soul into a tool with which to look into the spiritual world and then share what they have perceived there—this is sufficient for those who approach the matter with a certain sense of truth and without prejudice. Research and the discovery of facts require the trained soul of the spiritual researcher; grasping such truth requires only truly unbiased logic. When such things are communicated, they resonate with the whole of life to a much greater degree for anyone willing to reflect than any other philosophy currently in existence.

[ 10 ] Therefore, anyone can examine—or, so to speak, investigate—the evidential value of what the spiritual researcher has communicated. However, it is not enough simply to familiarize oneself with the results at face value, for the logic and the entire conceptual framework governing the soul’s development—necessary for ascending into the higher worlds—are subtle and rigorous. One might say that far stricter demands are placed on logic and conceptual understanding than in any field of ordinary science today. But if one does not seek to judge things in the blink of an eye, but strives with one’s whole soul to acclimate oneself to the nature of this new world of ideas in order to comprehend what emerges regarding the highest questions of existence, then this process of immersion does not act as mere suggestion; rather, the soul can follow it with full consciousness. Every soul can find its way into those realms where the highest questions of human existence—questions of time and eternity—are addressed.

[ 11 ] Does this teaching of spiritual science or theosophy have any significance for today’s culture and for the ongoing development of human civilization? This is a question that must be raised. For one might object that there may be people who, out of certain longings, take an interest in such things, but that they are loners who prefer to ponder in their own rooms and have nothing to do with the great processes of human culture. – One can no longer say that if one surveys the course of human development with such understanding that the very moment in which we now live reveals its essence to our soul. This moment in which we live has, after all, evolved from what humanity has experienced from ancient times right up to the present day. And from the current stage of development, the experiences of the people of the future will in turn emerge. If we look back at prehistoric human development, it becomes clear that we are subject to a powerful prejudice when we believe that the entire human psychological constitution—the way people think, the way they form ideas and concepts about their environment, and all states of human consciousness—has remained roughly the same throughout the ages. That simply cannot be the case. Although the word “development” is applied to the transformation of external forms, it is rarely applied to what the human inner life itself is; and it is precisely in relation to the human inner life that the concept of development points us deeply toward the most important questions of humanity.

[ 12 ] The study of the human soul through the eyes of the spiritual researcher—and the conclusions that can be drawn from it—shows us that human consciousness in ancient times of human development, which lie far beyond what history can reach, was different from what it is today; indeed, we may speak of periods in human development when the human soul itself lived in a kind of clairvoyant state of consciousness—though not in the same way as is the case with today’s trained spiritual researcher. The clairvoyant state attained by the trained spiritual researcher today is one that takes place with full consciousness, with the full, waking presence of mind that one also has in normal life. This was not the case with the ancient clairvoyant of prehistoric humanity. He possessed a more dreamlike form of clairvoyance, a dreamlike awareness of existence. We may therefore say: What people experience in their dreams today—what intrudes so chaotically into their sleep life—is an ancient atavistic remnant, a kind of legacy of that ancient state of consciousness. While today’s dream images, for the most part, have nothing particular to say about the reality of the external world, those ancient states of consciousness consisted of visual images that, while comparable to our dream images, were nevertheless very different from them. These visual images, which were often symbolic, constituted the content of an ancient clairvoyant consciousness that had not yet been permeated by the intellectuality we possess today in our normal waking consciousness. These images ebbed and flowed in the souls of people in ancient times. The people of antiquity did not always possess such a pictorial consciousness; they, too, alternated between waking and sleeping states, but while these merge into one another for us and are separated by an essentially meaningless dream state, in ancient times there existed a third state of consciousness, the state of such pictorial consciousness, in which it was not our sensory perceptions that ebbed and flowed in the soul, but symbols—such as art still possesses today, albeit in a diminished form. These symbolic images floated up and down with full vitality within these three states of consciousness, and they were not like our dream images—which we must not relate to any reality—but were clearly directed toward a reality, so that through them external reality was perceived, even if only in symbolic form. One experienced a spiritual world that lay behind the sensory world. Thus, the people of ancient times possessed an imagery-based consciousness that made our present-day intellectuality and the wisdom of our waking consciousness unnecessary for them. Instead, they looked into a spiritual world—but a spiritual world to be beheld through the images of a dreamlike clairvoyance.

[ 13 ] One might now ask: Is there really nothing in the outer world that provides us with any reasonable evidence of what you spiritual researchers see when you look back into prehistory? Is there really nothing that can provide evidence that humanity once looked into the spiritual worlds? – Oh, there certainly is! People just need to learn to interpret these things correctly. What has been preserved for us from the mists of humanity’s ancient past regarding attempts to penetrate the inner essence of things? We search in vain for a science, as we know it today, among ancient peoples, but legends and myths have been preserved for us. Now, the enlightened person of the present day says: this corresponds to the childish fantasies of pre-humanity; now we have entered the age of maturity in science. – But whoever delves into the myths of various peoples experiences something quite different from such a superficial judge; they experience that these imagery-based conceptions are, in a wondrous way, connected everywhere [with the spiritual life of humanity]. And when one delves into these images, clues to the deep connections with this spiritual life of humanity and its culture open up to us, and one gains ever greater respect, ever greater admiration for the marvelous artistry of the images in the ancient myths and legends—such great respect that one often says to oneself: What are all the philosophies of the present day compared to the wonderful images preserved for us in the myths? They harmonize so perfectly across the entire Earth, and they correspond so closely to what the spiritual researcher can discover in the spiritual world through his method, that we must ask ourselves: Yes, where do these ancient concepts come from, which can be found all over the globe—where do they come from?

[ 14 ] Truly conscientious research can only find an explanation if it acknowledges that these things are remnants of an ancient form of clairvoyance. And it is a completely false judgment, made without objective basis, to say that the myths of ancient peoples sprang from childish imagination. No, we can only understand them if we tell ourselves that our ancestors looked into [the spiritual world] with their clairvoyant, imaginal consciousness. Even at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, there were numerous people who were aware that such an imagistic primordial wisdom existed and that the wondrous spiritual voices from the myths of the various peoples’ most ancient times bear witness to a primordial wisdom of humanity. At that time, it was still clearly understood that the peoples whom we today regard as individual cultural groups with decadent ideas had merely fallen from a higher standpoint; yet everything that humanity possesses today in terms of culture can be traced back to ancient times, when knowledge of the spiritual world was still alive—and that it was primordial wisdom, not childish irrationality, that stood at the starting point of humanity.

[ 15 ] There were certainly serious scholars who were deeply aware of this fact. If we ask the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato, if we ask the other philosophers who belonged to ancient Greek culture and who have passed their philosophies down to us, we find numerous passages where these philosophers speak of how all science traces back to the primordial wisdom that was handed down to humankind by the gods themselves. Plato speaks of people of the realm of Kronos who received primordial wisdom directly from the spiritual world. Spiritual researchers tell us not only that this was so, but also why this ancient clairvoyance—which had led people into the spiritual world—gradually disappeared from humanity.

[ 16 ] This brings us to the great law that can also be observed in nature, but which is particularly evident in the spiritual life of humanity: that for a particular power to develop, another must first recede. Those ancient people, who in certain states of consciousness had the ability to glimpse into a spiritual world, did not yet possess our present-day intellectual faculties; they could not have established science or culture as we understand them today. Everything intellectual had to develop first. Development is something that leads us to the deepest questions concerning the life of the soul. Our intelligence, our rational grasp of the world, the state of mind we have today—in which we rely entirely on our senses and combine sensory perception with the intellect bound to the brain— all that we conceive of in everyday life and all that we pursue in science—all of this could only enter into general human consciousness because, for a time, the old clairvoyance receded, drowned out by intellectual consciousness. The old clairvoyant consciousness had to recede so that intellectual culture could develop within humanity. Anyone who understands even a little about the fundamental character of the Middle Ages knows that the peculiar phenomenon of spiritual development during that era can be explained by the fact that the Middle Ages were the time when the capacity for the old form of clairvoyance gradually disappeared. The greatest impulse in human development—the Christ impulse, which will one day lead humanity to full clairvoyance—had the task of causing the old clairvoyance to recede. And so we see that with the dawn of the new era, a peculiar phenomenon emerges: the old clairvoyance recedes, while only the tradition of those truths gained through the old clairvoyance remains. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the branches of knowledge that had been developed on the basis of ancient clairvoyance continued to flourish, but people were no longer even aware of this; they had merely grasped the ideas that had been discovered in prehistoric times—indeed, toward the end of the Middle Ages, they even applied them quite incorrectly. An example: Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher of the pre-Christian era, was already standing at the turning point toward the age in which humanity’s intellectual development had begun, but he still looked back—albeit almost only in a dim inkling—to the time when human nature knew things only through clairvoyance; he looked back at the processes of human conceptualization and sensation, indeed at human origins in general, and he describes these. He could no longer perceive it, since he no longer belonged to the age when one could penetrate the spiritual world through the ancient clairvoyance; he had only the tradition. So he said: When a human being is engaged in mental activity, in a waking state, then what we are dealing with in the human being is, first and foremost, what can be called the physical body, and this body has its organs. But Aristotle would still have been quite averse to viewing this physical body, in a material sense, as the sole constituent of human being. He pointed to a higher member, centered roughly where the human heart is, and from this supersensible member certain currents emanate, which ascend particularly toward the brain and spread throughout the human body as supersensible currents. These currents were still referred to in the Middle Ages as “cold light,” which was said to pour into the brain in particular to enliven the physical organs of the brain. Even in the Middle Ages, people spoke of this cold light spreading from the location of the physical heart.

[ 17 ] One can only understand Aristotle if one knows that what he describes as emanating from the heart is meant in a supersensory sense—that he is not referring to physical strands, organs, or the like. Then came the Middle Ages. People lost the ability to look into the ancient world. They read Aristotle, and throughout the entire Middle Ages, belief in Aristotle was like belief in the Bible. Aristotle was the foundation for the natural sciences, for medicine, for everything. Everything was built upon Aristotle’s foundations. But people no longer had any idea of what Aristotle actually meant. Thus, a peculiar notion could develop precisely among the most devout followers of Aristotle—those who faithfully believed in him but no longer understood him. For, as is well known, it is not necessary to understand everything one believes in. Ideas could develop suggesting that what emanates from the heart refers not to supersensory currents but to sensory pathways. And so the followers of Aristotle believed that the nerves originated in the heart.

[ 18 ] Toward the end of the Middle Ages, great explorers and thinkers emerged—such as Giordano Bruno and Galileo—who developed a new worldview based on Copernicus’s revolutionary new perspective. However, the followers of Aristotle were not inclined to simply accept this new worldview. Galileo and Giordano Bruno pointed to the real world of the senses, because this was the beginning of an era in which people were to develop their knowledge through sensory observation and intellect. It so happened that Galileo led a friend—who was a staunch follower of Aristotle—to a corpse and showed him how the nerves do not originate from the heart, but from the brain. The friend looked at it and said: “Yes, it almost looks as if the nerves originate in the brain, but Aristotle says otherwise, and if there is a contradiction, then I believe Aristotle!”—That was the reply Galileo received.

[ 19 ] The time was ripe to discard what had been passed down from the old tradition of clairvoyance, for it had fallen entirely prey to misunderstanding. At that time, there was a particular surge in intellectual development, which we see emerge so grandly and powerfully, especially in the case of Galileo. A large part of the physical concepts we work with today can be traced back to Galileo’s way of thinking. His material, mechanical thinking was directly focused on the external sensory world and on grasping it through the intellect. The dawn of the age of intelligence had also broken in the realm of science, and from that time onward right up to the present day, we can observe time and again how humanity has sought to conquer this realm of the human soul, the most important aspect of which was the intellectual conquest of external reality through reason. A particularly striking example of how, in the Middle Ages, people were, so to speak, capable only of material thinking—yet still retained the old tradition—is provided by the following:

[ 20 ] It would never have occurred to any of the ancient clairvoyant sages to say that the spiritual world was “above,” that there was a blue celestial canopy enclosing our world. That was not how the ancient clairvoyants thought; they were only misunderstood in later times. Then people began pointing upward to the fixed-star sky as a kind of shell surrounding our world. It was a momentous occasion when Copernicus, as it were, pulled the earth out from under people’s feet. It was a momentous occasion when Giordano Bruno cast this “shell” out into the infinity of physical space. But Giordano Bruno added something else alongside this sensory image. We need only recall a few words of Giordano Bruno in our minds, and we will see that he accomplished the great feat of placing a spiritual image alongside this sensory image. He stated that everything that surrounds us in the sensory world is rooted in the thoughts of the World Spirit, and that which is rooted in the thoughts of the World Spirit reveals itself in the outer form—in what we perceive with our senses. So when Giordano Bruno points out into infinite space and seeks the essence of things through the senses, this was for him nothing other than the embodiment of the thoughts of the World Spirit. Giordano Bruno calls human concepts “shadows of the thoughts of the gods,” not shadows of external things. Thus, when Giordano Bruno directs his physical gaze toward the external world, the thought of the World Spirit mysteriously enters his soul, and human concepts are not shadows of external sensory things, but of the thoughts of the World Spirit. It is of infinite importance that we recognize in Giordano Bruno a great spirit who points outward into the vastness of space, but who is equally strongly attuned to what connects the human soul to the primordial spirit of worldly existence. If we examine what underlies this in the soul of Giordano Bruno, it becomes clear that he was guided by an intelligence and a mindset that can certainly be compared to the intelligence and mindset of modern science, but which was still enriched by the traditions of ancient clairvoyance. One might say that even a shadow of the ancient clairvoyance and of the sense of kinship with the divine-spiritual world still lived in the soul of Giordano Bruno. But all that remains for us is the picture he sketched of the outer, sensory world, and nothing more of what was still alive within him at that time. The image of the ancient clairvoyance that lived within him disappeared. One need only trace this development without prejudice right up to the present day to see that, more and more, the mere intellect—this purely external observation of the sensory world—has become widespread in the general, normal consciousness of humanity.

[ 21 ] What, then, can be said about our age? It must be said that we truly live in the age of the intellect, of reason, and of its application to the sensory world. Now, from the perspective of spiritual science, one must examine the unique effect of the intellect itself—the mere rational knowledge of the human soul—as opposed to clairvoyant knowledge. The latter differs fundamentally from knowledge derived from the intellect or sensory observation. The difference lies in the fact that all clairvoyant knowledge, which in some way establishes a connection between the human being and the spiritual world, works its way into our soul, giving rise to a feeling, a sense of the human being’s place and position within the entire universe. Clairvoyant knowledge is powerful; it pours sensation and feeling into our soul, it satisfies our longings, strengthens our hope, and kindles our love. It is unthinkable that a human being could partake in supersensible knowledge without it translating into feeling and sensation. Thus we see how the pictorial legends and myths were not received indifferently in the imagination of the ancients, but in such a way that the whole soul could either be enraptured and devoted to a supersensory world, or else contrite over its own smallness. It is also part of the nature of intelligence that it has, in a certain sense, a darkening effect on all that exists as supersensory knowledge. We can observe this in our ordinary soul life. The moment any pictorial image—which, as they say, arises intuitively or through inspiration—is framed in abstract concepts, the deep emotional content it provides for the entire personality and the entire soul life disappears. Intellect is highly illuminating, but it extinguishes all the immediate psychological effects of supersensible knowledge.

[ 22 ] I am not presenting you with anything I have made up, nothing that you cannot read about in numerous books. There, the representatives of the intelligentsia point to Buddha, to Christ, to Zarathustra, to Pythagoras, and so on, and say: Here the human soul faces the great world; it perceives the world in various ways. The penetration of supersensory knowledge into the soul was linked to a powerful courage to exist, which, arising from the soul, brought about the awareness of our connection with the spiritual realm of the world. Intellect may indeed lead to understanding on the surface of things, but it is not suited to evoking a sense of inner, spiritual courage. Thus we see despondency and a lack of strength in the face of the penetration of knowledge as a characteristic of our time. Our time praises and emphasizes what science can achieve. It does so rightly. But wherever people believe they are thinking more deeply, they say that human beings cannot penetrate to the very heart of things, where the “why” of things speaks. Neither Pythagoras, nor Christ, nor Zarathustra would have known anything to say about this “why.” This proves sufficiently that a sense of despondency has replaced the old knowledge and confidence.

[ 23 ] There are essentially two forms of resignation in human emotion. The old clairvoyant could say: Given the way human abilities have developed in my circumstances and in my era, they do not yet extend far enough to see into the very foundations of things—one must resign oneself to this. – That was a different kind of resignation than the one we find today. Why does the ancient seer resign himself? Because he sees: As I stand now, I am not yet capable of arriving at insights. – He resigns himself out of modesty, out of the awareness that although the highest powers reside within him, he is unable to unfold them due to his imperfection. This is a heroic resignation, full of confidence; this is the person to whom the gates of the world’s mysteries are not closed.

[ 24 ] Today, however, it is said: Human beings cannot penetrate [into the knowledge of higher worlds] at all; given their nature, their cognitive faculties can never be developed to such a high degree. – This is a resignation based on principle—it differs quite significantly from heroic resignation—and it has an air of arrogance in that it declares the current state of knowledge to be absolute. What this state of knowledge cannot perceive lies entirely beyond human comprehension.

[ 25 ] The age of intelligence is filled with other sensations—sensations of a negative nature—because it cannot itself be productive, in contrast to the times of ancient clairvoyance. Humanity was bound to reach this point if it was to lose all its old conceptions, including those of faith, and this required the culture of intelligence. But inner life would become barren if only the intellect were called upon to shed light on the inner life of the human being. That is why spiritual science, or theosophy, has emerged in the present day, demonstrating that it is once again possible to draw forth from the depths of the human soul forces that permeate the intellect with a higher power of knowledge, which in turn will lead people back into the spiritual worlds. Thus, the new clairvoyant knowledge aims to be a stimulus and an aid to intellectual understanding, and it restores to humanity what it needs—not merely the light of intellect, which leaves the soul empty, but the possibility of possessing a kind of knowledge that brings strength, confidence, and hope back into our lives. Countless people yearn to attain such insight, which can be transformed into courage and strength within our souls. Anyone who comprehends the full spirit of this new development—from the dawn of the intellectual age to its present-day culmination—will also grasp that, for the future of humanity, it is necessary for the soul to be filled with substance. For intelligence alone could extinguish the soul, but it would not provide new spiritual content. The old ideas are criticized by today’s progressive circles or, at best, regarded merely as history. One looks back, so to speak, to take note of the old ideas. Spiritual science, however, despite being a genuine science, will always be a science that instills in our souls a sense of strength for connection with the spiritual worlds. It seeks to provide content for the soul and to enrich human souls with this content.

[ 26 ] In this way, spiritual science points to its mission for the future. It is a science that will restore sensation and feeling in the most natural way possible. Intelligence will indeed build the bridge from the past to the future, but the mission of spiritual science is to imbue this intelligence with the living value of spiritual life as nourishment for the soul. Because intelligence has, to a certain degree, reached its highest level of development in our time, this very moment has been chosen by those who know how to interpret the spirit of the age to make an attempt, through spiritual science, to gradually reclaim [vibrant spiritual content for] the soul.

[ 27 ] Thus, spiritual science does not present itself as something arbitrary or arbitrarily conceived in our age, but as something that seeks to understand the true meaning, the deepest tasks, and the mysteries of our age. And when the human soul allows this spiritual science to take effect upon it with complete openness, free from prejudice, it will sense that this spiritual science is on a par with any external science in terms of logic and intellect, yet that it structures logic in such a way that it enters our soul as a force of love, compassion, and assurance of life. And every soul will feel and understand the lofty meaning of spiritual science, the essence of which we wish to summarize in the words:

They speak to the human senses
The things in the vastness of space
They change as time passes
The human soul lives in awareness
Unlimited by the vastness of space
And undeterred by the passage of time
In the realm of spiritual eternity.