# The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922

## GA 251 — 26 May 1918, Vienna

### 29. On the Meaning of Life

My dear Theosophical friends!

During the years in which this catastrophe that has befallen humanity has called so many of our human brothers to difficult, responsible posts, we have always turned to the protecting spirits of those fighting in the field at our meetings:

> Spirits of your souls, watchers ever active,  
> Your wings may bear  
> Our souls' imploring love  
> To earthlings trusting in your keeping,  
> That, joined with your might,  
> Our plea may helpfully shine  
> On the souls it seeks in love!

My dear friends!

We have not seen each other for a long time here in Vienna, but this difficult present, this present, which makes so much of what we now have to remember so necessary, so much of the past gathering of strength for the present and the future, this present necessitates so much. And we have to accept – as so much has to be accepted today – that we will see each other less on the physical plane. On the other hand, however, at such a meeting it will be particularly important to remember those souls who have been holding us together in our spiritual movement for years. One of the main thoughts, one of the main impulses that hold us together, is that through spiritual science we must increasingly come to the conviction that whatever is to help all of humanity, to help it on , must be spiritually motivated. The more we can truly feel, sense, and understand this in our souls, that humanity needs spiritual insights to warm and illuminate our souls, the more we will

we will find the opportunity to fruitfully engage with the difficult tasks that are actually posed today to every person who does not dreamily, sleepily pass by the events of the present. And so, after such a long time of not being together, it may be good today, when we tie in with this reflection, to think about ideas that, on the one hand, are connected with the present-day insights that are necessary, but which, despite being necessary, are not present in general humanity, and which, on the other hand, are again suitable to penetrate us soulfully, to strengthen us, to permeate us with strength precisely for the task we have in the present for this present.

In particular, my dear friends, if we turn our attention to what we have been doing for years in spiritual science, one main thought, above all, will remain before our soul. The thought is that if we want to gain spiritual-scientific knowledge, we must shape many a concept, many a feeling, and many a volitional impulse differently than we have done so far. We must think differently about many things, and perhaps the time is not far distant when many more people than today will see that something else also teaches us to think differently about time, about human development, and about human tasks. And this other thing is the catastrophe itself that has befallen humanity, the whole of humanity on earth, and the goal of which can hardly be grasped at all by anything other than an understanding of the spiritual path of human development.

But let us start with seemingly very distant thoughts. We can ask: Why is it that, as soon as they are present, the majority of people actually show either irony, mockery, annoyance, or some other kind of dislike or opposition to what we call spiritual science? It can be said that this is often because this spiritual science makes demands on people that have to be met, but first a firm decision of the heart must be made. The spiritual world, as everyone says, as we gradually learn to understand it through spiritual science, looks quite different from the world that our senses must actually be the spiritual world. We only learn when real spiritual research brings us close to how fundamentally different the ideas about it are; only then do we learn to understand why people are so dismissive of spiritual science.

Let us then start from an obvious thought, or I could just as easily say: from a remote thought, to show you why humanity has so much to say against spiritual science. To help us understand this idea, let us first take those spiritual beings that are closest to most people, towards which most people long most intensely, let us take the human souls that have passed through the gate of death itself. The one who enters the spiritual world with clear vision gradually comes to an understanding, although this understanding is one of the most difficult in the realm of spiritual vision. There is also a certain correlation that draws him to the so-called deceased human souls. But it is precisely then that it becomes apparent that when one enters into this spiritual communication with the departed human souls, one must become accustomed to different concepts than those to which one is accustomed from the sense world. When we stand here in the sense world and speak to another person, it is the case that when we say something to him, we know that what we speak to him as sound comes from our own soul. We hear ourselves speak; and when he answers us, we hear him speak. We know that what he has to communicate to us is coming from him to us.

We become accustomed to such communication with the outside world as a matter of course, and therefore it can only seem quite strange, quite paradoxical to us when the spiritual researcher claims the absolute opposite about communication with the dead. When he has to say that he has struggled to make contact with the deceased, when he can tie the karmic threads that connect people even beyond death, then one has to get used to perceiving what the dead person has to communicate as coming from one's own soul. What comes from the dead person resounds from one's own soul, and what we have to communicate to him, what we have to say to him, is clothed

so that it is as if we heard it spoken to us by him. So you have to completely change your habits when you are confronted with a spiritual being, when you compare the external experience you have with it to the experiences of the sensory world, when someone who has become a spirit speaks to us in that wordless language that is spoken on the spiritual plane, that when he communicates or seems to communicate something to us, then we have to say to ourselves: that is what you yourself say to him. On the other hand, when he really communicates something to us, when something really comes from him, then it rises up from the depths of our own soul.

It is easy to say such things, but to develop this habit of our soul life, to truly change our habits, that is somewhat more difficult. Now you will understand that it is not easy for a person to cross this bridge to a completely different kind of experience, to a completely different way of experiencing. [You will understand] that he instinctively, unconsciously, withholds his soul life, which, if he did not withhold it, would lead to communication with the so-called dead. But then one would have to communicate in the way I told you. On the other hand, it cannot be said that people who live here on earth in the physical body do not do so; they actually do it all the time, only they misunderstand the whole nature of this communication. The simplest thing that happens in this area for most people is that they dream about people with whom they have been in contact. But these dreams, even if they are partly subjective experiences, can also arise from a real interaction with the dead.

If one really wants to establish a right relationship with the spiritual world, then it is necessary to see two experiences in the right light. Two experiences that man actually pays no attention to in ordinary life. And these two experiences are falling asleep and waking up. The other two states of the four states of consciousness, sleeping and waking, last, and man is generally inclined to follow attentively what lasts a long time, but what passes quickly, like waking and falling asleep, man is not accustomed to follow with the same attention. And in the times when we are awake, we do experience important things for our physical life, but in the time of actual sleep, we experience, with the exception of dreaming, which we find very difficult to interpret, not much consciousness. On the other hand, we actually experience a lot in the moments of falling asleep and waking up, but we do not pay attention to it because at the moment we wake up and fall asleep, we are at our most inattentive. The moment of waking up and falling asleep has already passed by the time we want to look at it and take notice of it; that is why we are so unaware of how infinitely important and significant these two points of falling asleep and waking up are.

We know from spiritual science, at least in theory, what falling asleep is: a stepping out of the physical body. In the present state of development of humanity, we are too weak to be conscious in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and so it happens that when we fall asleep, we pass from our conscious state to the unconscious one; we do not develop enough attention to observe the falling asleep itself; and it is the same when we wake up from the spiritual world. The physical world with its impressions of light, colors and sounds overwhelms us immediately, physical sensations overwhelm us immediately as well, and we do not have time to grasp the moment of waking up in a spiritual way; our attention cannot develop that fast, and when it does develop, we are already overwhelmed by the external influences, then our consciousness is no longer attuned to grasp the more subtle things. The spiritual researcher must learn to develop attention for these two moments, for falling asleep and waking up.

Now, for us, falling asleep is a stepping into the spiritual world. By stepping into the spiritual world, we are in the realm of existence where the so-called dead are. We are with the dead. In the world in which we then are, they live and weave. But as I said, our consciousness is too weak in the present cycle of humanity to perceive our surroundings in this state. But just because we do not perceive something, it does not mean that it is not there! It is all around us, we just cannot perceive it. So we are together with the so-called dead, but at first we are not aware of this togetherness. But sometimes it does emerge from dreams, and, as I said, these dreams can only be completely subjective experiences, reminiscences. So there are dreams that, by showing us that the dead person is saying this or that to us, bring us into a real interrelationship, into a real communication with the dead. But as a rule one interprets the communication wrongly. One has the image of the dead person before one, the dead person says this to one, one takes this for an order. It is not that. Perhaps we have thought and felt about the dead, and if we are in spiritual science, we also know that we can become more and more aware of these thoughts about the dead. We can almost reshape our thoughts about the dead in such a way that they offer a certain guarantee of the reality of our contact. We can vividly remember this or that occasion when we were together, but we do not think in general, abstract terms in such a case; rather, we think of something that we really experienced with him, we think of it with the vividness with which we experienced it, and then we make the decision to to behave in our thoughts with the dead person as we would like to behave with him if he were standing in front of us. When we do this, we address a question to him, or we communicate something to him that we believe he or we might need to tell him. What we do consciously and more and more consciously – but in a sense it is what I say, what we want to send into it during our waking life – we take that into our sleep consciousness. We will then have not a subjective but an objective, real dream. But we must interpret this dream in the right way. People do not interpret it correctly, because this “dream means the echoes of what we ourselves have addressed to the dead; even if it seems to us in the dream image that the dead person is speaking to us, it does not mean that he is speaking to us in the words he is saying to us, but only that he is hearing us, that what we are saying to him is reaching him. There you have a living application of what I have told you.

I said that when we turn to the dead, we have to get used to the fact that it seems as if it comes from him. This also occurs in dreams. The dream seems as if it brings us something from the dead. But in reality it is only proof that it has been transformed in a certain way, that it has reached him; he has heard us. When we dream of the dead, that is no more than proof that they hear us, that what we have sent to them in loyal love really reaches them.

These facts of spiritual life are often misinterpreted. When someone dreams of the dead, they believe that what the dead person tells them is directed to them. But this is only proof that what they have said to the dead has been understood by the dead. I have to say to myself: Yes, I really spoke to the dead, since he tells me so in my dream. This is proof that what I said to him has reached him. For it is only the reflection of what has reached him from me.

Through the moment of falling asleep, we carry into the spiritual world what we say to the dead. By waking up, we carry into the physical world, conversely, what the dead person says to us. And what the dead person speaks to us must resound from the depths of our soul in the state between waking up and falling asleep in the everyday state of consciousness. As in the “dream, what we speak to the dead lingers, so what the dead speak to us lingers in the waking state.

But here again, people are unaccustomed to interpreting it correctly – unaccustomed for a different reason than we stated in the previous case. People, as they are predisposed for physical life, are, firstly, not very inclined to really listen to the inspirations that come from the depths of the soul. Most people, who do not consider anything that arises from the depths of the soul to be anything other than subjective ideas, think: Yes, that just occurred to us, it comes from ourselves. But one must learn to distinguish, just as there are dreams that are subjective and others that are objectively true, there are so-called ideas that are purely subjective and others that are inspirations from the depths of our soul. We must learn – and we can learn – to listen attentively to our waking daily life, so that we become aware of how thoughts penetrate from the depths of our soul, and even when we are in conversation with others, how this or that thought, which we are not inclined to pay attention to, emerges from the depths of our soul, and then we will recognize the objective character of these inspirations, which softly sound in the midst of our daily life from the soul. Then we will experience that in such inspirations the dear, so-called dead speak to us from their realm. For what the dead person tells us must come from within ourselves.

For the spiritual researcher, it is the case that he directly experiences what he has told you: What the dead person says comes from the soul, and he has to reorganize himself. For those who have not acquired this state of mind, it takes place in such a way that what we experience in our thoughts when we address a message and question to a dead person in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and what the dead person tells us, sounds from the depths of the soul.

Human life is much more connected with the spiritual world than we usually believe. Today, we have not only become [materialistic] in our views, we have also become vain and proud, dismissive of the spiritual world, presuming to say that everything that resonates within us is our own inspiration. Materialism also makes the human soul selfish and vain, leading to a certain conceit, in which we ascribe everything to ourselves. What we consider our own ideas are actually the thoughts of those who have already passed through the gate of death, who, by addressing our souls, are working together with us in this shared human life.

It is not enough for us to develop the thought: We will not perish when we die. It is certainly true, but it has something selfish about it. Rather, it is more important to grasp it practically, vigorously for life, to grasp it in such a way that we know: Not only our life does not perish, but the dead do not perish for life either. They influence our soul, and we will only understand our dreams correctly if we see them as inspired by the realm of the dead.

This is the first thought from which I started today. It should show you that the real contemplation of the spiritual world makes demands on people, in the face of which people see, consciously see: after all, all this contradicts the world in which I have become accustomed. Man does not say to himself in his conscious mind: I do not enter the spiritual world because those who fantasize about the spiritual world describe it to me in such a way that it contradicts the physical world. But instinctively man would rather say: There are limits to human knowledge, one cannot enter it - than to admit to himself: I must grasp the strong, courageous thought [and imagine] the spiritual world quite differently. If this healthy courage to think about the spiritual world replaces much of the morbid thinking that still prevails today, our earthly life can be fertilized by spiritual thoughts in a completely different way than it is fertilized when these spiritual thoughts are merely conceived in the abstract.

Let us now take up another thought. The thought that is linked to a question: What does an understanding of the spiritual world offer people with regard to ordinary physical life on earth?

There, you see, we can already penetrate a little more into the practice of contemporary life. For how could one not admit to oneself that - after humanity was so proud of its great cultural and human progress until 1914 - that what has been happening since 1914 could befall it? How could one not admit to oneself that this must pose a difficult question? And how can we not admit to ourselves in the face of this question that perhaps something in the overall state of humanity was not quite right after all? Of course this is not meant as a criticism. But we can understand this life. So when I say that something must have been wrong, I do not want to say that I condemn what happened. For spiritual science has nothing at all to do with such thoughts about the past. These are critical thoughts from which one learns and should learn. When I say that something is not right, I mean that it could not have been otherwise in the development that has now passed, but on the other hand, the human being must pull himself together, then many things will be different. Criticism is unfruitful. Only recognition of what should be from what was is fruitful.

In humanity, from old states of consciousness, it has now become so that since the middle of the fifteenth century, mainly with regard to the consciousness soul, that on the one hand man - although he does not believe it - that man preferably hangs on to abstract concepts; and [although] precisely those who believe they are very practical. So people are theorists, often completely steeped and infected by all kinds of theories. But theories are quite barren. Theories only have value when what they contain bubbles up directly, welling up from living together with the spiritual world. But in his present cycle of development, this is precisely how the human being acts. On the other hand, there is justification: the consciousness soul must be developed. But on the other hand, countervailing forces must be developed so that it does not become one-sided. The sensing, feeling, and willing that one develops primarily through the consciousness soul is tied to the human brain. One should not ignore the fact that today man develops a consciousness that is tied to the brain. And so he believes that all consciousness is bound only to the brain. But this has a very specific consequence for the coexistence of people and for practical life, that man preferably develops a thinking that is bound to the brain. This forces him to develop thoughts that come from his interaction of the ordinary brain with the external, sensual world. He cannot free himself from what the brain can experience. The consequence of this is that a general cultural trait takes hold in the human soul. This is narrow-mindedness, narrow-mindedness. This is not to be criticized. On the other hand, I would like to point out that it is necessary. But it is the case that present-day humanity is most inclined to hold only to that which arises in the brain with the outside world; only when we reach out to the spiritual world do we expand it. This is something that today's development of humanity brings with it. Spiritual science is called upon to counteract the narrow-mindedness in the intellectual field. It has this cultural task of broadening the horizon again, of raising the horizon.

Yes, my dear friends, the matter at hand is much more serious than one might think. I think most of you have known me too long to know that I don't say this or that out of some personal sympathy or antipathy. When I observe how one of the most outstanding character traits is narrow-mindedness, I must at the same time see it in important things that go beyond the world. I may mention it, one must always remind, I may mention it because I am not saying it only now, but because I have said what I am saying before this catastrophic event befell our humanity. [In Helsingfors, that is, at a time before the war began, I have already pointed out] the fact that at such an outstanding position there is a person like Wilson, who today is associated with many catastrophic events that have befallen humanity. At the time, I drew attention to the most salient trait of Wilson's character, to the narrow-mindedness and bigotry that is encroaching on the social structure of humanity.

But what [humanity] does depends on what people think. That thoughts are realities and that realities flow out of thoughts is something that humanity must come to understand: to understand life precisely on the basis of genuine spiritual science, to come to an understanding of the spiritual world from an understanding of what underlies life. We must not only recognize that spiritual science can give us those experiences that can make us whole in our entire soul life, because they prove to us that we belong to a spiritual world, but also the thought: When what lies in the spiritual world flows into our moral and social will, then thinking does not remain limited and expands. Then it will also get better, otherwise not.

If only we could grasp this thought in all its depth! Then we would become aware of much of what is going on in the present. With regard to our feeling, with regard to our thinking, the present age makes us limited. With regard to our feeling: what does it do to us? That which arises from the consciousness soul. Feeling is that these abstract thoughts, which are at the same time the most materialistic thoughts, that these actually no longer grasp our feeling and sensing in reality.

How often do we hear people say: Oh, it's just a thought, you have to feel! That is as true as it is false. You cannot have a truly fruitful influence on life, you cannot truly lead life fruitfully if you do not want to think, but instead you let everything be absorbed into the mush of feeling. You turn life into a mess. What matters is to bring the light of thought into feeling and to elevate feeling. Thinking feeling, feeling thinking, that is what is needed. What the consciousness soul wreaks, because the abstract brain cannot grasp our /gap in transcript]

Therefore, the spiritual state of present-day people in relation to feeling, the present spiritual state will tend more and more towards narrow-mindedness the more materialistic it becomes. Narrow-minded, philistine – that is what the spiritual state is currently leaning towards.

If the light of thought, the realm of light of thought, does not penetrate feeling, it makes people narrow-minded, their interests are limited to the very immediate. Thoughts must be wide-ranging, but they can only do that if we carry the sense that the world that surrounds us sensually is something quite different [from what] expresses itself spiritually, that the dead express themselves; [then our interests, then spiritual science - just as narrow-mindedness and limitation in the field of the intellect - will have to work against narrow-mindedness in the field of feeling. It needs a view of a social structure that is imbued with broad interests, namely, interests that will arise in us when we look at the wonderful, mysterious human being himself. For today's anatomist and philosopher, this human being is only a kind of physical organism, not mysterious and wonderful enough. Such ideas must kill our ethics in particular, but also our social conception of life. We must be clear that the spiritual is reality, that thoughts are what the reality of life flows from. In theory, most people agree with what I am saying on this point. In terms of their life practice, however, they do not agree. They act contrary to it. From what people say, we can see which thoughts are unfruitful for life due to the narrow-mindedness of their emotional life.

My dear friends! To have thoughts in such a way that the thought stands vividly before us, as something we see directly, that is something that people have gradually lost in the materialistic age. In the 1980s, I attended a lecture by a professor who was extraordinarily impressive for people at the time. He kept asking the question, “What should one ask?” [gap in the transcript] And finally he said: I think I have led you into a forest of question marks. Who not only expresses the thought in the abstract, but develops views on these thoughts: It is neither beautiful nor meaningful, [so] a forest of question marks. Who is not satisfied with expressing thoughts – thoughts must be immersed in reality – does not speak of the truth.

A statesman has expressed a remarkable thought. He says: Our relationship with Austria is the point that indicates the direction of our future policy. Anyone who is out of touch with reality must say to themselves: A relationship is a point and a point is a direction.

Those who think like this are not rooted in reality with their thoughts. He separates thought from feeling. But realities can only be real thoughts. He who works with such thoughts can accomplish nothing healing. He who has a feeling for such things can hear a great deal of this kind today. Recently, for example, someone said in regard to the peace treaty with Romania: [gap in the transcript] that Romania is putting itself on an open, honest footing with us. We would like it not to be on just an “open” foot, but to be on a foot at all. In the future, the Romanians should have an “open” foot in order to enter into a proper relationship with us. Is such a thought present in reality as a thought? It is not! Speech is used because the brain is in motion.

But something beneficial for humanity can only arise for the social structure when it flows from the real. It is precisely for this reason that one must respect reality and also the spiritual life. Mere criticism does not make it. You can study the life of humanity today. It would certainly be necessary to study the life of humanity in order to develop thoughts that are in line with reality. And one should not study it in such a way that every thought becomes a matter of sympathy or antipathy, of praise or blame.

You know from my lecture cycle 191[0] in Kristiania, also with regard to the present time, that I have ascribed to the British nation that it is preferably called upon to develop the consciousness soul. On the one hand narrow-mindedness, on the other hand small-mindedness. It does not apply to the individual Englishman, but to the whole English national soul. One has only to study the language. We must really, I might say, for the sake of the spirit, hold on to the idea that language is inwardly effective; it forms feelings that are effective in language. The British language simply drops whole broad sections of the word into nothingness; it is the most abstract language.

That is it, my dear friends. What matters in the present is not to create theoretical concepts, but to draw these concepts from the depths of the soul. We need such concepts. You can be a traveler, a scientist, a political scientist, you can travel to entire countries, but if you have no sense of what lives inside people, the descriptions for practical life will not be of much use. People in the materialistic age have said many a witty and apt thing about the various European and non-European national souls. When it comes to expressing the true essence of the national soul, they fail. If one wants to be effective in practical life, because people are so reluctant to get to know each other in terms of their soul qualities, they are bound to end up in a catastrophe that is only the result of incorrect thoughts.

There are two aspects to the human soul: materialism strives towards one, and spiritual science must counteract the other. The area of will: thoughts that do not want to unite with our will, they do not attack it, they do not intervene in the whole person, they arise from the brain. The result of this is that in our lives, materialistic thoughts make people clumsy, narrow-minded, philistine. This must necessarily result. Those who observe life notice the clumsiness. What can a person do today? What he has been taught and learned with difficulty. Today you can be an excellent professor of Chinese, you can be an excellent civil servant, carpenter, and yet it can happen that you cannot sew on a trouser button, but that someone else has to sew it on for you. We are highly inept at everything we have not learned, because what we absorb in our education in feeling and thinking is suited to our body and blood and muscles.

The spirit, when it takes effect on a person and has a living effect, takes hold of the whole person, makes him skillful out of the spirit. [This is] a test for the reality [of spiritual science] that it forms people out of us who are more and more able to cope with life, that what it lets flow in out of the spirit, [people] can also carry into life.

But that is what triggers another thought. What we need, out of an understanding of the spiritual world, is to come to life at all.

Let us take a truth of spiritual science: I will list it briefly today. Today I want to elaborate on the idea that When a person passes through the portal of death, he should immerse the first third between death and rebirth mainly in the imaginative, the second third between death and rebirth mainly in the inspirational, and the third third between death and rebirth mainly in the intuitive; in the last third of our life between death and rebirth – the Viennese cycle – the person immerses himself in the life he has to live here on earth. In the continuation of this, we would have to lead an imitative life between birth and the seventh year, an immersion in childlikeness. Thus, in the imitative immersion of the child, in every action, is the continuation of the life of the last third between death and new birth. We just have to grasp life in the right way. We see the human being growing into life and we can tell from his faculty of perception that he is continuing a spiritual life in the physical one, that he is continuing an imitation of the intuition from the last third. We see the human being growing into life. — What a thought!

Imagine, my dear friends, if it becomes socially fruitful for the human being to be together: this is the continuation of spiritual life, we see it in him! Life is the proof of the immortality of man. As it is, it is the continuation. To grasp the thought of immortality, the departure from the spiritual world through birth into physical life on earth! Imagine what that must be like for life! Imagine this thought! That is also why we recognize the value of thoughts. Imagine this even more in a concrete sense. Imagine: I look at this body, which comes from spiritual life, then you will believe in the whole of human life. Do we believe in the whole of human life today? No, we do not believe in the whole of human life, we only believe up to the age of 25 or 26 at the most. Most young people no longer believe that we can be educated, that life gives us something new. We still believe that we can acquire something new well into our 20s, but after that we only believe that life goes on. That what is brought in through birth is to be developed through the whole of life must, may not be a theoretical truth, it must become a concrete truth of life. Ask how many people there are today who, when they turn 30, say: When I turn 40, life will have revealed more to me. I am waiting for what life will bring me. I have not lived in vain. I live in anticipation of life, waiting for each year to reveal new secrets.

Do we believe in life like that? No, we don't expect anything more when we turn 27. Today, when we turn 20, we consider ourselves mature enough to make decisions about the whole of human life, if we are not [even] elected to parliament, where we already decide everything. [Gap in the transcript] Greeks atavistically.

We will once again look into the developing, the expectant. We should not express such a thought, nor think it, we should feel it through and through. Imagine what would have to be different in social life if people faced each other like this. Today, one person may be 60 years old and another 17. The 17-year-old has his point of view. Today everyone has their point of view. Life experiences develop and become ever richer. How different our interactions will be if we lead a life of hope and expectation. And every new

year brings me something new, and when I am ten years older, I will be completely different. [A] different view of life then arises from the view of the world, that we grasp the concrete thought of reality from the meaning of the world and the meaning of human life, that the whole of human life, the whole of the human being has a meaning [gap in the transcript]

Historical science must change completely!

Today, anyone who looks at the life of humanity at most says to themselves: the life of humanity is developing, and the individual human being is also developing. That is only an external comparison. Spiritual observation yields something quite different. Humanity is becoming ever younger.

People who are capable of development through their natural powers alone – if I may put it this way – in body and soul until their 50s [Unclear transcript; gap in transcript].

The ancient Persians 40 years to 30 years.

Today, the human being remains [only] capable of development for 27 years. Today, people believe only in youth, not in the whole of humanity. It is an important truth that man can experience through his natural powers, without intervention, [that he] can actually only develop for 27 years. He does not become more perfect through the outer world.

If we ask the question: Who is a particularly characteristic person for the present day? - A person who grew up without the advantages that one has through the past, without inheritance; [a person] who did not go to many high schools, but is open and receptive to everything in his environment, who had to grow into and only take in what today's world offers into his education. A self-made man. [He] absorbs his environment in an elementary way. Up to the age of 27 – then he enters public life, gets himself elected to parliament, becomes a minister. Now he is engaged, he has no need to develop further. A person born of poor parents, growing up wild, but receptive to his environment /gap in the transcript]: Lloyd George. — Ministry wonders what to do with the man – just take him on. What do you give him? What he understands least: transportation.