Lecture II-V

What is called skepticism came into this stream. We find in Roman culture a complete skepticism existing alongside a highly refined approach to knowledge concerning all things intellectual. Let us consider, on the other hand, a personality like Augustine's. He was not in a position to arrive at anything other than doubt concerning what he had learned of Greek and Roman science. Then he encountered Manicheism, which he came to know only in a false form. He became acquainted with a teaching that took into account everything that Zarathustra taught. However, his soul was not inclined to take in all of this because the souls of the people living at that time were not meant to undertake such lofty flights of the spirit and see the spirit everywhere behind the physical world. The science that had penetrated all the way to the stars deteriorated; and even if this science had reached the Europeans no one could have understood it. The soul had to remain attached to what could be seen in the external world of the senses.