xi. Some Necessary Points of View

However, one must be clear about one essential difference between the prediction of events through physical science and that through spiritual cognition. Physical science is based on the insights of the understanding, and therefore its prophecy is only based on the intellect, which has to rely on judgments, deductions, combinations, and so forth. Prophecy through spiritual cognition, on the contrary, proceeds from an actual higher seeing or perceiving. The scientist of the spirit must strictly avoid even representing anything to himself which is based on mere reflecting, combining, speculating, and so forth. Here he must practice the most far-reaching renunciation and be quite clear that all speculating, intellectual philosophizing, and so forth is a hindrance to true seeing. These activities still belong entirely to the lower nature of man, and truly higher cognition begins only when this nature raises itself to the higher nature in man. Here nothing is really said against these activities which are not only wholly justified in their field, but are there the only justified ones. In itself, a thing is neither higher nor lower; it is higher or lower only in relation to something else. What is high in one respect can be very low in another.