Lecture V

Here again the concepts freedom and necessity come very close together. It might sometimes have seemed as though I was only playing with the words “dreaming and intoxication.” That was most certainly not the case. You can find individual examples, and I could tell you many, many more, of the way people speak, as though in a kind of dream, about outer reality. For instance, a particular objection is often raised against what I say in anthroposophical lectures. A pet remark is, “But how can you prove that?” meaning that people require to have what is presented to them proved by comparing it with outer reality. They assume that an idea is valid only if one can point to its physical counterpart, and that this external counterpart is the proof. This is such an extremely obvious idea, that people think they are great logicians if they say, “You see, it all depends on being able to prove that a concept links up with its counterpart in outer reality.”