4. The Rise of Spiritualism. The Need for the Science of the Spirit

Spiritual knowledge, however, has never died out; it is always safeguarded somewhere, and there are individuals in every age who are able to obtain it. It was saved even through the period in which it counted for least, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, being preserved like a fine thread. Those of whom I spoke as holding no expectations from the materialistic path into the spiritual world perceived something else as well. They were of the opinion that our modern way of feeling and thinking, as it has developed in the last centuries, can be further trained and developed so that out of clear-headed materialistic methods a knowledge then can develop gradually that which can even work in a sufficiently penetrating way to get under the surface of things and into the spirit. That is what the real method of spiritual science ought to be—to enter into the spiritual world along the same path that man has entered into nature during the last three or four centuries. All that is necessary is a further development of the scientific habits that mankind has evolved in this period. The point is that in a corresponding way, through a real exertion and effort, avoiding indolence, man has to develop further the thinking habits already evolved.