Lecture XXI

GA 173c/1917-01-20/p035 ·1917-01-20 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: stenogram (shorthand transcript). Shorthand transcript taken during the lecture — the strongest kind of lecture record in this corpus. Evidence: «Diese dreibändige Ausgabe wurde auf der Grundlage der stenografischen Nachschriften vollständig neu bearbeitet.» (This three-volume edition was completely re-edited on the basis of the shorthand transcripts.). The publisher's description of GA 173a-c, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 173a-c). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

This should give you an idea of the disproportionate lengths to which exaggerated materialism, materialism that is hyper-materialistic, is prepared go in order to cross the border to the spiritual world, a border which today should only be crossed by means of attuning the soul to that mood which can be achieved through contemplating super-sensible concepts. An attitude appropriate for today is one that never accepts things which are given out by many secret societies, and which are not understood, for indeed a great deal that has not been understood is today both given out and accepted. Today it is appropriate to treat what these societies give out as something that is at most a failure to give the spoken word its true value, that is, something that uses words as mere concepts.

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Cite: GA 173c/1917-01-20/p035 · edition English