IV. The Eternal and the Imperishable

In the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” I began by representing spiritual reality in the form of thought which grasps itself, because one can only attain to an understanding of the spiritual by really learning and really experiencing what first approaches man as the spiritual: the thought which understands itself and is dependent upon itself. But in coming to this result, I was obliged to speak about many things in sentences different from those used by persons speaking from different points of view. Thus on one page I had for instance the sentence: “The idea is an individualized concept, the concept is experienced in the spirit by means of intuition. The idea is an individualized concept and is brought into relation with the object outside through the Ego.” Among the senses through which Eduard von Hartmann drew his pencil at that time was this one, and he had the remark: “This is an unusual form of speech.” You see this was a very amiable objection, but very characteristic; for if we may compare the great with the small, we might cite the following: One Copernicus expressed the thought that the sun does not revolve around the Earth but the Earth around the sun, if someone had written on the margin: “This is an unusual form of speech,” how strange that would have appeared! Of course a form of speech to which one is not accustomed must appear when something new makes its first appearance. But you see how, from a quarter in which one might expect absolute understanding, one is greeted with the words: “That is an unusual form of speech!” If men had never decided to have unusual forms of speech there would be no progress at all, and this not only in the spiritual domain. This is an example, which clearly shows how such things are to be met with. You will find in all directions what the aversion exists towards the use of the language which Spiritual Science employs. The form in which the old world philosophies are presented today is like a worn-out press, it could not even be any longer used by the old-world philosophers themselves; it is so worn out that even the “Old Clothes Shop” would no longer accept the dress! But when it appears as a “world conception” which lives in the inner soul, people do not notice it! One must acquire a feeling for this, but that is part of what men of the present they need in order to understand the times; and the times must be understood.