Lecture III

Never was there more necessity than in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch for men to exert themselves more and more to attain what is of particular value, namely, the understanding of what is known as Spiritual Science. For there is no doubt that there are men able to do this. It is certainly a necessity for the knowledge of Spiritual Science to be sought by seeing into the spiritual world clairvoyantly. It goes without saying that there must be clairvoyants to penetrate into the spiritual world, that there must be those who strive after supersensible knowledge. This is, first, something obvious and, secondly, something that is not so important as for people to find the intellectual power to understand the matter, where the knowledge of Spiritual Science, is concerned. Today it is particularly necessary to have a reasoning, intellectual grasp of Spiritual Science, for it is this by which the opposing cultural powers can be overcome. Man's intellect today is so great that if the desire is only there the whole of Spiritual Science can be understood. And to strive for just this understanding is not an egoistic cultural interest but one that is universal and human. For this understanding can be our goal when those intellectual forces applied today in scientific spheres on all kinds of pedantry, when those intellectual forces applied so fruitlessly in the modern economic sphere and, finally, those forces used in soul-destroying technics—when all these forces will be suitably applied and men are no longer misguided from their earliest childhood. Then will be seen how easily spiritual gifts of the spirit can be brought to the understanding of the human being! This is one side.