Lecture Four

You have come to know from the most diverse aspects that the evolution of modern man passed through a decisive moment in the fifteenth century, when the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch began. As we are well aware, this epoch received its special character from the entry of mankind into the development of the Consciousness Soul,[^1] whereas in the previous epoch, the Graeco-Roman, human evolution ran its course pre-eminently in the sphere of the Intellectual or Mind Soul. Now it is important that such a truth as this—that with the fifteenth century the age of the Consciousness Soul began—shall be taken not merely theoretically and in the abstract but with all possible earnestness in life, so that we have the will constantly to ask ourselves: What must be our attitude of soul, what must we do to this attitude of soul, in order to do full justice to the fact that we are living in the epoch of the development of the Consciousness Soul?