I. The Transforming of Instinctive into Conscious Impulses

Spiritual Science, after all, is alone able to penetrate these things clearly, in the true direction of the age of the spiritual soul. Yet they emerge—as I have already indicated—they make their appearance here and there in a more or less tumultuous form, not only in the thoughts and opinions but in the events in which the men of the present day are living. It is characteristic, for example, to see what comes to expression in a recent speech by Trotsky. If you consider what I have just said about the desire to place Man in the very center of our World-conception, such words as Trotsky uses here will make an overwhelming, shattering impression upon you. He says:—“The communist or socialist doctrine has set itself, as one of its most important tasks, to attain at length on our old sinful Earth a state of affairs when men will cease to shoot at one another. Thus it is one of the tasks of Socialism or Communism to create a social order where for the first time man will be worthy of the name. We are wont to say with Gorki that the word Man strikes a proud and lofty note, yet in reality, looking over these three and three-quarter years of bloody murder, we would fain cry out: The sound of the word ‘Man’ is shameful and contemptible.”