I. The Transforming of Instinctive into Conscious Impulses

Let us consider such an idea, illusory as it is but extraordinarily effective; let us consider the Marxist idea, however modified—it does not matter. It is in all essentials the idea of the professional minds of our time. Consider this idea: Only the economic life, only the economic structure is the real thing; everything else is ideology, super-structure, Fata Morgana. Truly, it is an extraordinary thing—this absolute unbelief in all that Man can produce by way of spiritual things, evolving out of the thoughts that have arisen since the dawn of the Age of the Spiritual Soul. Men are being diverted more and more to the things that are outwardly known, outwardly and tangibly present to their senses. All other things they flee from and avoid. The fact is that not only the social thoughts but the social feelings and in the last resort the social events of our time have evolved under the influence of this flight from the spirit, this avoidance of spiritual things. And they will continue to evolve under this influence, if the call for a true spiritual-scientific penetration of the facts is neglected.