I. The Transforming of Instinctive into Conscious Impulses

The second thing with which man must make himself acquainted and from which again he flees is this, my dear friends: In the present age of Intellectual evolution—that is to say, in the evolution of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, it is absolutely necessary for man to seek within himself as it were a new center of gravity of his own being. Instinctive evolution gave him even in his thought a center of gravity. He imagined that he stood fast on the views, the opinions, the ideas that came to him through the blood or through descent or in some other way. Henceforth man can do this no longer. He must free himself from these things on which he formerly stood so fast and firm, which arose in him instinctively. He must take his stand, as it were, at the edge of the abyss. He must feel beneath him the void of the abyss. He must find within himself the central point of his being. Man is afraid to do this, he recoils from the task.