I. The Difference Between Man and Animal

A certain intensity of conception is indeed necessary if man wishes to know what is indicated for him in the progress of time, in the necessities brought about by time. Here man must go deep into world-evolution. And he must not shrink from preparing himself through the concepts of Spiritual Science for the more difficult concepts, the concepts bearing reality. For it is natural, when for the first time anyone hears the kind of things I have been saying today, for him to say: This is pure madness!—That is quite easy to understand. But, my dear friends, we can also imagine that some one may regard very much of whet has been done for years by the clever as pure madness, and accordingly hold the great majority to be mad. But then he would be able to understand why this great majority should take him—an exception—for a madman. For in a company of madmen it is not themselves they hold to be mad but the clever people.