Lecture I

Now, of course, it is deeply, deeply rooted in the historical development that this is the case today with the antisocial instincts. For people have been developing since the middle of the 15th century in the age of the consciousness soul. People should gradually place themselves on the basis of individual consciousness. Therefore, they can reach a social life only in a different way than in earlier ages, where still the group instincts, the group-egos played a much greater role than they play today. Therefore we see discrepancies everywhere today in the social life of people. We see strange non-coherence. Man always has something in him somewhere in the subsoil of his soul through which he understands everything that can reveal itself in any time. Only he is usually not far enough with his head understanding, with his intellect. Then the strange phenomenon can occur - which should be observed especially by those who join a spiritual-scientific movement - that just those who have learned too much in any direction, lag behind in the development. We experience this today in the most sufficient measure. We would be able to make much faster progress today in understanding what is socially necessary if the masses were not held back by those who have learned too much from the old, who live too much in old concepts, who have adapted themselves too stubbornly to the old concepts. On the whole, it can be said that today the broad mass of the proletariat would certainly have understanding for the most advanced impulses, if they were not held back by that leadership which for decades has fitted itself into quite definite rigid concepts and now cannot go any further. The holding back of people by those who have learned too much, just too much of what could be learned in the 19th century, that is something very significant for the psychological understanding of our time. Therefore, one will only slowly and gradually be able to see something, which, however, is very intensively necessary to see.