III. Historical Occurrences of the Last Century

When I thus call before your mental vision this first experience of life beyond the threshold, you become vividly conscious that there are indeed few people today who have sufficient inner courage to venture themselves, as it were, into the bottomless and timeless in actual experience. Certain people, however, are bound by their destiny to cross over the threshold; and without the wisdom which can be brought over from beyond the threshold no further progress is possible. From this you will feel what is necessary. It is necessary that what we call confidence of one man in another should be increased in the future. It would be a fundamental social virtue. In our time of social demands this virtue is one of the rarest, for although people demand that everyone shall serve the community, no one has confidence in another; the most unsocial instincts hold sway. In order that the general education of humanity shall progress in such a way that human beings may grow into the spiritual world, it will be necessary that those who may rightly speak of the science of initiation be given confidence—not confidence arising from blind belief in authority, but from common sense; for what is brought as information from beyond the threshold can always be comprehended if only common sense is really employed.