Twelfth Lecture

All these phenomena must be judged today from the standpoint of the laws of human development. In general, it is not pleasant to judge humanity according to its peculiarities, and above all, it is not in people's nature today to respond to other people. That is why people today are happy to be labeled. There is no inclination to go to the trouble of meeting a person to find out if they have abilities, if something lives in their soul that has possibilities for effect. People do not want to get involved in judging people in this way, through direct impressions drawn from life. They need other possibilities. Someone has graduated, he has a doctorate – so he must be a wise man. You don't need to get to know him first, you just need to know: He has passed exams, or he is – I don't know whether one should say: he was – a government councilor. That's nice, he is someone to respect, you don't need to worry about whether he has any possibilities for action in his soul. A government has made one a councilor, with a C, not a fifth wheel on the wagon, with a D. So you need external possibilities. In the future, we will need a truly direct relationship from person to person. No one will acquire this who does not develop his human spiritual powers in an appropriate way. This appropriate way is through spiritual science. For example, if you read my “Secret Science,” you can read what is in it and absorb the content. If you take it in so that you can then recite it quite well by heart, then I would almost find it more useful if you read a cookbook, or if you are not women, some treatise on collective agreements or the like; it will be more useful than if you read my “Secret Science”. This “occult science” only has its significance when reading if, through the special formation of thoughts - which so annoys people that they refuse to deal with what they call “badly stylized” - this way of writing and thinking has an educational effect on the soul's entire makeup, when the how, not the what, shapes the soul. Anyone who allows the “Occult Science” — it could, of course, also be another book — to take effect on them, then goes out into life, will see that he has actually strengthened his inner vision, so that he gains knowledge of human nature from it. Things become something quite different from a mere scholastic assimilation of the subject! Nowadays, when people have read a book, they imagine that they have done what is necessary when they have the content within them, that is, they have it within them in such a way that they can possibly pass an exam. But spiritual-scientific books are never meant in this way. There the most essential thing is not done when one can count the content on the fingers, but there the necessary thing is only done when the things have passed over into the whole soul constitution, into the whole soul condition, when one has thereby developed suitable soul powers for life.