Lecture V

And the thinking in it, too, should take a peaceful course so that all one needs is to help things along with the laws of logic. But pure thinking—that is just as if an ant-heap were let loose in one's head, and that, people say, is not as it should be. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the human being was still able to endure living thinking. I am not saying this in order to criticize; that would be out-of-place, just as out-of-place as to criticize a cow because she is no longer a calf. It would have been the greatest disaster for humanity if this had not happened. There had to be human beings who could not endure having an ant-heap in their head! For what was dead had to be brought to life again in a different way.