Pneumatosophy: The Riddles of the Inner Man

Now it may be that in our present materialistic age the human being no longer has any notion that idealism or spirituality may be expressed in the speech. People today usually have the idea that speech is intended to express only the external, the tangibly-objective. The feeling that ideals may be expressed in the speech has almost entirely disappeared. For this reason, it is also true that people today generally find so “unintelligible” what is said to them about “spirit”. For what do people say to themselves when spirit is mentioned? They admit that “words” are being used, but of these words people know only that they indicate what can be grasped or seen. The idea that words may also signify something else, something supersensible, invisible, people no longer like at all. That may be one way in which people regard speech; but the other may, of course, be that people shall find the way again to idealism even in words, even in language, knowing that a soul-spiritual experience may sound through each word, as it were.