Lecture I

So a person could be sitting there at that time, defending with every weapon of sharp incisive thought the doctrine of individual man in order to save the doctrine of individual immortality. He could be arguing with polemics against Averroes, or others of that stream of thought which I described at the beginning of this lecture. But there was another possibility. For especially in the case of an outstanding person like Averroes, that which proceeded from him, dissolving after his death like a kind of ghost in the Sublunary Sphere, might well be gathered up again by the Moon itself at the end of that Sphere, and remain behind. Having enlarged and expanded, it might even be reduced again, shape and form be given to it, till it was consolidated once again into an essence built, if I may say so, in the ether. That could well happen. Then the man would be sitting there, trying to lay the foundations of individualism, carrying on his polemic against Averroes; and Averroes would appear before him as a threatening figure, disturbing his mind.