Lecture IV

For you see, all that I described to you as the stream of Michael has gone on into our time. But individualities appearing again on earth have to make use, in the first place, of the physical bodies that are possible in a given age. They must find their way into the impulses of education which a given age provides. In the materialistic age all these things become their external garment. And our materialistic age offers the greatest imaginable hindrances to souls who had a rich spirituality in former lives on earth. To pour this spirituality into the bodies of this age, especially when they have to be prepared by modern educational methods, is extraordinarily difficult. Thus you need not wonder when I say: The souls which strive earnestly towards Anthroposophy are to be found in this way in former epochs of evolution. We cannot lay the foundations of true knowledge unless we can perceive the real interplay of all that lives and works in the world. For spiritual research itself depends on the spiritual life and requires us to seek the spiritual along its own true path. The paths of the spirit are different in every age. In our age they are possible only if we have beneath our feet the firm ground of a spiritual knowledge of external Nature.