Lecture X

We must understand that strength and energy, perseverance and a holy enthusiasm are necessary in order to transform into spirituality the intellectualism which after all belongs to the present age. These things are necessary that the thoughts and ideas of men to-day may rise into the spiritual world and that man may find the path of ideas upward to the Spirit no less than downward into Nature. And if we would understand this, then we must fully realise that intellectualism to begin with offers the greatest imaginable hindrance to the revelation of any spiritual content that is present within the soul. Only when we are really aware of this, only then shall we, as Anthroposophists, find the true inner enthusiasm. Then shall we receive on the one hand the ideas of Anthroposophy which must indeed reckon with the intellectualism of the age, which must remain, so to speak, the garment of contemporary intellectualism. Then shall we also become permeated with the consciousness that with the ideas of Anthroposophy, relating as they do, not to the mere outer world of sense, we are destined really to take hold of that to which they do relate, namely, the spiritual. To enter deeply and perseveringly into the ideas of Anthroposophy—it is this in the last resort which will most surely guide the man of to-day upward into spirituality, if only he is willing.