Thirteenth Lecture

It is precisely from the facts that I have discussed here in recent weeks that this struggle with knowledge can only arise in our time. And so it comes about that in our time, when it comes to knowledge, to the pursuit of knowledge, people are only too inclined to delude themselves. On the one hand, people today want to be free from any belief in authority, but on the other hand, people today have fallen prey to the worst kind of belief in authority. For when someone brings forth something — I have often discussed this in other contexts — that bears the cloak of scientificity, then belief in such scientific things is very common. People do not want to bring themselves to what is truly an individual pursuit of knowledge. In truth, without realizing it, they are too comfortable, too lazy to activate those forces of the soul that come into play when one struggles with knowledge. And so people want to reassure themselves with what is generally recognized as authoritative science, as if with a spiritual narcotic. They want to accept what is so generally recognized so that they do not need to activate their individual striving for knowledge. Basically, the rebellion against the spiritual-scientific worldview can be traced back to the fact that this spiritual-scientific worldview demands that individual souls activate their individual powers, think for themselves, and empathize. But people do not want that. They want to be given a certain authoritative knowledge ready-made.