Fourth Lecture

The other thing living in men is that they have a vague feeling: ‘My dreams should really tell me more than the sense-world!’ It is, of course, an error, a delusion, when people fancy that their dreams should tell them more than the sense-world does. But what is the origin of this delusion?—this delusion which in reality has grown up in proportion with the growth of the modern style of education? For there is a peculiar circumstance about this modern style of education: when people to-day, who are ‘educated’ in the modern sense, come together in their educated society gatherings, then, well then, one is obliged to be ‘educated’; then one talks in the way befitting persons who have a proper schooling in the modern style. Should anyone begin to say anything whatever about spiritual agencies in the world, then one must curl one's lips sarcastically,—for that is the educated thing to do. In our public-school education it is not admissible to talk of spiritual agencies in the world. If one does so, one is a superstitious, uneducated person. Then one must curl one's lips; one must show that such things are proper to the superstitious section of the populace.