XIII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul

Renaissance, spiritual New Birth, Humanism—all are rushing, storming indeed, after spirituality in a direction where spirituality is not to be found. In the direction where it is to be sought, impotence, illusion, bemazement. And everywhere, through it all, the Michael Forces breaking through, in art, in learning, into the life of man, only not as yet into the young, rising forces of the Spiritual Soul. A tottering of all spiritual life; Michael, with all his forces reaching back in cosmic evolution, in order to find strength to keep in balance the Dragon under his feet. Under these powerful exertions of Michael there arise the great works of the Renaissance. Yet these are still a revival, by Michael's power, of the old life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—not yet a working of the new soul-forces.