XIII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul

> 1. In the very first period of the spiritual Soul's evolution Man began to feel that the picture of Mankind, of his own Human Being, which had hitherto come of itself, imaginatively, was now lost to him. Powerless to find it as yet in his Spiritual Soul, he seeks for it along the paths of Natural Science of History. He would like to revive once more within him the old picture of Humanity. > 2. By this road, men do not come to the real fullness of the human being; they come only to empty illusions. But they do not see this; they look on these as things that give mankind substantiation and support. > 3. And so Michael, in the time preceding his earthly regency, can only look with anxiety and sorrow upon mankind's evolution. For men condemn spiritual contemplation in any direction, and thereby cut themselves off from everything that makes a bond with Michael.