6. The Quest for Knowledge and the Will for Self-Discipline

These matters indicate most pointedly how the more vital quest of knowledge in the Anthroposophical Society must be accompanied by the unceasing endeavour to ennoble and purify the life of feeling. An intensified search for knowledge deepens the life of the soul and reaches down into those regions where pride, conceit, lack of sympathy with others, and many qualities besides, are lurking. A lesser quest of knowledge enters these regions only to a slight extent and leaves them slumbering in the deep places of the soul. But a life in knowledge that is keen and vital stirs them from their slumbers; habits which kept them under lose their power to do so. A spiritual ideal may well awaken qualities of soul which would have remained unmanifest without it. The Anthroposophical Society should be there to counteract, by cultivating nobility and purity of feeling, the dangers that are lurking in these quarters. There are indeed, in human nature, instincts which instill the fear of knowledge into man, for the very reason that these connections are felt to exist. But a man who would refrain from cultivating the impulse to knowledge lest it should stir up the uglier feelings in him, fails to develop the fullness of true manhood. It is humanly unworthy to cripple our insight into life because we fear weakness of character. To cultivate the impulse to knowledge and combine it at the same time with another striving—the will to self-discipline—this alone is worthy of humanity.