Esoteric Lesson

The most free of sensuality thoughts in the world are still mathematical ones; but even when modern man thinks of a triangle, he thinks of it with color and a certain thickness, not abstractly enough. However, one comes closer to supersensible thoughts when one pays attention to relationships. Remembering a sound is still the memory of something sensual; remembering a melody is already something more, something that exists in a relationship of sounds to each other, which as such does not belong to the sensual world. Or imagine a villain and another villain next to him — or even two good people — and one [villain] is an even greater villain than the other, or one good person is greater in goodness than the other: then there is something in this relationship that is not of the physical-sensory world, something that leads us up into the spiritual world. When a person thinks of or sees a villain, it will make them feel uncomfortable; but when they see two villains side by side in a play, the worst villain will always be more appealing than the less evil one, because greatness always attracts. This is the basis, for example, of the effect of various Shakespearean dramas. — That is why it is so important that we observe and study the conditions in the external world, because that leads us away from the sensual.