I. Technology and Art

GA 275/1914-12-28/p021 ·1914-12-28 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

You so often hear people saying “These books of modern spiritual science are difficult; they make you exert yourself in order to develop your soul forces and really penetrate into spiritual science.” This is why ‘well-meaning’ people—and I am saying this in inverted commas—keep on coming to me and saying that they want to smooth out difficult passages for their fellow men and change what is written in rather a difficult style into something as trivial as can be—and these last words are not said in inverted commas. However, it belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing and another, but of how you take it in. You should take it in by dint of effort and soul activity. To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul—please forgive me for not being very polite. That belongs to the business of spiritual science, if you will excuse the mundane expression.

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Cite: GA 275/1914-12-28/p021 · edition English