Eleventh Lecture

But this did not appeal one-sidedly to the human intellect, to sensory observation, to external sensory experimentation; it appealed to the whole human being, body, soul, and spirit. But it also penetrated to those depths in the essence of things where reality is revealed, on the one hand in such a way that it harmonizes divinely with piety, and on the other hand in such a way that it expresses itself in a true context of ideas. This way of pursuing the truth, beauty, and also the morality of human nature was called, and can still be called today, the path to the initiates, to the beginnings of things. For people were aware that they were living in the beginnings of things by conjuring them, these beginnings, into the cultic act, into the beautiful revelation, into the truly formed world of ideas. And such an approach to the things of the world was then called initiatory knowledge, the knowledge of the beginnings from which all things can be understood, all things can be dealt with through our will. Initiatory science, which penetrated the mysteries of the world, the beginnings, was what people were actually seeking.