Lecture XVII

For instance, if one runs into a passage that refers to a bad gland, then of course intellectual types will say that glands can only be in men and animals, so what is that supposed to mean, it must be a poetic image—and they race on; but they're wrong about this. The Apocalyptist uses the word gland because he knows that it's just as justified to think of this real thing in the microcosm, as it is to think about the corresponding thing in the macrocosm. You begin to realize that the introduction of such a glandular thing that has to do with secretions leads over to the functions of divine wrath. Thus seemingly paradoxical things in the Apocalypse enable one to pass over from a merely intellectual course of the soul life, which is so common today, to a spiritual one.