The Spiritual-Scientific Basis of Goethes Work

Anthroposophy will only be able to fulfill its great and universal mission in modern civilization when it is able to grasp the special problems which have arisen in every land by reason of the intellectual possessions of the people. In Germany, these special problems are in part determined by the inheritance bequeathed to her intellectual life by the men of genius living at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Any one who approaches those great minds, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, Jean Paul and many others, from the point of view of Anthroposophical thought and its attitude toward life, will have two important experiences. The first being that, as a result of this profoundly spiritual attitude, a new light is thrown upon the working and works of these men of genius; the second, that through them Anthroposophy receives new life-blood, which must, in some way as yet not clear, produce a fructifying and strengthening effect in the future. It may be said without exaggeration that the German will understand Anthroposophy if only he brings his mind to bear upon the highest conceptions for which the leading spirits of his land have striven, and which they have embodied in their works.