VI. The Connection Between the Higher Aspects of the Human Constitution and the Physical Body — The Effects of Opium and Alcohol

Those people who do not want to convince in this way but to persuade usually use as sentences and words what pleases others, while the one who wants to tell the truth cannot always say what pleases others. For in our time it is even so that as a rule people do not like the truth. So just from the way a person writes his sentences, one can see: If a person writes his sentences in such a way that they are logical, that one sentence follows from the other, then he will have an effect on the ego of the other person, which is free. If a person writes his sentences in such a way that they are not logical, but rather are intended above all to please the other person, to stir up the other person's desires, urges, instincts, passions, then he will act on the other person's astral body, which is not free. And that is a characteristic of our time, that freedom is so often talked about, and that the greatest sin against freedom actually comes from public speaking and writing today. Actually, public speaking and writing is misused everywhere.