The Mission of Esoteric Science in Our Time

The secret scientist, however, counters this with the following. He says: You are completely right about the insights that you think are clear to you; you cannot recognize anything more than that. But there is a development of the faculty of cognition. If you want to penetrate the supersensible world, you must develop supersensible cognitive faculties. And that is possible! — So the position taken by occult science does not contradict what these people say at all. It even agrees with them. It only says that human beings have another faculty of cognition within them that is without these limitations and that they can develop within themselves. Now, does anyone in the world — let us consider it from the standpoint of clear logical thinking — have the right to say that there is no such thing as the development of the faculty of cognition? What can he say? He can only say, I do not know it, it is unknown to me. He can draw the boundary for himself through which he cannot see into such a development. If he says, my limits of cognition are not sufficient for this, then he is bound to say: I do not know. — Then he must not want to decide anything about such facts. It is not the one who knows nothing about the supersensible world who can say whether it exists or not, but the one who knows something about it. Esoteric science stands precisely on the standpoint of positivism in all its universality. The esoteric scientist says: No one has the right to decide what can or cannot be known, but each person has to decide only about what he himself knows.