20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

However, if the question raised this evening is to be discussed from the point of view of this spiritual science, this does not mean, dear audience, that what spiritual science has to say is something completely new. On the contrary, one can say that what spiritual science has to say has always lived in human souls, lives in a dark way in all human souls, with greater or lesser clarity, especially in the very first souls. Let us quote a saying by an outstanding thinker of recent spiritual development, a saying that can, in a sense, lead us right into the heart of our question. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great philosopher, once said, when speaking about the nature of the scholar: