2. The Human Soul, Destiny and Death from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

And that, honored attendees, is what still arouses the harshest prejudices in so many circles, one might say, in general today, against what spiritual science has to say. Not only do the general prejudices exist, which assert themselves against every new cultural movement, which have asserted themselves even in the widest circles when the dawn of the new natural science appeared, but there is something quite special about it, that in a much higher degree humanity will have to relearn with regard to spiritual science, as it has to in relation to natural science. And although it was inconceivable to mankind only a few centuries ago that contrary to all appearances of the senses, it should be assumed that the earth does not stand still and that the sun does not stand still, but that the sun stands still and the earth moves around it, it is even more fundamentally inconceivable to these people, given their present state of development, to assume that the life of the spirit, the results of spiritual science, in the most eminent sense, must fundamentally contradict all that the outer senses present, and that the very nature of research to assume, according to their present course of development, that the life of the spirit, the results of spiritual science in the most eminent sense, must fundamentally contradict all that the outer sense appears to offer, and that the very nature of research into spiritual realms must take a different form from that of outer scientific research.