16. A Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought

For example, we find – just to mention a few things, although I could of course talk about this for hours – we find, for example, as early as 1827, Kirejewskij indicates a tone that is then found again and again. Only, various things have been done to prevent the good Germans in particular from noticing this tone; sometimes strange ways have been sought to prevent the Germans from noticing this tone. One of these ways is this: after the lecture that I have given in various places about Tolstoy, no one will attribute to me the claim that I do not value Tolstoy precisely as a spirit of the very first order; but precisely with spirits of the very first order, whom one does not need to fight as spirits, one can find the characteristic peculiarities that develop in them out of their nationality. Now, even in Tolstoy's works of fiction, one finds this tone, this sense of the staleness and decrepitude of Central and Western European intellectual life. But, you will say, people have read Tolstoy's works, they can't possibly have forgotten that they found this in them!