Man and the Historical and Moral Life of Humanity according to the Results of Spiritual Science

Dear attendees, to express such a truth in abstracto, as I have just done, is of course relatively easy. If it is introduced into the true contemplation of life, it requires a strictly scientific approach. But this strictly scientific approach leads to something completely different from the historical consideration, as we have been accustomed to in school so far, which, as I have shown you in the introductory words, is so inadequate in the most important cases of life assessment. Once we have recognized, in its full significance, that what pulses as historical, moral, and social life in humanity must be considered as it directly works, like dreaming, like sleeping, we will realize that History must become something other than what has been understood by it so far and than even Karl Lamprecht understood it, because he wants to consider the soul of the individual and now apply that which lives in the waking consciousness to the historical consideration. No history comes of it, because one does not approach the dreamy and sleepy impulses of the event with it. And one comes to it least of all when one does what has been done more and more in the course of the nineteenth century, when one, which has led to such great, such powerful results for natural science, which have also been fully recognized by spiritual science completely appreciated by spiritual science, if one wants to apply the scientific way of thinking to history, this scientific way of thinking, which is, after all, a result of the intellectualism of modern times.