3. The Spiritual Signature of the Present

And such a property, one can say, sheds light on all the others, and follows precisely from the way in which humanity of our age approaches scientific conviction, in which one has become accustomed to in the last few centuries. My dear audience, today man is so proud to say that he has cast off the belief in authority of the past centuries, as prescribed by the religious authorities. Man today is so proud to say that he only believes in what he can grasp in his own personal being. And yet, to the discerning, it seems as if the old authoritarian belief of the confessional religions has merely jumped to another area, and this area is precisely what is called “science” in the abstract, with a great deal of vagueness but with all the more conviction. Science. — As soon as a modern man hears the word “science,” everything within him that once went in quite different directions because of the old belief in authority is stirred. Nowadays, for reasons that people in wider circles do not really understand, anything that is said to be scientifically established is an authority of much greater power than any authority ever was. How often do we hear the answer to something that arises as a question from within the human mind: “Science says this or that.” This general power, science, has taken all authority for itself today. It has taken this authority from those people who consider themselves to be at the height of their time, including with regard to questions of world view.