4. Anthroposophy as a Moral Impulse and a Creative Social Force

And we will only come to grasp the true core of anthroposophy, on the one hand, and to understand the moral and social impulses of anthroposophy, on the other, if we realize how the [scientific] spirit, which otherwise only grasps external natural facts, can can reach in, transforming and metamorphosing itself, into what the human being is in his instincts, for example, in his will impulses; for this is connected with the actual character of our present epoch, which began in the 15th century and in which we still find ourselves today. In the 15th century, the first seeds of the modern scientific spirit were sown, and this modern scientific spirit had to develop in a one-sided way. I cannot go into this in more detail now; I have explained it many times in other places. It had to develop the inner soul constitution in such a way that it was capable of pursuing the connection between external natural phenomena in a lawful way. In order that this one-sided power of the human soul-life might develop vigorously in spite of its one-sidedness, the other powers of human life and human organization had to be left behind for a while.