A few days ago I was sent a treatise on profound theosophical matters which was, in fact, merely a treatise on the ‘something’; it only dealt with the ‘something’ — the ‘unimproved something’ and the ‘improved something’, and how the improved takes hold of the unimproved, and how the ‘improved something’ takes precedence over the ‘unimproved something’. And so: conscious and unconscious ‘something’, improved and unimproved ‘something’ — going one way and then the other, here again, there again; and in the final instance you have no more than this strange modern way of working in the abstract — though here applied to things of the spirit — which likes to see itself in the abstract and in reality is flight from reality and no longer has anything to do with any kind of reality.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 177 – Fall of the Spirits of Darkness – Lecture 11: Recognizing the Inner Human Being – Dornach, 21 October 1917
Translated by Anna R. Meuss
Previously posted on August 18, 2016
The great Rudolf Steiner Quotes Site 