We must acknowledge with intellectual humility our impotence to penetrate the universe with understanding by means of the natural gifts with which we are born; and we must then admit that there may be ways of self-development and of unfolding the inner powers of our being to see in that which lies spread out before the senses the living spirit and the living soul.
My writings to which I have referred show that it is possible to put this in practice. This must be said, because intellectualism, the fruit of evolution of the last few centuries, is no longer able to solve the riddles of life. Into one region of life, that of inanimate nature, it is able to penetrate, but it is compelled to halt before human reality, more especially social reality.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 332a – IV – CULTURAL QUESTIONS. SPIRITUAL SCIENCE (ART, SCIENCE, RELIGION). – THE NATURE OF EDUCATION. SOCIAL ART – Zurich, October 28, 1919
Translation by Henry B. Monges
1891 by Otto Fröhlich
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