Science at the Threshold


CHAPTER I

Introductory

If I introduce this book by relating how I came to encounter Rudolf
Steiner and his work, more than twenty-five years ago, and what decided
me not only to make his way of knowledge my own, but also to enter
professionally into an activity inspired by his teachings, it is
because in this way I can most directly give the reader an impression
of the kind of spirit out of which I have written. I am sure, too, that
although what I have to say in this chapter is personal in content, it
is characteristic of many in our time.

When I first made acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner and his work, I was
finishing my academic training as an electrical engineer. At the end of
the 1914-18 war my first thought had been to take up my studies from
where I had let them drop, four years earlier. The war seemed to imply
nothing more than a passing interruption of them. This, at any rate,
was the opinion of my former teachers; the war had made no difference
whatever to their ideas, whether on the subject-matter of their
teaching or on its educational purpose. I myself, however, soon began
to feel differently. It became obvious to me that my relationship to my
subject, and therefore to those teaching it, had completely changed.
What I had experienced through the war had awakened in me a question of
which I had previously been unaware; now I felt obliged to put it to
everything I came across.