In the course of a comprehensive historical survey the lecturer
characterized, in a way I found utterly convincing, the present
mathematical interpretation of nature as a transitional stage of human
consciousness - a kind of knowing which is on the way from a past
pre-mathematical to a future post-mathematical form of cognition. The
importance of mathematics, whether as a discipline of the human spirit
or as an instrument of natural science, was not for a moment
undervalued. On the contrary, what Rudolf Steiner said about Projective
(Synthetic) Geometry, for instance, its future possibilities and its
role as a means of understanding higher processes of nature than had
hitherto been accessible to science, clearly explained the positive
feelings I myself had experienced - without knowing why - when I had
studied the subject.

Through his lectures and his part in the discussions - they were held
daily by the various speakers and ranged over almost every field of
modern knowledge - I gradually realized that Rudolf Steiner was in
possession of unique powers. Not only did he show himself fully at home
in all these fields; he was able to connect them with each other, and
with the nature and being of man, in such a way that an apparent chaos
of unrelated details was wrought into a higher synthesis. Moreover, it
became clear to me that one who could speak as he did about the stages
of human consciousness past, present and future, must have full access
to all of them at will, and be able to make each of them an object of
exact observation. I saw a thinker who was himself sufficient proof
that man can find within the resources of his own spirit the
vantage-ground for the deed which I had dimly surmised, and by which
alone true civilization could be saved. Through all these things I knew
that I had found the teacher I had been seeking.