Text: "What was lacking in those who strove to go beyond the mechanistic interpretation of the world was primarily the courage to say to themselves that one who would surmount this mechanism must surmount also the habits of thought which have brought him to this. A confession demanded by the times failed to appear. It is this: that, by taking the direction of the senses, man penetrates into that which is mechanistic. In the second half of the nineteenth century, this orientation had become habitual. Now that the mechanistic has failed to satisfy, one should not seek through the same orientation of attention to penetrate into the higher spheres. The senses in man evolve of themselves. But he will never perceive through what they bestow upon him anything other than the mechanical. If he wills to know more, then he must, from within himself, give to the deeper-lying powers of knowledge a form such as Nature gives to the sense. The powers of knowledge for the mechanical are awake of themselves; those for the higher forms of reality must be awakened."

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Source: 124