scientist would merely point out that this _can_ be done, and
that it is sinning against the faculties with which man has been endowed
if he allows them to waste instead of developing and using them.

But he who thinks that views about the unseen world are necessarily wholly
dependent on personal opinion and feeling is denying the common essence of
all human beings. Even though it is true that every one must find light on
these things within himself, it is also a fact that all those, who go far
enough, arrive at the same, not at different conclusions regarding them.
Differences exist only as long as people will not approach the highest
truths by the well-tested path of occult science, but attempt ways of
their own choosing. Genuine occult science will certainly fully admit that
only one who has followed, or at any rate has begun to follow the path of
occult science, is in a position to recognize it as the right one. But all
those who follow that path will recognize its genuineness, and have always
done so.

The path to occult knowledge will be found, at the fitting moment, by
every human being who discerns in what is visible the presence of
something invisible, or who even but dimly surmises or divines it, and
who, from his consciousness that powers of cognition are capable of
development, is driven to the feeling that what is hidden may be unveiled
to him. One who is drawn to occult science by such experiences of the soul
will find opening up before him, not only the prospect of finding the
answers to certain questions which press upon him, but the further
prospect of overcoming everything which hampers and enfeebles his life.
And in a certain higher sense it implies a weakening of life, in fact a
death of the soul, when a person is compelled to turn away from, or to
deny, the unseen. Indeed, under certain circumstances despair is the
result of a man's losing all hope of having the invisible revealed to him.
This death and despair, in their manifold forms, are at the same time
inner spiritual foes of occult science. They make their appearance when a
person's inner force is dwindling away. In that case, if he is to possess
any vital force it must be supplied to him from without. He perceives the
things, beings, and events which approach his organs of sense, and
analyzes them with his intellect. They afford him pleasure and pain, and
impel him to the actions of which he is capable. For a while he may go on
in this way: