230. So science will now begin to pass on to the spiritual planes; in other words the object of its research becomes "thought" or "mental life". But a person can only be an authority in such research in relation to that area of thought climates and mental life which he himself has overcome and now controls. An individual who is still governed by lower tendencies can never be any kind of authority for someone who has long ago overcome them. As long as someone is an alcoholic he cannot be an expert in a temperance movement. The zone into which science is now passing is a zone of love; so people who are not very far forward in the development of love cannot have any authority in that zone, however much material knowledge they may possess. Naturally, material knowledge should not be despised; on the contrary it is an immensely important factor without which spiritual science or the "science of love" would never be able to come to perfect fruition. It is precisely through material science that mankind has been led forward into the zone of love and through that same science has developed the faculty of meeting a higher form of consciousness.