The Neglect of Intellectual Life in World Affairs
It is reported that in the next volume of Bethmann-Hollweg's posthumous “Reflections on the World War”, the sentence “With a European chaos, the age of freedom and justice begins, which our opponents have promised the world.” It took only one world war to bring personalities who, through their position in European public life, could have had as much influence as Bethmann-Hollweg, into a line of thought as indicated in this sentence. When he wrote this sentence, Bethmann-Hollweg had long since been deprived of power.
The conditions in the life of the nations of Europe did not come into being only as a result of the World War. They were there before it. They caused it. They only gained the opportunity to come to fruition through it.
The leading personalities of public life were not able to prevent the terrible catastrophe because they did not want to see the forces at work in the lives of nations. They based their thinking on the external balance of power; and real life was rooted in the spiritual conditions of the nations.
A ray of hope in this chaos cannot arise until the insight matures that without an understanding of the soul life of nations, public affairs cannot be brought into a healthy course.
The eyes of those who are thinking of the Washington Conference are now turned towards the Far East, towards Japan. But again, these eyes are only attracted by the external means of power. What should be done in relation to Japan in order to be able to represent Western economic interests in China and Siberia in a satisfactory manner, is what is being asked.
That is indeed the question. For these economic interests do exist, and Western life cannot continue if they cannot be satisfied. But suppose they are steered in some direction only by the means we are considering today. What must happen?
Japan is at present in a certain respect the outpost of Asiatic life. It has to the greatest extent externally adopted European forms in this life. Through alliances, treaties and so forth, it can be treated politically in the way that one has become accustomed to in the West. But in terms of the national soul, it remains connected with the life of Asia as a whole.
Asia, however, has inherited an ancient spiritual life. This is more important to it than anything else. This spiritual life will flare up in mighty flames if the West creates conditions that cannot satisfy it. But the West believes it can organize these conditions for purely economic reasons. It will thus create the starting points for even more terrible catastrophes than the European war was.
The public affairs that now span the world cannot be conducted without the input of spiritual impulses. The peoples of Asia will respond sympathetically to the West if the West can bring them ideas that are universally human in character. These ideas speak of what man is in the context of the world, and how life should be socially organized in accordance with this cosmic context. When the East hears that the West has new knowledge about things of which the old traditions tell, but for which a dark feeling strives for renewal, then they will come to an understanding coexistence. If, however, the public work with such an impact continues to be regarded as the fantastic idea of impractical people, then the East will ultimately wage war against the West, despite the fact that people in Washington are talking about how wonderful it would be in the world if disarmament were to take place.
The West wants world peace in order to achieve its economic goals. The East will only embrace economic goals if the West has something of spiritual value to convey to it. The solution of the great world problems today depends on whether one is able to bring spiritual life into the right relationship to economic life.
This will not be possible as long as the spiritual life in our social organisms is not placed on its own free foundation. The West has the possibility of a lively spiritual development. It can extract a spiritual world view from the treasure it has accumulated through its scientific and technical way of thinking. But so far, only that which leads to a mechanistic-materialistic view has been taken from this treasure. Public thinking classified the spiritual with the economic in socio-public life. The free development of the spirit, which is strongly predisposed in the West, was hindered because the administration of spiritual affairs is intertwined with the other factors of social life. Individual people with higher spiritual interests relate to the East in such a way that they take over its ancient spiritual heritage and outwardly graft it onto the spiritual life of the West. Under such conditions, the “light from the East” is not only an indictment of the West. It is a terrible indictment. It means that the West feels so taken in by dark interests that it cannot see its own light.
The elevation of spiritual values in the West will determine whether humanity will master today's chaos or continue to err helplessly in it. As long as the will to do so is regarded as the utopian-mystical ravings of impractical people, chaos will continue. People will speak of peace but be unable to avert the causes of war. They will be forced to tremble for the fate of Europe when, as in these days, a single personality who formerly held power wants to regain such power. But it must be remembered that conditions are unhealthy in which such trepidation is possible at all.