The Human Soul, Fate and Death

GA 70a — 18 June 1915, Cologne

18. The Rejuvenating Powers of the German National Soul in the Light of Spiritual Science and in View of Our Fateful Times

Dearly beloved! For many years now I have been privileged to give one or more lectures here every year on the subject of what I dare call the spiritual-scientific world view. The friends of our spiritual-scientific world view were of the opinion that even in our fateful times such a lecture should be given here in this city again.

You will understand, dear ladies and gentlemen, that from the point of view of the spiritual-scientific world view, a consideration of our time must direct our feelings and emotions to what moves us in our immediate present as its most fateful content. We see various nations of the earth fighting with each other. Above all, we see Central Europe, as if locked in a great, mighty fortress, struggling for the most sacred goods. Every human soul must then, even if it wants to turn its thoughts to the most important, perhaps the highest riddle questions of existence, take with it the feelings that come from the events, which undoubtedly carry something tremendously significant in their womb , demand confidence, strength, hope from us, and above all demand of us that we survey the facts with open eyes, that we also allow the forces to come before our soul with open eyes, which come into play in the present.

Now it is truly not my intention to add yet another reflection to the already overwhelming literature and the abundant lectures on our current events. Tonight's discussion will cover a number of other topics that have often been discussed in our present time. It has already been said, and not without good reason, that one should not allow one's clear and certain view of the conflicting interests at stake in the present to become clouded, to become obscured by all kinds of mysticism, all kinds of metaphysical, that one must be clear about the fact that the present struggle owes its existence to political causes, social causes and the interests of the peoples, and that one should certainly not speak of the fact that the spiritual life can somehow be called fruitful among the causes of the present events.

Now, of course, the spiritual scientist in particular has every reason, my dear audience, to be careful not to fall into all sorts of speculation about how the world spirits themselves came into conflict with each other or the like. But one thing must always be emphasized: Even in those ancient times, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when our ancestors, our Germanic ancestors, the inhabitants of Central Europe, were confronted with the old Roman Empire, which was coming to an end, even then people could say: It is only a question of the spheres of interest , on the one hand the Germanic peoples of Central Europe, on the other the peoples of Southern Europe, and one should not let one's clear view be clouded by all kinds of considerations of intellectual currents or the like when considering the immediate issue.

Of course, for the immediate present, for the view that only looks at the immediate present, it is so, it is fully justified. Nevertheless, the following may perhaps be considered. One will be able to say: Yes, certainly, just as English and German interests, political interests, are correctly viewed as being opposed to each other and have led to war, so in those days Central European and Southern European interests were opposed to each other; but if one considers the whole history that followed those events, one will still have to say: Yes, Europe was shaped back then as it had to be shaped so that the entire cultural development with all its content that has since taken hold could take place. And everything that happened intellectually afterwards was already in the womb of events back then. The way in which Christianity took root in Europe depended on the validity that the Germanic peoples were able to establish for themselves at the time. All subsequent culture, in which we are only beginning to immerse ourselves, was shaped by what happened at that time.

It is incumbent upon people of the present day not to live their lives only instinctively in the same way as people of that time, for example. Times have moved forward, and now it is a matter of allowing what is happening before one's soul, even from a certain higher point of view – I do not want to say that it underlies the events, I would like to emphasize that – but what is expressed in the tremendous struggle that has never been seen before in human development, to be seen with open eyes, that is, with full consciousness, I want to emphasize that.

This is one thing. The other thing, however, my dear audience, is this: that anyone who considers the spiritual events of the present and the past, insofar as the present has developed out of this past, will see that not only at the present time, but basically for a long time already, a struggle, a wrestling of the peoples of the earth, of the people of the earth for spiritual goods is taking place, a wrestling that has often been neglected in its special nature, and perhaps especially in the last few decades. But what is happening today, what has to be fought for today in blood and death, must remind us to take a look at what is going on in souls and how in what souls strive for and want, there is also a field of battle on our earth.

It is not my responsibility to get involved in political matters. But I may touch on the fact that in the future all the declamations and sophistries that are practiced today about the causes of the war, about what one or the other did to bring about the war, that this will crystallize, especially when deeper and deeper into the future, which may not be so very far away, the situation will be understood, that it is a matter of a defense that the peoples of Central Europe, in particular the German people, have to lead against powerful nations that do not want to let it happen. It is also clear to the objective observer and will become ever clearer that the German people have to fight a defensive battle. I call attention to this for the reason that the word defensive struggle must also be applied to the spiritual goods that are to be given from the depths of the German national soul to the world, but which must be defended against attacks that no longer present themselves as attacks but which are nevertheless attacks in a spiritual sense, so to speak, on the stage of world events.

To illustrate what I actually mean, let me give an example that seems rather remote, but is only an example. For more than a century, our German intellectual culture has included a certain area of intellectual property, the tremendous value of which is unfortunately still not fully recognized. For a long time now, when speaking of a thorough-going Weltanschhauung in harmony with the present time, reference has been made to the idea of evolution. It is said that humanity has advanced to the point of realizing that individual forms of life do not stand side by side, but that individual forms develop side by side. With tremendous magnitude – to use this expression – in a spiritually appropriate way, Goethe, at the end of the eighteenth century, out of the depths of German thinking, of German intellectual research, placed this developmental idea into world development, into world culture. And it may be said that the way in which Goethe has placed the idea of development in the spiritual world culture is one of the greatest things that has emerged in the development of humanity, at least in the spiritual realm, even if one compares it with everything that Goethe achieved as a poet.

Now it must be said that not everything that Goethe gave to humanity has directly flowed into the great stream of spiritual progress. Basically, few have yet recognized the full value of Goethe's spiritual achievement. On the other hand, the idea of evolution has entered world culture through Darwinism, I would say in a purely external, more materialistic-utilitarian form, from a non-German ethnic group.

Of course, one cannot say that there is something like struggle and war when looking at things so externally and superficially. But if you look at them internally, it is clear that something greater has simply been pushed back by the intellectual and external power of a less significant, English-influenced Darwinian idea. That is one thing. But countless examples of this could be cited. Countless things could be cited – we need not concern ourselves here with the deeper reasons – that within German culture impulses have been given that are being oppressed as such, even waged against, that are to be replaced by those who have surrounded them. The intellectual encirclement began long ago. And it will be, one may say a world luck - if the word is not misunderstood - it will be a world luck, if that which we are now experiencing in such a hard way makes us aware that we also need spiritual weapons. The future will teach that we need spiritual weapons to protect the deeper against the less deep. For those who look a little deeper, what is happening today out of blood and death is only a beginning; a beginning of a struggle that will also take place on the spiritual scene.

Now many things can help to find the way in the confusion that has arisen in relation to spiritual currents - the word is of course itself challenged today, but it may still be used because it best describes the present situation. And today's reflection is intended to point the way.

Spiritual science is by no means something - as it is meant here - that is already recognized in wider circles today. Rather, spiritual science is something that is even regarded as folly, as fantasy or reverie in wider circles. But the spiritual scientist does not allow himself to be deterred by this. When Copernicus put forward the new natural scientific world view in relation to their first thoughts, when Copernicus and Galileo appeared, what they had to say to humanity was also seen as fantasy in the eyes of those who wanted to hold on to what corresponded to their habitual thinking. He who observes the way in which truth advances through the world knows that spiritual science today is in exactly the same position as natural science was several centuries ago. And he finds it understandable, indeed self-evident, that it is still regarded by the vast majority of people today as fantasy, as reverie or worse.

Now, in earlier lectures, I have had a variety of things to present here from the field of spiritual science, how the view should be directed to something else. Today I can only present, not prove, but only hint at, some basic ideas that may interest us today, the spiritual-scientific views.

Sometimes we speak of the soul of the nation. However, the soul of the nation is a concept that can, it is to be hoped, be placed in a new light by spiritual science. What is the soul of the nation in our more or less materialistically thinking times? Well, if one wants to raise oneself to the concept of the national soul at all, one says: one looks at the qualities that always emerge in a national community, that is, what a group of people, who are called a nation, have in common, and one then comes to an abstract concept and does not think of anything further, of anything real, when one speaks of the national soul.

The spiritual scientist, however, speaks of the soul of a nation as something very real, as something one can call personal reality, as something personally real. The spiritual scientist speaks from his spiritual scientific research that just as we are surrounded in the physical world by the realm of minerals, plants, animals and human beings, we are surrounded by higher realms of the soul and spirit, by beings of a supersensible world. He does not speak of these beings of a supersensible world as if they were abstract concepts, but he speaks of these entities as if they were real realities. Just as someone in ancient times who had no idea about the nature of the atmosphere could believe that there was nothing around where we live, while the modern person knows, of course, that he is surrounded by air, so the person who is familiar with spiritual science knows that, in relation to our soul and spirit, we are surrounded by spiritual beings everywhere. But not in the sense of pantheism, but in the sense of a spiritual world that is populated by spiritual beings everywhere. And we also count the folk soul among such spiritual beings, we count the individual folk souls of the various peoples. We speak of real and individual beings when we speak of the folk souls of the individual peoples. I can only hint at this briefly today because time is limited.

But what the national soul has as an entity can only be understood by considering the relationship of this national soul to the individual soul within such a nation. And here we immediately come to an area where all of today's psychology is quite inadequate in the face of spiritual research. With this consideration, especially with regard to the contemplation of the soul, one stands at the beginning of a completely new way of looking at things with spiritual science. The person who speaks of the soul in the usual way of soul science today speaks of the soul as if it were a simple thing in which will, feeling and thinking and so on surge up and down. For the spiritual researcher, this is just as if one were to speak of color in general or of light in general. Anyone who has heard a little about physics knows that we can get behind the nature of light by observing the rainbow band of the entire spectrum, by observing how light manifests itself in connection with the phenomena of the world, let us say in a sevenfold or, for the sake of simplicity, in a threefold way. On the one hand, light manifests itself in the spectrum in such a way that we have, so to speak, reddish yellow on the outside, green in the middle, and blue-violet on the other side. And it is precisely through this that we come to understand the way in which light works. This enables us to look at light in terms of the way it works and to know that light really does live in the seven colors of the spectrum.

Just as the physicist today takes this for granted, so too will the science of the soul one day take for granted, but also as a scientific necessity, a threefold mode of action of the soul. And there we call that in the field of spiritual science, which, as it were, expresses itself in the soul as reddish-yellow expresses itself in light; we call that in spiritual science, in relation to the soul, the sentient soul. And we call that which, as it were, constitutes the center of the soul, as green is the center of the band of colors, the mind or feeling soul. And we call that which, as it were, appears on the other side as the manifestation of the soul, as blue-violet appears in the band of colors, the consciousness soul. And spiritual science must stand on the standpoint that one recognizes the soul from this structure just as one recognizes the mode of action of light from the color band. And just as light expresses itself everywhere, in every link, in every nuance of the color band, so the threefold effect of the soul expresses itself through what we call our self, our actual I. Truly, there will come a time when there is a science of the soul, as scientific as today's physics is, when the spectrum of the soul will be characterized as the sentient soul, as the mind or feeling soul, as the consciousness soul.

And if we now look at the individual peoples of Europe, we find: What characterizes them – but now in a real way, not in the abstract way that it is characterized by the previous ethnology – what characterizes these peoples is how the folk soul, the real, real folk soul, relates to the individual soul, the soul of the individual human being who belongs to the community of peoples.

And here we find, first of all, that the whole nature of the Italian people can be understood in a luminous way through this – I cannot go into this in detail now, but if it were described in full, one would see how what was previously ethnology would would step forward in a radiant way. The Italian people are characterized by the fact that the folk soul, insofar as it belongs to their nationality, intervenes in the individual soul of the Italian people, insofar as it belongs to their nationality, in such a way that this intervention occurs primarily in the sentient soul. Everything that has emerged as Italian culture is, comparatively speaking, the expression of a dialogue between the Italian folk soul and the sentient soul of the individual members of the Italian people. And all the one-sidedness, but also all the greatness of the Italian development, is based on the fact that the link of the soul life, the nuance of the soul life, which we call the sentient soul, is inspired and impelled in a one-sided way by the forces of the Italian folk soul.

Now one might think that I am only talking about abstract concepts with all these things. This is absolutely not the case. For spiritual science further shows us that these three members of the life of the soul, which have been enumerated, are really connected with the whole being, the comprehensive being of the human soul. And from the research in spiritual science, we can say that what we call the sentient soul initially forms the expression of all passions, all impulsive aspects of human nature; that it is the expression of the sensations that well up from the center of the human soul. But at the same time, it is also the part of the human soul that, as elementary as it is, as much as it is initially at a childlike stage, so it is connected with that which passes through births and deaths of the human soul, which belongs to the eternal part of the human soul, which passes through the gate of death and enters the spiritual world after death. Much more than the other aspects of the soul's life is that which unfolds in the sentient soul, that which belongs to the eternal in the soul.

But it also belongs to the eternal that the sentient soul contains only that which is linked to the eternal in the temporal, so that the human being directly lives this eternal as elementary life. If I could expand on this further, which would take many hours, it would point out to us how, precisely through this dialogue and these interactions between the Italian folk soul and the individual soul as a sentient soul, great Italian painting came into being, Dante's poetry came into being, who, let us say, gave a picture of the eternal in his “Divine Comedy”. All these bearers of Italian culture have given these things in such a way that one must say: What they have given is the result of the interaction of the national soul with the sentient soul of the individual, through everything that is accessible to the sentient soul of the individual soul. These things will be characterized in more detail when we turn to other nations and compare their characteristics with those of the Italian people.

But now something very peculiar happens. Apart from the general facts that I have just mentioned, we must also bear in mind that each age, each historical epoch, is assigned, as it were, the effect on a particular part of the human soul as a special mission in the course of time. It cannot be said that the wisdom that rules in the development of the world is always the same in all ages, so that the sentient soul, the soul of understanding or mind, the consciousness soul can work in the same way. That which comes from the human soul must meet the demands of world culture. And now, a deeper consideration of the spiritual development of newer peoples and especially of Europe shows that the activity of the sentient soul was essentially concluded by the middle or end of the sixteenth century, and that therefore the greatness of a people that is based on the sentient soul must be concluded by the sixteenth century. This in turn explains why everything that has been formed within Italian culture since that time, up to the present day, gives the impression of being outdated, and this can be said quite objectively. When we refresh our soul – and this is deeply satisfying for everyone – by drawing on the essence of southern Europe, as so many artists, as Goethe and others have done, it is due to the greatness of the Italian national spirit, which in the sixteenth century; the other is all after-effects, and it could easily be shown how it is prepared in the depths of the historical impulses, that what has since been asserted as Italian greatness must sound so hollow and empty. These things can now only be hinted at, as I said.

Some things, because they have to be briefly mentioned, have to be stated somewhat radically; but if you follow the lines of thought that are presented here, you will see how much more easily they can penetrate into the understanding that we must seek in the present, the understanding of the interrelationships between the peoples of Europe.

If we now consider the French national soul, we have to look for the essential peculiarities in the fact that there is an interaction between the very real national soul and the intellectual or emotional soul.

And everything that French culture has ever achieved can be explained by this peculiar interaction between the national soul and the intellectual or emotional soul of the individuals who belong to the French nation. This also explains why the French are particularly predisposed to combining and assembling facts, and to applying even the most profound concepts only in a way that is convenient for this world. This explains why even in the poetry of the French people, even when it rises to the classical heights, there is still an effort to construct as systematically as possible, for example in drama, to proceed as far as possible according to certain rules; this is the peculiarity of the intellectual soul. This intellectual or emotional soul brings to manifestation in the soul that which, so to speak, half points to the eternal of the soul, but which, on the other hand, points to the completely transitory temporal, which the soul experiences only in the physical world, in connection with the physical between birth and death.

Recently, some psychological societies have once again been pondering why the French mind in particular is so materialistic, why, let us say, even the greatest philosopher of the French people, Descartes – or Cartesius – constructed a philosophy entirely according to the model of mathematics. This is for no other reason than that the whole culture of the French mind comes from the interaction between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind or soul. How often are we Germans quite peculiar when we try to establish harmony between meaning and form in poetry, when we try above all to allow the content to flow into the form in such a way that the content creates its form, how are we when we now look at the same thing in the artistic products of the intellectual or emotional soul of the French, where it is especially important to build rhythm and rhyme in a systematic way. The French have a completely different feeling for rhythm and rhyme than we Germans do. We Germans are quite capable – and Goethe showed this throughout many of his dramas – of creating rhyming rhythms without rhyme. The French, who want to be justifiably French poets, find this quite impossible. Everything that makes up the peculiar character of French poetry, that which makes up the peculiarity of French characters, comes from the interaction of the French national soul with the intellectual or emotional soul of the individual.

If we now turn to the English people, we find that the individual Briton who seeks his connection with the national soul in his nationality is subject above all to an interaction between this national soul and the consciousness soul. Now this consciousness soul is that which, in relation to the outer man, in relation to everything that man is in his dealings with the world of the senses, is the most highly developed part of the soul. But at the same time it is the only thing that is limited to the world we pass through between birth and death. We can, so to speak, look up to the loftiest expressions of the British spirit, we will find everywhere that its expressions come from the interaction of the British national soul with the consciousness soul of the individual British, which, so to speak, is directed into the physical world with its best powers.

This peculiarity of the British character will become even more apparent to us if we now immediately mention the peculiarity of the interaction between the German national soul and the soul of the individual German. There we see – and we shall understand this later through individual expressions of the German nature – there we see that just as light manifests itself in all color nuances, just as reddish yellow, green, blue violet are all expressions of light, so the soul as a whole is the expression of the self, of the I. And that which constitutes the substance of the German people is rooted entirely in the ego, in the self. And the interaction between what we call the German national soul and the individual German, insofar as he stands within his nationality, is the interaction between the national soul and the ego. Hence the peculiarity of the German soul, that it is not one-sidedly attuned to the revelations of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or the mind soul or the consciousness soul, but that it expresses itself sometimes in this way and sometimes in that; that it strives for universality, for the all-embracing, and that at the same time it strives for inner depth, always wanting to experience more deeply all the different nuances of the soul life in a living way. It can be said that just as the I, the self, is the deepest part of the human being, and the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul are its expressions, so it is with the German, insofar as he belongs to his people , that in relation to the most intimate part of his mind, in relation to the depths of his soul, when he rises to the best that can flow from the German nature, he holds a dialogue with his deepest soul with the spirit of his people. Thus he also has a feeling, sometimes only an instinct, but on the heights of humanity also a clear consciousness of this confrontation with the spiritual powers of the world.

If we now look back again at the peculiarities of the British people, it becomes clear to us – and I would like to give an example that has greatness, because no one will accuse me of citing Shakespeare to denigrate him, and I would of course consider myself to be a madman, like anyone else, would consider myself a fool if I were to doubt Shakespeare's greatness in the slightest; of course I count Shakespeare among the best poets in the world – but it is one thing to recognize the foundations of the world's effectiveness and another to form value judgments.

Let us consider one of Shakespeare's most characteristic works, the work in which Shakespeare's thoughts and feelings can come to us so fully from his soul, let us consider his “Hamlet”. Let us see how real riddles of the world and of humanity are brought to our soul in Hamlet. “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The ghost of Hamlet's father appears; one might say that the dead intrude into the world of the living. But do we recognize Shakespeare's greatness on the one hand precisely in the fact that he is able to present his characters in such a wonderfully sharply outlined way, in a typical and completely individual characterization, showing us precisely that the part of his soul that is called the consciousness soul is directed towards the external-historical. What is solid in the world about the human being on two legs and reveals itself through the human being is characterized by Shakespeare from the consciousness soul with a wonderfully sharp contour. That is the remarkable thing, that he has become one of the greatest, that he was able to characterize a world from the consciousness soul as it stands before us. That is the characteristic.

But let us look at him just at the point where he wants to touch the boundary that leads beyond the sensual world into the supersensible. He wants to touch it. He wants to cross over this boundary. Hamlet's soul shows what happens to a person who wants to cross over this boundary. The question is raised: to be or not to be? He looks towards the other world, but how far does Hamlet get? He only gets to the threshold, he looks into that land from which no traveler has yet returned.

In this we have the entire workings of the consciousness soul in that the poet is great at characterizing what is in the physical world; but uncertainty immediately befalls the soul when it wants to go beyond the physical world. Shakespeare in particular shows us how he also emerged from the interaction of the folk soul with the consciousness soul.

If we now compare this with an episode in the greatest world poem, which is also the greatest German poem and the greatest German intellectual achievement, we conjure up the scene in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” where the question of “to be or not to be” also arises before the human soul, and the spiritual world and the sensual-material world stand before the human soul full of significance. Mephisto is there, he has the key to the spiritual world, but he is the representative of the materialistic view, he is the representative of those beings who only see the material, the transitory, out of the spirit. He has the key, just as science has the key to the higher secrets, but, if it is only filled with materialism, it cannot enter into these secrets. Goethe even depicts Mephisto as having to place himself in relation to the higher mysteries. And Mephisto addresses to Faust a question that touches so closely on the Hamlet question: “You will enter the indefinite, you will come to nothingness.” There is a reference to that which is to assert itself in Faust as spirit. And Faust replies to Mephisto: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

You see, this is the answer that comes from the depths of the I, the I that knows it is connected to the world spirit, the I that is directly strengthened by the fact that it is the German I that experiences the interaction between the national soul and what lives as the self in the soul. Doubt alone enters into the one-sidedness of the consciousness soul, the Hamlet doubt, precisely that which is truly experienced as the deepest. Then certainty enters and says: Because I experience the divine that flows and is through the world in my own inner being, I know that I must find the All in your [Nothingness]. That is the significant thing, that precisely this nature of the German essence has been expressed in the greatest German intellectual achievement. And what I have discussed in this one scene from Faust, it goes, like the spirit of Faust, through the whole of Faust. That is the significant thing, that at this point this influence of the folk soul into the depths of the soul is expressed through all the nuances of the soul.

But that is also what is so difficult for other Europeans to understand. It is this that appears to the other Europeans as an enigma. And enigmas that cannot be solved are best banished from the soul by such means as are now being used in the sophisticated and defamatory declamations that are being directed from all sides out of hatred towards the German national character, because it cannot be understood.

But from this interaction of the national soul with the individual soul of the human being, insofar as this human being is rooted in his nationality, follows what I would like to call the ever-rejuvenating power of the German spirit, of the German national soul. For by cultivating his innermost being, by being able to hold a dialogue with the national soul, the German always draws closer to this national soul. And when any cultural period has expired, when a cultural period has become decrepit and dies, then a new interaction of the German national soul with the national spirit occurs, a rejuvenation of the whole being. But through this direct contact with the national soul, the German essence not only rejuvenates that which lives within the German spirit itself, but also that which, as spiritual culture in the world, must also flow into the German essence.

Let us see how Christianity flowed into the old, worn-out cultures at the end of ancient times. Oh, one can observe how this Christianity adopted old forms, ancient forms of religions in the Greek and Roman folk. How that which was Greek philosophy was superimposed like a religious element, superimposed over that which was carried into human development as a living impulse as the deed of the living Christ.

And then we see how Christianity enters into the self-refreshing and rejuvenating spirit of the German being. This can be observed in individual phenomena. For example, let us see how the “Heliand” was written in the ninth century, a German way of presenting the events in Palestine that are grouped around Christ Jesus. If we allow this remarkable ninth-century poem to take effect on us, it shows us above all the peculiarity that here, out of the German spirit, the events surrounding Christ Jesus are described, who has taken Christ Jesus completely into his own mind, who sees a longing, an ideal in it, to live in his own soul life in such a way that the forces of Christ permeate this own soul life. Everything that is German soul should be permeated with Christianity. This is the source of the feeling that arises when reading the Heliand and letting it take effect in one: All this is related to us, the eternal of Christ is described to us in such a way that it does not appear as renewing, as rejuvenating an old culture, but rather that it appears as if the power of Christ itself is absorbed in its youthfully fresh achievement and is directly present, rejuvenating itself.

And then we see how, for example, such profound poetry, which of course did not originate on German soil in its first form, like Parzifal – and I could name others – how such poetry has been seized by the German essence, how it has been deepened, how the adventurous nature that was formerly associated with Parzifal appears to us in the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and later in those of other writers, and how we see Parzifal as a representative of the striving human soul in general. We see in it something that lives in such a way that its striving is intimately connected with the forces in the human soul that strive for the highest, for the path to the spiritual. And we see, for example, how medieval religious spiritual life is grasped so profoundly by the power of what I have just explained. We see, for example, in the work of Meister Eckhart, this profound German mystic, how he constantly speaks of the fact that the divine must merge with the soul itself, that the soul can feel how God lives in it. Yes, that everything the soul experiences as thinking, feeling and willing can be experienced as if God Himself were thinking, feeling and willing in it. To let God rule completely within oneself becomes the ideal of German mysticism, the ideal of Meister Eckhart and others.

And if we follow the course of this spiritual current, we find numerous expressions by him that show us the same way of thinking. One of his expressions, I would just like to present it to you now for the reason that it can show this way of thinking so extraordinarily characteristically. It is a saying by Angelus Silesius:

I die and do not live either. God himself dies in me,
And what I am supposed to live, he also lives for and for.

Here we have direct proof of the intimate union of the individual human soul with the all-embracing spirit of the world. And do we not see in this an expression of an infinitely profound idea of immortality, an idea of immortality that can confront us, so to speak, in gigantic grandeur? Here Angelus Silesius says: I die and do not live either, God Himself dies in me. But when God Himself dies in me, it means that the event of death is experienced by the God who lives in me; then death can only be an appearance, because God cannot die in me! One sees that this profound German mystic grasps even the thought of death in connection with the divine, living permeation of the world, and he comes to the certainty of immortality from the experience of the divine world within himself. This stems from the fact that the German cannot remain with an old realization, but, as is so magnificently expressed in Faust, always strives for the sources of life. And even if he has studied everything, like Faust himself, he strives beyond everything, he strives for direct contact with the spirit of the world. For that is the peculiar nature, that is the essence, that the self seeks interaction with the national soul in German intellectual life. Therefore, out of this nature of its essence, the true German mind also feels in harmony with the eternal forces of the world that lie beyond death.

That is why we find such profound words in the works of Jakob Böhme and later in those of Fichte, in different ways in both, but both striving in the same direction. They said: He who grasps the essence of death from the depths of the human soul actually grasps that which is already immortal within mortal human nature. That which we carry with us through death is the self, which we have within us even while we live here on earth between birth and death. Therefore, Jakob Böhme, and later Fichte in the manner of Jakob Böhme, regards it as the highest goal to become aware of that which passes through the gate of death, that which lives in man as the eternal, to become aware of it already in earthly life, so that that which can be recognized as the fully developed eternal can be carried through the gate of death, out of the mortal body. And here Jacob Böhme expresses in a wonderful way the saying that is so characteristic of the peculiarity of the German national character as described. He says:

He who does not die before he dies
Perishes when he dies.

These are profound words! For it should be said: Those who are unable to unite during their life on earth in the body with the immortal, cannot in a proper way achieve the consciousness of their unity with the spirit freed from the body after death.

He who does not die before he dies
Will perish when he dies.

These words are spoken with such depth of feeling, and they are spoken by someone who wants to unfold her best powers by allowing the spirit and soul of her nation to weave into her own depths what it wants to give her.

In this respect, the Russian national spirit is incomprehensible, quite incomprehensible, precisely in terms of what is most deeply characteristic of the German national soul. This Russian national spirit, whose characteristic peculiarity, however strange it may seem to some, may appear strange to some, but since I can only characterize many things very briefly, sometimes radical words must be used -, this Russian national spirit, whose peculiarity in relation to Western European and, above all, Central European intellectual culture is arrogance, pride. When people often speak of the modesty of the Russian national spirit, this is based, in relation to what we see as characteristic, on a complete misunderstanding of the innermost impulses of this Russian national spirit. If one can see in the Italian people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the soul of the individual; if one can see in the French people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the soul of the mind or emotions; in the British people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the consciousness soul of the individual; and in the German being, a direct experience of the national soul in the self of the individual, then one must say: the Russian being, to this day he lives in such a way, despite all the forces he carries within himself, that the Russian national soul has not yet found its way into the individual soul. That is why someone who is completely immersed in Russian national identity, whether as a philosopher or as an artist, does not experience the kind of intimate coexistence that the German seeks through the characteristics just described within his being.

The Russian person does not know this flowing in of the forces of the national soul into one's own soul, into the individual soul. The Russian person sees something in the national soul that hovers over the individual souls like a mist. A Russian person, even a profound philosopher like Soloviev, who is the greatest philosophical mind of the Russian people, does not speak as a German would, for example, saying: I have my trust in the deepest core of my soul, which is within me, and it can connect with the divine that flows and weaves through the world. And so he is certain of true spiritual progress for humanity because he feels the power within him through which God reigns in him, which finds expression in the great creations of the German spirit.

That conversation, which every German, the simplest, most original German instinctively feels, is basically quite unknown even to a philosophical Russian person. And so we see, especially in the case of the most outstanding spirit of the Russian people, of the Russian world-view striving, in Soloviev, who died in 1900, we see in this great philosopher: when we go through his works, then one has to – forgive the expression – get out of one's Western European skin in order to live one's way into what one encounters there. It has greatness – that should not be denied, greatness should be acknowledged wherever it is to be found in the world – but it has greatness in such a way that when Solowjow, for example, speaks of what should happen through Russian culture should come, it will come as if from the heights of the mist, as a kind of nourishment, as something that should be sprinkled down by grace at a certain time into the deeds of the Russian people. He is waiting for a miracle. When God Himself works from the heights of the beyond into people, then people will move forward.

The Russian sees the folk spirit above the individual souls; he does not see it working in the three characterized soul powers, let alone really being able to grasp that intimate experience of the spirit in the individual soul itself, which is precisely the characteristic of the Central European folk striving. Therefore, we also find in the great philosopher the peculiarity that the folk soul does not grasp with its powers either the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, the emotional soul, or the consciousness soul. We find in Solovyov the peculiarity that these individual soul powers are at work in him. We see how they string together one idea and one sensation after another according to rules that we in Central Europe would never be able to perceive as logic or inner necessity. We see, as it were, the spirit of the people, revered by the Russian people, hovering in airy heights. And we see: there the souls can be active with their chaotically whirling soul forces. That this can be made clear precisely in the case of one of the greatest minds of the Russian world is remarkable.

And again and again we must remind ourselves of the momentous words spoken by Lessing in his Testament. Oh, this Testament of Lessing's, which is called 'The Education of the Human Race'! He explains how the whole development of humanity is a great unity. And he expounds an idea which, through spiritual science, will be elevated to the rank of a scientific truth: the idea of the repeated earthly lives of human beings. There are very clever people today who say: Well, Lessing created great things, but then he grew old. One need not attach so much importance to the fact that he came up with the idea that the soul always carries over again into a later epoch that which can be made fruitful in a later epoch by an earlier one. But Lessing truly did not grow old and decrepit, nor did he become weak-minded, as very clever people say, even if they do not say it in relation to this 'Education of the Human Race'. Rather, it was precisely at this point that Lessing grasped in the deepest sense what the human soul experiences when it can experience the rule of the world spirit within itself as the most characteristic of its deepest experiences. From this consciousness Lessing spoke the weighty word as in a testament: “I feel as a human soul through its own content, through its own essence; I too have surged from time to time, from eternity to eternity.” Through what I am, I am immortal. And now he concludes: “Is not all of eternity mine?”

There is a conception of the spirit, a cultural conception, which is the direct consequence of this ever-rejuvenating power of the German national soul.

Let us compare this with the belief of the great Russian philosopher, Solowjow, that what man can achieve can only be achieved by a miracle giving the Russian people their mission themselves. If we compare these two beliefs, we have every reason to understand why what is Russian in nature cannot understand what is Western European, what is Central European, and especially what is German in nature. And therein lies the entire arrogance, the entire arrogance of the Russian intellectuals, these Russian intellectuals who have been talking for a long time about how what the West has achieved in terms of culture is actually rotten, ripe for destruction, and that it must be replaced by something that could emerge from the forces of the Russian character into world culture. This was not given much consideration in times that were not as war-torn as our present fateful times, but it has always been the basic tenor of Russian intellectual life that Western culture is rotten.

We have seen the most diverse minds, Khomyakov, Katkov, Aksakov and so on, appear in Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth century. They all repeatedly say: Western European intellectualism must perish. One of these minds even went so far as to say: In this Western European culture, everything has been led by the impulses of art to that human-selfish, to that egoistic individualism, which leads people apart and founds everything that is to be established on violence, on servitude and hatred.

According to important Russian minds of the nineteenth century, these are the characteristics of Western European culture: “violence, servitude and hatred”. While, according to the same minds, Russian culture is said to be based on “freedom, concord and love”.

Now, Solowjow was an important mind, an important spirit. And precisely because he was so great, the feeling that he had to develop from his intimate connection with the Russian essence was that he says: the national soul still hovers above us. We have not yet connected with it in our individual souls. God must perform a miracle, must radiate down to us that which is to be our mission.

But he was convinced that it is up to the Russian people to redeem the world, because Western European culture has reached its death throes, because it has become decrepit. So he, Soloviev, says further: We do not want to destroy this Western European culture, but we want to heal it.

What has just been said about Russian culture should not be seen as a special impulse within the spirituality of the Russian people. For precisely in Russia, what is to be mentioned can be counted among the symptoms that arise from the instincts of nationality. Therefore, in Solowjow, as in his Slavophile predecessors (although he fought against them), we see a connection between what they, out of their arrogance, characterize as the mission of the Russian people; we see how they deduce the whole course of future politics from it. We see them, out of these impulses, demanding that Russia expand ever further and further against the West, that Constantinople become a Russian city, that the Sea of Marmara become a Russian lake, and so on. Everything that we are experiencing today, everything that underlies the attack that the Russian essence is also politically waging against the Central European, the German essence, everything is completely permeated, in terms of feelings and emotions, especially in the best Russians, by what has just been characterized, by the haughty conviction that Russia alone can save European culture, indeed world culture.

It is precisely the contrast between the German and the Russian nature that makes it possible to understand what the driving forces of our present world culture are and what struggles the German nature will be drawn into in the future, which will most certainly come.

Dear attendees, one can refer back to Goethe's “Faust” when one wants to show what is mentioned here as the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul, what has been characterized as such. Don't we see Faust standing there – Goethe wrote this scene in the 1770s , the words have become almost trivial, having been heard so often and probably already declaimed by everyone themselves – we see Faust standing there, wanting to escape from everything he has absorbed from the forces of the past, because he wants to connect directly in his soul with living knowledge, we hear his words:

Alas, I have now studied philosophy, law and medicine,

and unfortunately also theology

to the full, with great effort.

There I stand, poor fool that I am,

and am no wiser than before!

Goethe wrote this from his own consciousness, from what he himself felt in the seventies of the eighteenth century.

Then came what can truly be called a 'rejuvenation of the German spirit' through German idealism. Goethe himself, like Faust, strove to absorb the sources of life with his thinking, feeling and willing into his soul. Then the great German idealistic philosophy, which had been pushed back precisely by the invasion of the French and also the Russian worldviews, came to Central Europe itself. Then came what must be seen as an achievement: the fact that these struggles again made it possible for the greatness of this German philosophical idealism to be discussed in wider circles.

And so they came, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who tried to present law and medicine to the German people in a rejuvenated way. And they were not only philosophers, for Schelling wrote a yearbook for medicine; Fichte wrote a treatise on the state. And they all wanted to be theologians. The German intellectual powers that emerged from the depths of the German soul after Goethe wrote these Faust words were tremendous.

Alas, I have now studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately also theology
to the full, with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool that I am,
and am as wise as before!

But let us now assume that Goethe did not write these words of Faust in 1772, but only in 1840, after a new philosophy, a new jurisprudence, a new theology had passed through the German soul. Do you think that Goethe, if he had written the beginning of Faust in 1840, only after emerging from the Faust mood, would have written the words as follows:

Now, thank God,
I have studied with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel;
so there I am, I wise man,
and no longer need to be as stupid as before?

Even in the 1790s, despite all this greatness that had passed through German culture, Goethe would certainly have said:

I have now, alas! studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately theology as well
with great zeal and effort.
There I stand, poor fool that I am,
and am no wiser than before!

And again, just as before, Faust would have longed for the sources of life and sought his refuge in the living spirit that was to appear to him. The German does not crave knowledge that has grown old; he always craves that knowledge that has flowed from the depths of the soul and emerged into the visible world. He craves the rejuvenating power of the German spirit itself, as it lives in the interrelationship between the German national soul and the German soul of the individual.

That is what one must feel, ladies and gentlemen, if one wants to visualize the fundamental character of the German spirit. And one may say: it has actually been felt, felt even by those who now dare to say the most defamatory, hateful and poisonous things about the peculiarity of the German spirit in the most diverse languages.

Let us look, for example, to the West. It is very strange: if we go to the far West, we find an excellent spirit of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, as is natural for an English-writing writer, names the English as the first people in the world. Yet in numerous passages of his writings, he shows us that he values the Germans more than the English. And today, we can reflect on some of what this English-writing writer said, because it would be unpleasant for us to give a characteristic of our own nature in our own words. Emerson, who had a sense of the rejuvenating power of the German national soul, said the following about Goethe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public:

— spoken in English in the nineteenth century, mind you —

that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth.

Now, I would like to say: What more could you want? In English, you hear that Goethe is the representative of Germanness, that he expresses something that he has in common with the whole nation: “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth.”

In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of their conviction. In France, people are delighted when they see brilliant ideas, regardless of where they lead. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind possesses neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed for the practical, nor, finally, the American adventurousness. What it does have, however, is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it advocate? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get his ideas? The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws. The Germans think for Europe. The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

Dear attendees, the entire nature of this presentation shows what I have tried to characterize for you today from the perspective of spiritual science. Emerson senses something of this intimate connection between the self of the individual German and that which passes through the world as the Spirit of Truth, as an ideal that indeed hovers over German development. Emerson also sensed this, as he says in the following words:

For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something in his eye that is even better. [...] He has that fearsome independence that springs from contact with the truth.

From many of the hateful words we hear today, my dear audience, if you are sensitive to such tones, you can discern what Emerson calls “the fearsome independence that springs from the truth”. That independence that is so unbearable to those who cannot muster sympathy for such things. One truly does not need to be chauvinistic to express these things. They arise not only objectively for the observer who stands in the midst of the spiritual essence, they also arise for those who can rise above the peculiarities of their nation.

But one also has such feelings in other places, and in order to illustrate to some extent what I have discussed from spiritual scientific research, I would also like to add the following: Perhaps you know that one of those who spoke the most brutal, hateful, venomous words against the German 'barbarians' was the Belgian-French poet Maeterlinck, Maeterlinck, who himself found so much recognition within the German character. I would like to draw attention to a peculiar compatriot of Maeterlinck. And I would like to tell you a little about this compatriot in a very brief way. So, he is a fellow countryman of Maeterlinck, and a Franco-Belgian poet. When he talks about the influence that an archetypally German spirit, an archetypally German soul, has had on him, when he talks about the influence that Novalis has had on him, this Franco-Belgian poet says some very strange and significant things. It was some time ago, but it is still characteristic to hear a Belgian who writes in French talk about what the soul of Novalis has become for him. This Belgian says: “Isn't Novalis, out of his German uniqueness, a spirit who created something that cannot even be expressed, that is not limited to the earthly at all!”

And so this Belgian writer comes up with something special to describe the purely spiritual influence and the deep impression that Novalis makes on him. He thinks of saying: When you read Schiller or Shakespeare, you find everything that is poetically depicted in Schiller and Shakespeare, but it is only of interest to what is experienced by people on earth. But if one wants to characterize what the soul of Novalis wrote, one would have to assume that spirits from the spiritual heights, spirits from other planets would be interested in it. What Schiller and Shakespeare said is only of interest to people on earth; what Novalis wrote must also interest angels, it must also interest beings that have never heard of the earth. So significant, so deeply connected is what Novalis wrote with the spiritual forces of the German national soul. He characterizes the nature of the influence that the original German, Novalis, has had on him very peculiarly, and he says:

But if he needed other proof, it would lead him among those whose works almost stir silence. She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises [by one step] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably [only] begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone, there are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas [that resemble and are] as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a [strange] reason; but [the people I am talking about have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community [count].

This French-writing Belgian feels impressed by Novalis. He feels the magic breath of the German spirit as it flows from Novalis to him. If one were to believe what Maeterlinck, his fellow countryman, said about German “barbarism” after the outbreak of the war, one would not believe that this Belgian would have said: Oh, these useless screamers, who only resort to phrases, they should remain silent when it comes to matters of the mind!

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to discern its weak childish voice amidst the useless clamor that surrounds it.

Yes well, my dear attendees, the French-writing Belgian whom I have quoted here has already spoken, but I have somewhat mystified you. It is the same person who said what I read about Novalis; it is Maeterlinck himself. He only spoke in this way in the healthy days of his soul. One can only believe when reading that it was said by a completely different personality. This is what has become of those who once felt something of the magic breath of the German soul. Maeterlinck himself wrote about Novalis in this way.

From this we can see what will be necessary to defend the German soul against the misjudgment of its essence, with the weapons that we ourselves must take from it as its members. And this defense will truly become more and more necessary. What good does it do that the German soul, having also become part of external culture, has already been understood! That which separates it from those who have become its enemies will speak ever louder if it is not defended by the German essence itself. And what we hear today, one will have to be convinced, as [what we have heard] is in some respects only a beginning, especially with regard to the deeper currents of human life.

I would like to give another example. Shortly before the outbreak of this war, an Englishwoman wrote a book about Germany. Yes, you see, an Englishwoman who differs from many of her compatriots in that she really got to know the German character. Because she was in Germany for eight years. She got to know universities, clinics, hospitals, educational institutions, all kinds of places. But she also got to know the German character, which, as an emanation of the German soul, must after all be present in every soul, even if it masks and hides itself in ordinary life. The book was written shortly before the war. As I said, not in Berlin, not in Cologne or Leipzig, but in England and in English, the following was said about Germany:

We read a great deal [...] about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. What exists is the mature work of generations, which has always been. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany has shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it has made an epoch-making impact; in music, it has always dominated. [...] German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnaughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnaught, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. At every border and across the water, the opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, so that they can pounce on her and overwhelm her. Germany knows this very well.

It would be good if those who are now reflecting on the cause of the war were also listened to, if those who say what the mood within Germany should be towards those who lurked in the period leading up to this war were also listened to.

And if we ask, my dear attendees: How do you understand German culture when you would like to destroy this German culture with more or less pride or from other points of view? A few more characteristics on this point at the end. There is, for example, a true Russian intellectual of the present day. If one picks up his latest book, one can get the impression, from the last words he says about Goethe, that he counts Goethe among the greatest in the development of humanity. We know how Goethe is connected with what must be called the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul. We know that his Faust, if not in an artistic sense, then at least in terms of the power of its characterization of humanity, rises above all other works of world literature. We know how nonsensical it would be to characterize Goethe without first seeing the great spirit of modern times that reigns in Goethe and from which his Faust could emerge. Mereschkowski, the Russian intellectual who certainly knows Faust and German culture as well as he can know it, judges Goethe from what I have just called the characteristic arrogance of the Russian intellectual. He judges the same Goethe about whom Emerson speaks as I read earlier, daring to say the following words:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German bourgeois and – may the shadow of the Olympian have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.

With certain people, it does not matter that such words may be correct, if one is a pedant, but it does matter whether the person who finds it appropriate to speak such words about Goethe understands the greatness of Goethe at all. Sometimes it does not matter what one says, but whether one is at all capable of saying something specific about a particular object or a particular person.

I said: One must seek the Russian national spirit as if floating above the Russian individual soul. But this means that this individual Russian soul, let us say, can easily live as if “down there” without being touched by its national spirit, without also having that confidence and security that arises from the way of dealing with the national spirit, as we were able to characterize it with the German national soul. Therefore, permeated by poetic values, but nevertheless like a worldview, what Mereschkowski calls the “barfoot worldview” as a newest kind of Russian worldview could arise. Now, we know how this barefoot worldview basically arises from the mood that must come when one feels so completely grounded and cannot find the connection with the folk soul, to see within the spirit, so to speak, to that which man is outside of the spiritual. Materialism has not yet taken this completely seriously, but it is characteristic that this Russian individual spirit has taken it seriously in his world view. And so he denies everything spiritual and comes to what an important Russian poet addresses as a characteristic of man. I would truly not mention this if it only occurred here and there. But it is something that the spirit of the East comes to, which characterizes the impulses that live there.

Yes, what is he to you, this human being? Do you understand? He takes you by the collar and crushes you under the nail like a flea! Then you may feel sorry for him! ... Yes! Then you may reveal all your foolishness to him. He will put you on seven different forms of torture for your pity. He will wrap your intestines around his hand and pull all the veins out of your body, one inch per hour. ... Oh you... Pity! Pray to God that you will be beaten without any mercy, and that's it! ... Pity! ... Ugh!

And Maxim Gorky says that these words are spoken entirely from his soul, because this is how he perceives what a person can find as his value when he looks at himself for what he actually is.

One must put such things together with the many things that have come from the East, the arrogance and the arrogance of Russian intellectualism in the course of the last few years, the outgrowth of which is the mood that speaks today of blood and death.

Among the Russian intellectuals I mentioned earlier, we must also mention Yushakov, who has written books that have not found a large audience but which nevertheless show what has been in the minds of many intellectuals in Russia. Yushakov has the following ideas about the course of world culture. I would like to briefly present these ideas to you. He says: This West, everything that this West of Europe has achieved in culture, is over. If you look over to the East, you find that there is actually still something in it of rejuvenation, of germs from which something can develop. But the West cannot develop this. This West has always shown [...] a gap in the text].

[In contrast, at the end of the nineteenth century, Yushakov writes about the Russian-English question in Asia: As far as Russia's mission in Asia is concerned, what the English are doing there is rotten through and through. What Russia is doing there is infinitely more spiritual.

The English – Yushakov says – have behaved towards Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to “clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles”.

Russia alone, Yushakov believes, is capable of feeling an affinity with this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe, because it cannot yet grasp the inner human being, which has been made sick and aged by the ego, like the European West.

It is an interesting book, published in 1885, about the relations between England and Russia. It highlights the superiority and arrogance of Russian over Englishness. In 1885, Yushakov has the following idea:

This West, it is over for him. If you look to the East, there is still something that can be developed, the West, especially England, have caused the darkening of India, Persia.

What have the English done in Asia? They have arrogated to themselves everything that was once established in Asia by the power of Ahriman. They have crept in where Ormuzd was at work. They have sat down everywhere where there was light to enjoy the fruits of that light. But what have the Russians done? The Russians have gone everywhere where Asia has been impoverished, where Asia was threatened and impoverished, where people had come down, where people were oppressed and oppressed, where people were plunged into poverty and darkness. Russia has taken care of these people. That is why Russia has its mission in Asia. Therefore, the world struggle between Russia and England must break out in Asia. Russia must be reinstated in the rights of Ormuzd against Ahriman, after it has behaved in this way, while the English have only interfered in what has been established in Asia in terms of fertility, greatness and beauty, and have exploited it.

This is how this Russian speaks about England. And he says: England exploits millions of Hindus. Its greatness and power depend on the people there. I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland. I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this sad state of affairs.

Could one not actually wish that the Russians of today, who admire the English, would take a little time to study this book by Yushakov, which was only published in 1885 and deals with relations between Russia and England? It could be interesting at all sometimes if people would get to know something of the driving forces that have worked and will continue to work on the forces that have led to what is now around us, that reaches our souls.

I believe, my dear audience, that what I have said, based on the spiritual-scientific foundations of the nature of the German being, can be substantiated, even if it is illustrated by this or that. And I could cite similar evidence to support what I have said for a long, long time. One could cite such things for so long that no one in the room would be listening.

All of this, however, would illuminate the one truth that is so important now, when we first have to forge the weapons to defend what is also being attacked spiritually and what will be increasingly surrounded, all of this would lead us to the one great truth with which one must come to terms, the truth that the German, by virtue of his immediate national character, could see the direct relationship, the experienced relationship of the individual soul with the national spirit.

And when we see how this German idealism always worked in the whole mood of the German people and its great representatives, especially in the time that we can call the great epoch of the German spirit, how there are seeds, and when we see what is all that is contained in these germs, then we may say to ourselves: We can also trust in the inner strength of the German character, just as we trust in the germs that must unfold into blossoms and fruits in nature; we may have confidence in the German spiritual life. And we know that in many respects it still contains the germs, and that it contains the power of perpetual rejuvenation, that this power is its own. And we know from this what those who, at great sacrifice in the east and in the west, have to defend that which is enclosed as in a large fortress in Central Europe.

But there is also a way to direct the soul's eye to the inner forces of the spiritual world. Then one does not look at this German people as it may be looked at today by the enemies of the German spirit, but rather in such a way that one says to oneself: the German spirit has not yet been fully realized. It has powers within it that are only germinal powers, that must first fully develop in the future. Therefore, from such considerations, however imperfectly they may be presented, as they could only be presented in a lecture in such a short time, nevertheless that which can be summarized in certain feelings emerges, feelings that give the German soul confidence and courage and hope, precisely from the depths of this being.

On the one hand, we are completely convinced today that we have no need to give courage and confidence to those who have to suffer and bleed for the great events of the time based on certain, genuine knowledge and insight – the whole course of events within the realm of the German being, the Central European being, shows that this is not necessary. European being, shows how the Germans went to war, how they knew how to wage this war. No, not to talk about it, but to talk about what reigns and works in the innermost being of the German soul, so that it gives us [and those in the field] certainty about the future and fills us with hope. It is to point this out that today's reflections were made. And that is why I would like to summarize, because the feelings are the most important thing, the feelings that underlie the individual words of this evening. I would like to summarize some of the feelings that, as I believe, can arise for German feeling and sentiment precisely from the contemplation of the German essence and its connection with the German national spirit:

The German spirit has not yet been fulfilled,
What it should bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in future concerns,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerful
Hidden things that must still mature.
How can a wish for his end, without understanding,