2. Nationalities and Nationalism in the Light of Spiritual Science

The Italian and the Spanish character is determined by the sentient soul. We can observe this in life down to the finer detail. Everywhere we come upon the sentient soul. (This does not, of course, refer to life in the higher self.) As soon as a native of those countries is wholly within his national element he is within the sentient soul. This is particularly attached to everything connected with home and sensitive to everything that is not home but, rather, ‘alien country’. If you try, for instance, to understand all that is part of the national element in Italy you will find that an Italian sees another person who is not Italian as a foreigner who lives abroad. All the struggles that took place in Italy during the 19th century had specifically to do with home territory. Here we have a recapitulation of Egypto-Chaldean culture.