8. Abstraction and Reality

You may well feel that something is missing in what I have been saying. If your sense for pedantic accuracy—and this, too, has its justification—begins to stir in your hearts as I say these things, you will no doubt say I ought to give you proof that the life of the whole earth must be compared to the organism and an individual State to a cell. Well, the proof of the pudding lies in the eating; it does not lie in the abstract deliberations which we can always go into, but in taking the thought to its conclusion. If you do so with regard to Kjellen's idea, you will always find that it cannot be taken to its conclusion. You will keep running into a brick wall, and you will have to turn into a goat; otherwise you cannot take it to its conclusion. Yet if you take the thought to its conclusion for the life of the whole earth, you will find that it works, that you gain useful insights and it makes a good regulative principle. You will come to understand many things, even more than I have already indicated.