The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine

Today the human being should not move blindly through earthly evolution; he must be able to see through such relationships. Europe will be able to come into a proper relationship with America only when such conditions can be understood, when it is known what geographical determinants come from there. Otherwise, if Europe continues to be blind to these things, it will be with this poor Europe as it was with Greece in relation to Rome. This should not be; the world should not be geographically Americanized. First, however, this must be understood. Things should not be taken with such lack of seriousness as is so common today. Things have deep foundations, and knowledge is necessary today, not merely sympathy and antipathy, in order to gain a position in the connections in which present-day humanity is so tragically placed. Such things as we can discuss here more intimately can only be hinted at in public lectures. Yesterday I called attention to the necessity for spiritual science really to penetrate also into social and political concepts. For America's endeavor is to mechanize everything, to drive everything into the realm of pure naturalism, and gradually to extinguish European culture from the earth. It cannot be otherwise. Obviously geographical concepts are not concepts of a people as such. It is only necessary to think of Emerson in order to know that nothing is intended here as characteristic of a people. But Emerson was a man of European education through and through. This simply shows the two opposite poles that are developing. Precisely under such influences as have been characterized today, people such as Emerson develop, who develop as they do because they confront the double with complete humanity. On the other hand, people are developing such as Woodrow Wilson, who is a mere sheath of the double, through whom the double himself works with special effectiveness. Such people are essentially actual embodiments of the geographic nature of America.