6. The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World

It is this that gives repeated occasion for the warning that the time has actually arrived when the human being must take earnestly the duty of learning through his life and not dealing with it like a game to be played. By means of those things we develop from our inherited potentialities, we get as far in our lives as the twenty-seventh year. In future the number of years will be continually lower. You know this on the basis of earlier discussions. We need something that maintains us throughout life as human beings who are in the process of becoming and not as individuals who are finished and completed. On the basis of these things, men will obtain an insight into much that bears on the social question. They will correct much of what they possess today in the form of illusory ideas and, indeed, much must be corrected. It may well be said that the task that lies before men can be called a difficult one, but it can be mastered. Just consider for a moment the fact that you are actually sitting here, and know these things. But do not consider yourselves on that account as specially chosen. Reflect rather upon the fact that in the world outside there will be many others who will be able to understand the same things. It is by no means impossible that these ideas shall enter into human life. In other words, the hindrance is only something artificially set up. To be sure, this artificially erected hindrance is something terrible, but it must be overcome for the reason that salvation can come in no other way. May everyone in his own place do what is possible toward overcoming the difficulties in this field.