Lecture V

A very different attitude to a world historic movement arises in those who look more deeply into what is happening, from the attitude of those who observe merely what is on the surface. The present social movement is now finding its most radical expression in Bolshevism, which is more a social method, having for its content all that has been absorbed into the will of the most advanced so-called socialism. The student of history as reality rather then theory, endeavours above all to understand how certain streams in the cosmic development of man reveal themselves in their most extreme form. For in an extreme form it is often easier to recognise what, though no less active, is frequently hidden in the less extreme. If we are rightly to understand the historic consequences of Bolshevism, the horrifying deeds of which are already historic fact, we shall, in some measure, have to observe the more recent life of history.