I. Social Impulses for the Healing of Modern Civilization

What has Europe got? Well, Europe has got the utmost necessity for solving the social question; but she has not got the temperament for the social question. To solve the social question, she would need to have the Asiatic temperament. The social necessities of Europe are such as to supply all the conditions requisite for a solution of the social question; but the Europeans would first need to become permeated through and through with the way of thought which is natural to the Asiatic, only the Asiatic has no gift for actually perceiving social needs as they exist externally. Often, indeed, he even acquiesces in them. In Europe, there is every external incentive to do something about the social question, but the temperament is lacking. On the other hand, there is in Europe, in the very strongest degree, the talent, the ability which would provide the soil for Freedom,—for the impulse of freedom. The strong point of European talents, specifically European talents, lies in developing in the very highest degree the inner sentiment, the inner feeling for freedom. One might say that the gift for getting to a real idea of Freedom is specifically European; but among these Europeans there are no people who act freely, who could make freedom a reality. Of Freedom as an idea, the Europeans can form the loftiest conception. But just as the Asiatic would be able to set about doing something, if he possessed the clear thought of the Europeans without their other failings, if he could only get the clear-out European idea of Freedom, so the European can evolve the most beautiful conception of Freedom, but there is no possibility, politically, of realising this idea of freedom through the direct agency of the European peoples, for, of the three essentials to civilisation,—the impulse for altruism, the impulse for freedom, the impulse for cosmogony,—the European possesses only one-third, the impulse for Freedom. The other two he has not got.