The Peoples of the Earth in the Light of Anthroposophy

In the short time at our disposal it is impossible to characterise all the individual peoples. All that can be done is to consider the main types of earthly humanity. We are led, in the first place, to a very characteristic type and also one of the very oldest—to the oriental, as expressed in many different ways in the ancient Indian peoples and in other Eastern races. This oriental type reveals one common element, especially in the Indian people. The man of the East has grown together, as it were, with the Earth which is his own soil. However clearly it may appear that the oriental has received the Spirit with intense devotion into his heart and soul, however deeply oriental mysticism may impress us, if we study the racial characteristics of the oriental, we shall find that the lofty spirituality we so justly admire is dependent, in his case, upon the experiences of the will flowing in the human being, the will that is, in turn, bound up with the metabolic processes. However paradoxical it may appear at first sight, this very spirituality of the oriental peoples, and especially of the ancient Indian, is something that—to use a crude expression—wells up from the metabolic processes. These processes are, in turn, connected with the processes of Nature in the environment of the oriental. Think of the Indian in very ancient times. Around him are the trees and fruits, everything that Nature in her beauty and wonder gives to man. The oriental unites this with the metabolic processes within him in such a way that the metabolism becomes a kind of continuation of all that is ripening to fruit on the trees and living under the soil in the roots. In his metabolic nature, the oriental has grown together with the fertility and well-being of the Earth. The metabolic process is the bearer of the will—hence the will develops in the inner being of man. But that which develops in the innermost being, in which man is firmly rooted and by means of which he relates himself to his environment—this does not enter very vividly into consciousness. A different element streams into the conscious life of the oriental. Into the feeling and thinking life of the oriental—especially of the most characteristic type—the Indian—there streams something that to all appearance is experienced in the metabolic processes in a material sense. In its spiritual ‘mirror-image,’ however, it appears as spiritual life.