14. The Development of the German Soul

Now, as you know, it is not my way to engage in anthropomorphism in the sense of Gustav Theodor Fechner or similar people, whom I highly esteem, by the way, and to seek anthropomorphic analogies. Instead, I try to look the facts in the eye, but the facts in the physical world as well as the facts that are in the spiritual world and only show themselves in the physical world through their effects. The first step is to consider how the peculiarity, the character, the essence of a national soul can work into a person at all, what this national soul actually consists of. Those who make cheap analogies and proceed anthropomorphically take the individual human being, the boy, the development of youth and so on, and then look at a people as it also develops from certain beginnings in youth to a certain state of maturity. As I said, that is not my task.