14. The Development of the German Soul

Let us take a look at the Russian national soul. What we find is that the peculiarity of the national soul, the character of the national soul, turns out to be related to a kind of mixture between what happens in the individual human organism from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties; and that is shadowed by what happens from the age of forty-two or forty-three to the age of forty-nine or fifty. If you imagine these two soul characters in a state of confusion, that is to say, what is at work in the organism from sexual maturity into the early twenties, still permeating it, but also at work in the soul, if you imagine this overshadowed , thoroughly organized, of what works at such a late time, then you get, so to speak, an arithmetic mean, let me express the rough word for this fine thing, which shows what the peculiarities of the Russian national soul are. For the Russian national soul works with the forces that are similar to the forces just characterized in the human organism.