14. The Development of the German Soul

Now we have this German national soul in its development. We encounter it already so wonderfully vividly and magnificently described by Tacitus in the first century AD, which for earlier centuries points to the Germanic national soul from which the German national soul has grown. We see it then in its development through the Middle Ages up to its newer blossoms, where it was immersed in the poetry of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and immersed in the great musical development of the newer German spiritual life. But Christianity, a different communal soul essence, intervenes and permeates this folk soul essence. If we examine the course of events in detail, we can see how these great aspects that I have mentioned are confirmed in the individual expressions of the soul of the people. For example, we can ask: If the being that unconsciously works in man until sexual maturity is truly seized by such a communal consciousness as Christianity, what wants to be incorporated? We need only take words, foreign words that the German language has adopted through Christianity. Such foreign words have entered into the German being that refer to what must be grasped in sensory perception, albeit with a supersensible character, for which one already needs a deeper soul life that can imprint itself in the way I have characterized. For example, the word 'nature' entered the Germanic character of Central Europe through Christianity. Of course, the way it was understood at that time, the word 'nature' is beyond the grasp of anyone who takes it only in the sense in which we understand it today. But in the dialects it still lives in the old meaning. And there we see how this word “nature,” which penetrated Central Europe with Christianity, developed further with folklore. From this one word “nature” and from other words in older versions that have been adopted in this way, we can see how the forces that have been hinted at, which have entered into human individuality from Christianity, are effective in such words.