1. The World View Of German Idealism. A Consideration Regarding Our Fateful Times

Just as sensualism is the world view corresponding to the Italian national character; just as rationalism is the world view corresponding to the French national character, so is so-called empiricism, the focus on external reality, which of course initially only has a meaning for the human consciousness soul, for that in which the human being wants to place himself here as an earthly being with his conscious purposes. This outer reality, what is given in empiricism, as it is said, is the object of the outer consciousness soul. That is what one wants to gain when one looks at it in terms of its characteristic properties, the British world view, that is, all the content it can contain. And from the dawn of modern spiritual life up to Darwin and Spencer, up to the present English world view, we find this basic trait everywhere. But we see that in recent times, strangely enough, it has united with that which lives so truly in the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul, as I said earlier, sets out to get to know the human being through the purposes he pursues as an external being on earth in his immediate sensory surroundings. The consciousness soul focuses on these purposes. On what is useful to man. Let us look back at the example of Darwin. And we see from the form that Darwin gave to the theory of the development of the organic how the principle of usefulness is already being considered in the becoming of the beings. The beings arise and perfect themselves in the struggle for existence. How in the struggle for existence? Because the being that is organized in such a way that it is most useful to itself displaces the others.