The History of Mankind in the Light of Supersensible Reality Research
Wilson wants to grasp what he is supposed to represent and what is characteristic for the development of the American people, and one sees how he, by continuing from one point to the next, actually manages to present the whole history of his people in an extremely plausible way. He shows how wrong all those are who apply a historical way of thinking to America according to the pattern of the way of thinking that comes from England and that they want to apply to American life, without realizing that America has shaped its life under special preconditions. Wilson wants to create pure Americanism in his own way; he points out that it is a striking phenomenon precisely in America that culture in America gradually moved from the east to the west, where it was only fully developed in later times. From the east to the west, people have moved, overcoming the wilderness, and he shows how the development of American history lies in this struggle against the wilderness, how everything that Americans have done in life has come about because the west had to be conquered from the east. American history was not made by politicians or diplomats, but by hunters who felled the trees, and by farmers who moved into the wilderness and cultivated the fields. These were also the most important questions for Americans: questions of agriculture and farming. Wilson views American history from this perspective and comes to a [plausible] solution to these questions by showing how these questions arose and why it has become necessary for this advance to move from east to west.