5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

Now it is extremely interesting to contrast this Western thinker with an Eastern thinker: Vladimir Soloviev, the most significant Russian thinker of the most recent period, who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose most important works thus extend well into the present day. From a completely different spirit, from completely different psychological backgrounds, we hear this Eastern thinker speak; in that – one might say – although he expresses himself entirely in Western and Central European thought forms, the whole of the Orient still resonates emotionally and sentimentally, which everywhere nuances what he has to say in a warm, deeply intimate way.