The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The State of the World, War, Peace, and the Science of the Spirit

[ 1 ] Spiritual research cannot interfere in the immediate affairs of the day. Nor, however, should the belief arise that spiritual knowledge is something that hovers above all reality in the clouds and has nothing to do with the practical realities of life. We do not wish to present the events that are currently stirring up the world in the same way that one might discuss daily news, nor do we wish to be among those who would remain blind and deaf to what directly moves the human heart—what concerns us directly. Between these two extremes, the spiritual researcher must always find a path so that he never becomes lost in the opinions and views of everyday life; on the other hand, he must never become entangled in mere empty abstractions or fall prey to authority. I have often said this from this very place: Spiritual science is meant to make us practical—immediately practical, much more practical than the practical people of everyday life usually imagine. But it is meant to make us practical by leading us into the deeper forces of life and enlightening us about things from the perspective of these deeper forces, so that it guides our actions in harmony with the great laws of the world. For only then can one achieve anything in the world, can one intervene in the workings of the world, if one does so in accordance with the great laws of the world.

[ 2 ] With that in mind, let me first point out a few facts that are intended solely to remind us of the importance of the questions we are addressing today and, I would say, their relevance.

[ 3 ] One fact that everyone may recall is that on August 24, 1898, the Tsar’s plenipotentiary sent a circular to the foreign representatives accredited in St. Petersburg, in which the following words, among others, appear: “The maintenance of general peace and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments that burden all nations represent, in the current state of the world, an ideal toward which the efforts of all governments should be directed.

[ 4 ] The humane and magnanimous aspirations of His Majesty the Emperor, my exalted Lord, are entirely devoted to this task. Convinced that this noble ultimate goal corresponds to the most vital interests and the legitimate desires of all powers, the Imperial Government believes that the present moment is extremely favorable for seeking, through international consultation, the most effective means of securing for all peoples the benefits of true and lasting peace and, above all, of setting a limit on the ongoing expansion of current armaments.”

[ 5 ] This document also contains the following words: “Since financial burdens are on the rise and strike at the very root of public welfare, labor and capital are, to a large extent, diverted from their natural purpose and consumed in an unproductive manner. Hundreds of millions are spent to procure terrible machines of destruction, which are regarded today as the pinnacle of science but are already doomed to lose all value tomorrow as a result of some new discovery in this field . . . Therefore, as the armaments of each power grow, they correspond less and less to the purpose set by the government in question.” The document concludes by stating that, with God’s help, a conference should be a favorable omen for the coming century. — Undoubtedly, this manifesto stems from a resolution. Recent events show us how this intention came to fruition. This intention is not exactly new, for we can go back centuries, and there, in the 16th and 17th centuries, we encounter a monarch, Henry IV of France, who at that time proposed the idea of such a general peace conference. Seven of the sixteen countries at that time had been won over when Henry IV was assassinated. No one continued his work. We could probably, if it were necessary, trace the intentions for this purpose, which stem from these sources, back much further still.

[ 6 ] This is one set of facts. The other is this: The Hague Peace Conference took place. You all know the name of the distinguished figure who pursued her ideal with rare dedication and rare expertise—the name Bertha von Suttner. A year after the Hague Peace Conference, she set out to compile the records into a book in which she transcribed the speeches, some of which were beautiful and magnificent. She prefaced the book with a foreword. Please bear in mind that a year had passed since Bertha von Suttner had been able to witness the work of the Peace Conference. She already foresaw the consequences after that year had elapsed. In stark contrast to this, we had in the meantime experienced the bloody Transvaal War, with mediation rejected, and today we are once again at war. If we look around the world a little today, we see the struggle of so many noble people for the ideal of peace, and already in the hearts of highly principled idealists we see a love for universal world peace; and yet, on the other hand, at no other time in the history of our world has so much blood been shed as now. This is a serious, very serious matter for anyone who also grapples with the great questions of the soul.

[ 7 ] On the one hand, we have the devoted apostles of peace and their tireless efforts. We have the outstanding achievements of Bertha von Suttner, who, with rare greatness, knew how to portray all the horrors of conflict and war; but let us not forget that there is also the other side of the coin. Let us not forget that there are also very many among our discerning people who, on the other side, assure us time and again that they consider struggle necessary precisely for progress, as something that strengthens our powers. Only in the struggle against resistance do our powers grow. The researcher who has attracted so many thinkers to his cause—how often has he stated that he desires a fierce war and that only a fierce war can propel the forces of nature forward? Perhaps he did not express this in such radical terms, but many nevertheless think this way. Even within our spiritual science movement, voices have been raised claiming that it would be a weakness—indeed, a betrayal of the spirit of national strength—to object to a war that has led to national honor and national power. In any case, views on this subject remain sharply, very sharply, at odds with one another today. But the Hague Peace Conference did achieve one thing. It brought together the voices of a number of people who are at the forefront of public affairs. A large number of state representatives gave their approval at the time for the Hague Conference to take place. One would think that a cause which has found such approval from such quarters must be promising in the most eminent sense.

[ 8 ] Well, in order to truly take a stand in the way that a spiritual worldview and philosophy of life allow us to do, we must look a little deeper into the whole matter. If we examine the question of peace as an ideal—as it has developed over time—and at the same time consider the realities of conflict and strife, we must surely conclude that the very way in which this ideal of universal peace is pursued calls for our attention and scrutiny. Many of those who have waged war are themselves filled with pain—and perhaps even revulsion—in their hearts at the consequences and effects of war. Such things naturally lead us to ask: Do wars stem at all from anything that can be eliminated from the world through principles and views? Anyone who looks more deeply into the human soul knows that two distinct and very different paths give rise to what leads to war. One is what we call judgment and reason—what we call idealism; the other is human desire, human inclinations, human sympathies, and antipathies. Many things in the world would be different if it were readily possible to govern desires, wishes, and passions according to the principles of the heart and reason. But this is not possible; rather, the opposite has always been the case in human history. Whatever passion desires, whatever desire demands—reason creates a mask for it, and even the heart itself creates a mask with its idealism. And if you trace the history of human development, you can ask yourself this question over and over again whenever you see principles or idealism shining through here and there: What desires and passions lurk in the background? If we consider this, it may well be that even today we cannot yet make sense of this issue with the most beautiful principles; it may be that something else is necessary, simply because human passions, drives, and desires have not yet progressed far enough to follow the individual’s idealism. You see, the question runs deeper, and we must also grasp it more deeply. We really must look into the human soul and its fundamental forces if we want to assess the whole matter correctly. Human beings do not always see enough of their own evolutionary path; they often see only a short span of time, and so a far-reaching worldview must open our eyes—one that, on the one hand, leads us deep into the inner workings of the soul and, on the other hand, allows us to survey broader periods of time—so that we may form a judgment about the forces that are to guide us into the future.

[ 9 ] Let us take a look at the human soul, where we might be able to study it deeply and thoroughly in one particular aspect. Here we have something today that we were able to touch upon eight days ago, but from a different angle. Here we have a scientific theory, so-called Darwinism. Within this scientific perspective, one concept plays a major role. And this concept is called: the struggle for existence. For decades, our entire natural science, our entire worldview, was shaped by the struggle for existence. Natural scientists used to say: Those beings in the world that fare best in the struggle for existence—those that gain the greatest advantage over their fellow creatures—are the ones that survive, while the others perish. So we need not be surprised that the beings we see around us are the best-adapted, for they have evolved over millions of years. The fittest have survived; the unfit have perished.

[ 10 ] The struggle for existence has become the watchword of research. And where did this struggle come from? It did not come from nature. Darwin himself, although he viewed it on a grander scale than his successors, derived it from a Malthusian conception that had spread throughout human history—the notion that the earth produces food at such a rate that this increase rises at a much slower pace than the increase in population. Those who have studied these matters will know that it is said: The supply of food increases arithmetically, while the population increases geometrically. This necessitates a struggle for existence, a war of all against all. — Based on this, Darwin also posited the struggle for existence at the level of nature. And this view corresponds not merely to an idea, but to modern ways of life. Even in the circumstances of the individual, this struggle for existence has become a tangible reality in the form of general economic competition. People have observed this struggle for existence at close quarters; they have regarded it as something natural in the human realm and have subsequently incorporated it into the natural sciences.

[ 11 ] Ernst Haeckel takes such views as his starting point; he saw military activity—war itself—as nothing less than a lever of culture. Struggle, he argued, is what makes us strong; the weak must perish; and culture demands that the weak perish. — Political economy then applied this struggle back to the human world. Thus, we have grand theories within our political economy and within our social theories that view the struggle for existence as something entirely justified and inseparable from human development. In these matters—not without prejudice, but guided by these principles—people have gone further back to the most ancient times, where they sought to study the lives of barbaric, savage peoples. They believed they could eavesdrop on humanity’s cultural development and thought they would find the wildest principle of war there. Huxley has said: If we look out into the natural world of animals, the struggle for existence resembles a gladiatorial contest, and that is a law of nature. And if we look from the higher animals down to the lower ones and consider the course of world development thus far, the world of facts teaches us everywhere that we live in a general struggle for existence.

[ 12 ] You see, this could be articulated; it could be presented as a universal law of the world. Anyone who is clear about the fact that words do not come to the lips unless they are deeply rooted in the human soul will tell themselves that the feelings, the sensations, the entire state of mind of our best people today still stem from the view that war and conflict within the human race—indeed, throughout all of nature—are something natural, something from which one cannot escape. — You might now say: But perhaps these researchers were actually very humane people who, in their deepest idealism, longed for and wished for peace and harmony. Yet their profession, their science, convinced them that this was not the case, and perhaps they wrote down their theory with a heavy heart. — This would be a valid objection, were it not for the fact that something entirely different had already come to pass. We may say that among all those who believed they were thinking scientifically and in terms of political economy, throughout Western and Central Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, the theory in question was commonplace. It was commonly held that war and conflict were a law of nature from which one could not escape. People believed they had thoroughly done away with Rousseau’s old view that it was only human unnaturalness that had introduced conflict and war, opposition and disharmony into the general peace of nature. Indeed, as late as the end of the 18th century, this Rousseauian sentiment was widespread: that if one looks into the life and workings of nature, which is still uninfluenced by human civilization, one sees harmony and peace everywhere. Only human beings, with their arbitrariness and their culture, have brought strife and conflict into the world. — That was still the Rousseauian view, and researchers assured us in the last third of the 19th century: Yes, it would be nice if that were the case, but it is not. The facts teach us otherwise.

[ 13 ] And yet, let us ask ourselves seriously: Was it emotion that spoke, or were the facts speaking? We could hardly object if the facts spoke in this way. Then, in 1880, a remarkable man appeared—a man who delivered a lecture at the 1880 Naturalists’ Congress in St. Petersburg, Russia, a lecture of great and profound significance for all those who take a deep interest in this question. This man was the zoologist Keßler. He died shortly thereafter. His lecture dealt with the principle of mutual aid in nature. For all those who seriously engage with such matters, the research and scientific maturity inspired by this lecture give rise to a completely new trend. Here, for the first time in modern times, facts from across the natural world were compiled to prove that all earlier theories about the struggle for existence do not correspond to reality.

[ 14 ] In this lecture, you will find it explained and proven by the facts that animal species and animal groups do not evolve through the struggle for existence; that, in truth, a struggle for existence exists only exceptionally between two species, but not within a species itself, whose individuals, on the contrary, help one another, and that the species that are most enduring are those whose individuals are most inclined toward such mutual aid. It is not struggle, but mutual aid, that ensures a long existence. This marked the attainment of a new perspective. It is only through a remarkable chain of circumstances that modern research has enabled a figure who holds the most incredible standpoint for our time—Prince Kropotkin—to carry this idea forward. Drawing on a vast body of established facts regarding animals and tribes, he has been able to demonstrate the significance of this principle of mutual aid in nature and in human life. I can recommend to everyone that they study this book, which is also available in German translation, translated by Gustav Landawuer. This book instills in people a wealth of concepts and ideas that serve as a school for the ascent to a spiritual mindset. However, we can only truly understand these facts when we examine them in the light of what is known as the esoteric perspective, when we penetrate these facts with the foundations of spiritual science. I could certainly present some clear examples, but you can read them for yourselves in the book I have cited. The principle of mutual aid in nature is this: those who have developed this principle most fully go the farthest. — The facts, then, speak clearly and will speak ever more clearly to us. From the perspective of spiritual science, when we speak of a single animal species, we speak in exactly the same way as we speak of a single human being, of the individuality of a human being. An animal species is to us, on the lower plane, what the individual human being is on the higher plane. I have said this here before: One must hold a certain fact clearly before one’s eyes in order to understand the contrast between human beings and the entire animal kingdom. This contrast is expressed in the saying: “Human beings have a biography; animals do not.” With animals, we are satisfied once we have described the species. With human beings, we say: father, grandfather, grandson, son; with a lion, the situation is not such that we should describe each individual separately. Certainly, I know that many objections can be raised here; I know that anyone who loves a dog or a monkey believes they can write a biography of the dog or the monkey. But a biography should not contain what others can know about the creature, but rather what the creature itself knew. Self-awareness is an essential part of a biography, and in this sense, only human beings have a biography. This corresponds to what, in the case of animals, is a description of the entire genus or species. The fact that every group of animals has a group soul is the outward expression of the fact that every individual human being carries a soul within themselves.

[ 15 ] I have already had the opportunity to discuss here that a hidden world is directly connected to our physical world—the astral world, which does not consist of objects and entities that can be perceived by the senses, but is woven from the same substance as our passions and desires. If you examine human beings, you can see that they have brought their souls all the way down to the physical plane, or into the physical world. In this physical world, there is no individual soul for animals. However, you will find an individual soul for animals on the so-called astral plane—the astral world hidden behind our physical world. Animal groups have individual souls in the astral world. Therein lies the difference between human beings and the animal kingdom. If we now ask ourselves: What is truly at stake when we observe the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom? — then we must say: The truth is that behind this struggle, which is waged between species in the animal kingdom, lies the astral struggle of soul passions and desires, rooted in the species or group souls.— But if we were to speak of a struggle for existence within a species in the animal kingdom, it would be as if, within a human being, the soul itself were fighting against its own various parts. This is an important truth. It cannot be the rule that there is a struggle within an animal species; rather, the struggle for existence can only take place between species. For the soul of the entire species is a unified whole, and because it is unified, it must govern the parts. The mutual aid we can observe among species in the animal world is simply an expression of the unified activity of the species or the group soul. And when you look at all these examples, which you will find cited in the interesting book mentioned, you gain a wonderful insight into the way in which group souls work. For example, if an individual of a certain species of crab is accidentally flipped onto its back so that it cannot right itself, a large number of nearby animals will come to its aid and help it back up. This mutual support arises from a collective soul organ shared by the animals. And if you observe the way beetles support one another to care for or protect a communal brood, to deal with a dead mouse, and so on—how they connect, support one another, and carry out collective work—then you will see the group soul at work. You can observe this all the way up to the highest animal species. It is true that whoever has a sense for this activity of mutual aid among animals will gradually gain insight, an understanding, and a sense of the workings of the group souls. And it is precisely there that one can learn to see with the eyes of the spirit. There, the eye becomes sun-like.

[ 16 ] In the case of human beings, we are dealing with a group soul that has become individualized. Such a group soul dwells within every single human being. And so, just as is the case with the various animal species, it is indeed possible for human beings, as individuals, to engage in a struggle against every other individual. But let us now consider the purpose of the struggle—whether struggle for struggle’s sake exists in the evolution of the world. What, then, has become of the struggle of the species? The species that have survived are those that support one another the most, while those that are the most warlike among themselves have perished. Such is the law of nature. Therefore, we must say that in the external natural world, progress in evolution consists in peace replacing struggle. Where nature has reached a certain point—that great turning point—balance indeed prevails; the peace into which the entire struggle has evolved is present. Just consider that plants, as species, wage a struggle for existence among themselves. But consider how beautifully and magnificently the plant and animal kingdoms support one another in their joint process of development: the animal inhales oxygen and exhales nitrogen, while the plant exhales oxygen and inhales nitrogen. This is how a peace of the universe is possible.

[ 17 ] What nature brings forth in this way through its own power is meant for human beings to bring forth consciously from their own individual nature. Human beings have progressed step by step, and step by step that which we recognize as the self-consciousness of our individual soul has taken shape within them. We must view our current world situation by imagining it as having developed over time and then tracing its trajectory toward the future. If you go back to earlier times, you will see that in the human realm, at its dawn, group souls still prevailed, existing within small tribes and families; thus, we are also dealing with group souls in the case of human beings. The further back in history you look, the more compact and unified these people—grouped in this way—appear to you. It is like a spirit that permeated the ancient village community, which then evolved into the primitive state. You could study how things were somewhat different when Alexander the Great led his masses into war, compared to how crowds of people with their much more developed individual wills are led into war today. This must be properly examined. For this is the course of progressive culture: that human beings become ever more individual, independent, and conscious—more self-aware. The human race has evolved out of groups and shared characteristics. And just as we have group souls that guide and direct the individual animal species, so too were the peoples guided and directed by the great group souls. Through his progressive education, the human being is increasingly outgrowing the guidance of the group soul and becoming more and more independent. This independence has led humanity to a point where, whereas in the past people within groups viewed their fellow human beings with more or less hostility, today they are in fact caught in the midst of a struggle for existence that permeates all of humanity. This is the state of our world, and this is the destiny of our race in particular—that is, of our immediate present.

[ 18 ] In spiritual science, we distinguish, within the current development of the world, first five successive great races, and then so-called subraces. The first subrace developed in ancient times, in distant India. Initially, this subrace was permeated by a priestly culture. This priestly culture, in fact, provided the first impulses to our present race. It had come over from the Atlantean culture, which was located on land that today forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. This race set the tone; it was then followed by other subraces, and we are now the fifth. This is not a classification borrowed from anthropology or a theory of race, but one that will be explained in more detail in the sixth lecture of this series. The fifth race is the one that has brought humanity the farthest in its uniqueness, in its individual consciousness. Christianity has, in a sense, prepared humanity to attain such a sense of individuality: human beings had to achieve this self-awareness. When we look back to the time before Christ, when the gigantic pyramids were built in ancient Egypt, a host of slaves performed labor whose difficulties and hardships no one today can truly imagine. Yet, with a sense of matter-of-fact acceptance and immense inner peace, these workers spent the vast majority of their time simply building. They built because, in those days, the teachings of reincarnation and karma were taken for granted. No book will tell you this, but as you delve into spiritual science, it will gradually become quite clear to you. Every slave who worked his hands raw there and lived in hardship and misery knew deep down: This is one life among many, and I must bear what I am now suffering as a consequence of what I have brought upon myself in previous lives! But if that is not the case, then in a future life I will experience the consequences of this present life of mine; the one who commands me today has been in the same position as I am today, or will yet be in it.

[ 19 ] With this mindset, however, the full, self-aware earthly life would never have come to fruition, and the higher powers that guide the destiny of the human race on a grand scale knew what they were doing when, for a time—spanning millennia—they allowed the awareness of reincarnation and karma to fade. This has been the great development of Christianity to date: it has dispelled the tendency to look upward, to gaze toward an afterlife intended to serve as a balancing force, and has drawn attention to the immense importance of this life.

[ 20 ] It may indeed have gone too far in its radical form, but it had to happen, for the affairs of the world do not develop according to logic, but according to other laws. People have derived an eternity of punishment from this earthly life; the trend of development has led to this, even if it is illogical. Thus, humanity has learned to be conscious of this one earthly existence. As a result, the Earth—this physical plane—became infinitely important to humankind. And it had to be this way; it was bound to happen. Everything that happens today—everything that has come to dominate the world in material terms—could only have developed out of a mindset rooted in an education geared toward this Earth, apart from the concepts of reincarnation and karma. Thus we see the consequence of this education: humanity’s complete descent onto the physical plane. For it is only there that the individual soul could develop; there it is separated, enclosed within this body, and can look out only as a self-contained, separate existence through its senses. Thus, we have brought more and more of human competition, more and more of the effect of this separate existence, into the human race. We should not be surprised that the human race is still far from being ready today to eliminate what had to be brought about through this upbringing. We have seen, after all, that the present species of animals have developed to their perfection through mutual aid, and that the struggle has raged only from species to species. But if human individuality is the same as the group soul of animals, then the human soul will only be able to attain self-consciousness by undergoing the same struggle as “the animals out in nature.” As long as humanity has not yet fully developed its independence, the struggle will continue. But humanity is called upon to consciously achieve what exists out there on the physical plane. Therefore, it will lead humanity, on the levels of consciousness within its own realm, toward mutual aid and support, because the human race is a single species. And the absence of struggle, as found in the animal kingdom, must first be achieved with regard to the entire human race: a complete, all-encompassing peace. It is not struggle that has made the individual animal species great, but mutual aid and support. That which lives as the group soul within the animal species as an individual soul is at peace with itself; that is the unified soul. Only the individual human soul is unique in this distinct physical existence.

[ 21 ] This is the great achievement for our soul that we gain through spiritual development: that we come to truly recognize the collective soul that permeates the entire human race—the unity within all of humanity—which we do not receive as an unconscious gift, but which we must consciously attain. To truly and genuinely develop this unified soul throughout the entire human race—that is the task of the spiritual-scientific worldview. This is expressed in our first principle: to establish a brotherhood across the entire earth, regardless of race, gender, color, and so on. This is the recognition of the soul that is common to all of humanity. Purification must take place even within our passions, making it self-evident to each person that the same soul lives within their brother or sister. Physically we are separate; in the soul we are one as the “I” of the human race. But only in true, real life can we grasp this and find our way into it. Therefore, it can only be the cultivation of spiritual life that permeates us with the communal breath of this unified soul. It is not the people of the present, with their principles, but the people of the future—who are developing an ever-greater awareness of this unified soul—who will lay the foundation for a new generation, for a new race, one that is wholly absorbed in mutual aid. Therefore, our first principle conveys something entirely different from what has usually been said. We do not fight; nor do we oppose war or anything else, because struggle does not lead to higher development at all. It is through struggle that every animal species has developed into a distinct race. Leave all the fighting around us to the aggressive ones who are not yet mature enough to seek what the communal soul of the human race seeks in spiritual life.

[ 22 ] A true society of peace is one that strives for spiritual knowledge, and the true peace movement is the spiritual scientific movement. It is the peace movement in the only way a peace movement can be in practice, because it is rooted in what lives within human beings and looks toward the future.

[ 23 ] Spiritual life has always developed like a wave coming from the East. The East was the region where spiritual life was cultivated. And here in the West was the region where external material culture flourished. That is why the East is also viewed as a region where people dream and sleep. But who knows what goes on in the souls of those we call dreamers or sleepers when they ascend into worlds unknown to Western peoples? — Now we must step out of our material culture, taking into account everything that surrounds us in the physical world. With what we have achieved on the physical plane, we must ascend into the mental, into the spiritual. It is, to a certain extent, more than symbolically significant that in England, Darwinism still found a proponent in Huxley, who, from his Western perspective, felt compelled to say: Nature shows us that the great apes fought one another, and it was the strongest who remained on the scene—while from the East came the watchword: support, mutual aid—that is what secures the future!— We have a very special task here in Central Europe. It would do us no good to be one-sidedly Eastern or one-sidedly English. We must unite the dawn of the East and the physical sciences of the West into a great harmony. Then we will understand how the idea of the future is united with the idea of the struggle for a distinct existence.

[ 24 ] It is more than a coincidence that in that fundamental text of Theosophy—the book from which those who wish to delve more deeply into spiritual life can find light on their path—the second chapter concludes significantly with a sentence that aligns with this idea. This is not merely a phrase in *Light on the Path*; rather, it is because spiritual evolution will lead humanity to a point where people will recognize that the collective soul—which lives within the individual human soul, reviving and illuminating it—harmonizes with the beautiful words that conclude the two chapters in *Light on the Path*. Those who immerse themselves completely in this wonderful little book—which not only fills the soul with content that makes us inwardly devout and good, but also gradually grants human beings true clairvoyance through the power of words—will see the balance in the details once they have lived through what is written in each chapter. And then the final words will sink into the soul: “Peace be with you.” This will ultimately be shared with all of humanity through what we cherish and nurture as spiritual power. Then the human genius will descend spiritually upon the human race, and its principal words will be: “Peace be with you.” — This opens up the right perspective for us. We must not merely speak of peace, set peace as an ideal, conclude treaties, or yearn for arbitration rulings; rather, we must cultivate spiritual life, and in doing so, we will summon within ourselves the power that, as a force of mutual aid, will pour out over the entire human race. We do not fight; we do something else: We cultivate love, and we know that by cultivating love, strife must disappear. We do not set strife against strife. We set love—by nurturing and cultivating it—against strife. That is something positive. We work on ourselves through the outpouring of love and establish a society built on love. That is our ideal. Then, when we truly internalize this in our souls, we will bring an ancient saying to life in a new way—in the way Christianity intends. And a new Christianity—or rather, the old Christianity—will awaken for the new humanity. Buddha gave his people a saying that holds out the prospect of such a way of life. But Christianity, too, expresses this cultivation of love in perhaps even more beautiful words, if one understands them correctly: It is not by struggle that one overcomes struggle, nor by hatred that one overcomes hatred; rather, struggle and hatred are overcome, in truth, solely through love.