The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Rejuvenating Forces of the German National Soul

[ 1 ] Every winter in recent years, I have had the privilege of giving a lecture here on a topic in the humanities. My friends here have requested such a lecture again this year. And it will seem understandable that, in this difficult, fateful, and momentous time, such a reflection may turn to that which, after all, fills us all deeply, deeply in our hearts and souls. For our sensibilities and our feelings are directed toward the East and the West—toward the places where the great events of our time are unfolding with such significance, such grandeur, such magnitude, and such pain; where the fate of humanity is decided not by words, but by deeds that find their expression in courage, confidence, bravery, in death and suffering, but also in all the uplifting sacrifices that are so abundant in this era, in which events of such great significance are unfolding even for us, the people of Central Europe.

[ 2 ] What can be explored in our present time regarding the relationship between the souls of the European peoples may form the subject of today’s spiritual scientific reflection. May it form the subject of this reflection in the way that spiritual science is precisely able to shed light on these relationships. This spiritual science, which has indeed found little—truly very little—resonance and acceptance among the majority of people today, yet which, for those who are permeated by its innermost meaning and spirit, presents itself in such a way that it must commit itself to the entire movement—to the entire life of the human spirit—and thus to the cultural movement of the present and the near future, just as the movement of the natural sciences has been integrated into cultural life for several centuries. And it is precisely in the face of life’s deeply moving questions that spiritual science must prove its worth.

[ 3 ] Among the concepts in my first fundamental book on spiritual science—my *Theosophy*—that have, so to speak, provoked the most ridicule and opposition is the concept of the national soul, not as an abstraction, a mere idea, or a sum of characteristics that hold a group of people together, but as a real, active being. Here we have already reached a point where the habits of thought that have developed over centuries are no longer compatible with spiritual science.

[ 4 ] Just as human beings, as the highest of earthly beings, stand in relation to the entities of the other kingdoms of nature—just as, so to speak, the entities of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms find their physical, sensory culmination in human beings—so spiritual science must show — however unfamiliar this may be to contemporary conceptions — that the realms of beings do not end with the visible, that there are other realms above the human being, which, however, cannot be reached by the intellect bound to our brain, or by our physical, sensory eyes and ears, but which can be reached by what Goethe called spiritual vision, the spiritual eyes and ears. This is not meant figuratively, but to express something that is as certain a finding for anthroposophy as, for example, biological findings are for external science.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science teaches that just as human beings, with their souls, face the things and entities of external nature and form concepts and ideas about them, so too do truly real spiritual beings—invisible to the physical eye—stand above human beings; and for these beings, human beings with their souls are, as it were, thoughts and ideas, just as the objects of external nature are for human beings. Thus, we are spiritually permeated and sustained by these spiritual beings. And spiritual science must count among the next class of these beings what for many is merely the harmony of a people’s characteristics: the national souls.

[ 6 ] What matters is the relationship between the collective soul of a people and the individual human soul. Spiritual science does not view the soul in the same way as conventional psychology. It does not regard it as a product of the external organization, but as the true shaper of the external organization. And not merely to make a simple classification, but based on the very nature of the matter, the researcher in spiritual science distinguishes three essential aspects of the soul with the same justification—merely transferred, naturally, to a different realm—as one distinguishes in the rainbow spectrum the color red on one side, green in the middle, and then the color blue. And just as one cannot grasp the interplay of light and colors without taking as a basis this structure—which is most clearly seen in the spectrum of the rainbow—so too can one not understand the human soul without the threefold structure that we designate as the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or feeling, and the soul of consciousness. Just as the rainbow has the color red on one side, so the human being has the soul of sensation on one side; in the middle [— just as the rainbow has the color green — the human being has] the soul of understanding or the emotional soul; [and] just as the rainbow has the color blue, so the human being has the soul of consciousness. As stated, this does not arise from arbitrariness or a mere desire to categorize, but is connected to the innermost nature of the soul.

[ 7 ] Let us first consider the sensory soul: Just as the red part of the spectrum primarily contains warmth, so the sensory soul is more associated with the desires, the passions, and the passionate forces of the soul, but at the same time it is also that into which the soul withdraws when it passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world—namely, the eternal forces of the soul, which are mysteriously hidden behind the drives, the passions, and the desires, and which are at the same time what impart the soul’s eternal character. But that which exists in the soul as the mediation between the eternal self of the human being and the temporal-spatial human being corresponds to the color green, which primarily serves light, just as the intellect serves the spiritual; it mediates the human being’s relationship to both the eternal and the temporal.

[ 8 ] And the consciousness soul is that through which human beings, between birth and death, use the eternal to work on the temporal; it is most oriented toward the material world. The consciousness soul is that which contains the greatest proportion of the soul forces that are carried through the gate of death to the least extent, and that are least connected to the human being’s eternal Self.

[ 9 ] In all that we distinguish as nuances of the life of the soul, the true self of the human being lives, just as light lives in the nuances of the spectrum. Just as light is present in every color, so is the “I” present in every aspect of the human soul; but at the same time, what permeates the human being like an invisible entity—the national soul to which he belongs—flows through the “I” into these aspects of the soul. The national soul relates to the individual human soul in a wide variety of ways, and nations differ according to how the national soul relates to the individual human soul. There would by no means be enough time if I were to elaborate in full detail, based on spiritual scientific research, on how the national soul has its real relationship to the human soul. A comparison may be illuminating here, but it should be more than a mere comparison; it should yield a genuine result of spiritual science.

[ 10 ] When we consider human beings in relation to the mineral, plant, and animal worlds, we can distinguish three types of people. First, there are those who, with their entire being, are inclined solely toward the external sensory world; they cannot sharply focus their attention on anything that draws them away from the sensory world, and they always need the impressions of the external world. They fall into indifference and inattention when they are expected to form ideas that are not tied to the external world.

[ 11 ] There is another relationship to the environment that we find more often in introspective, sensuous natures—people who move through the world in such a way that their senses are scarcely drawn to the external natural world; who create internally; who draw from their inner life what they experience. They move through the sensory world in a dreamy, reverie-like state. These are very different types of people, because the soul relates to itself and to the outside world in different ways.

[ 12 ] A third type is the one who has made his mark on history primarily through the representative of German culture, Goethe. A great thinker of his time called his way of thinking “concrete thinking.” By this he meant that Goethe had the distinctive quality of being, just as he himself was, attuned to sensory things, yet able to immerse himself in the spiritual aspects he could experience in and through those things. The concepts of “spirit and body” were deeply ingrained in his soul. His thinking was concrete; it rarely strayed far from objects, and when it turned toward objects, it did not stray from itself.

[ 13 ] In accordance with this threefold relationship between human beings and the environment, we also have three types of relationship between the national soul and the individual human soul. For just as the human being relates to nature, so does the national soul relate to the individual human soul. There are national souls that relate to individual souls in such a way that they are, as it were, wholly devoted to the individual human beings, that they slip completely into them and permeate them, so that the individual soul is something that bears the imprint of the national soul.

[ 14 ] This is how the relationship is, for the most part, among the souls inhabiting western and southern Europe: among the French, Italian, and British peoples. The relationship is different among the Russian people. There we find that the national soul remains, as it were, above the individual souls; it does not enter into the being of the individual human being. This is expressed by the fact that the Russian people still today—like a cloud hovering over the entire nation—retain the Byzantine religion, which does not connect with the individual soul. Such is the relationship between the national soul and the individual Russian human being.

[ 15 ] [Where, as in Western Europe, the national soul takes hold of individual souls, it dominates them, so that the individual soul is something like an imprint of the national soul. Just as the national soul is present within the individual soul in the West, the relationship of the Russian national soul is such that it does not descend to that level.]

[ 16 ] Just as a person who lives only within his own soul, so too does the national soul not deign to descend to the individual soul; the national soul hovers, as it were, above the people. Russian souls are not gripped by the national soul, but rather they are in anarchic disarray. Even when one thinks of the outstanding representatives of the Russian people—Tolstoy and so on—one sees how the national soul hovers over them like a cloud, and that the individual soul forces are not gripped by it but swirl chaotically about.

[ 17 ] Let us now turn to the heart of Europe: There we find such a relationship between the collective soul and the individual soul that we can compare this relationship to Goethe’s concrete thinking. We see the national soul lovingly and intimately penetrating into the individual souls, yet at the same time rising above them and being carried away into the spiritual worlds to draw new strength and bring it down from those spiritual realms. Here we see the life of the national soul extending over human beings in the spiritual heights, and then returning to the individual human souls.

[ 18 ] One might say: When one considers the peoples of Western Europe, one always finds a particular soul force that is grasped and governed by the national soul: in the Italians, the feeling soul; in the French, the intellectual or emotional soul; and in the British, the conscious soul. All the characteristics that the members of these nations possess [precisely as members of these nations] immediately become clear and understandable when viewed from this perspective of the nature of facts, which can be discovered through spiritual science. How intensely passionate, how completely steeped in instinct the whole of Italian life appears, right up to the greatness of Dante, who drew upon the images of the soul of feeling to conceive his *Divine Comedy*. The Italian people become understandable when one realizes that here the national soul takes hold of the soul of feeling.

[ 19 ] The French people become understandable when one realizes that the national soul directly influences the intellectual soul. I have read how, in a psychological society in a German city, people sought to explain the French national character; [the conclusion was]: It is their mathematical disposition. This disposition becomes immediately understandable when one realizes that the national soul directly engages the powers of the intellectual soul. Everything about this Western people is illuminated when one knows that it tends to take things in such a way that, despite all striving for personal freedom and national freedom, it is internally dogmatized and systematized—even into artistic activity, right down to the details of artistic activity. And we find the other side there as well. I would like to say, the negative pole of dogmatism: This is criticism, the dissolving force. On the one hand, the intellectual soul wants to see everything within a system of dogma, and if it cannot, it rebels against it, and thus we have either dogmatism or Voltaireanism. The starting point of Descartes’ philosophy is doubt, down to the finest details. One can understand what is happening in the French people when one knows this.

[ 20 ] I notice that there are a number of people sitting here who know that I have been exploring these issues for years, and that they were not formulated in response to current events. But I believe they can shed light on what we are now experiencing—something so vast, so significant, and so painful.

[ 21 ] Now, regarding the conscious soul. The part that is most inclined toward external life and contributes least to the eternal aspect of the human being is the conscious soul, and among the British people, it is the part most deeply influenced by the national soul. Immediately, the character of the British people as a commercial people—and also the character of Shakespeare—becomes clear. For what is the basis of his greatness? That he has portrayed individual human beings with such sharp characterization that they stand firmly on the physical plane; that he characterizes them in terms of what does not pass through the gate of death. His greatness lies in the fact that he succeeded in characterizing, with such sharp precision, that aspect of human beings which is not eternal, but rather what they develop for the physical world between birth and death.

[ 22 ] Well, the German national soul, or, I might also say, Central European culture—its distinctive feature is that no single aspect of the soul is directly grasped, but rather that the national soul descends into the soul and grasps it in its entirety, as it were, with that which flows from the sources of the spiritual world; for it has the gift of withdrawing into the spiritual worlds and drawing strength from there. Hence the distinctive quality of the German soul: to experience that which possesses the power of the eternal, that which trickles directly into individual souls as if from the eternal. The individual soul must be able to feel this: something lives in your soul through the national soul, which descends into you; it is carried into you, through which you are directly connected to what lives in spiritual heights. Hence the idealism, hence the ever-rejuvenating power of the German national soul.

[ 23 ] One can examine the products of German intellectual life and find evidence that, unlike other peoples, Germans find themselves in this peculiar situation: it is not the individual aspects of the soul that are embraced by the national soul, as is the case with the Western and Eastern peoples of Europe, but rather the “I”—a realm in which Germans seem less developed. One is a Briton or a Frenchman; one seeks to become a German.

[ 24 ] It is an ideal because it engages not a single faculty of the soul, but the whole soul, as the various aspects of life continually emerge from its deepest depths. Let us look back to the times when Christianity penetrated the young, emerging German identity. How was it received? This can be seen in the Old High German poem *Heliand*. What the individual—in this case, the poet of the *Heliand*—feels in response to events becomes his personal experience, yet is directly connected to the forces surrounding him. That which had merely been handed down to the Romans is reborn from the poet’s own nascent powers.

[ 25 ] And in other poems as well, we find how Christianity [does not] merely take root in the German people, but is born from the individual, becoming a personal matter for each person. It is the soul of the people that does not allow what touches a person to grow old, but rather rejuvenates it, so that it lives in the soul like a plant and is reborn anew.

[ 26 ] We also see how, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, a worldview known as German mysticism developed, as exemplified by Tauler, Meister Eckhart, the unknown author of the *Theologia Deutsch*, and so on. Observe how these minds operate in their own unique way, how they relate to the spiritual world. In the case of the mystic Eckhart, he is convinced that the spiritual world must be experienced directly in the soul; it must be surrendered to completely; it must not be stirred by one’s own arbitrary will; it must yield to the forces that weave and reign throughout the world. Then something is kindled within the soul—a tiny spark—but in this spark lives God, the divine weaving and being.

[ 27 ] That place where God dwells, [where Christ is also born, which suffers] and dies when the individual soul walks the path of suffering and passion, /gap in the text]—it is there that Meister Eckhart coined the term “Gemüt.” In the Gemüt, the world comes to life spiritually, and it is aware that what a person thinks, the Divinity thinks; what a person feels, the Divinity feels; what a person wills, the Divinity wills—provided that the person surrenders himself to his God. Here we see something of the intimate coexistence of the individual with the German national soul.

[ 28 ] And in the author of *Theologia Deutsch*, we find a rejuvenation of the German worldview through a rhythmic interplay between the German national soul and the individual representatives of that soul. What in earlier times led to the revival of the life of Jesus—as if Jesus had wandered through the regions of Germany with his disciples as his servants—what portrayed the life of Jesus so personally, what, as it were, rejuvenated Christianity—that is now rejuvenating the worldview within German mysticism. And it is wonderful how deeply the German national soul penetrates into personal life! This becomes clear when we look at a disciple of mysticism, Angelus Silesius, and share one of this mystic’s sayings—one of the deepest among his many:

I die, yet I do not live. God Himself dies within me,
And what I am to live, He also lives forever and ever.

[ 29 ] Oh, what depths, let us say, even just in regard to the idea of immortality! The one who uttered this saying senses the ruling divinity. When I die, it is just as much an act of the divinity as it is that, when I live on, it is the divinity that lives within me. By allowing God within me to experience death, I am aware of my immortality.

[ 30 ] One could say: Such ideas of immortality—which point to an immortal power in the human soul that is not grasped through reflection on what lies beyond death, but is already grasped by it during life—are demonstrated by Jakob Böhme, who was entirely inspired by the German national spirit: the simple cobbler from Görlitz, the profound philosopher. He directs his enlightened gaze toward what, from divine realms, resides within his own soul. He saw the courage of human striving on earth in the fact that the individual human soul—which is otherwise given over to emotional impressions, those of the intellect, and so on—always knows itself to be connected to its immortal core, to that which lives in death, to that which knows how to die by knowing how to die while still alive, out of direct knowledge.

[ 31 ] Jakob Böhme’s goal was to experience death directly in earthly life and to recognize that this is the seed of life’s experiences. The following statement seems to be an expression of the German national soul through a single individual:

Whoever does not die before he dies,
Will perish when he dies.

[ 32 ] Whoever fails to grasp during their lifetime what lives as the immortal in the soul—and thus passes through the gate of death—and whoever fails to grasp death as the source of spiritual life, that person perishes when they die. We see the highest philosophical insight, which, however, is at the same time imbued with elemental soul power and rises to the highest heights of the spiritual realm.

[ 33 ] Whenever we see such figures of German folklore appear before our minds’ eye, we perceive how the German national spirit continually has a rejuvenating effect, so that it must time and again take hold of mind and soul as fresh seeds in order to climb the entire ladder and reach the highest peaks of spiritual fruits.

[ 34 ] And now that the scorching and devastating ravages of the Thirty Years’ War have passed, we are once again seeing the vitality of the German spirit take hold in the life of the entire nation. [Gap in the text] Lessing points out quite deliberately that a truth need not be foolish simply because it originally arose among people who had not yet been corrupted by the sophistry of the schools—he is referring to the great truth of repeated earthly lives—and that the entire course of earthly life unfolds in such a way that it passes through various earthly lives. He expresses this in his *Education of the Human Race*. Very clever people say: He was getting old when he wrote that. But he was aware that in *The Education of the Human Race* he presented the entire development, which is drawn just as much from the elementary soul forces as it leads to the highest heights of spiritual life. What arises in this way arises through the familiar interaction of the national soul with the entire range of soul forces.

[ 35 ] This is also true of Herder, who provided a broad overview in his *History of Mankind*, which encompassed the entire nature of the soul—from its most elementary powers to its highest philosophical faculties. There is much, much more that could be said about how the folk soul lives within the Goethean soul. It is remarkable that we come to realize that, once again, a poetic work could emerge from him that could not have arisen within any other culture. If the German national soul has the distinctive quality of grasping not the individual powers of the soul but the whole soul, then it grasps the immortal within the mortal, and the personality becomes the bearer of the eternal. That is why Goethe’s *Faust* could only have come into being within German culture. It contains everything in the human soul—all the striving toward the very earliest beginnings of spiritual life—which are consciously sought again after everything traditional has been cast aside. How is this portrayed?

[ 36 ] Let us compare how the German national spirit inspires the German people in relation to the French people. In both, the Greek spirit is revived. But how is it revived among the French poets? It is studied; the rules are adopted, and so on. But how is it with Goethe? Even in *Iphigenia*, the Greek spirit is not merely borrowed but is reborn anew, rejuvenated. And in *Faust*, we see the union with what he regarded as the Greek spirit: Helen is reborn for Faust. He becomes young in order to unite with the embodiment of the Greek spirit. Faust, now grown old, casts off the old and seeks the elixir of youth. What is historically given must be rejuvenated and brought into connection with Faust. This demands the full force—the rejuvenating power—of the German national soul.

[ 37 ] We can trace it everywhere in every detail of German intellectual life! This is what becomes conscious through being immersed in the very substance of the German national soul. One sees, one feels, one senses in it a constantly rejuvenating force. Whatever the state of contemporary culture may be, this rejuvenating force will endure because, in various epochs, its magical breath will be breathed anew, time and again. This is a distinctive feature of Central European culture in particular. This hope and confidence, which immediately becomes a source of strength, is what gives rise to the German people’s optimism—not a superficial one, but one that runs deep—which is also linked to idealism in all philosophies. Anyone who is truly capable of approaching what the German national spirit has produced cannot despair of humanity, but will always arrive at a faith in humanity—namely, a spiritual faith in humanity.

[ 38 ] This becomes very significant when one considers the spirits who turn their gaze toward humanity in search of something that can offer hope for humanity’s further development, and who find nothing—those who believe European culture to be dead. No one who is able to understand the relationship between the national soul and the individual German soul can regard European culture as having grown old. Anyone who considers European culture to be old simply does not understand this.

[ 39 ] Thus we have a Russian intellectual who has sought what might bring happiness to humanity, yet can find nothing that has sprung from this culture of the national soul. He looks everywhere and finds nothing. I mean Herzen, the great Russian who became so small in his own eyes when he tried to understand Central European culture. The following statement by Herzen immediately sheds light on the way the Eastern European, anarchic soul perceives desolation where, for those who can understand Central European spiritual life, a flourishing life is to be seen. He forms a spiritual alliance with an Englishman, with Stuart Mill, and says:

Mill is not exaggerating when he speaks of the narrowing of the mind, of the constant trivialization of life, and of its reduction in a commercial culture. He says that England will become like China, and we would add: not England alone.

[ 40 ] This is what Herzen says, a man who has no understanding of what must fill Central Europeans with the greatest vitality. And he goes on to say:

Perhaps a stroke of luck will save us from Chinese desiccation.

[ 41 ] If he had understood Goethe, such a statement would have been impossible! Herzen goes on to say:

Where is the loftiest thought—that is, the hope—that hardens hearts so that they feel neither pain nor suffering? Look around you—what is capable of lifting hearts?

[ 42 ] That the very force which brought forth the highest poetic and philosophical achievements in Goethe is the same force that today produces countless sacrifices—sacrifices of death and suffering—is what becomes clear to us from the overall context of German life.

[ 43 ] And this German way of life—has it always been so misunderstood in the world as it is now, when people from all sides are shouting that it is the life of “barbarians”? Not only is Central Europe being encircled like a great fortress with the intent of starving it out, but it is also being reviled and vilified from all sides. Here and there, friendly voices are also being raised, such as that of a Romanian who exclaims:

All those who have studied in France and lived among the French people have rushed to fill the columns of the newspapers with all sorts of praise. Why don’t you—who have enjoyed German hospitality—tell these people that these “barbarians” have the best schools, hospitals, universities, and so on? That you were welcomed everywhere with open arms! Why don’t you tell them that these “barbarians,” who were your teachers, are incapable of committing such crimes? [Why don’t you tell them?!]

[ 44 ] These voices were not always so rare. It is uncomfortable for a Central European to characterize the German character in terms of value judgments on his own initiative. What I have said—and I know this—is just as certain a finding of research in the humanities as the laws of the solar spectrum are a finding of scientific research. But it is uncomfortable for a German to pass value judgments on the German character; therefore, let us first hear from others. First, Emerson, the great American teacher. In his reflections on Goethe, he wrote as if there were some awareness of how the German national character relates to the individual soul, and of the difference between Eastern and Western Europe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him an exceptional figure in the eyes of both French and English audiences: that everything about him is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, talent is respected, but people are satisfied only when it works for or against a party in accordance with their convictions. In France, people are delighted simply to see brilliant ideas, no matter where they lead. In all these countries, however, gifted men write to the best of their ability. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends good taste, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many hours spent pleasantly and usefully. The German spirit possesses neither the French vivacity nor the English understanding, which is sharply focused on practical matters, nor, finally, the American spirit of adventure

[ 45 ] — as I said, an American is writing this in English —,

All he possesses is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always returns to the central question: “Where is this leading?” The German public demands that a writer rise above things and simply speak his mind. Intellectual vivacity is present—very well: What does it stand for? What is this man’s opinion? Where does it come from?—Where does he get all these thoughts?

The English [...] see only the individual; they do not know how to conceive of humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not grasp the depth of the German genius.

[ 46 ] There is something alive in these words that may seem like an echo of what can emerge from the familiar interaction between the collective soul of the people and the individual. And Emerson goes on to say:

For this reason, the terms of distinction commonly used in high-level conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French—who are celebrated for their acumen and erudition—view their studies and their standpoint with a certain superficiality, and their personal character bears only a shallow connection to what they have grasped, and the way they express themselves—there is not a very deep connection, whereas Goethe, the head and the essence of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but because truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines forth from it. He is wise to the highest degree, even if his wisdom is often veiled by his talent. How excellent is what he says; yet he has something in mind that is even better. He makes me curious. He possesses that awe-inspiring independence that springs from communion with the truth.

[ 47 ] One might say: Well, that’s what Emerson once said, who lived far away in America. We’ve had to hear it: The Germans living today are not the same as they used to be. Even the French philosopher Bergson remarked on how mechanical the Germans have become. It is strange how, in these times, a man who aspires to be a philosopher seeks to reach his judgment: he surely longs for that judgment! He knows that Germans have had great thoughts. He seems to feel that, when cannons and rifles are turned against the Germans from all sides, they should respond by reciting poems by Novalis or Goethe.

[ 48 ] Strange logic is running rampant in the world today. When people ask, “Who wanted this war?” and the British, French, Russians, and so on claim, “We didn’t want it,” one might say, “Yes, we believe that too!” But what matters is not what one says, but whether one can say it. If five people stand menacingly around a house, and the person living inside sees them and tells them to leave, and then, because they refuse, beats them up, the five can still say, “We didn’t want to be beaten!”

[ 49 ] One cannot say that Emerson’s judgment of the German “barbarians” is already outdated, but one might think that those who have immersed themselves in the German intellectual tradition are better equipped to judge.

[ 50 ] A few years before the war, a book by an Englishwoman was published, titled *Eight Years in Germany*. She visited German schools, hospitals, and so on, and after getting to know the German character, she wrote the following:

We read a lot about the new Germany and the new German spirit. Is what exists today the matured work of generations? Blinded by the glitter of Germany’s wealth, we tend to forget that, apart from prosperity, it has never occupied any place other than the very forefront. In literature, it has always provided inspiration; in science, it has always shone; in music, it has always dominated.

[ 51 ] And now the following. I don't know if she would have written it now, but she did so about two years before the war:

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its very existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is waging a quiet but determined struggle against powerful rivals whose power and experience were built up generations ago. [...]

At every border and across the waters, its adversaries—both commercial and political—lie in wait, eagerly anticipating the moment when Germany shows even the slightest sign of weakness so they can pounce and bring it down. Germany knows this all too well.

[ 52 ] The reasons why the German national soul is so poorly understood can be grasped. Some aspect of the German national soul may penetrate into the West—less so into the East—but it is rejected in the West because, in its dogmatic nature, the West does not want to acknowledge what seeks to live and breathe within the whole soul. There is a certain degree of understanding, but at the same time a reluctance to allow this to take full root in the soul.

[ 53 ] About a year and a half before the outbreak of the war, a series of lectures was given in Manchester. They have been published and were very interesting; in the preface, the scholars explain why they gave them: to provide English journalists with a better understanding of German conditions. Regarding the immediate present, the scholar Herford stated that, on the whole, there was no question that the establishment of the German Empire had been conducive to peace. [Gap in the text] History should be more than just a cinema and should shed a higher light on things:

All in all, there is no question that

[ 54 ] — it says there —,

that the establishment of the German Empire has been conducive to world peace. This statement will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling movie. But history should be something more than that. It is fitting to let the light of the past shine upon the chaotic turmoil of the present, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors regarded France with far greater fear than even the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors’ fear had good reason. [...] To sum it all up, it can thus be shown that the founding of the German Empire was a boon for Europe and, therefore, for Great Britain as well. For the events of the years 1866–1871 put an end, once and for all, to the possibility of waging wars of plunder against the hitherto unprotected heart of Europe, thereby eliminating a temptation to war that had so often led France astray in earlier centuries; they enabled the German people to develop their political capabilities, which had hitherto been stunted, and they helped to establish, on a secure foundation, a new European system that has maintained peace for forty years. This blessing stemmed from the fact that German unity achieved in a single stroke what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to accomplish—namely, securing the balance of power so decisively that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

[ 55 ] When one is left scratching one’s head at these things and wonders what lies in the souls of those who wrote them, one must have some understanding of the peculiarities of the European national character to grasp why people outside Germany find it so difficult to understand. Only enlightened minds can do so.

[ 56 ] One mystic who has written some truly beautiful works deserves mention here. He confessed that he had experienced something profound through three mystics. One of them is Novalis, who gained so much from his intimate connection with the German national soul. He uses beautiful words to characterize him. He says: So much happens on Earth that can really only interest earthly souls—such as, for example, what Shakespeare’s characters do. But if other beings from other planets could look down upon us, what might interest them? And he wonders if there is anything that might also interest other spirits, and finds in Novalis’s writings something that interests not only earthly souls but also those beings who descend from heavenly heights. What the human soul can scarcely put into words—that is what he speaks of, what one would most like to keep silent about, where true nature first begins. He says:

But if he needed further proof, it would be

[ 57 ] — which probably means the soul —

count him among those whose works border on silence. She would open the gate to the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without concerning themselves with the subtle gestures of her body. Together they would ascend to the lonely plateaus, where consciousness rises to a higher level and where all those filled with restlessness about themselves gaze intently at the immense ring that links the world of phenomena with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts lie [only] in the invisible, where he must be constantly on guard. Only at these heights are there thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble it and are as commanding as the soul itself. There, humanity reigned for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that herald the Earth in the realm of the spirit. Their reflection truly bears the color of our soul. We sense that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of an alien reason; but [the people of whom I speak] have, in their works, emerged from the small village of passions and have spoken words that are of value even to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

[ 58 ] This is how this enlightened mind assessed Novalis. Who is it that speaks thus? Surely someone who calls such loudmouths—who are now railing against German “barbarism”—to account? Someone who will turn against words such as:

In truth, it is difficult to listen to one's soul and hear its faint, childlike voice amid the useless clamor that surrounds it.

[ 59 ] The words that the enlightened man wrote about Novalis are by Maeterlinck. And the words about the crier are also by him. We are experiencing such things now; they directly characterize our time in and of themselves, without the need to add this or that in particular.

[ 60 ] The lectures mentioned, which were given in Manchester, have been published and also translated into German. The preface contains a few words that can therefore also be read in English:

The source of the current of his intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a movement unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as uninterrupted as it has been characteristic ever since. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not witnessed such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of today’s Germany is, to a high degree, concrete and practical.

[ 61 ] The person saying this is Lord Haldane.

[ 62 ] When we consider how different Central Europe and Eastern Europe must be in terms of their overall national character, it is understandable that a major conflict was bound to arise there at some point. People who were willing to look clearly saw this conflict coming. Today we hear cries from all sides: “The Germans wanted this war.” Who wanted it—and who, given the particular nature of their national aspirations, had long been bound to want it—has always been clear to reasonably enlightened minds. A man who is by no means particularly sympathetic to the German character writes:

As for me, I have not a moment’s doubt that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic worlds is imminent, that it will be sparked either by the East—specifically Turkey—or by the ethnic strife in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will assume leadership on one side in this conflict. This power is already preparing for this eventuality; the Russian nationalist press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warnings. A long time has passed since Russia regrouped after the Crimean War, and, it seems, it is now deemed expedient in St. Petersburg to take up the Eastern Question once again.

If the Mediterranean were ever to become, to use an expression more pompous than true, “a French lake,” Russia has the even more concrete intention of turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake and the Sea of Marmara into a Russian pond. That Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia is a fixed objective of Russian policy, which finds its leverage in the shared religion and in Pan-Slavism.

[ 63 ] This is how the spirits who wished to see it perceived how the forces at work in Europe were gradually bringing about this era. This was written in 1870!

[ 64 ] The contrast between Eastern Europe and Central Europe has always existed, so that the logic behind the question: “Who wanted this war?” is the most flimsy of arguments, because the people—whose spirit hovers over them like a cloud—have a desire for expansion, and because there is not the slightest understanding of what has been accomplished in Central Europe. It was accepted in Russia, but the way this happened is, once again, quite characteristic.

[ 65 ] It is true, as Herman Grimm says, that the Englishman Mr. Lewes wanted to write an important book about Goethe. But he only told the story of a man who happened to be born in Frankfurt am Main and happened to die in Weimar, who had this or that experience and wrote this or that work. But Goethe’s soul does not live within it, because his soul slips through his fingers. He sees only what he can dogmatize; he sees only that part of Goethe which stands firmly on the ground—the dates of birth and death, and so on. He knows the titles of the works and so on. But what Goethe truly was—that he was the representative of the dialogue between the individual German and the German national soul—he has no inkling of.

[ 66 ] Just as over there, in the West, the phenomenon has the effect of causing inner passions to rebel against it and manifest in a coarse, dogmatic form, so too does that which is a direct experience for Germans—as I said, they have often willingly embraced it—take on a form in the East that turns it into a web of abstract thought. Because the Russian feels that this must be carried up into the cloud hovering above him, it becomes ghostly, shadowy.

[ 67 ] Even the great philosopher Soloviev is lost in this fog. He borrowed his generous philosophy from German culture—but everything that lives with such vitality in the German soul appears ghostly in his work, giving rise to a jumble of fluttering thoughts that the German, accustomed to a familiar rapport with the national soul, cannot follow as a reflection of truth. One must even witness how [a Russian intellectual] turns Goethe into a specter in yet another way—a man who, admittedly, once called another people “barbarians” before the war: Merezhkovsky. He speaks of the heart’s final vision of death:

Herzens’ final vision of death is—Russia as the “land of free life” and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He mistook his old love for a new faith, but realized, it seems, in his final hour, that even this last faith was an illusion. Yet even if his faith deceived him, love did not; in his love for Russia lay a certain true insight: not the peasant community, but the Christian community may in truth become the faith that the young barbarians are destined to bring to ancient Rome.

[ 68 ] That's what he says from the bottom of his heart.

Meanwhile, however, he dies—without any faith: Farewell, corrupt Rome! ... Farewell, my homeland!

[ 69 ] But do not be misled by what he says about Goethe in his latest book; the whole of Goethe has become a ghost there. The fact that he does not understand the soul of the people—which has rejuvenated everything—and that he cannot perceive what Goethe represents as a force of the world soul is evident from his claim that he dares to attribute such words to Goethe as:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends down toward the ground, as if by some evil spell a giant were to be crushed and shriveled into a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod, he becomes a German citizen and—may the shadow of the Olympian be merciful to me—a German philistine, “Mr. von Goethe,” Privy Councilor to the Duke of Weimar, and the respectable son of a respectable Frankfurt shopkeeper.

[ 70 ] About the poet who wrote *Faust*!

[ 71 ] One comes to understand what needs to be grasped in the heart of Europe, and this is evidenced by the degree of understanding shown toward the German national soul by both the left and the right. One day, world history will be judged not only by the archives—by what has been printed and written—but by more subtle characteristics! Actually, with a heavy heart, through tears—inner tears—I have come to realize that something like a vision has appeared before my soul, showing the state of Europe’s forces, because it is so far removed from the original forces through which the individual human being grows out of the cosmos.

[ 72 ] It is precisely [because of] what that alliance of the Grand Duchy and hypocritical Pan-Slavism has done to the Russian people that this image stands before me. We have seen those first days of August unfold. I will mention just three images from that time: In Central Europe, the Reichstag. Something characteristic precedes the coming deeds like a herald; it is the purest expression of something infinitely youthful in the forces of the German national soul: The people are silent! Therein lies something immense. Let us, in contrast, look westward to the French Parliament; look at the speeches that have been delivered there, and how all these speeches flow directly from tyrannical power. And then let us turn to Russia, where we are accustomed to seeing the best of the Russian man in silence: In the Duma, speeches rage, and everyone speaks in such a way that the words are mere phrases and everything looks like a staged theatrical performance of speeches.

[ 73 ] Thus the European forces stand opposed to one another, and I am fully aware of the objectivity with which I have, with great pain, allowed them to take their toll on my soul. The silence in the midst of it all is a symptom of something connected to the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul; from one epoch to the next, it has engaged in dialogue with the most outstanding representatives of German culture, and the finest achievements can be traced back to this. Even in what has happened in our time, the German people’s striving for the spirit has been realized.

[ 74 ] Such has always been the essence of German endeavor. But if one looks at it, seeking to recognize its fundamental character, one must say: This German spirit has not yet exhausted the developmental forces and possibilities that lie within it; the German national soul possesses a rejuvenating power and will continually renew it anew. How rejuvenating Fichte’s philosophy is! Like a folk current, it flowed into the “Addresses to the German Nation” and into the spirit of that time. What his ideas bring to light through a remarkable metaphor, a new form of education seeks to present to people as reality. Fichte knows how reluctant people are to accept the new, and thus employs a distinctive comparison. It is highly characteristic of his style.

[ 75 ] Spiritual science, however, from which flow the attitudes that make it possible to understand the conditions of the national soul, aims to be an active science that courageously and boldly draws out its findings. It speaks of the eternal—not merely in abstract terms, but just as it speaks of how the human spirit lives from incarnation to incarnation; so, too, does it speak as it must speak today—of the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

[ 76 ] Fichte says:

Time seems to me like an empty shadow standing over its corpse—from which an army of diseases has just driven it out—wailing and unable to tear its gaze away from the shell it once loved so dearly, and desperately trying every means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. True, the life-giving breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already embraced her and surround her with a warm breath of love; true, friendly voices of the sisters are already greeting her and welcoming her; true, something is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions to develop the more glorious form into which she is to awaken; yet she still has no sense of these breezes or hearing for these voices; or, if she did, she would be consumed by grief over her loss, believing that in it she has also lost herself.

[ 77 ] We can have confidence in the German spirit’s successful striving toward spiritual life because we see what the German spirit has accomplished. This is a work in progress and not yet complete. It is as much a seed as it is a fruit. No matter how insensitively people on the right and left may speak of Germany, it is not yet complete and must carry its inner strength out into the world. It is this strength that it must defend. The time for what the German spirit must defend will come—it can be expected. The souls who make the ultimate sacrifice today—when future generations understand what the national soul can mean to individual Germans—those who have died will, in days to come, look down upon a time that transforms into [human salvation] and progress that which has been purchased with such great sacrifices, [with courageous but painful sacrifices]. Truly recognizing the driving forces, it may be said that the German spirit has not yet reached perfection, but will continue to develop:

The German spirit has not yet accomplished
What it is meant to create in the unfolding of the world.
It lives with hope amid concerns for the future,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerfully
Something hidden that must still ripen and take effect.
How can the desire for its end,
In the power of the enemy and without understanding, come to life:
As long as life reveals itself to it,
Which holds it creatively in the roots of its being?