The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Worldview of German Idealism: A Reflection in Light of Our Fateful Times

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] Year after year, here in Hamburg as in other German cities, I have had the opportunity to speak about topics in spiritual science—that branch of knowledge which is aware that, in its understanding of human spiritual life, it is a true continuation of the scientific way of thinking that has developed within humanity over the past three to four centuries. Now, it is a conviction drawn not from fleeting emotions but, as I believe, precisely from an understanding of this science of the spirit itself—that the power to understand human beings from a spiritual-scientific perspective, to recognize that which in human beings transcends birth and death—that this power must, above all else, be drawn for humanity from what one is justified in calling the spiritual idealism of the German people, that idealism which manifested itself in the deepest and most acute manner during the golden age of German spiritual life at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, but which continues to exert its influence to this very day. And I believe—just as this belief already underlay the reflections I was permitted to share here in this city last year— I believe that it is indeed fitting, in light of the great realities and forces of development we face in our time, for the members of the German people to immerse themselves precisely in that which can bring, in the deepest sense of the word, an understanding of their own essence—an understanding that can then lead to an assessment of this essence in the face of the insults and outright slanders—which are without precedent— — such as these world events—are unprecedented in the entire history of human development. I believe that, in the face of these insults and slanders, it is appropriate to pursue what would be more in keeping with the nature of the German people: to gain clarity in an objective manner, based on the facts, regarding the significance the German people could hold through their achievements in the overall development of humanity. Above all, attention must be drawn to what one might call a prejudice—if the word did not seem rather strong in light of current sentiments— above all, attention must be drawn to a prejudice—if the word does not seem too strong in light of current sensibilities—that keeps cropping up time and again, even within the circles of our own people: the prejudice that modern intellectual life, precisely because it seeks to emerge on a scientific foundation, must by its very nature have an international character from the outset. How often have we heard it, and how self-evident it seems: Science must be international. — Certainly, to a certain limited extent, this is entirely true. But the question is whether it truly belongs to the fruitful sensibilities and feelings to repeatedly and consistently base one’s views on the relationship between individual peoples precisely on this word. The sun is certainly international, and so is the moon. But how different are the ideas, perceptions, and feelings that different peoples are capable of expressing about the moon and the sun. Science is certainly international; but is the nature of the talent that individual nations bring to science also international—a talent by which some may approach this science more superficially, while others delve into its depths? And does it not apply especially to Germans to reflect on a statement made by one of the greatest Germans, Goethe, when he had completed a major portion of his journey to the south and had engaged not only in the contemplation of various artistic treasures but also in the contemplation of the most diverse natural objects and phenomena? There he said: “He would most like to take a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to view what has already been discovered in his own way—that is, to see once again in external appearances that which is alive within his soul.”

[ 2 ] It is not that which is international in an abstract sense that serves as a driving, sustaining force within the nations, but rather that which the individual souls of the individual nations are able to perceive in the [gap in the transcript]

[ 3 ] Now, distinguished guests, I would like to begin my discussion by approaching the subject from the perspective of spiritual science. And I firmly believe that the German people may approach the examination of their relationship to other peoples in this objective manner. Spiritual science, as it is understood here, ladies and gentlemen, is still something quite new, even though—as we shall see—this spiritual science can develop in a completely organic way precisely out of German idealism. Nevertheless, it is all too easy to understand that this spiritual science still encounters opponents everywhere today, and that what it has to say—which it derives from a contemplation just as thorough and profound as [that applied to the natural sciences]—is still, in part, ridiculed and mocked as something paradoxical, perhaps even insane. Yet it is precisely a question such as that concerning the souls of different peoples that the science of the spirit seeks, in a certain sense, to grasp objectively.

[ 4 ] When one considers the human soul from the perspective of spiritual science, it does not appear, from this point of view, as modern academic psychology often believes it to be; there, everything in the soul is all jumbled up—I would say.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science must observe the soul just as natural science observes any phenomenon. Just as the natural scientist must seek to recognize the essence of sunlight by observing its manifestation in the world of colors, so too must the researcher of the soul seek out the soul’s essence in its manifestations if he wishes to gain an understanding of that essence. Sunlight reveals itself in reddish, greenish, and blue-violet shades. Just as the natural scientist distinguishes, on the one hand, the reddish-yellow shade in the color spectrum of light, so the spiritual scientist distinguishes, on the one hand, that which can be called the feeling soul within the soul. And just as the natural scientist distinguishes the greenish center as a phenomenon in sunlight, so too does the spiritual scientist perceive, as it were, in the center of the soul being that which can be called the intellectual soul; viewed from another perspective, this intellectual soul may appear as the emotional soul. And at the other end, as it were, of the rainbow of the soul, there appears what can be referred to as the soul of consciousness.

[ 6 ] When one views the human soul in this way from the perspective of spiritual science, one comes to the conclusion that everything that emerges from the subconscious depths of the soul—everything that plays itself out in feelings and impulses of the will in a semi-unconscious, instinctive manner—lives within the sensory soul. But at the same time, it contains that which, at first in an indeterminate way, finds expression within the soul—namely, the soul’s share in the spiritual, in eternal life. The intellectual soul is that through which a person comprehends the surrounding world in such a way that he introduces concepts and ideas into it everywhere, so that, as it were, he constructs the world for himself as an external edifice of natural laws. The conscious soul encompasses that which is most closely connected to what human beings recognize as their place in the physical world, through which they place themselves most deeply within the finite and transitory, within that which is interwoven with death.

[ 7 ] This is how it is, first of all, with the three—I would say, rainbow-like shades—of the soul. And just as light—the common light—exists in all colors, exists in these three color nuances, so too does the “I,” the true self, the eternal essence of the human being that passes through births and deaths, exist in these three nuances of the soul. And just as these three nuances of the soul are found within the individual human soul, so do they manifest themselves among the various peoples. So that in the soul life of peoples—and I am now saying explicitly: of peoples, not of individuals within peoples, not of individuals, but of peoples as a whole—in the soul of the various peoples, the feeling soul is particularly expressed in one people’s soul, while the other aspects of the soul recede into the background; in another people, the intellectual soul is more prominent, in a third nation, the soul of consciousness is more prominent; and in a fourth nation, that which illuminates and permeates the individual members of the soul: the “I,” the Self. And one can understand—as paradoxical as this may still seem to many today—a part of European humanity only if one knows how these individual shades of the soul are distributed among the individual national souls.

[ 8 ] Thus one finds—and I expressly note that I cannot, of course, prove this in detail, as would certainly be possible if we had hours to spare; I cannot, of course, prove this in detail, but it can be proven—thus one finds, when one considers the Italian national soul, that the feeling soul predominates in this Italian national soul. In the French national soul, what must be called—in the most eminent sense—the intellectual soul predominates. In the British national soul, what must be called the conscious soul predominates. In the German national soul—and this is not spoken out of any particular feeling, but out of insight—what predominates is what must be called the “I,” the “Self,” that which seeks to harmonize and unify the various nuances of the soul, and which shines through these various nuances. And all the individual manifestations of life within the individual nations, including the way in which the various nations fail to understand one another—all of this follows from this insight into the national souls. Even if the German people in particular seem called upon to gain an understanding, based on an insight into the nature of the soul, of what actually prevails among the peoples, while the one-sidedness of the other peoples prevents them from truly gaining an understanding of what is, in truth, a different national character in each case. Is it not—if I may use this image—plain as day, esteemed audience, that the unconscious, instinctive impulses are alive everywhere in the Italian national soul? Even when we turn to the greatest figures—whose greatness should certainly not be diminished because of this—we find the life of feeling at work everywhere. Delve deeply into minds such as Giordano Bruno and Dante: it is the life of feeling—that which surges up from the unconscious and is expressed in images—that for which one does not initially seek a thought to justify it, but which one simply draws up from the soul and—I would say—wishes to let it flow forth.

[ 9 ] And take the French national character—not the individual Frenchman—take the national character, and you must say to yourself—and this is something that, for example, is now recognized in an external sense, not based on the insight we are dealing with here, by many who think objectively, for instance in neutral countries—when you consider the French national character, you certainly find wit everywhere; one finds what the intellect can crystallize; but one finds, in particular, a certain constructive spirit, that rational spirit which attempts to construct the world in the way that the intellect can indeed construct it.

[ 10 ] And nothing illustrates this more clearly, ladies and gentlemen, than—I might say—one of the greatest minds in the very realm of French philosophy, where one can see how the intellect operates preeminently within the soul. Descartes at the beginning of the seventeenth century—or Cartesius—one of the greatest Frenchmen, on whom all French thinkers are still fundamentally dependent today; Descartes, in his view of the world, in the creation of a worldview, begins with the premise that he actually wants to doubt everything. But even his very first conclusion—“I think, therefore I am,” the famous “Cogito ergo sum”—does it not bear the stamp of reason? Already in the “ergo,” in the “therefore,” lies the fact that the intellect, through its own thinking, seeks to gain clarity even about its own existence. And then he goes further. And one of the most remarkable conclusions in Cartesius—in Descartes—is that he now attempts to construct a worldview using the intellect. But what does this worldview look like? Well, we need only hold up a single symptom of this worldview before our soul, and it will immediately become clear to us. Descartes goes so far as to say: When we examine the world, we find the soul—truly the soul, the spiritual—only within our own selves. When we look at the external world, it appears to us everywhere as mechanism; and animals, for Cartesius—for Descartes—are soulless automatons, mere moving machines. This is not something I am merely stating here—I might say—in a radical way, but rather it is Cartesius’s conviction. And because this was his conviction, later French thinkers were influenced by it to the extent that they created, in the most eminent sense, materialism or mechanism—for this is, fundamentally speaking, of French origin within the development of civilization—that mechanism, that materialism, which Goethe, for example, had already encountered in his youth, and of which Goethe said at the time: Yes, they describe the world to one as if everything, everything in it were merely moving atoms colliding back and forth; and if only they could show us how the diversity of phenomena could actually arise from these colliding atoms. But they persist in presenting the whole world to one as nothing more than a machine. — Goethe rejected this worldview, this conception of the world—based on the German Idealism that prevailed within him—as early as his youth. But, in essence, this has carried over into our present day.

[ 11 ] The French now call one of their greatest philosophers—well, I don’t know, should one say today “Fils de montagne”—he was called “Bergson” until the war, and how I’ve been calling him since the war is something they certainly don’t want to let cross our borders—he was called Bergson until the war. He is the one who, in the most unbelievable way—I would say—has projected his French worldview onto the German people, for, yes, he seems to have believed that if the French advanced with cannons and rifles, the Germans would confront them with recitations of Novalis, Goethe, or Schiller. And since they did not do that—since they, too, have cannons, and indeed larger cannons than the French have, which they pitted against the French—he speaks of how the entire German culture has become mechanized, how everything is merely like a great machine. And at a certain point—as one can read in foreign newspapers—he actually entertained his audience at a French academy by showing them how the Germans in recent times have fallen from the heights they had reached under Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer, how they are fixated on mere outward appearances, how they are, in a hypocritical way, something like [gap in the transcript], how, in a hypocritical way, especially in the present, they invoke Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel once again, yet how they interpret them today in a wholly mechanical manner and unite them with their souls in a wholly mechanical manner. Admittedly, they are unpleasant, these Germans—but the French may not realize this until the borders are open again—[the Germans] are unpleasant, for they could prove that, indeed, in recent times they have once again engaged more intensely with the aforementioned thinkers, who drew their worldview from the very depths of their being, and thus sought to deepen the German spirit. But something else could also be demonstrated. They could, for example, prove that Henri Bergson copied entire long passages almost word for word from Schelling, Schopenhauer, and so on, and that, fundamentally, his entire philosophy—which is certainly a sign of our times—is, to a large extent, German plagiarism. That is the non-mechanical appropriation!

[ 12 ] And, ladies and gentlemen, if we look, for example, at the British national soul: just as the Italian soul embodies the primary nuance of the feeling soul, and the French soul that of the intellectual soul, so the British soul embodies the consciousness soul for our present time. The Italian feels, the Frenchman thinks, and the Briton asserts himself in the physical world—that is to say, he seeks above all to develop his relationship to the physical world in one way or another. I am not saying this out of any national sentiment, but based on what can be demonstrated in detail. One might say: How hard Kant had to strive to deepen, in a philosophical sense, this perspective that was directed solely toward the physical world. From a certain perspective, Kant’s entire endeavor is a process of working his way out of what had become ingrained in him through, for example, Hume, Locke, and other British thinkers. And it is certainly fitting to take a close look at precisely this aspect of the development of modern intellectual life. Hume—let us single him out—what did he actually achieve?

[ 13 ] He went so far as to say: Yes, when we look at the world, we actually find nowhere—not even cause and effect, not even connections—but only that one phenomenon follows another, that it succeeds it. The most superficial view of the world!

[ 14 ] With regard to everything else, he arrives at what is called skepticism, a tendency toward doubt. Kant had to work his way out of this. But now, again, when we look at where this worldview—I mean insofar as it is now the embodiment of the national spirit—has led us, where has it taken us? We have seen a peculiar worldview develop in recent times, in the present, one that has emerged precisely from the British national spirit, which was supported in this by the American national spirit. We have seen that from this “conscious soul,” which above all else seeks to assert the “I” in the world—in the physical world—what is called pragmatism has developed. We must not speak of this objectively, for a number of Germans, too—if I may use that trivial term—have, after all, fallen for this pragmatism, precisely because they are philosophers. What does this pragmatism consist of? Well, this pragmatism actually does nothing more or less than say: Oh, the truth—as it is supposed to emerge as truth from the soul—doesn’t really exist at all. What is summarized in individual judgments, in concepts that are then regarded as truth, is merely devised by the human spirit to prove useful out in the world. When you speak of the soul—the soul is merely a pragmatic concept. We see how there are individual phenomena of human life that fall apart before us, and we cannot really hold them together unless we presuppose a unity. We have this unity only in order to comprehend what constitutes external phenomena. Truth must be something—an advantage—that is useful in the external physical world. That is pragmatism. One must not believe that this is merely philosophical hair-splitting. It is deeply connected to the national spirit and to what arises from that national spirit. [Robert Seeley], a professor of history, examined English history in the 1880s and 1890s—the corresponding work was published in 1883—and pointed out that it is, in a sense, a prejudice—for that is the point of the history book—that in the nineteenth century, English identity was always viewed as the struggle of the English for freedom and democracy running through English history. He goes back a bit further and attempts to examine this English history, and concludes that what happened can be summarized under the term “British expansion”; first “Great Britain,” then “Greater Britain.” The Italians merely echoed this by speaking of “Greater Italy.” And then Professor [Robert Seeley] says: But history is not merely there so that one may learn something from it—that one may, as it were, gain from history a truth that one now carries within one’s soul, so that one knows something—but history must be shaped; it must be brought into life. And how is it shaped? It is shaped by seeing that Britain has continually expanded over the course of the last few centuries. So one must learn from it how to continue expanding. — The truth, how one can use it, how one can put it to work in the service of external, physical life!

[ 15 ] I do not believe, distinguished audience, that I am presenting these matters in a one-sided manner; rather, I believe that people have always been one-sided in their view of these matters precisely because they have not been willing to examine them at their very root. In this regard, it should always be emphasized once again how we Germans actually fared in the intellectual sphere—particularly during the nineteenth century—with regard to the development of a worldview.

[ 16 ] Goethe—and I am qualified to speak on this, for I have devoted my entire life, thirty-five years, to the study of Goethe—Goethe attempted to construct a worldview based on the observation of external facts, one that takes into account the interrelatedness of the details of the external natural world. He sought to discover the spirit in the development of living beings. Yet, in the end, he made very little of an impression on his contemporaries. Then came Darwin. Darwin approached the task in an English way—truly English—that is, he approached it in such a way that it is not particularly difficult to delve into his train of thought. And he focused entirely on what can be observed externally in the physical world—what one can see with one’s eyes and grasp with one’s hands. That made an impression. And even today, the world still owes a debt to Goethe—even if it is, of course, more difficult to grasp Goethe’s theory of evolution—and must acknowledge how towering Goethe’s theory of evolution stands above that which emerged in the nineteenth century on the basis of Darwinian research.

[ 17 ] However, it is precisely a Frenchman—a French philosopher, indeed, I’d almost say, naturally, one who had traveled around Germany not long before the war—who had even spoken at a German university about the deep friendship between the French and German spirits—a Frenchman; in recent weeks, he has sought to highlight the differences between the scientific worldview that the German seeks and the one that the Frenchman and the Englishman seek. He had previously told his Parisian audience that, well, if a Frenchman wants to get to know animals, to gain knowledge of them, to integrate his concepts of things into his worldview, then he goes to a menagerie and looks at the animals. Certainly, one way. — The Englishman—so this French philosopher told his Parisian audience—takes a journey around the world, observes the animals in the various parts of the world, and then describes what he has seen there. And the German—he would neither go to the menagerie nor travel to the various parts of the world, but rather he would go into his living room and immerse himself in his own inner self, in order to bring to the surface the essence of the lion, the essence of the hyena, and so on, from within himself. If one wishes to characterize the three peoples with a certain wit—which, of course, should by no means be denied to the French—or perhaps to characterize them according to the proportion of thought and ideas present in their worldview, then one can certainly do so. Yes, but there’s a catch to this story. The very witticism that the French professor made out of his thoroughness is, in fact, not his own, but Heinrich Heine’s.

[ 18 ] Well, distinguished guests, to a certain extent one has always recognized how German intellectual life has sought, so to speak, to avoid one-sidedness and to find something that can shine through the totality of the individual nuances of the soul. To do so, however, this German intellectual life had to penetrate, time and again, into the very depths of the human soul. And in order—I would say—to demonstrate through facts how the Germans sought to arrive at the essence of the world, at the essence of that from which the world springs and flows, I would like to present three German figures today. Not because, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that one could somehow dogmatically accept what these three figures created as a worldview within German idealism, but because I believe that they are, in fact, three figures who emerged from the innermost essence of the German national character, the German national soul. I would like to say: Today we can go far beyond viewing a figure who appears in the intellectual history of the world in such a way that we accept what he has expressed as individual statements, as individual ideas, or as individual opinions, as dogma. One can view people in terms of how they have striven, how they stand in their search for a worldview. Here we encounter a German figure whom I already attempted to highlight last winter from a different perspective, right here in this city—a figure who is now, of course, the subject of much discussion. First and foremost, we encounter the figure who was aware that what he had to say about a worldview arose entirely, so to speak, as through a dialogue with the German national soul itself; we encounter Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I would like to begin by recounting just a few traits of this Johann Gottlieb Fichte to show that he is indeed a figure who could only have emerged from the totality of German intellectual life; for a figure such as Fichte has truly emerged from German intellectual life. When we see that this Fichte, dressed in a blue peasant smock, can be encountered by us as a seven-year-old boy—there he stands on the bank of a stream, the stream that flows past his father’s house—throwing a book into the stream: he throws the *Siegfried Saga* into the stream. His father comes over. The father is angry about this, for he had just given Fichte this *Siegfried Saga* as a Christmas present last Christmas. But it turned out that Fichte, who until then had been a diligent student, had become completely absorbed in the *Siegfried Saga*, and was now less inclined to study. He only needed to be reminded of what his duty was, and he immediately said: “Everything must give way to duty.” And we can find the seven-year-old boy throwing the *Siegfried Saga*—which had kept him from his duty—into the stream. What the soul felt and sensed, it felt and sensed in such a way that everything for him was in the deepest, most intimate connection with this soul.

[ 19 ] One Sunday, a landowner from the neighboring village had come over to the simple farming village where Fichte had grown up. At the time, Fichte was a nine-year-old boy. The neighboring landowner had come over to hear the sermon, but he had arrived too late. The landowner was no longer able to hear the sermon. So they called for the nine-year-old Fichte—because they knew how well he understood what he heard even as a nine-year-old boy, and how he already knew how to connect what he heard with his soul. He came over in his blue peasant smock and, with an inner fire, repeated word for word the sermon he had just heard—but in such a way that one could see: every word he spoke had become one with the very core of his soul. It was not merely the emotional soul, the intellectual soul, or the conscious soul acting one-sidedly; it was the soul in its entirety that was at work. In this sense, Fichte is—I would say—one of the quintessentially German spirits, but a spirit who was also intimately connected with the entire mission, or rather the entire essence, of German folk culture.

[ 20 ] One must—I would say—let one’s gaze wander far and wide if one wants to truly characterize the essence of German folklore in just a few words.

[ 21 ] Let us look across to Asia, where the relatives—the Aryan relatives—of the Germans live. There, among these Aryan relatives, we find the urge to find the divine-spiritual aspect of the world already fully manifested. But everywhere we find this urge paired with another: to subdue the ego, to dampen it, so that it feels extinguished, in order to merge into the universe. The other pole is expressed in the German spirit, in the German spirit’s search for a worldview. While the Aryan kin in Asia—particularly in India—seek to pour themselves out into the universe by subduing the “I” and thereby find a worldview, the German seeks, by elevating and strengthening this “I” within himself—by spiritualizing and enlivening it—to find within this “I” that place where the Divine pours itself into it. Thus, not through subduing, but through elevating—through the heightened striving of the “I”—this “I” is led upward into that which, as the Divine-Spiritual, pulses through, permeates, and works within the world.

[ 22 ] And so Fichte once again confronted the human “I,” the human self, with his whole being, in order to discover within the self the forces that give rise to a worldview. I would like to say, however, that he did so not by attempting to speak through abstract theories or all sorts of mere abstract ideas about what constitutes a worldview, but rather it was his entire being—the wholeness of this being—through which he presented himself, whether before his students or before his entire people.

[ 23 ] Someone who listened to him once said: When Fichte speaks in public or even to his students, his speech rolls forth like a thunderstorm that breaks into individual flashes of lightning. His imagination is not lavish, but energetic; his images are not magnificent, but strong and powerful. And he reigns in the realm of ideas, demonstrating that in this invisible world of ideas he can not only dwell but also reign. — But in this manner of speaking, there was something in Fichte through which he sought to let his entire soul work upon his listeners. That is why a friend who knew him well could say of him: He sought not merely to educate good people, but to educate great people. And he sought not merely to say something to his listeners, but to create a living whole out of what he and his listeners were together.

[ 24 ] Fichte, the quintessentially German spirit, certainly would not have appealed particularly to those people who prefer merely to listen passively and endure whatever does not require them to think for themselves while listening. For example, he would repeatedly do the following with his listeners. He would say: “Try to think of the wall!”—And so the listeners thought of the wall; they tried to think of the wall. Of course, they managed that quite well.—“Now,” he said, “try to think of the one who is thinking of the wall!”—Then one could see how some were taken aback, how some were strangely moved. But through such an unreasonable demand, Fichte sought to direct people back to that which wells up and springs forth within themselves. For he could not say, as Descartes did, “I think, therefore I am”; rather, he regarded this “I” in its constant vitality, in its constant becoming. And he recognized only such an “I”—one that continually generates itself, that has the power to come into being anew at every moment, in every successive moment. The will—the will reigning within the “I”—became for him the fundamental power of the “I.” And as the “I” grasps itself in the highest sense through its fundamental powers, it grasps the highest divine power, which weaves and surges into the “I.”

[ 25 ] For Descartes, the worldview was such that he did not even acknowledge the existence of souls in animals; rather, to him, they were mechanisms, machines—the entire world was a mechanism. Of course, Fichte, too, saw how the mechanical is present in the external physical world; but for him, this mechanical aspect was not to be dismissed upon consideration; rather, one could only grasp its true nature by finding the divine-spiritual source of things, which, however, could only be found in the nature of human will.

[ 26 ] And so, for Fichte, the spiritual—which permeates, floods, and ripples through the world—became the moral order of the world, taking precedence over a mechanical order of the world. The divine-spiritual appeared to him in the effect of duty, which pulses into the human soul. And the mechanisms—the external products of nature—appeared to him, in his worldview, in relation to the whole of creation, as if a person who initially wishes to act morally were to construct individual machines, about which he cannot then ask to what extent they are moral, but which nevertheless stand in the service of the moral, of humanity’s moral order. Thus, for Fichte, mechanical nature was, as he says, merely the expression of the fact that duty—that the moral world order—is realized; it was the materialized substance of duty. For Fichte, mechanical nature is everywhere a world-moral order, and everything that is not moral exists so that duty may have the tools to realize itself in the world. This is the energy of the spirit that reigned in Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

[ 27 ] There is no need today to adopt Fichte’s point of view. One need not accept what he expressed as his opinion. But that is not the point at all; rather, the point must be what one can gain by—I would say—allowing oneself to be inspired by the way in which someone like Fichte approached the spiritual world and, from this perspective, shaped one of the worldviews of German Idealism. Strengthening of the soul, but also development of the soul, can be achieved by engaging—not dogmatically, but humanely—with the kind of striving as it appears in Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

[ 28 ] Now let us turn to his successor, the much-misunderstood Schelling. For him, too, external nature was not something soulless. He could not stop at regarding external nature merely as a materialized substance of the moral world order; rather, for him, external nature was spirit brought to life. And the spirit was an animated nature. And in his worldview, the two came together to form a whole. And the divine-spiritual, which reigns throughout the world, was for him the great artist who creates by bringing the world into being out of the divine and the good, so that it might stand as beauty in contrast to the invisible spiritual. In this much-misunderstood Schelling, contemplation of the spirit and contemplation of nature grow together in a profound way. But indeed, this man—who even in old age still stood before his listeners with sparkling eyes from which, as if through a human gaze, a deep view of nature spoke naturally—a view of nature that glowed with beauty—was embodied in his entire personality. This man was such that we can say: He represented, so to speak, the other side of German spiritual life, the German national soul. Fichte, too—one might say—represented something like the human soul of consciousness, but this soul of consciousness was illuminated by the “I.” Schelling, too, represents something like the intellectual soul of the human being; but this intellectual soul is illuminated by the “I,” so that it acts upon the human mind. Once again, it is the elevation, the strengthening of that which is always present in the human soul—that is what Schelling seeks. It goes so far that he once goes so far as to make the following statement, which certainly cannot be taken at face value: “To know nature is to create nature.”—Yet this statement remains fruitful, provided one does not accept it as a dogma, but rather recognizes that it springs from the soul of a person who wishes to immerse himself with his whole soul in nature and seek the spirit within nature.

[ 29 ] The third aspect of German national character is represented—one might say once again, and the word may be repeated—by the much-misunderstood Hegel. Yet he portrays this German national character with the utmost force. For him, that which reigns throughout the world as the divine-spiritual is, everywhere, thought. Human beings seek thought. But human beings do not merely imagine thought; rather, they extract thought from all phenomena, because thought lives in everything. One may, of course, impartially acknowledge this one-sidedness. The divine-spiritual appears as a mere logician. Hegel perceives the world as if it were merely thought. Naturally, one will never arrive at any understanding of the world other than the understanding of the thought world. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that one—I would say—understands how to think along with Hegel, understands how to think in order to develop thought in such a subtle way as he has developed it. And this gave rise, for him and his worldview, to the conviction that one knows the world only insofar as one can recognize it as rational in all its parts. Everything real is rational, and everything rational is real. — One can mock this, but the mockery is cheap. One can even mock such a passion and dismiss it, as Bergson does! But the mockery is, after all, cheap. That is not the point; rather, the point is is that this one-sidedness had to emerge precisely from the depths of German folklore, because when a person immerses himself in these pure, crystal-clear thoughts—which emerged through Hegel in the development of humanity’s spiritual essence—he thereby merges, within this pure thought, with that which, in turn, as pure thought, pulses through and interweaves the world. What matters is not the ideas that Hegel produced, but the feeling he associated with his intellectual life—this feeling of knowing oneself to be one with the divine thought that radiates through the world and is reflected in the individual human soul. Everywhere, it is the elevation, the strengthening, the empowerment of the self that is sought, so that through this elevation, strengthening, and empowerment of the self, one may find what can open up in the innermost depths of the soul, what can reveal itself as the most divine—that which reveals itself in the lives of human beings, in the lives of all beings, and indeed in the life of all of nature.

[ 30 ] These ideas were too grand, these aspirations too far-reaching—having emerged, as it were, from the three, I might say, most formidable intellectual figures of the German people—to take full root immediately. But they are here. And we must consider them today not insofar as they said this or that, but insofar as the German essence can be recognized through the fact that such thoughts, feelings, and possibilities of knowledge were inherent in it. Our intention cannot be to get to know Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, but rather to get to know the German essence in its manifestations, insofar as they give expression to this German essence. That is what matters.

[ 31 ] Certainly, this worldview—this, I might say, three-part worldview of German Idealism—has been swept away by the flood, the justified flood of the scientific worldview. And so far, it has not been possible to vividly unite these two—this scientific worldview and this worldview of German Idealism. But they will become one. And it is my conviction that it is precisely through the science of the spirit that this unification can be made possible.

[ 32 ] What does the Italian ask today—I mean, insofar as he grows out of his national character, not as an individual—what does he ask about the relationship between the worldview he constructs for himself and his religious sentiments? What, indeed, does the Frenchman ask about this when he seeks to develop a scientific worldview? The Englishman asks more about it. But he asks in a peculiar way. We can study this in Darwin, but also in many others. Darwin seeks a worldview derived purely from the facts of the physical world. But he draws no conclusions from them. He allows the worldview based solely on convention and external tradition to coexist alongside it. And so we find that Darwin does not feel the need to modify his convictions about the spiritual in any way by creating an external worldview based on the physical world—which, however, as soon as it becomes part of German intellectual development, turns into a major, all-encompassing question. The German cannot conceive of a view of the spiritual realm based solely on tradition alongside a view of nature, because that would strike him as a lie. And he would rather accept Haeckel’s materialism than a British worldview that allows the most devout sentiments to be placed alongside naturalism without justification and without seeking any connection between them.

[ 33 ] That is why we are witnessing such a tragic phenomenon—a phenomenon that, I would say, is truly heart-wrenching—namely, that Ernst Haeckel, who today, out of his German sensibility, is vigorously turning against Britain with stronger words than many others, is, in fact, thoroughly anglicized in his entire worldview, which is fundamentally based on Huxley and Darwin. Anyone capable of sensing what can live in the human soul from the heights of a worldview will perceive the tragedy in Haeckel’s soul—a tragedy that stems purely from the fact that the German—Haeckel — could not, like Darwin, allow a spiritual worldview to coexist alongside a purely natural one, because he strove for wholeness and lacked the strength, as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel did, to penetrate the spirit, and therefore constructed a worldview that [gap in the transcript] was oriented toward Darwinism, toward the observation of external nature.

[ 34 ] One should not, however, believe that what is now beginning to assert itself as spiritual science—that is, what this spiritual science itself has to say—could fundamentally be based on anything other than—I would say—the worldview of German Idealism. That is, as it were, the root. And its blossoms and fruits will have to be spiritual science. In spiritual science, we speak of how the human soul can, in a certain way, be shaped — and those among the esteemed audience who have listened to me here over the past year will know what these various methods are for gradually leading the soul to the point where, in its contemplation of the physical and the corporeal, it becomes free, so to speak, so that it can, as it were, step outside the body into the spiritual world and truly behold the spiritual world. We know that we truly perceive the spiritual world by undergoing certain exercises of the spirit within the soul. The spiritual researcher cannot conduct external experiments, but he conducts his research in a higher, spiritual realm just as the natural scientist does. He enables his soul to free itself truly from the instrument of the body—and also from the thinking apparatus—so that, as a soul, it can face the spiritual phenomena of the world. Once one contemplates these things in a deeper sense, one will discover what we today call meditation and concentration of thought—through which the soul attains liberation from physical existence, enabling it to recognize within itself the eternal forces that pass through births and deaths and remain present even when the human being sheds its physical body. One will recognize that these exercises took their strongest impetus back when Fichte sought to strengthen the will, Schelling the mind, and Hegel thought; for it is essentially the strengthening of thinking, feeling, and willing is essentially what leads the soul to the contemplation of the eternal, and what also leads the soul to that objectivism through which it recognizes that it bears within itself an eternal being that has united with the physical body through birth, and that re-enters the spiritual world for other experiences of existence when the outer, physical body is cast off.

[ 35 ] The worldview of German Idealism has not yet been able to develop into a true science of the spirit, just as the root is not yet the flower or the fruit. But if one does not wish to employ materialism in its truest form to contemplate the spirit, where, for example, one uses external events—which can only exist in the sensory-physical world—to recognize the spirit; where one does not wish to turn to physical nature to recognize the spirit, but rather wishes to recognize the spirit through the spirit itself—then one will find that the best guidance lies precisely in what Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel attempted.

[ 36 ] And when we speak today of the human being, wholly absorbed in himself, searching for the depths of his soul—in what we call meditation—and when we now turn our gaze once more to the entire German national spirit, we cannot do so in that dreamy manner characteristic of the Asian spirit, but rather in a lively manner. Through the elevation and strengthening of the self, this was what Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel sought: a meditation of the entire German people, a striving toward the knowledge of the true spirit. And in this striving toward knowledge of the true spirit, there truly lived what we might call: the liberation of the soul from the body. And to prove this to you, I would like to read a few words from Schelling, where Schelling says:

“The soul, then, is not merely the principle of individuality in human beings, but that through which they rise above all self-centeredness, through which they become capable of self-sacrifice, selfless love, and—which is the highest—the contemplation and understanding of the essence of things.”

[ 37 ] This liberation of the soul from the physical body is the goal of the worldview of German Idealism; and this worldview of German Idealism is not a one-sidedly scientific one; it is not something that can be attained merely through international science, but rather it is something through which the human soul, in all its powers and in its entirety, inclines itself and makes itself capable of directly encountering the divine-spiritual aspect of the world.

[ 38 ] The depth of feeling cannot be conceived within this worldview. And, at its core, there is always something weaving and living within the German people’s deepest yearning for a worldview—one that Jakob Böhme so beautifully expresses:

“If You Feel the Depth”

[ 39 ] he is referring to the deep blue of the sky

“when you look at the heavens, the stars, and the earth”

[ 40 ] says Jakob Böhme

“Thus you see your God, and in Him you live and are. And that same God reigns through you and also reigns over you.” “You are created from this God and live in Him. All your knowledge also resides in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

[ 41 ] This is the depth that is inseparable from German thought, and which can be sought within the Western world along the paths that are indispensable to the further development of humanity—that which the Aryan Indian seeks along paths that can no longer be the paths of the present, which must be abandoned for the sake of the present; what is sought is the experience of the Divine in a worldview that does not exclude sensibility, but which also encompasses the spirit and includes sensibility—indeed, which recognizes sensibility itself as something spiritual.

[ 42 ] Such is the worldview, esteemed audience, such is the worldview of German Idealism, which seeks new paths of life in the Divine-Spiritual, not by suppressing the “I,” the self, but by striving upward, so that the “I” and that which pulses through the world as the divine-spiritual may become one—that is, may experience one another. And so, in fact, this striving for a worldview in German Idealism places itself within the entire recent historical development of humanity—insofar as it is spiritual—and recognizes: Because it is a lived worldview, the German is so difficult to understand. For one would have to identify with his experience; one would have to seek, in its entirety, that which he seeks as a whole, and which others can see only as one-sided aspects.

[ 43 ] And when we now turn our gaze away from Western and Central Europe and look toward Eastern Europe, we find that, across vast regions, there lives a people whose defining characteristic—especially for the spiritual scientist—is that the soul has not yet emerged at all, neither as a soul of feeling, nor of consciousness, nor of intellect; that it does not yet grasp what can be experienced in the “I,” but still longs to perceive—as if it were something external—that which pulses through the world as its very essence. This is the Russian people. But something very peculiar lives within this Russian people. It lives within this Russian people precisely because—unlike the Western peoples—it does not yet find within itself the source from which a worldview can spring; within this Russian people lives the longing to receive a worldview from outside, yet at the same time a reluctance to receive this worldview from the West. Consequently, in recent Russian literature we are confronted time and again with the view that the entire Western and Central European culture is decaying, that it is dead, and that only from the young Russian intellectual life can a worldview emerge that is capable of redeeming humanity. We are confronted with this time and again. I would like to say: It confronts us in such a way that one sees the immense arrogance inherent in viewing everything Western as something senile and in wanting to start the world anew—but with the conviction that one is beginning with something better.

[ 44 ] And so we see in Russian minds—for example, in Herzen—as is evident in his work *From the Other Shore*—that he certainly possesses a precise understanding of, say, Hegel, as well as other German achievements regarding an idealistic worldview; yet, as he explicitly states: That alone is not enough. All of that is contained within the world. It is precisely this—Hegel’s view that the real is rational—that he finds unsympathetic. He maintains that the real is fundamentally irrational and foolish; and that the Russian must first come to bring something rational to the world. For the other things considered rational in Europe, he argues, are senile and ripe for extinction. He has already titled his book *From the Other Shore*, because he says that all these thinkers—Hegel and the like—have all been standing on the other side of the shore, caught up in a frenzy that must disappear, one that is only worth the effort of being viewed from the other shore.

[ 45 ] But on the other hand, one must also say: There is at least one thing that the Russian national soul grasped precisely at the end of the nineteenth century—and it grasped it while at the same time associating it with an immense presumption. As it were, this Russian national soul looked out across the vast expanse of Asia and saw there something that was now ripe for decline, something that needed to be fertilized by the West. But what was seen as the source of that fertilization was precisely the Russian element. And this is expressed most clearly in a book published by Yushakov in 1885. An interesting book, a truly interesting book. Let us first consider the positive aspect; for it is interesting to allow the worldview of German Idealism—I might say—to take effect on its own. If one takes it in, one can say: Through the way in which the German seeks a worldview within this idealism, he creates in modern times what Pan-Asianism created in ancient times—what found expression in Asia, but at an earlier stage of human development.

[ 46 ] How does the Russian Yushakov view the matter? Well, naturally, his first instinct is to use a Russian program to spread Russification throughout all of Asia. So he says: Well, in Asia, people have observed how, over the course of a long period of time, two spiritual forces have, as it were, stood in opposition to one another. And the ancient Iranians—he says, Yushakov — quite correctly perceived these two opposing spiritual forces as Ahriman and Ormuzd, in the Iranians, Persians, Indians, and so on—Ahriman and Ormuzd. Ormuzd is said to have been the predominant force among the Iranians, working in such a way that they sought to draw from nature everything that might contribute to the well-being of humanity. How rich, how rich the work on nature could have been for humankind, had the earlier Asian spirit not been condemned from the outset, through its suppression of the “I,” to attain not a certain height but rather a kind of dreamlike existence. But happy, happy in a certain way were these Iranians under the guidance of Ormuzd. Then came the Turanian spirit under the leadership of Ahriman, who laid waste to everything. The Russians—so says Yushakov—are called upon to restore balance between Ormuzd and Ahriman in Asia, throughout all of Asia, for all of Asia must be flooded and permeated by the way in which order and harmony can be created between Ormuzd and Ahriman through Russian spiritual life. For what have the Europeans done in Asia so far? What have they done that is bound to arouse the revulsion of the Russians in particular, that can show the Russians how they must be different in everything they do? What have these Europeans done? Over the centuries, they have discovered that, under the influence of the Ormuzd force, the Asians produced vast quantities of material goods. They have set out to take away from the Asians what they have earned under the healing influence of Ormuzd—so says the Russian; the Russians must come and must now unite with the Asians in Asia, not out of selfishness but out of love, and they must help the Asians defeat Ahriman. And now he goes on to explain how Russia has the task, through selfless devotion to the Asian peoples and selfless coexistence with them, of liberating the Asians from Ahriman; whereas the Europeans have so far only taken away from them what they had earned under the salvific Ormuzd.

[ 47 ] And it is quite telling which European people the Russian Yushakov identifies as having primarily driven the Asians from the Ormuzd estates, and which European people the Russian Yushakov primarily believes must be thoroughly and vigorously combated by Russia. The Russian Yushakov calls the thieves of the Ormuzd culture of Asian civilization—namely, the English! This, I think, is particularly interesting today, in our time, because we will indeed find a curious connection in this alliance between Russia and England. In 1885—as I said—Yushakov wrote in his book *The Anglo-Russian Conflict*: “Oh, these poor Asian peoples, what have the English done to them! These English have treated these poor Asian peoples as if they were good for nothing, as”

“to dress in English fabrics, to fight one another with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English dishes, and to play with English tinsel.”

[ 48 ] And he goes on to say:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, yet its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I wish nothing of the sort for my homeland—I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

[ 49 ] Well, distinguished guests, what strange circumstances—I might say—arise in the Russian worldview from the fact that this Russian worldview is still in the future, and truly embodies both unbridled energy and—I might say—absolute passivity. This gives rise to all the grotesque contradictions we encounter when we engage with this Russian worldview. And yet, time and again throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, we are confronted with the fact that, among outstanding Russian minds, what we were able to characterize, and which we indeed needed to characterize—by presenting the facts—and I have actually tried only to present facts in order to characterize the German idealistic worldview—that this idealistic worldview is portrayed as something senile, as something that must be overgrown by that which emanates from Russia. And precisely at the end of the nineteenth century—it is not merely the political legacy of Peter the Great—anyone who picks up my work *Thoughts During the Time of War* will see how, among the most outstanding Russian minds, there lived this conviction that Russian culture must expand westward.

[ 50 ] People soon abandoned the Pan-Asian dream, and the European dream emerged—a vision of the salvation that the senile Western and Central European cultures would need to experience after the Russians had conquered Constantinople, destroyed Austria, destroyed Germany, and so on. Only the deeply perceptive Russians themselves saw through what this was really all about. And I cannot refrain from quoting precisely what one such perceptive Russian, Soloviev, said from his Russian perspective about this presumption of Russian action. Soloviev seeks to refute a mindset like that of Danilevsky, who so rightly pointed out how Europeanism must be eradicated root and branch and replaced by Russian culture. And Soloviev responds to this. For Danilevsky brought to light the saying

“Why Doesn’t Europe Love Us?”

[ 51 ] And Soloviev responds to this.

“Europe,”

[ 52 ] According to Danilewski,

“Fear us as the new and superior cultural type, destined to replace the senility of Roman-Germanic civilization.”

“Nevertheless”

[ 53 ] as Solovyov writes,

“both the content of Danilewski’s book and his later admissions, as well as those of his like-minded friend”

[ 54 ] Soloviev refers to Strakhov —

“for a different answer.”

[ 55 ] And now Soloviev offers his answer based on what he calls the Russian soul:

“Europe Looks Hostile”

[ 56 ] says Soloviev

“and with fear toward us, because dark and obscure elemental forces dwell within the Russian people, because their intellectual and cultural powers are meager and insufficient, yet their demands are clearly and sharply defined. The cries of what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully throughout Europe—that they want to destroy Turkey and Austria, defeat Germany, and seize Constantinople and, if possible, India as well. And when we are asked what we intend to offer humanity in place of what has been snatched from us and destroyed—what intellectual and cultural renewal we intend to bring to the development of the world—then we must either remain silent or spout meaningless platitudes. And if Danilevsky’s bitter admission—that Russia is beginning to fall ill—is true, then instead of asking, “Why doesn’t Europe love us?” we should rather concern ourselves with another question, one closer to home and more important: “Why and for what reason are we ill?”

[ 57 ] And now Soloviev answers the question of why Russia is sick. And from the answer he gives, I think it is clear, distinguished audience, that his views on curing this illness differ from those who are now leading Russia against Europe—those who believe that ailing Russia should be healed by utterly crushing the decaying culture of Central Europe. Soloviev, however, says:

“Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as was evident in the last Russian war”

[ 58 ] That's the war in the 1970s

“Thus, our suffering is a moral one. According to the words of an ancient writer, we are burdened by the sins hidden in the national character—sins of which we are not even aware—and so it is, above all, necessary to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we remain spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elemental instincts can only serve to harm us. The essential—indeed, the only essential—question for true patriotism is not one of strength or calling, but of Russia’s sins.”

[ 59 ] And Soloviev himself tried to incorporate as much—as much as possible—into his thinking from Western European and, in particular, Central European culture. And to combine it with what the Russian people have derived from their Orthodox faith. That is precisely what makes Soloviev great.

[ 60 ] But it has also gained significance for another reason. We have, after all, witnessed the resurgence—I would say, even as the golden age of German Idealism in Central Europe initially seemed to fade into a sort of dream, though it continued to live on nonetheless—we have witnessed the resurgence there of an intellectual Slavophilism that has today become a kind of intellectual Pan-Slavism. There, attempts were made to justify—using nothing less than scientific worldview concepts—the idea that the Russian spirit must come to Europe. Soloviev examined this; he truly immersed himself in the works of those who sought to be entirely original by revealing the essence of the Russian worldview as it was to come to Europe. And what did Soloviev find? Strangely enough, he found nothing but Western European ideas everywhere—and not exactly the best ones at that—namely, those Western European ideas that were derived as minor ideas from the grand ideas of the worldview of German Idealism. These had become interwoven into the work, and it was from them that they derived the justification for their intellectual Slavophilism.

[ 61 ] A very characteristic phenomenon—characteristic in that, in reality, what must happen does happen; the forces stemming from the German people’s mission in world history must come into play; and these forces are needed within the worldviews of other nations.

[ 62 ] What I have specifically sought to present to your minds today, esteemed audience, is that this worldview of German idealism—which lives within the German national character and is destined, for a long time to come in the course of world history, to bring forth ever greater contributions for all of humanity from the German national character—requires only an objective examination, and there is certainly no need to adopt the stance that our enemies now take in order to justify their actions and their hatred toward what the Germans have produced, even in the spiritual realm. Admittedly, the German has never been able to avoid taking an objective look at how the spiritual forces of other nations compare to those of Germany. The German has, after all, increasingly regarded what he calls his “Germanness” as a duty, whereas other nations do not really understand at all what the German actually means by his national principle.

[ 63 ] Carneri, a significant—or perhaps even the most significant—Austrian philosopher of the nineteenth century, Carneri—that remarkable man who, despite a frail body, sought to formulate philosophical ideas based on Darwinism, yet built pure, noble, ethical ideas upon that very Darwinism, which he explored in depth from a German perspective— Carneri now also delves into a consideration of the various national souls of the European peoples. And with such a mind, which speaks not out of passion but out of insight, one can already see that what spiritual science creates from its own insight regarding the various national souls has already been instinctively recognized.

[ 64 ] What has emerged in English pragmatism as the concept of truth—that truth should really only be used to find one’s way in the world—Carneri says, without yet using the word “pragmatism,” which, after all, was coined only very recently: The English are certainly ahead in many ways: They are practical, practical. They know how to apply practically everything they can conceive, create, and invent. But they are so practical that their practicality has even led—as Carneri says, as mentioned, out of deep insight—to the point where the realization that they produced the greatest playwright of all time, Shakespeare, had to be taught to them by the Germans. — That is certainly the case. For whoever must one day write the history of Shakespeare’s recognition will have to write a story—a chapter in the history of German intellectual life, not English intellectual life. It was only from the depths of the idealistic German worldview that Shakespeare was truly recognized. And Shakespeare is, in fact, homeless in today’s England.

[ 65 ] We do not need to speak in the same way that, for example, French philosophers or the English today speak about the German character. We can simply point to what is. But in pointing this out, we are aware that it is the force that must act—must act—once the great world conflict, which now confronts humanity with the greatest task it has ever faced, has been resolved. Ladies and gentlemen, what must happen first will be decided by weapons, by other circumstances—not by words. But there is also something to be decided that will only be decided slowly and gradually: namely, the full-fledged penetration of the German spirit into the overall development of humanity. And certainly, it is not my place in this reflection to point to the immediate causes of the war or the like. But what we might call an immersion in the very essence of the German people—and that which must continue to work within the German people, must live on, and in which we must place our trust—is certainly connected to the consciousness that must live within us at this time—and must be connected to it.

[ 66 ] What, then, is the external situation as it stands before us? Indeed, in a most peculiar way. It is remarkable how little this idea is grasped—not by us, but by our enemies. Do these enemies really have any reason to hate the German spirit so much? Does this German essence—if one may frame the question this way—really take so much away from the world’s surface? The numbers speak for themselves: the Entente powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface; the powers of Central Europe, by contrast, possess 6 million square kilometers! 68 million square kilometers versus 6 million square kilometers. The powers of Central Europe have 150 million inhabitants; the Entente powers have 777 million! One should also reflect on this once in a while from outside the borders of Central Europe: what does it mean, in light of this fact, that 777 million people are pitted against 150 million people—not seeking to defeat them in open battle, but rather to encircle them and starve them out? That is the nobler form of bravery! But to draw attention to such matters so casually—it is understandable that people do not like this, and that they may instead favor the suspicions and slanders directed even at what the Germans have not only achieved intellectually but are, because their achievements can demonstrate this to anyone who is willing to see it.

[ 67 ] Admittedly, it is easier to come to terms with this if one views the German character as a Frenchman does—one who, for example, believes—and he has also convinced his fellow Parisians of this—a Frenchman, the very same Frenchman, incidentally, who was the first to speak of the deep friendship between the German and French characters here in Germany as he traveled around: Even in certain features of the German language, he says, one can see, for example, how the Germans cannot possibly have the nobler side of the ideal of humanity in their worldview, because they have no words for it. For example, the Germans have no word for “generosity”; therefore, they do not possess this fine quality at all. The French, on the other hand, have no word for “Schadenfreude,” for which the Germans have the frequently used term “Schadenfreude.” Thus, the Germans have Schadenfreude in their worldview, while the French have generosity!

[ 68 ] One will come to realize, distinguished audience, that there are many things one must gloss over and gloss past, because one cannot present oneself today in relation to this Central European intellectual culture in such a way that, if one were to present oneself as one ought, one could still appear, to some extent, as a person justified in one’s own eyes. In this realm, one needs something other than objectivity and truth if one wishes to characterize the Germans today from an international perspective. Another Frenchman, Ernest Renan, did indeed once manage—indeed, even during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—to say: When he became acquainted with German literature and German intellectual life in the age of Herder and Goethe, it was as if he had entered a temple. And to him, what he had known before seemed like nothing more than worn-out scraps of paper compared to the inner golden value—to what German intellectual life had produced as a worldview during the height of its idealism. But does this same Frenchman, he now asks himself, resolve to urge his fellow Frenchmen at the same time to establish such a relationship in Europe that it corresponds to the value of the German spirit that he himself acknowledges? No, says Ernest Renan—the man who claims that what the rest of European humanity has achieved in comparison to German intellectual life is like elementary mathematics compared to differential calculus—he says:

“This is a solemn moment. There are two schools of thought in France. Some argue as follows: ‘Let us put an end to this hated conflict as quickly as possible; let us cede everything—Alsace, Lorraine— let us sign the peace treaty; but then—hatred to the death, tireless preparations, alliances with whoever we can, unlimited concessions against all Russian arrogance; a single goal, a single driving force in life: the struggle for annihilation against the Germanic race.”

[ 69 ] This movement has triumphed in France. One can say nothing other than that this movement has triumphed in France. But if one has any idea of what one actually intends to destroy when one vows the downfall of the Germanic race—and by that one really means only the German people—then one must not admit it to oneself. And these individual nations must not admit this to themselves at all. In the present, they must not even think about what might still be alive in German folk culture as the soul of that culture—arising from the very essence that, for example, gave rise to the heyday of the German worldview of idealism. They must not admit it to themselves. Therefore, they must cover it up with something else. And with what? Russia, for example, must cover it up with a mission—naturally, with the mission of rejuvenating Europe. The French—one of their more recent poets once characterized the French, his own French, by pointing out how the rooster, which crows in the morning when the sun rises, becomes aware that there is a connection between its crowing and the rising of the sun. So it imagines: If I do not crow, the sun cannot rise.

[ 70 ] Of course, distinguished guests, this is not meant in the slightest to belittle the tragedy of the French people today; for this is not at all a matter of a misled people. For those who have in fact led this “misguided people” astray—who can be compared to the crowing rooster, who believe that if they do not crow, the sun will not rise—for there are indeed leading figures in France who hold this view: that nothing in the world can happen unless they crow— for this, Frenchness needs, time and again, a new figment of the imagination. And it is through such a figment of the imagination that those who now, in such a savage manner, particularly in Paris—such as Bergson or Boutroux—seek to so denigrate the German essence in what constitutes its soul.

[ 71 ] The English—yes, these English; one wouldn’t want to do them an injustice. Do the Russians need a new mission, the French a new fantasy image of their own greatness in the world—which they’ve always needed, though they’ve always forgotten that they had to be pushed back so that others might have some room as well—yes, what do the English need? One doesn’t want to be harsh; one wants to be fair to the enemy. But when one hears those enlightened minds over there talking about how the English went to war solely because their refined moral sensibilities could not reconcile themselves to the fact that the unfortunate Belgian people had been invaded— because they’re so enthusiastic about small nations being able to live out their freedom and independence—when, at the same time, one observes how peculiar it is that these English have taken it upon themselves to champion the freedom of these small nations, yes, and then hears how, in fact, the enlightened minds over there keep declaring, time and again: “For freedom” and against “bondage,” England had to go to war, for the Germans—they are thoroughly imbued with the maxim—as an outstanding English politician recently put it—the Germans are thoroughly imbued with the maxim: “Power takes precedence over right”; he forgot—the poor man, though I should say, a clever man—that this maxim was first coined by Thomas Hobbes, the Englishman, and was even espoused as an entire philosophy; that this maxim is deeply rooted in the entire worldview of English naturalism. Yes, if one wishes to be objective, ladies and gentlemen—one cannot help but say: The English need a new lie to conceal the truth and justify themselves before the world. There is simply no other way; this must become the judgment of history, at least with regard to the conduct of those who spoke during the war.

[ 72 ] The Italians—after all, they, too, need something to whitewash what is actually there. They are a people of the emotional soul. A prominent Italian politician confessed to me before the war—before the entire world war, that is—for one certainly didn’t have to be among the naive souls who believed, before the world war, that if a world war came, Italy would be on the side of the Central Powers, did one?—a prominent Italian politician confessed to me at that time: “If a world war ever comes, Italy will have to take part.” — Yes, but why? “It simply must take part,” he said, “because the Italian people are lazy; they have become degenerate. If you let them go on living like this for much longer,” he said, “they will degenerate completely. They must feel something properly again”—there we have the soul of feeling—“they must have a feeling, a sensation.” — I’m not saying that’s the only cause of war. The Russian needs a new mission, since the Pan-Asian one has fizzled out; the Englishman needs a new lie; the Frenchman needs a new fantasy; the Italian needs a new sensation in—yes, in the form of a new saint, for he must first be grasped through the soul of feeling: holy egoism was invented there in Italy, holy egoism. In the name of holy egoism—as we have heard time and again—Italy entered this war. A new saint—a new saint entirely worthy of his great representative, d’Annunzio. D’Annunzio, the priest of holy egoism—a sensation, as if tailor-made for the inner workings of the “soul of feeling”!

[ 73 ] I believe that, when we reflect on what pulsates at the very core of the German people—their inclination toward a certain worldview—we have no need to fall into the errors of our enemies. We need only look at what we have found to be great, significant, and effective in this German people, in the folk culture of Central Europe. In this respect, the Germans of Austria and the Germans of Germany are, after all, one and the same. Today they feel completely united. The concept of Central Europe must not only become a reality in economic terms; it must also become a reality in a spiritual sense. This can be said in particular by someone who, like me, has lived in Austria for thirty years.

[ 74 ] And when we look, esteemed audience, at what appears to us as the innermost—if I may say so—spiritual essence, as the spiritual essence of the German national character, we must say: This essence is not, in and of itself, something that can be captured solely in concepts and ideas; it is something that is experienced at the very center, at the very heart of the German soul—and it must remain part of the German soul, which can only flourish if the German soul is able to carry it vividly from the present into the future. History—the very course of the history of the Germans and of German identity, indeed of all humanity on earth—will be able to show that there is something in this German national character that has only just taken root and sprouted leaves, and that carries within itself the power to blossom and bear fruit.

[ 75 ] We Germans, however, can undoubtedly recognize the arrogance of other nations—without wishing to be unfair to them—and we must remind ourselves, especially in these difficult times, but also in times of great promise and hope for the future, of how we can truly feel what it means to be German precisely when we immerse ourselves in its highest expression, in its spiritual life; how we can then believe: Yes, this spiritual life reveals itself to us in its roots and in its leaves in such a way that we may have the deepest faith, the deepest trust in the blossoms and fruits yet to come. And so, precisely from this perspective—as we keep before our eyes the figures of 777 million people versus 150 million people, 68 million square kilometers versus 6 million square kilometers— let us never, under any circumstances, allow ourselves to be diverted; let us never, throughout these difficult times, allow our gaze to be diverted from the fact that our German past presents itself to us in such a way that, through its own strength—and especially through its spiritual strength—it guarantees our German future, toward which we wish to live fully, not merely out of instinct and feeling, but also out of clear, discerning insight.