The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Throughout this series of lectures, we will present reflections that will, so to speak, easily touch everyone’s heart, because each person will be able to take an immediate and intense interest in them. However, since the whole would otherwise remain incomprehensible, we must also offer reflections that are necessary for the sake of completeness and understanding, and which will be somewhat more difficult than what constitutes, so to speak, the main body of our lectures. For example, today we will be compelled to take a look into the inner nature of those entities we have spoken of in the two preceding reflections—into the inner nature of the normal national spirits.

[ 2 ] We have already stated what was necessary regarding their external characteristics: that they are beings two levels higher than human beings, beings who are working on the transformation of their etheric bodies—that is, who are currently in the process of transforming their etheric bodies into what is called the Life-Spirit or buddhi. Human beings are woven into this process. To the extent that the development of these beings progresses in such a way that human beings are woven into this development, the reflection of this national spirit manifests itself in the human individuality itself as the national character of the individual human being.

[ 3 ] Now we will have to take a look inside the folk-souls. If we want to shed light on the inner life of modern human beings, we need to create a mental image of this inner life that divides it into three parts:

the Sensitive Soul, so to speak, the lowest link in the human inner being,
the intellectual or emotional soul, the middle member, and
the conscious soul, the highest member of the human inner being, where the human “I” is truly brought to consciousness.

[ 4 ] It is actually only in the conscious soul that what is called human self-consciousness truly exists. Nevertheless, the human “I” is active in all three parts of the inner life—in the soul of sensation, in the soul of understanding or feeling, and in the soul of consciousness.

[ 5 ] In the sensory soul, this “I” is at work in such a way that the human being is scarcely even aware of its existence. In this respect, the human being is completely given over to all drives and passions in the sensory soul. The “I” smolders dimly within what we call the sensory soul. The “I” only begins to emerge, only comes to the fore in the intellectual or emotional soul, and becomes fully clear only in the conscious soul. If we wish to examine these three members of the human inner being separately, we must regard them as three modifications, as three parts within the astral body. It is true, however, that these three modifications—these three members of the astral body—preparatorily transform the astral body itself, the etheric body, and the physical body. Yet these transformations are not what we encounter as the actual inner being of the human being, as the soul. The soul, the inner being of the human being, consists of three modifications of the astral body. These three modifications must make use of certain instruments, and these take shape in such a way that in the astral body the sensory soul has a kind of instrument, in the etheric body the intellectual or emotional soul, and in the physical body the conscious soul. Thus we can distinguish the human inner being from what constitutes the human outer nature. The inner nature of the human being, therefore, consists of three modifications of the astral body.

[ 6 ] Just as in human beings the inner being—that in which the “I” works and expresses itself—manifests in these three modifications of the astral body, so too in those spiritual beings we call national spirits, the actual inner being—or that which we can compare to the human inner being—manifests as three members, three modifications in the etheric body. Just as we distinguish between the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul in human beings, so too must we distinguish three modifications in the etheric body of the archangelic beings, the normal national spirits. But because these three modifications are not in the astral body but in the etheric body, they are quite, quite different—fundamentally different—from the three modifications in the human soul life. Therefore, you must also create a mental image of the form of consciousness, the entire soul life of these national spirits, differently from the soul life of human beings. So we are now, as it were, moving from an external characteristic into the inner life of the souls of these folk spirits. This will not be entirely easy, but we must try to cross this Rubicon. Our task will now be to start from some concept that may be familiar to you—a concept that, so to speak, offers something similar to the inner life of the folk spirits. People do not encounter many such things in their normal lives; on the contrary, they have extremely little in their own consciousness of what lives in the consciousness of folk spirits. But you can still form a mental image of it if you patiently engage in the following reflection with me.

[ 7 ] You all learned in school that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180°, and you know that you could never learn this through any external experience. Imagine, for the sake of argument, triangles made of iron or wood. If you were to use a protractor to measure the sum of the three angles, this external experience would never be able to teach you that these three angles add up to 180°. But you will immediately understand—whether you draw these three angles or merely create a mental image of them—when you experience from within that the three angles total 180°. You must experience this from within through the power of your own soul. To do so, you need only carry out the following in your mind. What I am now drawing is done solely to illustrate the idea.

[ 8 ] This figure provides you with a rigorous proof that the three angles add up to 180°. Once you truly let this figure sink into your mind, it will give you this certainty in every situation. You can construct this figure in your mind without drawing it externally. You are then performing a purely mental operation through the power of your own inner being; you do not need to step outside yourself at all. Imagine for a moment that what is called the world of sensation—and what enters a person through the external senses—does not exist at all. So if you mentally eliminate the external world entirely—constructing space in your mind—then in this space all triangles would have a sum of angles equal to 180°. To arrive at a geometric-mathematical insight, it is not necessary for an external object to approach your senses; all that is required is inner experience, which takes place within consciousness itself.

[ 9 ] I had to use this example because it is the simplest and most practical—people already know it since they learned it in school. I could also give you the example of Hegelian logic, in which case you would have a collection of internal concepts, but we would find many unfamiliar elements in it, since Hegelian logic is unknown to the vast majority of people. From this, you can see how a person can arrive at insights purely from within, without being stimulated by anything external.

[ 10 ] If you create a mental image of what is externally accessible in the world in a mathematically constructive way, then you have grasped a part of how the consciousness of the archangels works. For they do not perceive at all the world as it appears to the outer human being—a world of external colors and sounds. Such a being never has these sensations; it never has the possibility of approaching anything with its sense of touch and thereby receiving perceptions. Such a being never has these experiences. But it does have the experience that can be expressed in words: “Now something is coming to me from a world that inspires me; this world has passed through my consciousness and fills my consciousness.” Now, the archangels are not beings who merely engage in mathematical thinking; rather, human beings are so imperfect that they can only form mental images of the activity of the archangels in terms of abstractions such as mathematical truths. They are what appears normal to both human beings and the collective consciousness of peoples. From this, however, you can deduce that the outer physical world—which exists for human beings through the senses—has nothing to do with the archangels. In the form in which the physical world exists for human beings—that is, the way human beings receive the manifestations of the physical world through their senses—the world does not exist in this way for the archangels. So if you exclude from your worldview everything that exists only as a physical sensation, if you set aside everything you have taken in through external perceptions, then you are excluding from your worldview precisely what has nothing to do with the archangels. So we will ask ourselves: Yes, what, of all that can also become human consciousness, still exists for the archangels? What of these things remains for the national spirits? Everything you experience in the feeling soul—what you experience as ordinary pleasure brought about by the external world, as ordinary suffering brought about by the external world—everything that consists of colors, sounds, and sensory perceptions of the external world in general—is of no concern to these beings. So set aside the entire content of the human sensory soul, and tell yourself: whatever is present in the world picture by virtue of the sensory soul existing for human beings is of no significance to the archangels; they do not intervene there. Even a part of the intellectual soul is not yet an element of significance to the archangels, insofar as it is stimulated by external sensations. What has been stimulated from without—what a human being processes with the intellect and experiences through the emotions—is also of no concern to the archangels. But certain things do come into play in the human intellectual soul, which the human being experiences, so to speak, on the same plane as the archangels. We can perceive quite clearly that such things influence the human intellectual or emotional soul when we see, for example, how what we call our moral ideals come to us in our lives. There would be no moral ideals if we were limited to forming impressions only of those things that evoke pleasure or pain, and to reflecting only on what confronts us from the external world as sensory perception. We would, of course, be able to take pleasure in the flowers of the field, or in a beautiful landscape, but we would never be able to be inspired in our hearts by an ideal that does not shine toward us from the external world—one that we can inscribe in our soul and for which we then become passionate. But we must not only be passionate and feel within the feeling soul; we must also think about it. A person who merely feels, who does not think, may be a dreamer, but can never be a practical person. We must not simply take ideals from the outside into the feeling soul, but rather allow them to flow in from the spiritual world and process them in the intellectual or emotional soul. Artistic and architectural ideals, and so on, are present in the intellectual or emotional soul and in the soul of consciousness. They are connected to that which a person cannot perceive from the outside, but which nevertheless glows through and permeates their inner being, so that it constitutes a part of their life.

[ 11 ] Look at the lives of peoples from epoch to epoch—how they unfolded, and how ever-new mental images and mysteries of the world arose within them. Where could the Greeks have gotten their mental images of Zeus and Athena if they had relied solely on external perception! What is contained in the wisdom traditions, mythologies, religions, and sciences of the peoples sprang from within. Thus we must see that half of our inner being—half of our intellectual or emotional soul and our conscious soul—is filled from within; and to the very extent that a human being is inwardly permeated by what has just been described, to that extent can the archangels penetrate into the human inner being, and that is also the extent of the archangels’ actual life. You must therefore exclude from your inner life whatever is taken in from the outside by the soul of feeling and processed by the soul of reason or the emotional soul. But then you also have what we call the “I.” For us, the “I” is the highest link in our being. What we bring into our moral consciousness are ideals—moral, aesthetic, and ideal thoughts. Just as a person’s outlook is, so to speak, closed off inwardly, yet can open outward to the external world through the senses, so he can say: I perceive colors, sounds, cold, and warmth. But they also have the awareness that behind these perceptions of colors, sounds, warmth, and cold there is something more essential. These are the beings of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. That is what lies behind them; so that human beings can, in the manner suggested, conceive of the world continuing beyond that. Beyond that, however, the view is closed off to the ordinary person. If that were not the case, there could be no materialism at all. If human beings had an unobstructed view of the realm that extends upward from the intellectual soul and the conscious soul, then it would be just as foolish to doubt the spiritual world as it would be foolish today to cast doubt on the existence of the animal, plant, and mineral worlds.

[ 12 ] Now consider how the “I” in human beings—the highest link in this chain—encompasses within itself the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness. In the case of the archangel, his soul life begins with his experiences in the soul of understanding or the emotional soul, then ascends into the “I,” which, however, extends into a world of higher realms—a realm of spiritual realities—in which it lives just as a human being lives in the realm of animals, plants, and minerals. Thus, we can say: Although we must recognize that this archangelic being can possess in its soul life what we call the human “I,” we cannot say that the archangel’s “I” is of the same nature as this “I.” The archangel’s “I” is therefore not identical with the human “I.” The archangel’s “I” lies precisely two levels higher, so that the archangel is rooted with its “I” in a higher world. Just as human beings, through their sensory perceptions, see colors and hear sounds, so the archangel looks down upon the world that the “I” encompasses as objective truth—only that something from that part of the astral realm which we humans know within ourselves as the intellectual or emotional soul is still grouped around this “I.” Imagine these beings looking into a world that does not extend to the mineral, plant, or animal kingdoms. Imagine that their gaze—which is a spiritual one—is directed toward their world picture, and that they perceive focal points there. These focal points are the human “I’s,” around which something else is grouped that resembles a kind of aura. There you have the image of how the archangelic being looks down upon the national personalities that belong to the archangel—the very people who make up the nation. Its world consists of an astral field of perception containing certain centers. These centers, these focal points, are the individual human personalities; they are the individual human “I”s. Just as colors and tones, warmth and cold lie within our field of perception and constitute the meaningful world for us, so for the archangelic beings—for the national spirits—we ourselves, with a part of our inner life, constitute the field of perception, and just as we enter the outer world and work on it and transform it into instruments, so are we—insofar as we belong to this or that national spirit—the objects that belong to the field of activity of the archangels or national spirits.

[ 13 ] There we gain insight—as strange as it may sound—into a higher epistemology of the archangels. This is, in fact, quite different from the epistemology of human beings, for even what is “given” to the archangels is entirely different. For human beings, what is given is that which is spread out in space, which meets us through the senses as color, sound, warmth, cold, hardness, and softness. For the archangels, the given is what appears within the field of human consciousness. For them, this is a sum of centers, of focal points, around which human inner experiences are woven, insofar as these experiences take place in the intellectual or emotional soul; their activity, however, is of a higher order in this case.

[ 14 ] How, then, does the worldview of the archangels or national spirits become specialized? For human beings, the worldview becomes specialized in that when they grasp any object with their hand, they perceive it as warm or cold. The archangel experiences something similar when encountering human individuals. There he meets people who are more animated by inner activity, who possess a richer inner life; these make a more intense impression on him. Others he finds casual, lethargic, with a poor inner life; these are the beings who appear to him in the same way that warmth and cold do in the worldview of the human soul. This is how the archangel’s worldview becomes specialized, and depending on this, he can make use of individual human beings and work on their behalf by weaving that which, arising from his very being, is meant to guide the entire people.

[ 15 ] But in other ways as well, the life of this archangel is connected in a certain way to the life of the people he presides over. Just as human beings experience periods of ascent and descent in life—a time of ascent in youth and a time of descent in old age—so too does the archangel experience his youth and old age within the ascending and descending culture of a people.

[ 16 ] Now we must once again look into the inner life of such an archangel. From what I have said, you have probably already realized that what a human being receives from the outside, the archangel receives from within; in return, when the national individualities arise within him as centers, the archangel experiences the sensation that what approaches him—though it arises from within his consciousness—is, so to speak, something foreign to him. It is something that arises in him just as thoughts arise in our consciousness. In a similar way, this also approaches him, just as youth and old age approach a human being. A human being experiences youth as a feeling of freshness in their limbs, as if they were striving upward and developing. In old age, these limbs become, so to speak, limp and fail to function. This is something a human being feels coming from within. The archangel, while he does indeed feel everything as coming from within himself, nevertheless perceives the rise and fall of a people as something foreign—as something he feels is independent of him, with which he therefore has no direct connection, but which nevertheless prompts him to incarnate in a particular people at a specific time. When the opportunity to incarnate arises—when there is a people living in the ascending phase of their life, in the full vigor of their ascent—then the Archangel descends, just as a human being descends after having lived through the period between death and a new birth. Thus the Archangel likewise descends into a people and incarnates within them. Likewise, the archangel senses his death—the necessity of withdrawing from that particular people—when the individual perceptions, the centers he perceives, begin to be less productive, less active, when they begin to have less substance. Then comes the time when he leaves such a national community; he then enters his Devachan, his life between death and a new birth, in order to seek out a national community in a different way at a later opportunity. Thus, the youthfully ascending life of a people signifies the youth of the national spirit, and he perceives it as a fresh, flowing element in which he lives. It perceives the declining period of national life as a withering of the centers that lie within its sphere of perception. — This, then, should serve as a kind of insight into the inner life of such folk-souls.

[ 17 ] If we bear in mind what has just been said, then we may say: In a certain sense, such a folk-soul is quite distant from the individual human life, for within the individual human being, that which he possesses in his sensory soul and in the lower part of his intellectual soul constitutes a realm into which the national spirit—the archangel—does not extend. For the individual, however, it is something very real. The individual feels very strongly that this is connected to the innermost, most intimate aspects of his own life. In a certain sense, the nature of the archangel—the guiding national spirit—is something that hovers above the individual. The Archangel who guides the people stands alien to the personal experiences that a human being has through sensory perceptions. — But there are mediators, and it is important that we understand that such mediators exist. These are the beings we call angels, who stand between the Archangel and the human being. Take this in the strictest sense of the word: national spirits are archangels—they are spirits who have completed the transformation of their astral body into the Spirit-Self or Manas, and are now transforming their Life-Body into Buddhi. In the midst of these beings and human beings stand the angelic beings. These are beings who are engaged in transforming their astral bodies into Manas, or the Spirit-Self, but have not yet completed this work. Human beings are at the beginning of this work in the present age, while the angelic beings are nearing its end, though by no means finished with it. Therefore, the realms of these beings are much more intimately connected with those in which human beings dwell and live. We can say that the angelic beings, with their entire soul-nature, are drawn to what we call the astral body. That is why they have a full understanding of everything the human personality can experience through suffering and joy. But because, on the other hand, they tower far higher above the human ego—because they possess a higher ego, and because they can perceive a part of the higher world—their realm of consciousness extends into the realms where the realm of consciousness of the archangels is located. They are thus truly the mediators between the archangels and the individual human soul. For their part, they receive the commands of the national spirits and carry them into the individual souls, and through this mediation arises what the individual can accomplish—not merely for his own progress and development, but for his entire people.

[ 18 ] Human beings experience these two currents side by side. One current is the one that carries him forward from incarnation to incarnation; it concerns his own affairs, which he must attend to above all else in order to fulfill the duty that is, in essence, the most demanding of all, for it is his very own duty. They must not stand still, for otherwise they would leave the seeds inherent within them fallow if they did not tend to them. But this is his very own concern, through which he advances from incarnation to incarnation. What he contributes to his national community, however—what pertains to the affairs of his immediate national community—constitutes the inspiration of the angel who conveys the archangel’s commands to individual human beings. We can therefore quite well form a mental image of our having a people in a certain region of the Earth, and over this people spreads the national aura, the etheric aura; and here, too, the forces of the national spirit come into play and modify the human etheric body according to the three kinds of forces. What influences this national aura is the archangel. We conceive of him as a higher being—a being who stands two stages higher in evolution than human beings, who hovers over the entire nation, and who issues directives regarding what this nation must accomplish on a grand scale. The Archangel knows what must be done during the nation’s ascent, during its youthful vigor; he knows how the nation’s transition from youth to old age must be utilized so that its impulses can take effect properly.

[ 19 ] The Archangel shapes these broad outlines. Here on this physical plane, however, the individual human being must do the work; here, the human being must ensure that these great goals are realized. Between the individual human being and the Archangel stand the angels as mediating beings, who then urge the human being toward the place where he must be directed, so that what corresponds to the Archangel’s grand designs may take place in the collective consciousness of the people. We form a true mental image of the matter when we conceive of what I have described not merely as an allegory, but as reality as much as possible.

[ 20 ] Now, what we have called the abnormal archangels—the spirits of language, understood in the sense I described yesterday—are at work within the entire fabric that the archangel weaves. But we have also described how the abnormal spirits of the personality—the Archai—exert their influence. Here we can now look toward the realm where the Archangel issues his commands, where he assigns the missions that are carried onward by the angels into individual human beings. But the archangel can also exert an influence within the realm of the abnormal spirits of personality, and in the mutual interaction between the archangel and the abnormal spirits of personality—because they pursue goals entirely different from those of the archangel—the archangel’s actions may, in a certain sense, be thwarted. When this happens—when these abnormal spirits of the personality thwart the Archangel’s actions—we may observe that groups with specific tasks form within a people itself. Through the formation of such groups with specific tasks within a people, the activity of the spirits of the personality becomes outwardly visible. This can continue for many centuries. For example, precisely in the region where we are now called upon to work in the field of Spiritual Science—in Germany—you have witnessed over the centuries this interplay between the Archangel of the Germans and the sometimes resistant individual personality spirits. In the fragmentation of the unified German nation into smaller ethnic groups, you have seen an interplay between the abnormal personality spirits and the Archangel.

[ 21 ] Such peoples are not very centralized; they place greater emphasis on the development of individuality. In a certain sense, this has its advantages, because it allows for great diversity and the expression of many nuances of national character.

[ 22 ] But you can also consider the alternative scenario, in which it is not the abnormal spirit of the personality, but rather the normal spirit of the personality—as expressed in the spirit of the times—that, at a given moment, becomes, so to speak, more important than it otherwise is in the ordinary course of events.

[ 23 ] So when we look at a people, we look to the archangel as its primary power. The spirit of the age then exerts its influence, issuing its commands to the archangel, who in turn passes them on to the angels, and they convey them to the individual human being. Because one usually sees only what is closest to oneself, in this composite process one regards the work of the archangels as the most important. But it can also happen that the spirit of the age must issue more serious, more weighty commands—that it is, so to speak, compelled to take something away from the archangel because it must separate a portion of the people so that the task of the age, the mission of the spirit of the age, can be fulfilled. In such a case, national communities then split off from others. There, the spirit of the age visibly gains the upper hand over the work of the archangel. Such a case occurred when the Dutch people split off from the foundation they shared with the German people. Holland and Germany originally had a common Archangel, and the split occurred because, at a certain moment, the Zeitgeist set aside a portion and then entrusted to that portion what had become the important concerns of the modern Zeitgeist. Everything you can read in Dutch history—though history is merely an outward expression, a maya, of what is an inner process—is merely a reflection of this inner process. Thus, in this case, we see the outward unfolding of the separation of the Dutch people from the common German national identity. The inner core, however, is that the Zeitgeist needed an instrument to carry out what was the Zeitgeist’s overseas mission. The entire mission of the Dutch people has been a mission of the Zeitgeist. And for that purpose, they were split off to enable the Zeitgeist to carry out something important with this group at a specific time. What historians describe is merely external maya, which conceals the true facts more than it reveals them.

[ 24 ] Elsewhere, too, you may encounter what has strikingly occurred in this regard, namely, that a portion of a people had to secede from the body of the nation. This is the case with the Portuguese people. You will search in vain for any other reasons for this than that it is simply a victory of the spirit of the age over the archangel. If you review the individual events, you will find that the opportunity was seized here to form a distinct national identity—there were not many such opportunities. The Spanish people formed a parent nation together with the Portuguese. The external reasons may be that the rivers are navigable only as far as the Portuguese border. There are no other external reasons. On the other hand, there is the internal reason that the tasks had to be fulfilled—tasks that were specifically those of the Portuguese and were different from the tasks of the united Spanish people. Here we see the spirits of the age developing, for a time, a more intense activity than they usually carry out. We see the previous harmony replaced by a different one. We see the spirit of the age, instead of issuing its commands to the archangel, intervening directly in the history of the people, and we see how the other spirits use this opportunity to incarnate themselves. When such a national entity is split off, the spirit of the age, for a time, assumes the functions of the archangel to such an extent—in the initial enthusiasm that has permeated the individual people—that the split exists hardly as anything other than a rush and a drive within this people. One sees the haste and the urging, the liveliness that arises from the mission of the Zeitgeist. But then the possibility arises that a normal and an abnormal archangel will incarnate within the seceded part of the people. Thus we see the development of the Dutch and Portuguese peoples, who then receive their own normal and their own abnormal archangels. In what is embodied therein—in the diversity of the people’s temperament, which finds expression in individual personalities—we see the interplay of what we have called these spiritual beings. In a most remarkable way, we see the interplay of these spiritual beings, and we then recognize that the history unfolding outwardly is merely a result of their activity.

[ 25 ] Little by little, the statement that the external world is maya, or illusion, takes on an increasingly concrete meaning. What happens in external history is merely the external reflection of spiritual, supersensory beings, just as the outer human being is merely the external reflection of the inner human being. That is why I had to say—and this must be emphasized again and again—that the statement “The world is maya” is of the utmost importance. However, it is not enough to emphasize it in the abstract; rather, one must be able to put it into practice in every detail.

[ 26 ] But we have now seen that other spirits and hierarchies are also at work in what we call the world. We have spoken of the normal and abnormal archangels. The abnormal archangels have now revealed themselves to us as true spirits of form or forces that have merely renounced a certain aspect of their development. We may then ask: But what about the normal spirits of form? We regard the normal spirits of form as standing four degrees higher than human beings. — We will have more to say about these normal spirits of form in our next meditation. — These, then, are beings that are four degrees higher than human beings. However, what we referred to yesterday as hierarchies is not limited to what we have finally termed, at the highest level, the spirits of form. Higher than these stand the Spirits of Movement, the Dynameis, the Powers; even higher are the beings we call Kyriotetes, Dominions, or Spirits of Wisdom. You will find these various spiritual beings described both in my Secret Science and in my work on the Akashic Records.

[ 27 ] Now you will be able to understand that the law of renunciation, of remaining behind, also applies to the higher spirits; that is, that even the spirits of movement with certain qualities can remain behind—spirits of movement that are five levels higher than human beings—and that certain spirits of movement are today contained within human evolution as if they were merely spirits of form, forces. With regard to certain qualities, these are actually spirits of motion, and with regard to other qualities—those to which they have renounced—they are spirits of form. Thus, we have normal spirits of form who stand four levels higher than human beings, and other spirits who act on the same plane as the spirits of form, but who are actually spirits of motion. This, then, is a realm in which—just as we have found a realm in which normal and abnormal archangels interact—the normal and abnormal spirits of form, the spirits of motion that have fallen behind, interact. Through this interaction, however, something occurs that very much concerns human beings; through it, the formation of what we call the human races takes place, which we must distinguish from the peoples.

[ 28 ] If we look at the matter this way, we do not end up with a confusing concept, but rather a clear one; we must not lump everything together. A people is not a race. The concept of a people has nothing to do with the concept of a race. A race can split into a wide variety of peoples. Races are different communities than national communities. We certainly speak correctly of a German, a Dutch, or a Norwegian people; but we speak of a Germanic race. What, then, is at work in the concept of race? At work there are those entities we designate as the normal spirits of form or forces, and those entities we have come to know as the abnormal spirits of form—which are actually spirits of movement carrying out the missions of the spirits of form. That is why human beings are divided into races. That which makes people the same across the entire globe—that which makes every human being, regardless of which race they belong to, a human being, a member of the whole of humanity—is brought about by the normal spirits of form. But that which plays out across the entire Earth, that which divides all of humanity into races—this is brought about by the abnormal spirits of form, who have relinquished their role in favor of the fact that not a single humanity appears on Earth, but rather a multitude of human beings.

[ 29 ] There, so to speak, we gain the foundation, the ground from which the individual national identities first emerge. Through this, we gain a panoramic view of the entire Earth, find that the Earth is destined to sustain humanity through the normal spirits of form, and discover that the spirits of movement that have lagged behind enter this realm of the spirits of form and, as abnormal spirits of form, divide humanity across the entire globe into the various races. When we look into what these spirits actually want, when we delve into the goals and tasks of these normal and abnormal spirits of form, then we will understand what they intend for the human races and how, through them, a foundation is created for what emerges from them. When we then consider a specific people on its own, we will have grasped and understood that people.