The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] An essay titled “Three Worlds,” attributed to the author Hsi-Lung, appeared in the November issue of the Catholic-leaning journal *Hochland*. It is written from a Chinese perspective on contemporary civilization and the forces driving it. We need not concern ourselves here so much with how this essay is rooted in Chinese civilization or what it signifies within that context; rather, we must be interested in the fact that it has emerged within our own European world and examines contemporary civilization from a certain perspective. First of all, the division into three worlds refers to what the author considers to be the three most significant cultural impulses of the present. The first cultural impulse he distinguishes is modern Western civilization, which he then contrasts with the second cultural impulse—Eastern, Asian culture—and we will discuss the third one later. He views modern European civilization from an Asian perspective—a perspective in which human beings are rooted in conceptions that spring from an ancient Earth civilization. In a certain sense, these ideas find their expression in the sensory world of people who are immersed in what still exists today as Asian culture—a culture derived from ancient, great, and mighty wisdom traditions that have, however, fallen into decadence.

[ 2 ] These sentiments convey, with tremendous intensity, much of what might be called a penetrating critique of modern European civilization in particular. The Asian of today—as we can also see in Rabindranath Tagore—speaks of European civilization from the perspective of an ancient culture, and from this perspective he criticizes, in a series of negations, what this European civilization has to offer. We need only consider the sentences that appear in this essay to immediately see the critical spirit from which springs what resonates from Asia in response to European civilization: “Yes, modern European scholarship has itself taken on something of the laborious spirit of servitude, of the drudgery of the technical age. As hair-splitting specialization—obscured and drowned out by thousands of quotations or armored with statistics and petty experiments—it pours out into the vast expanse. No depth, no wisdom, no life left! True, its results, measured by its own standards, may be highly valued; but no other assessment was permitted, and anyone who longed for one ran the risk of being considered backward and medieval. It was no different in the economic sphere. Where machinery displaced life, industrial competition filled the gaps with new needs and the means and ways to satisfy them, and those who had been utterly disinherited were carried along by the organization of society for a while longer. Thus, even the broad masses eventually seemed submissive. Indeed, the age of global trade, of never-resting factories, of standing armies, of cinematographs, machine guns, skyscrapers, gramophones, and the mysteries of the world boasted: “All this is subject to me!” But the indignant elements and human atoms rumbled, heralding an ominous echo that is still confirmed and expressed today in war and revolution. It resounds through all this restlessness: — “and it all boils down to destruction.”

[ 3 ] In other words, a sharp critique of what has emerged as modern European civilization within the course of modern human development! Let us try—and this will all be quite obvious—to visualize the actual defining characteristic of this European civilization. In fact, it is rooted in what has emerged—and what we have often described—over the last three to four centuries, during which, on the one hand, scientific knowledge has, in a certain sense, emancipated itself from the historical tradition stemming from the religious life of earlier ages in Europe. And this modern civilization is further rooted in everything that has become associated with these scientific insights: modern technology. Everything that has emerged from this has, I would say, developed from human foundations in a certain contrast to historical tradition. The figures who stand at the starting point of this modern civilization are a defining feature of our European life.

[ 4 ] Let us consider, for example, a figure like Copernicus, to whom a large part of what is alive in this European civilization in the direction just characterized can be traced. He is a Catholic priest. He therefore initially lives with the ideas that were instilled in him as a Catholic priest. But he lived in an age in which, alongside what his upbringing had given him, there arose within his soul what would later become the mechanical view of the heavens characteristic of modern times—from which, in essence, also sprang — or at least sprang from the same source — the mechanical worldview of modern times as a whole, and indeed the mechanical world order in politics and economic life.

[ 5 ] All of this now exists in such a way—as it increasingly engulfs the widest circles of Western civilization—that it seems to the Easterners as though it had only a body, but no soul. The soul is missing everywhere. And it seems to the Easterners as if this soullessness, this immersion in purely mechanical thinking, were also responsible for everything that strikes the Easterners about Europeans when those Europeans actually encounter them. The Easterners feel completely misunderstood by Europeans in all their sensibilities and in what they call their wisdom.

[ 6 ] A few points can be cited here as characteristic. The text explains how Japan has indeed adopted certain aspects of Western European civilization, but how, from an Eastern perspective, Japan thereby faces a certain danger: “Admittedly, the Japanese people now run the risk of confusing their deeply rooted patriotism and chivalry with European piracy and a spirit of exploitation. Nevertheless, the force that helps preserve the ancient works and unites East Asia with the South into a certain unity—Buddhism—will not lose its effectiveness anytime soon.”

[ 7 ] So what the Asian sees in what the Europeans present to him is practical piracy and a spirit of exploitation. And the Asian certainly sees it this way: that along with the mechanical worldview—along with everything that has been introduced in opposition to the older tradition—this spirit of piracy, this sense of exploitation, has also come. This Asian believes that Europeans have gradually forgotten to infuse a soul into what they live out as culture or civilization. The Asian holds the view that Europeans no longer know at all what a soul is. The following passage is characteristic: “And what did Europe itself do?”—he meant, in modern times. “Where have its most sacred treasures gone? Buried, forgotten, moved, or piled up in museums, labeled.”

[ 8 ] So what is essentially already there is seen only by Asians—I would say—in sharp contours. Everything that used to be life, that had an effect on people—as they absorbed the spirit from architecture and murals suited to that purpose, as they heard the same spirit resonating from architecture and painting— all of that—so the Asian believes—is, in essence, housed in museums by modern European civilization, piled up, labeled, so that it is viewed merely as antiquities. And the Asian feels strongly that what was the soul of an earlier civilization is, in essence, also labeled in this way, and that Europeans no longer actually know what constitutes the soul of the world in his sense. Thus, the Asian sees in Europeans, above all, a lack of soul.

[ 9 ] A scene is depicted there that, in a certain way, expresses how Asians think: “And the peoples of the East, this second world? Did they even have sacred possessions? How could they dare—having been pounded to pieces a dozen times by the cannon fire of allied European forces—to still act independently, and now even intellectually? In the end, that was something that could pose a danger to European civilization! — Is it even worth getting to know?”

[ 10 ] So the Asian asks whether, if one wants to be human in the fullest sense of the word—if one views the world not only from the standpoint of physical mechanisms but also from the standpoint of having a soul—it is even worth paying much attention to what Europeans consider to be of paramount importance.

[ 11 ] “One afternoon, against the backdrop of the towering walls of the Summer Palace on the ‘Mountain of Ten Thousand Bliss,’ the Empress Dowager, who was nearly seventy years old, was resting. She had had a yellow silk throne placed at her favorite spot on the ornate marble barge in the great lake. Amid the consummate splendor, the pavilion’s destroyed sculptures, paintings, and stained-glass windows stood out all the more, and turning to a new lady-in-waiting, Tzu-hsi said: “The European soldiers did that (in 1900), and I am not willing to have everything restored and to forget their lesson.” She recalled all her bitter experiences, and how, nearly forty years earlier, a loyal government official had described the spirit of the Europeans to her: “They have concluded some twenty treaties with China, containing at least ten thousand written characters. Is there a single word in any one of these that refers to reverence for parents and the cultivation of virtue—a word that refers to the observance of ceremonies, duties, integrity, and a proper sense of shame, the four principles of our people? No, and again no! All they speak of is material gain.” (Wu-ko-tau to Tzu-hsi, 1873). Nor could the Empress possibly respect the ideal counterpart to European expansion—the Christian mission—for, as head of state, she had known throughout her life only the material advantages that the European powers derived from protecting the missionaries. She had a keen eye for all the intellectual clumsiness and arrogance of the Europeans who crowded around her, and toward the end of her life she did appreciate technical aids such as railroads, mining, the army, and the navy—but only as means to an end. Often slandered, she was a complete and great person. Every day, the morning hours were devoted to the ministers’ briefings, the Grand Council, matters concerning exhibitions, and the reports of the viceroys, examiners, and censors, whose frank, often uncomfortable judgments she nevertheless frequently heeded,” and so on.

[ 12 ] Well, that, I would say, is Asian criticism. It would always be expressed in such a tone if we heard it from the mouth of a figure who today stands at the very heart of what remains in Asia of the ancient culture of wisdom. Of course, every Asian contrasts European civilization with the “second world”—the one he himself inhabits—while paying little attention to the fact that this world, at its origins, was indeed inspired by a wisdom, intuition, and imagination that are currently incomprehensible to Europeans, but that it has since fallen into decadence. The Asian as such—the Asian who is educated in our sense—speaks in a way that reveals his sense that this Earth is a dwelling place for human beings; on this Earth, beings of a higher order than those we call human beings once founded a civilization, and human beings have adopted this civilization. Human beings have lived within it, and the Asian still believes he lives within this civilization of the gods. In a sense, the Earth has inherited a treasure trove of ancient wisdom that speaks to the whole human being—not merely to the intellect, as does European mechanistic culture. And this Asian has no interest in what might become of the Earth, apart from the fact that it is the bearer of what it has inherited as an ancient legacy.

[ 13 ] When it comes to this entire way of thinking and imagining, to perceiving things from such a standpoint, Europeans have, in essence, lost all understanding within today’s civilization; that much must be admitted. Today’s European reads Homer, reads about Achilles; he appreciates them in a certain sense, but one could say that from the very beginning he does not really take them seriously. And he cannot do so, having grown out of the civilization of the present. How can Europeans take seriously what resounds to them from ancient European times when, for example, they read Homer and interpret it through their contemporary mindset: “Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Pelides Achilles”? Homer does not narrate the story himself; he says that the Muse narrates it—that is, that a spiritual being within him narrates it. The European does not take this seriously. He takes it as a mere phrase. He takes it as something—well, just something that’s said. Deep down, he has no real sense that the Greek knew himself to be inspired by divine beings who truly spoke within his soul, that he did not believe his mouth was proclaiming what his intellect or reason had formulated, but rather that his mouth was proclaiming what a divine being within him was speaking. Who today feels deeply and thoroughly that the Greek, who sang in this way, felt himself to be the vessel of this divine being?

[ 14 ] How did this Greek actually feel? Well, he felt that even in this divine being he saw that which once founded a civilization on Earth for the beings called human beings—though it was not itself a human being in the sense in which we speak of human beings today—that which has remained within humanity, that which, as a divine-spiritual being, can inspire human beings; so that it must not be understood as if these were merely human voices within one’s own human inner being. And do we notice today that profound contrast that confronts us when we compare Greek epic poetry with Greek drama, when we compare Homer with Aeschylus? Homer sings by letting the Muse sing; he sings as an epic poet, as a narrative poet. This is entirely connected to the ancient Greeks’ belief that ancient beings, who descended from the spiritual worlds to Earth, are still active within human beings today and sing of what once was—from which the Earth arose, and from which everything within which we live came into being.

[ 15 ] When one indulges in such a narrative about what the present civilization has brought forth, one must surrender to those divine beings who once descended from higher spiritual worlds and who can now inspire human beings. The Greeks saw the essence of epic poetry in the fact that it was expressed by beings who had come to this Earth from previous incarnations on Earth. In addition, the Greeks recognized that something already lives within human beings that will only undergo its proper development in the future—something that is still subhuman in people today. The Greeks perceived this as Dionysian. They expressed it through those divine figures to whom they always—even if only subtly in the case of the Dionysian—attributed certain animalistic characteristics. What surges up from the depths of human impulsiveness, human emotion, and human willpower—the Greeks perceived this as something that is still chaotic and disordered in human beings, something that will find an expression just as serene in future worlds—into which the Earth will incarnate—as that which human beings can describe today in quiet contemplation, in quiet reflection. And to that which still surges forth from human beings as a spiritual-animal force—and which is the Dionysian—the Greeks attributed drama. Thus we can still see in Aeschylus that in one of Greece’s earliest dramas, there was initially only one main character—the god Dionysus—around whom the chorus developed and asserted itself, singing of that which related to this Dionysus. When the Greeks looked inward, they said to themselves: Within me lives something higher than what it means to be human, something that has come down to earth from ancient worlds. If I surrender myself to it, I surrender myself to something superhuman, and I say: “Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus.” Thus the Greek turned to the divine-spiritual past from which humanity sprang. Thus the Greek became an epic poet. When the Greek turned toward the future, he saw what would one day—when the Earth is superseded by other worlds—become human; he saw this in the Dionysian, animal-spiritual form, in dramatic turmoil, in dramatic movement. He viewed humanity from the outside and spoke not of the Muse, but of Dionysus, and thus he became dramatic.

[ 16 ] And the Greeks saw what was truly human in poetry only in lyric poetry. They saw the superhuman in epic poetry. They saw the subhuman—which dramatizes itself and, through its own power, creates the seed for the future—in drama. The Greeks saw in lyric poetry that which ebbs and flows in a human, rhythmic way within human nature itself.

[ 17 ] This is how the Greek immersed himself soulfully in the spiritual-physical world; this is how he perceived himself in connection with his spiritual-physical world. And one must take the invocation of the Muse seriously if one truly wishes to portray the intellectual life of the Greeks. And the fact that ancient drama did not actually depict merely human events, but rather the workings of Dionysus within the human being—this, too, must be taken seriously. For one must point out that the Greeks would say, for example: If one does not look at a person inwardly, but only outwardly, then that person appears to one in the Dionysian form. Apollo and Dionysus—Apollo, the leader of the Muses, the preserver of what lives on from the past into the present of the earth, and Dionysus, the churning, ravaging seed that will only become clear in the future—these are the two great opposites. And in the middle stood the lyricism of the Greeks.

[ 18 ] One must indeed look back to such aspects of Europe’s primordial culture—where this sense of oneself as a human being in the cosmos, in relation to the gods of the past and the gods of the future, took root—if one wishes to connect the proper sensibility with what has come to be today; one must contrast this older aspect of European culture with what today exists as a mechanistic worldview—which is precisely what Asians criticize so sharply. And one must have a sense of how a modern figure like Goethe—who, after all, was not caught up in the mechanistic system in which we find ourselves today, but rather lived in the era when this system was only just beginning to take shape—how Goethe, with every fiber of his soul, yearned to break free from this European way of life and longed for what European civilization once was. That is precisely what lay in Goethe’s feelings when, in the 1780s, he longed for Italy in order to glimpse, through what still remained there in its decadence, that from which European civilization had actually sprung.

[ 19 ] One must realize that, while Asians live amid the decadence of this ancient culture of wisdom, one must also realize that, despite the fact that their culture and civilization are in a state of decadence, they nevertheless have a keen sense of what has become of Europe compared to what it once was. Hence his sharp criticism, which works with such intense shadows and sets off the lights that, in his view, can still be seen in the Orient—which may indeed be outwardly dirty and all sorts of things, but which, in his opinion, has a soul, and which, when he looks upon its soul, feels no compulsion whatsoever to take an interest in what springs from admiration for railroads, steamships, cinematographs, gramophones, Haeckel’s cosmic mysteries, and so on. Such thinking about the mysteries of the world is completely foreign to the Asian, for it is based on a combination of what only the senses can observe, whereas he knows that it was a reality: that humanity received from higher spirits that which then takes root in the soul and actually makes a person human.

[ 20 ] People today have become extraordinarily petty in this regard, believing themselves to be great and viewing what once existed in early European culture as belonging to a bygone historical era, while considering as great only what European civilization produced, particularly in the 19th century. Today, as we live in an age of great decisions, people must rise above this pettiness; they must be able to lift their spirits and recognize that it does mean something when there are people over there in Asia who still carry within their souls a living awareness of spirit and soul, and who view everything that Europeans call their greatness with a sharp, devastating, corrosive criticism. We need to realize that this means something. One must say to oneself: What lives in Asian souls will one day be capable of leading to a European catastrophe, for it exerts a powerful impulse on the soul—precisely because it stands in opposition to the European soul’s constitution, which has been desolated in the mechanistic age and cannot rise to the task of building something spiritual and soulful from within itself. Those Europeans who feel the pull of European, mechanistic life would much rather—rather than look toward something being built—draw from the decadent Orient what they, in turn, need as spirituality. That is why they do not want to hear what is already resounding quite clearly from Asia today, and which always sounds like this: “And what did Europe itself do? Where have its most sacred treasures gone? Buried, forgotten, moved elsewhere, or piled up in museums, labeled. As far as the eye can see, it beholds nothing but tastelessness out there. And when Europe finds its way back from this chaos of hatred and deceit, wasted energy and misery, it will likely continue to manufacture, strike, colonize, and militarize; it will continue to conquer the whole world, but lose its soul.”

[ 21 ] And then reference is made to something a European has just said. After all, a European is basically capable only—I would say—of a half-hearted critique. Here we hear further: “Or should we expect a new salvation from America?” An authority on the subject such as Kühnemann comes to the conclusion (Germany and America, Chapter 13): “No one knew before 1914 what America really is.” But now we know: America represents neither progress nor a lesson for the moral world. It does not exemplify any new ideas of a higher humanity for us. On the contrary! The sin that clings to modern European culture appears nowhere as shockingly naked and uninhibited as here: the unscrupulous, blind selfishness of greed as the all-dominating idea. Nowhere else does it wear the garment of its ugliness more openly and hurtfully than here, in the hypocrisy that pays lip service to the service of humanity, while cold self-interest thinks and acts. »

[ 22 ] That is what the Asian man argued. But it is nonetheless something that—if one feels it, one must say so—fundamentally stems from a petty way of thinking. For it is—and I’ll put this rather bluntly—a professorial European grumbling in the face of what naturally lies plain as day, a grumbling that is entirely justified, indeed ten times over; but what lies behind Kühnemann’s critique of America is not the same as what lies behind the Asian critique of modern European civilization. What lies behind the Asian critique of modern European civilization is precisely something that speaks as the Muse once spoke for Homer. It is something that also possesses a power like that which the Greek dramatist once had when, observing humanity from the outside, he dramatized his Dionysian emotions. In a sense, it is the cosmos itself that speaks when an Asian criticizes European civilization.

[ 23 ] That is what Europeans should be telling themselves even today. They should vividly bring to mind this contrast that we must perceive today when we set what lives in our literature, in our writings, and in our so-called education side by side with an age that believed it had to proclaim earthly-cosmic conditions through the souls of the gods.

[ 24 ] And now we see all sorts of people who are beginning—but just beginning—to sense, out of the spirit of this European civilization, something of what actually exists within this civilization. In the same issue—which is truly magnificently compiled with regard to what is intended here, what most people today still do not see at all, but which small, and for the most part demonic, “cliques” practice—in this issue, which is truly masterfully compiled, you will also find a review of a book by Hans Ehrenberg. The essay reviewing this book is titled “Paths and Wrong Turns to Rome.” There we see how, in his book titled *The Heretic’s Homecoming: A Guide*, by Hans Ehrenberg—this Ehrenberg, who, as a contemporary university lecturer, is in a certain sense a representative figure and embodies all the characteristics of a professor—I have been able to observe this firsthand in him. We see how he becomes, so to speak, disheartened by the bleak atmosphere that pervades modern scholarship and modern education. The unresolved nature of this modern scholarship and modern education comes to the fore, so to speak. He says a resounding “no” to everything that has emerged in European life—and in the life of modern civilization as a whole—over the last three to four centuries. And he would like to see the religious spirit—the true religious spirit—return to modern sensibilities, to modern civilization. To this end, he points the way to Rome. And he draws attention to the fact that, alongside the Petrine commission, there is also a Johannine commission, and that the words “Little children, love one another” are attributed to John. — It is very telling that the very person who, in this issue of the journal, criticizes this, contrasts the “Little children, love one another” with another saying of John. He says to Ehrenberg: “I know of yet another saying of John: If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house and do not even greet him!”

[ 25 ] This is the expert, the religious scholar deeply immersed in Catholicism, who speaks entirely in the Roman spirit, whereas Ehrenberg merely dabbles in the Roman spirit. For the one who adds this to the other saying of John—“Little children, love one another”—knows—if I may now speak allegorically—that human beings need muscles and bones, that they need not merely muscles, tendons, and ligaments, but bones as well. Without allegory, speaking in reality, this means that human beings need a doctrine, a content, a life of the imagination that sustains them, and that at the foundation of this life of the imagination, emerging from it—just as muscles, tendons, and ligaments are attached to the bones—so love must be attached to what constitutes the skeletal framework of human spiritual and soul life: the doctrine, the content. This is what characterizes modern people like Hans Ehrenberg: they come along and say, “Science contains nothing; science drains us; science is unredeemed; science leaves our soul cold and empty. We must nurture love.” — But that would be tantamount to saying: We must forgo healthy bone formation in the human organism, for there is no apparent reason why bones are needed; a person will be much softer, much more pliable, and will adapt much more readily to circumstances if he is rickety. So that on the one hand we see the mechanism, and on the other, something that, with a certain right, wants to break free from this mechanism but strives toward a rickety form. For love remains a mere phrase if it seeks to stand on its own in this way, without the backdrop of spiritual teaching. There it springs solely from the despair of one who, lacking the courage to embrace the skeletal framework of our civilization’s culture, wishes to remain stuck in the rickets of civilization.

[ 26 ] Naturally, an Asian—in whom something of the robust strength of ancient Eastern wisdom still lives on—cannot see any promise for the future in such a European who yearns for “cultural rickets.” Thus, the Asian looks upon this Europe, where, on the one hand, mechanistic culture manifests itself—the ethical expression of which the Asian calls piracy and a spirit of exploitation—and where, on the other hand, there is a force that, in a sense, seeks only to cling to something with its muscles, but does not wish to stand on its own sturdy bones.

[ 27 ] By overlooking this, the Asian then arrives at a peculiar view, one that is, however, propagated with true relish within certain European circles, for these circles know exactly what they want; this must be emphatically stressed. And as for what all of this boils down to, I would prefer to read it out verbatim right now. This essay, “The Three Worlds”—written, as I have just explained, from the Asian, Chinese point of view—characterizes, as I have just described to you, the world of modern European civilization and the world of ancient Asian culture, and then presents the “third world.” And it characterizes these three things in the following way, as it were, crying out to Europe what the Asian must think—what still lives outside Europe as something capable of a future. “If Europe does not want to die, what must it do?”—this is roughly what the Asian asks. And to this he replies: “In truth, the synthesis must indeed be something third, a third world. And this third world opens up above and between the other two, indeed right in the midst of them, without denying any of their intrinsic value, even if only as factors of education. The very oldest is the spiritual world itself, inspired by the supernatural, which sustained itself for millennia in the small realm of the chosen people amid overpowering cultures and under manifold bondage, then transforming antiquity as Christian leaven and growing into a mighty tree under which the peoples dwell. It is the world of the Catholic Church in which the magnificent medieval human being was formed—the true and only harmonious European. It is the Catholic Church that, despite all hostilities, has endured, and whose voice has not fallen silent even amid the tumult of modern upheaval; indeed, it has resounded as the only noble and humane voice of our time, like the deep toll of a bell rising above the noise and debauchery of a great city. Where else is the much-invoked judge of world history to be found, where else the world’s conscience, where else the guardian of morality? This world alone has seen everything come and go; it alone is the world of authority. Facing the world of the East, it will powerfully resume the campaign of conquest waged by Saint Francis Xavier and his disciples. In the face of all the defiance of modernity, it shows that humility requires more strength and self-control than a sense of mastery. It is capable of clothing the beggar in royal dignity. It is the religion of splendor and renunciation, of the harmony between affirmation and negation, of freedom within piety and commitment to dogma, of the *philosophia perennis*, of strict rites, ceremonies, and discipline—and yet also of broad-minded understanding, adaptability, social welfare, artistic richness, and depth of feeling. And should this world be anxiously concerned about how it will be able to hold its own, and should it strive for compromises with modernity? And should even the children of this Church fear and ask, at every “Non possumus!” from the authorities: How will we survive? O you of little faith, have confidence; “I have overcome the world!” Not “I have come to terms with the world,” but harmony is to be sought higher, beyond the first and second worlds, in the supernatural, in the true superhuman nature of the Son of God and His Kingdom.

[ 28 ] The less blurred the notes are, the purer and more liberating the song’s final chord will ultimately be after all the dissonances. O felix culpa! That is why it is good to clearly articulate thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A full and rich humanity will then emerge. After all, everything in life is interwoven, and all three worlds exist together.”

[ 29 ] So, from the Asian-Chinese perspective, the sole hope for Europe lies in the Catholic Church, and we find in a journal—which, as mentioned, is exemplary in its composition and comes from people who are well aware of current trends— we find this view propagated in this journal, which interests us far more than the provenance of this essay as such. We find it stated here that there are three worlds in the new era: the world of modern European civilization, which has no soul, and the ancient Asian culture, which Europe cannot readily accept, since the two are incompatible; but in Europe, it is said, there exists a third—eternal Rome, the Catholic Church. It is upon this that we must build. — And today we see many, many Europeans tending decidedly toward this goal.

[ 30 ] What lies behind all of this, what lives within all of this—a great many people do not see it, because a great many people do not want to participate in what is actually surging and swelling within today’s modern world. On the one hand, people do not see what this modern, mechanistic civilization—which is, in fact, soulless—demands; on the other hand, they do not see the immense destructive force emanating from what is asserting itself in Asia; and they do not see the tremendous power with which work is being carried out from Rome in these chaotic times, nor the promising forces at work there. People do not want to see it because it is inconvenient; because it is necessary to adopt a certain perspective from which one must work diligently and energetically—spiritually, emotionally, and physically—if one wishes to achieve clarity in this area.