The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Peoples of the Earth in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The past few years have revealed the extent to which feelings of hatred and antipathy have been able to take root in the souls of the peoples of the earth. No one who is true to their feelings will close themselves off from the realization of what is, after all, a truth: that, on the path of this hatred and antipathy, life on Earth will not be able to make fruitful progress. And so, among the various reflections I have already been permitted to share with you here, it may well be permissible to speak—from the standpoint of Spiritual Science knowledge—about all that, according to this knowledge, can unite humanity, at least all of civilized humanity. Certainly, knowledge is not yet feeling. But insights from Spiritual Science—and this, too, has already been stated here—are more closely connected to the whole human being, to the innermost core of the human being itself, than external, abstract truths or external sensory truths. Therefore, truths of Spiritual Science are indeed well-suited to stir up sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will in people, so that the strong inner power that can be revealed through insights into the unifying force among peoples can very well serve to strengthen the feelings of sympathy and mutual love among the various peoples of the earth. And since, in the course of human development, humanity is progressing more and more from instinctive, unconscious life toward conscious life—toward a full, voluntary grasp of the human mission— it is already the case that, in the future, vague, emotional love alone will not suffice to unite the peoples of the earth; rather, there must arise a conscious, mutual understanding of what the nature of one people can expect from the nature of another.

[ 2 ] In one area today, it is relatively easy to see how necessary this unity among people across the globe is; we need only look at the terrible damage currently being done to economic life. And when we ask about the underlying reasons why this economic life has suffered such damage, and along which paths of destruction it is heading, we must first acknowledge that, stemming from an indefinable impulse of all humanity, there is a striving, a tendency, to turn the entire Earth into a single economic sphere. But on the other hand, the peoples of the world are not yet ready to elevate their national self-interest to such a degree that what these individual peoples can produce can truly become part of a global economic life; one people wants to snatch something away from another. As a result, the old instincts of the nations give rise to subjective perspectives, while the new instincts call for a global economy for all of humanity. This is, after all, a realization that today—I would say—is plain to see, one that is repeatedly emphasized by the leading minds of our time: that this striving for a unified global economy exists, but that national economies stood in opposition to it well into the 20th century, and that these national economies, through their opposition to the global economy, have brought about the process of decline in economic life that we face today.

[ 3 ] However, this is merely to be pointed out. That is not what should essentially concern us today; it is something else. We should focus on what can once again turn the peoples’ minds and souls away from the hatred that has manifested itself so terrifyingly, from the antipathy that has manifested itself so terrifyingly, as we have experienced over the course of the last five to six years. These feelings certainly existed for a long time, but they have revealed themselves in such a terrible way over the course of the last five to six years. But if it is a matter of one people coming to know another, if it is a matter of the spiritual and soul nature of one people on Earth being absorbed into the spiritual and soul nature of another people on Earth, then, my esteemed audience, we cannot simply go among this other people or be led there by our fate in order to —as it were, through what takes place in everyday interaction between human beings—to get to know one another as peoples. Traveling or living among other peoples is no more sufficient for an understanding of peoples than it is for an understanding of the individual human being if I were merely to observe his gestures and movements. If I have a sense for such things, I could deduce from his gestures and movements many things about what lies within him; yet I will come to know him more directly if I am able to let his language take effect upon me, if I am able to receive from him that which he wishes to convey to me through his own, inner strength.

[ 4 ] Is there a similar transmission of inner strength, of inner essence, from one people to another? — It cannot be mere language, nor what we perceive in everyday life from one people to another, for all of that is based solely on human-to-human interaction. Something must occur that goes beyond the merely individual-human, beyond the recognition and understanding of the other being within the human being. And we are, in essence, at a loss if we wish to speak at all in a comprehensible way about a unified national character. Is there anything about a unified national character that is as sensually real as external things or external beings, that could prompt us to speak of such a unified national character? We can speak of the individual human being, of a single entity, even if we wish to limit ourselves to sensory perception. To sensory perception, national character is nothing more than the sum of so many individual human beings. But if we wish to recognize national character as something real, we have no choice but to rise to something supersensory.

[ 5 ] Indeed, for those who undergo the spiritual training that has been discussed here frequently—including again in recent weeks—and who develop within the human soul the supersensible powers of knowledge that otherwise lie dormant in everyday life, what might be called “national character” becomes a real entity—albeit a real entity of a supersensible nature. But then, when one becomes receptive to the spiritual in the world at large, the foreign national character reveals itself as a spiritual entity—as a supersensible reality that permeates the sensory nature of human beings like a kind of cloud belonging to that national character and enveloping it. Only when one attempts to seek, from one people to another, such insights that are rooted in the supersensible can one penetrate the essence of a people in a way that is never possible through everyday interaction between individual human beings. This is what I would like to attempt to sketch out today, at least in broad strokes: how Spiritual Science seeks to truly and deeply understand the interconnectedness of the peoples of the earth across the globe. To this end, it seems necessary to me that the individual human being first be truly understood from the very sources of Spiritual Science.

[ 6 ] I have already pointed out in a lecture in Stuttgart how my book *Von Seelenrätseln* (On the Mysteries of the Soul), published several years ago, discusses how this human being, as he stands before us in everyday life, is not a unified being, but that in fact the human organization —and here I mean the immediate, natural human constitution—is such that it reveals three distinct components.

[ 7 ] In the human organism, we first have everything that relates to the head as the center of everything that can be called, in the individual human being, the nervous-sensory system. And the human being experiences his sensory perceptions and his mental images, his thoughts, and his ideas through the medium of this nervous-sensory system; a thinking human being is the human being of the Earth through this nervous-sensory organization. Now, based on the natural science commonly accepted today, there is a mental image that the entire human soul-spiritual being is based on the nervous-sensory organization and is, as it were, superimposed like a parasite upon the rest of the organism. That is not the case.

[ 8 ] I apologize for making a personal remark, but I must say the following: Thirty years of studying human nature and being—a study in which I have always sought harmony between Spiritual Science and the findings of the natural sciences—have led me to confirm this threefold division of the natural human being. It is a common prejudice in modern natural science that the entire soul-spiritual life runs parallel to the nervous-sensory life. In truth, this is not the case. In truth, only the human life of thought is bound to the nervous-sensory apparatus, while the life of feeling and sensation is bound to everything in the human organism that proceeds rhythmically. Not merely indirectly, but quite directly, the life of sensation and feeling is linked to the rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of blood circulation, just as the life of thought and perception is linked to the nervous-sensory organism. And just as the life of feeling and emotion is bound to everything in the human being that originally proceeds rhythmically, so too is the life of the will bound to everything in the human being that constitutes metabolism. The seemingly lowest aspect of human nature—metabolism—is the bearer of the life of the will—as a process, not as matter.

[ 9 ] Thus, in terms of soul and spirit, the human being is a threefold being. The spiritual will, the soul’s feeling life, and thinking, mental images, and perceiving—which are organized in relation to external, material phenomena—these are the three members of the spiritual-soul human being. These three aspects of the spiritual-soul human correspond to the three aspects of the human physical organism: first, the nervous-sensory apparatus, the nervous-sensory mechanism; second, the organization manifested in the rhythmic life of blood circulation and breathing; and third, the metabolic life, which, together with the other two, constitutes all the possible processes present in the human organism.

[ 10 ] But when we consider human beings in a particular region of the Earth, this threefold organization does not present itself to us in such a way that this threefold organization would be essentially the same for all people across the entire Earth. This, in turn, is the great error in humanity’s thinking today: the belief that one can impose some kind of common—for example, social—program across the entire Earth and that people must conform to such a common program, whereas in reality people across the Earth are individualized and specialized. And anyone who wishes to come to know the true nature of human existence on Earth, who truly wishes to come to know their own kind on Earth, must be able to develop love—not only for an abstract, general humanity—which would, after all, be merely the idea of humanity, the dead, empty idea of humanity—but must develop love for the individual manifestations of human nature across the various regions of the Earth.

[ 11 ] Of course, in the short time allotted to us, we cannot go to every single, individual people and describe them, but we can consider the main types of human organization on Earth.

[ 12 ] When we wish to consider a characteristic human type—one of the oldest—we are first led to the Oriental human type, which has manifested itself in a wide variety of ways among the ancient Indian people and also among other Oriental peoples. This Oriental human type exhibits one common trait. It demonstrates—particularly characteristically among the Indian people—how the people of the Orient have grown together with the earthly nature in which they thrive. Now, as much as it seems to us that this Oriental person has absorbed the spiritual into his soul and mind with intense devotion, and as much as Oriental mysticism impresses us —when we study the Oriental person in terms of his folk characteristics, we find that what reveals itself so admirably as the highest spirituality within him is, precisely in his case, dependent on the experience of the will flowing within the human being, which in turn is bound to the human metabolism. As paradoxical as this might seem at first, it is precisely the high spirituality of the Eastern people—and especially of the Indians—that is what—if I may use a crude expression—“boils up” from the metabolism, the metabolism that, through its own essence, is connected to the processes of an earthly nature in the environment surrounding these people. For out there, in Indian nature—out there are the trees, the fruits—there is that which a magnificent, admirable nature gave to human beings—especially in earlier times—as if of its own accord, and he unites this with his own metabolism in such a way that what takes place within him as a metabolic process is, so to speak, the continuation of what “simmering” out there in the trees and in the fruits, what weaves and lives beneath the earth in the roots, and so on. I would say that this person of the East has, through his metabolism, become completely intertwined with earthly growth and flourishing. That is precisely the point: because metabolism is the bearer of the will, this will develops within the human being. But that which develops particularly within the human being—that in which the human being is wholly immersed and through which he connects with his surroundings—does not enter consciousness to such a great extent. Something else radiates into consciousness. And it is precisely this: what radiates into the emotional and intellectual life of the Eastern person—especially the quintessential Eastern person, the Indian—is what is experienced in a seemingly materialistic way in human metabolism, but which is experienced in such a way that, in its spiritual reflection, it manifests itself as spiritual life.

[ 13 ] Thus, what emerges from the mind and thought of the Eastern peoples—what they produce spiritually—also appears to us as a spiritual product of the Earth itself. When we immerse ourselves in the Vedas—which speak so intensely to our souls and are illuminated by the light of the Spirit—when we immerse ourselves in the instinctively perceptive Vedanta philosophy and in the philosophy of yoga, when we delve into works such as those of Laozi and Confucius, and when we have even the slightest inclination to surrender to Eastern poetry, Oriental wisdom—then nowhere do we have the feeling that this wisdom flows from a personality in a particular, individual human form. Just as the Eastern person has become one with the surrounding nature through his metabolism, just as the surrounding nature continues to weave and flow within him—indeed, to boil and simmer—so it is when we allow his poetry, his poetic wisdom, and his wisdom-filled poetry to take effect upon us. It is as if the earth were speaking for itself, as if the very mysteries of earthly growth were speaking to all of humanity on earth through the mouth of the Eastern person. One has the feeling that just as this Eastern person can be the interpreter of the Earth’s inner spiritual mysteries, so no member of any other people—no people of the West and no people of central Europe—can be the interpreter and explicator of what the Earth’s mysteries themselves are. Indeed, if one were to characterize the finest members of Eastern peoples, it is almost as if they were walking upon the earth and expressing in their inner experience that which actually lives beneath the earth’s surface—that which grows out of the earth from beneath its surface and manifests itself in the earth’s blossoms and fruits; it is the case that in the spiritual and soul aspects of the Eastern human being, the inner life of the Earth is, as it were, brought to life within these people. Therefore, we understand that Eastern people, in their entire being, have less interest in the physical phenomena that present themselves on the Earth’s surface—in what is revealed through external sensory facts. They carry within their own human nature the inner, subterranean forces of the Earth that give rise to these phenomena and facts. Therefore, they have little interest in what takes place above the Earth’s surface. They are people of metabolism. But we see that their metabolism manifests itself in a spiritual-psychic way.

[ 14 ] What happens when an ideal dawns within these people? Oh, when an ideal dawns within these people, then the mental image of the Eastern sages, as it relates to a special discipline of the soul, is expressed something like this: You must breathe in such-and-such a way; you must attune yourselves to the rhythm of human life in this or that manner. — These teachers give their students instructions regarding a specific breathing rhythm and a specific rhythm of blood circulation. There is something peculiar about the way Eastern sages guide their students toward the principles of the mind and emotions in order to lead them to higher realms. The Eastern person, as he exists in ordinary life—particularly insofar as he belongs to the more southern Asian peoples—is organized around metabolism. When a concrete ideal dawns on him—how he can become a higher human being—he then develops his rhythmic system; he then seeks, of his own free will, to cultivate what he must recognize as something higher, not given to him by nature.

[ 15 ] Now, what is peculiar is that the more we move from the Asian peoples toward those of Europe—particularly those of Central Europe—the more we find, in people’s everyday lives, a particular aspect of human development that we can describe as the rhythmic system. Precisely those peoples who inhabit Central Europe—not the East, not the West, but Central Europe—and as the pinnacle of this cultural tradition, this has emerged particularly in German culture—these peoples possess as a characteristic of their everyday life that which the Indian strives for as his ideal of a higher human being. But it is one thing to acquire something through self-discipline and freedom, and quite another to possess it instinctively and naturally. The Central European possesses naturally what the Oriental must first develop from his metabolic life, which is intimately connected to the earth. Therefore, what is everyday and natural for the European is an ideal for the Asian, and something else must become the ideal for the Asian. This ideal for the European will be that which lies one step higher: the life of thought, as it is bound up with the life of the nerves and senses.

[ 16 ] This Central European—how does his striving to express externally [in his artistic creations] that which, from the perspective of the Spiritual Science, appears to be bound precisely to the instrument of rhythmic life? The Oriental possesses something like an unbridled imagination in his artistic creations; it is truly something that rises like a vapor from inner earthly activity, much like mist rising from water. This rhythmic, inner coherence—which is the essence of the Central European’s life—was already brought forth by the ancient Greeks, from whom so much has emanated for the whole of modern civilization, particularly for what we call European art. That which is expressed to us as the inner harmony of the earthly human being—where neither the material aspect on one side nor the ethereal-spiritual aspect on the other is particularly emphasized, where the balanced human being is expressed—is precisely what the Greeks strove for. Consider the creations of the Oriental imagination: they tend to veer off in one direction or another. It is only in Greece that the human form, as conceived artistically, assumes its harmonious roundness and inner coherence. This is because the [Central European] human being grasps himself in the middle link of his being, in the rhythmic system. When he conceives of an ideal, it is what he strives for through inner spiritual discipline, through his dialectical logic, through his scientific education; it is the use of the organs of thought, just as for the Indian it is the use of the organs in the human being associated with rhythm. Just as the Indian yogi sits and attempts to organize his breathing in a soul-spiritual way so that it carries him beyond the ordinary human being, so the Central European—in whom that which takes place in the rhythmic system, in blood circulation, and in breathing develops instinctively and makes him human— the Central European is educated out of what constitutes the life of thought. And these thoughts take on the form, especially in the finest individuals of Central Europe, of being interpreters of what the human being is as such. This is what strikes us when we move from an immersion in the artistic productions of Eastern humanity to those of European humanity. In the artistic works of the East, even in the highest spiritual creations, we see something like the blossoms of the Earth’s own evolution; the human mouth is, as it were, there only to let the Earth speak for itself. This is not the case with the Central European—not even with the Greeks. For the Central European of today—if he follows his own nature and remains true to himself—it is the case that when he wishes to express the highest truth, he expresses everything that he himself is as a human being; he wishes to be allowed to surrender to the recognition of the fact that self-knowledge is the noblest fruit of human striving. That the portrayal of the human in the human’s surroundings—in nature and history—is the noblest human creation is, after all, the essence of the Central European when this Central European surrenders to his own nature and essence. That is why we see how it is really only in Central Europe that such a wonderful idea could have arisen as the one that shines forth from Goethe’s book on Winckelmann—I would say like the sun of modern cultural life. Where Goethe, in his book on Winckelmann, summarized all that lived within this extraordinary man—in terms of higher sensibility, profound thought, and strength of will—as his worldview, he said: “This is where art comes in, for since man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself once again as a whole of nature, which must in turn bring forth another summit within itself. To this end, he elevates himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the creation of the work of art, which occupies a prominent place alongside his other deeds and works.” Human beings, as it were, bring forth a new nature from their own spirituality. This directing of all human powers toward the comprehension of humanity itself is precisely what—according to folk tradition—stands out most prominently in the people of Central Europe when they remain true to themselves; it has only receded in more recent times. But there is every reason for the people of Central Europe to reflect on how they, precisely, when following their very own essence, must and should arrive at this appreciation, comprehension, and penetration of what is truly human.

[ 17 ] But if we look toward the Orient and its peoples from an even more spiritual perspective, from a more spiritual point of view, we find that these Eastern peoples develop precisely that spirituality—which gives rise to the awareness of the connection between the human soul and the Divine—by virtue of being metabolic human beings; for, in order to be a complete human being, a person must internally oppose that which does not come from the elemental world, because he must oppose the opposite of his own nature within his own consciousness. And so, touching the human heart, the way an Eastern person can speak of the connection between humanity and the Divine as something self-evident—no member of any other people on earth can do so. Therefore, even as members of other peoples on Earth subjugate and conquer the Eastern peoples, even as they seek to strip them of their distinctive traits and impose their own laws and orders upon them, they nonetheless accept what the Eastern peoples have to say about the connection between humanity and the divine as something that is also determinative for them. And we see, especially in recent times, how the Western peoples, steeped in materialism, themselves take refuge in Eastern philosophers such as the ancient Laozi, in the Chinese worldview, and in the Indian worldview —not so much to find ideas there, but to find that fervor with which one can simply and powerfully experience what human beings can feel in connection with the divine. It is more to let one’s feelings be stirred by the way Easterners speak of their connection to the divine that one delves into Eastern literature, rather than to grasp its philosophical content. However, the abstract nature of Europeans sometimes thwarts their understanding of Eastern thought.

[ 18 ] Time and again, I have found that people who, for example, had read the Buddha’s discourses—with their endless repetitions—told me that they should be published in an abridged form, that each sentence should appear only once, and that the repetitions should be deleted so that one would not have to read the same sentence over and over again. - I could only say time and again: You are not truly coming to know what is so great about these things for the people of the East; it lies precisely in what you wish to omit. - For as the Eastern reader immerses himself in the Buddha’s discourses with their endless repetitions, he attains his ideal: the rhythmic recurrence of the motif. He returns again and again to the same sentence. What is everyday for him is what takes place within his metabolic being; what occurs within him when he surrenders to the ever-recurring sentences of the Buddha is a soul-spiritual counter-image—erected in his freest striving—of breathing and the circulatory system. When one truly attempts to become one with what is sacred and great to the Easterners, one learns to recognize something that, as a member of other peoples, one cannot readily come to recognize. The European, of course, feels the need to eliminate the repetitions. For because he lives in the rhythm of breathing, his ideal is to rise above it to the realm of thought. Once a thought has been grasped, it does not tolerate repetition; the European strives beyond repetition. If one is to engage with these Eastern repetitions, one must already possess a different kind of understanding—not merely an external, intellectual understanding. One must develop an inner love for that which manifests itself in very different, individual ways among various peoples—and one must stand before it in such a way that one feels: What one people possesses in terms of greatness, the others do not. —- And one finds this only when one is able to love other peoples, when one can accept the greatness that these other peoples possess.

[ 19 ] It is precisely when we delve into the inner nature and essence of the peoples of the earth that we find this individual essence to be so diverse that we must say to ourselves: The universal human nature does not actually manifest itself through any single human being, nor through a member of any single people; it manifests itself only through all of humanity. And if you, as a human being, wish to recognize what you are as a whole human being, then journey through the distinctive characteristics of the individual peoples of the Earth. Take in everything that you yourself cannot possess; only then will you become a whole human being. You do have it within you; just become attentive to what is within you. What is revealed in another person, you do not have; you must seek it in them. But you have a need for it. You feel this, and you know that when you find in another what is precisely that which is great and unique to them, it simply has an effect on you. Then it becomes a necessity that you cannot exist without what you receive from them, because it corresponds to your inner spiritual and soulful longing. The potential to become a whole human being is already within everyone, but we must find its fulfillment by passing through the distinctive characteristics of the various peoples as they are spread across the earth. And when we come to this spiritual aspect, we can say to ourselves that in the East, it is the ability of human beings to express humanity’s connection with the Divine as something self-evident and grand.

[ 20 ] But today, hidden as if by a layer—a layer of misunderstanding that must be removed—we find something highly distinctive within the Central European people, within Central European culture. Let us look at all our great philosophers, who, in addition to what they thought about nature, God, and humanity, have all—I would say equally—produced something: There is almost no great German philosopher who has not delved with the utmost intensity into the question: What is the law that governs relations between human beings? - The search for justice, however buried and misunderstood it may be, is precisely a distinctive feature of the Central European people. And whoever fails to acknowledge this does not understand this Central European people, and will not find the enthusiasm to turn away from present-day materialism—which stems from something entirely different—and return to that which truly characterizes this Central European people, this true Germanness, this genuine German distinctiveness and essence.

[ 21 ] Just as the Eastern person, by expressing his spiritual life as if he were a flower or fruit of the earth, becomes the interpreter and voice of the earth, so the German becomes the interpreter of himself. He confronts himself with questions. By doing so, he stands before every other human being as an equal, and thus the most pressing question for him becomes the question of law. Not the adoption of Roman law, but the exploration of the nature of law—this confronts us in Fichte, in Hegel, in Schelling, wherever German thought delves into the depths of the essence of the world. And finally, what we encounter in the abstract pursuit of the question of law in Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Humboldt is, in essence, the same in concrete terms as when Goethe, in all his endeavors, seeks the expressions and the portrayal of true human nature—a nature that is comprehensive and harmoniously integrated. In this regard, Goethe is, I would say, the representative of the Central European essence, the representative of the Central European, the German people. Just as the Oriental stands in relation to the earth, so does the Central European human being stand in relation to humanity in self-knowledge. And if we turn to Western Europe—and further still, to where its essence manifests itself more fully and with greater distinctiveness—to America, and examine the character of this true Westerner, we find that his natural essence lies precisely in abstract thought. The Westerner is primarily a person of the head; the Eastern person is a person of the heart, one who experiences the process of metabolism in the heart; the Central European is a person of the breath, who, through his rhythm, stands in a rhythmic relationship with the outside world. If I may borrow an image used by Rabindranath Tagore—who, I believe, was extraordinarily witty—the spirited Eastern man, I would like to say: Tagore compares the Westerner, the man of the mind, to a spiritual giraffe—he loves him; one need not feel any antipathy whatsoever when making such a characterization. He compares him to an intellectual giraffe because one has the feeling—and this is portrayed in a truly intellectual way—that: the head is far removed from the rest of the body; a long neck separates the head from the rest of the body; a head that then perceives what the world presents to it solely in abstract terms, that takes in everything in abstract form—in such abstractness that Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points emerged. And it is a long way before these abstract concepts, these empty phrases, these shells of concepts and ideas find their way to the heart, to the lungs, to the respiratory system—before they find their way to those places through which they can become feelings, through which they can pass into the will. Here we have the person whose defining characteristic is what I would like to call the “system of thought.” What the Central European strives for as his ideal—what he seeks to achieve through freedom—the Westerner, particularly the American, does not strive for in freedom; it is instinctively given to him. He is an abstract thinker—by instinct. And it is quite a different matter whether one possesses something instinctively or whether one acquires it. When one acquires something, it is connected to one’s human nature in a completely different way; one experiences it quite differently when one must conquer it through one’s own free will than when it is given to one instinctively by nature itself.

[ 22 ] And therein lies a great danger. For you see, while the Indian can strive for the rhythmic system in his yoga philosophy, and the Central European can strive for what is a system of thought, Western humanity—if it is not to lose its humanity—would have to let the “spiritual giraffe” grow beyond its head. Indeed, it is incumbent upon this Western humanity to fulfill what I recently stated quite openly at a gathering attended by Westerners themselves: it is incumbent upon them to fulfill what must be characterized as the great responsibility that present-day Western humanity in particular bears. Western character and Western culture will be lost to nothingness if they strive beyond the system of thought, if they strive into the void or into empty spiritualism, and seek the spiritual precisely where one finds spiritual nothingness. Herein lies the danger, but also the responsibility: the danger of falling into spiritual nothingness through a striving beyond what is naturally given to human beings, and the responsibility to rise to true Spiritual Science—unless one wishes to lead humanity to ruin through world domination.

[ 23 ] For the peoples of Central Europe, on the other hand, it will be a healthy, human striving in freedom that leads one upward into spirituality, that brings one to Spiritual Science. I would like to say: The peoples of Central Europe have a sacred duty—because it lies in their very nature—to ascend the spiritual ladder toward spiritual knowledge. But by ascending from their system of rhythm and breathing into the system of thought, they still attain something that remains within the realm of the human. For the peoples of the West, the danger lies in their moving beyond the human realm precisely when they fashion an ideal for themselves—hence all the sectarian and similar endeavors in the West that ultimately deny the universal human. In this regard, things are still not clearly understood in the present.

[ 24 ] While in the Eastern person, whose metabolic system is oriented toward the Earth, a spiritual influence manifests itself through natural processes, in the Western person—who has developed, above all, a system of thought—a focus on the sensory world comes to the fore. For the Eastern person, it is as if that which lies beneath the Earth’s surface were at work within him; for the Western person, it is as if he were merely seeing what lies above the Earth’s surface—the observable facts of what occurs on Earth through the sun, moon, and stars, and through air and water. The organization of thought cannot be explained by what takes place within this sphere. I explained in a previous lecture here how what is spiritual in human beings cannot be explained by the external environment. Through what emerged as the “blood of the Earth Spirit” through his own humanity, the Eastern person also knew that, as a human being—as that which lives spiritually within him—he is a member of the entire cosmos, a part not only of the Earth but of the entire cosmos. For the Westerner, who has developed the system of thought to a particular degree, modern natural science has left him with nothing of this cosmos but the possibility of calculating it through mathematical and mechanical formulas. Thus, regarding the realm from which the Westerner must acknowledge that his soul originates—the realm without which he, as a thinking human being, could not exist if its source were not cosmic—he must say to himself: I have no other science for it than dry, sober mathematics. - What has become ingrained in the Eastern person is that which flows into his very human being like the earth itself. What he reveals as his poetic wisdom is like a blossom of the earthly. What the Central European must acknowledge as his humanity is the very same thing that reveals itself in the human being through the human being himself; there, the human being stands face to face with himself.

[ 25 ] For Westerners, what is most valuable is precisely that which a person does not derive from the earthly realm, but rather from the cosmic realm. But he has no other means of recognizing this cosmic, this supernatural, than through calculation, or through spectral analysis—which is just as dry as calculation—and the like, or through hypotheses of the same sort. Therefore, Western man seeks what the Eastern man seeks from his innermost nature as an expression of his connection with the divine; what the Central European seeks as an expression of the human in Goethe’s “complete human being” or in the “man of law,” who is equal to all other human beings—this is what Western man seeks by devoting himself primarily to economic life. And what the Westerner means when he speaks of law—that through which he characterizes the spirit—is, for him, something that blossoms solely from economic life. That is why it was entirely natural that Karl Marx, from Germany—where he could have learned to recognize humanity in a humanistic, Goethean way, had he been gifted to do so—had to go to the West, to England, in order to look beyond humanity, to look beyond what is truly human, and to be led to believe that what human beings can recognize is nothing other than an ideology—something that arises from economic life. This is not an absolute truth, but it is in fact, in a certain sense, just as deeply rooted in the nature of Western man as it is in the nature of Eastern man—the tendency to view nature as a kind of satellite of the human being and to speak of the connection between the human soul and the divine as something that goes without saying. This is why, particularly among so many Westerners who feel a need to look toward the divine, a longing arises—when they seek to extend their conquest beyond the Eastern peoples—to take from these peoples what they have to say about the connection between human nature and the divine, because, as I have already said, the “full human being” at least exists as a need.

[ 26 ] And so we see—and we could extend this to smaller peoples, to individual peoples; after all, we can only stick to what is typical—we see that the complete human being is not actually expressed in the members of a single people. We see that this complete human being exists within us only as a need, and that this need should therefore grow within us into love for all human beings—especially for that aspect of human nature that we do not possess, which we can only acquire by devotedly seeking to understand the nature that lives in other peoples on Earth, in order to unite it with our own people.

[ 27 ] This was the kind of internationalism that prevailed in Goethe’s time. This was the kind of internationalism that permeated such beautiful debates as, for example, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s on “The Limits of the State’s Power.” This is the pursuit of cosmopolitanism that ennobles and elevates the essence of one’s own people by embracing what can be acquired through love for all other peoples, and that seeks a deeper understanding of one’s own people by embracing all that is ideal, great, and beautiful among the other peoples of the earth. Hence, even during Germany’s golden age of intellectual splendor, there arose that which, born anew from rhythmic life, reflects what was found at that time—in the noblest cosmopolitanism—by the seeking German among all other peoples. How Herder went out to all peoples in his quest; how he sought to unravel the deepest essence of all the peoples of the earth! How deeply he was imbued with the realization that, fundamentally, living within us—as if animating the individual, flesh-and-blood human being we carry about here—is a great, mighty, different human being who animates us, but who can only be found when we are able to pour ourselves out in this way across all peoples.

[ 28 ] One need only contrast what emerged at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries as the seed of greatness in Central Europe with what is today known as internationalism— one cannot say pulses through the world, but is preached throughout the world to seduce humanity as Marxism—the Marxism that believes only in human thought and which, even in a more or less attenuated form, no longer has any conception of how all of humanity is differentiated across the earth, the Marxism that believes an abstraction can be imposed upon one as humanity, as a human being. Marxism is not a first step toward the rise; it is a final step in decline—a final step in decline precisely because it is devoid of any striving for true internationalism, which always elevates the essence of one’s own national identity [by embracing what one can acquire through love for all other peoples]. This internationalism, which appears in Marxism and in everything that has developed from it, is a stagnation within the most one-sided system of thought, the most impractical system of thought, which, moreover, is fixated solely on the sensory world and does not penetrate to the essence of national identity. True internationalism, on the other hand, springs from that love which extends to all peoples, in order to kindle the light that can be received from all peoples, and through the deeds, feelings, creations of one’s own people, to place that people within the great chorus of the peoples of the earth in such a way that it contributes to the full understanding of the peoples—an understanding that can unite the peoples of the earth only through genuine, essential, mutual recognition.

[ 29 ] Well, my esteemed audience, today I wanted to speak about what, through insight, can unite the peoples of the earth. I did not wish to speak about other matters that might, in a sense, be more programmatic in nature or that are subjects of Spiritual Science itself. I wanted to speak of that which, as an insight derived from Spiritual Science, is inspired in the spiritual researcher through his other, spiritual research—namely, the possible coexistence of human beings on Earth guided by love. One can certainly characterize, from a wide variety of perspectives, what is necessary for humanity’s immediate future. One can certainly speak of this or that impulse. But one must surely also acknowledge that, in addition to everything that can be said in the fields of social policy, law and government, and education, there must also be—as an illumination of all that—that comfort, that solace for the soul, that spiritual comfort that can arise from such insights as have been attempted today; I would say, in a more fleeting sketch rather than as a comprehensive presentation. And this comfort can come from insights that relate to the rhythm—the possible, and I say expressly possible, rhythm—of human historical life, which we will then seek to understand in its own unique way the day after tomorrow from the perspective of the Spiritual Science: that what has been lived through history reveals how it is embedded in our immediate present.

[ 30 ] Today’s reflection was intended to show you how it is possible that, in response to the wave of hatred and antipathy that has swept over humanity, a healing wave of international love among people and nations can also develop out of the recognition of what unites us—just as new wave crests arise from the troughs of waves. It is possible. But we live in an age in which what is possible must be consciously and willingly pursued by human beings in freedom. People must confront the reality of what the conditions for unity among the peoples of the earth are, so that each individual, based on their own understanding, can contribute to ensuring that the wave of hatred is followed by a wave of love for humanity. For only through this love for humanity can that which hatred has destroyed be healed. If people do not choose love, then destruction will remain. This is the terrible alternative that confronts the soul of the discerning human being today. Whoever truly grasps the horror of this situation will say to themselves: Souls must not sleep; otherwise, it could happen that, due to the powerlessness of the spiritual slumber of the nations, the healing wave of love cannot emerge from the wave of hatred.

[ 31 ] Whoever sees through this will take in the insight that can come to him through the spiritual contemplation of the relationships among peoples. He will take this insight into his feelings; from it he will develop love for humanity. He will take it into his will; from it he will develop human actions. And they will say to themselves: The course of history itself—everything that presents itself so terrifyingly, so paralyzingly in the present—presents this as a duty before our souls: to bring together, in the face of what has revealed itself in the very recent past right up to the present as a force that fragments humanity, to bring together everything that can unite humanity in love. To seek this loving unity, this unifying love, is not merely a feeling that can somehow arise voluntarily within us; rather, to those who see through the circumstances of the present, it appears to be humanity’s greatest duty in our current age.