FOREWORD
This little
guide to study was written for a special purpose and it will help the
reader, where and whensoever he may use it, if this is explained. For
the autumn term of 1938, various working groups of the
Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain — notably the group
meeting week by week in Rudolf Steiner House in London — had
resolved to study the psychology of nations and the character
of lands and peoples — the spiritual realities that underlie
them. The lecture-course referred to in our sub-title, wherein the
founder of modern Spiritual Science, Rudolf Steiner, primarily deals
with this great subject, is not an easy one. I therefore undertook to
write this guide to study, which is now being printed so as to make
it available to all who may need it, whether now or in the
future.
It is
therefore essentially a piece of working material of the kind often
required in a University or School where systematic study is going
on. In such a publication one will look to find accepted forms of
expression, technical terms at least a few, and references to special
literature; in a word, all things belonging to the life and practice
of the school in question. The references in this booklet are
of this character, and it is written in the style and context with
which students in the spiritual school arising out of Rudolf
Steiner's work are familiar.
The
lecture-cycles of Rudolf Steiner — shorthand reports of his
spoken word — are in themselves working material of this kind,
and in their publication he insisted that this should be made clear.
In reading them we should have in mind the time and situation —
the audience to which they were spoken. They contain many things
indispensable to students — things not contained, at least not
explicitly, in Dr. Steiner's actual writings. Yet they cannot be read
quite in the same way as we should read a written book. We have to
call the spoken word to life and in a way transplant what it contains
into the living present. Whether we read them individually or in
working groups together, we must endeavour to renew by our own
spiritual work some of the magic touch, the immediate presence of the
Spirit which was felt when they were given. For this reason too it
may be good that the result of work upon them by one individual
student — 28 years after, so it happens — should
circulate among other students. It is in intercourse that these
things prosper.
While I have
followed, in a free way but fairly closely, the main line of Dr.
Steiner's exposition, I have not hesitated to insert explanations of
my own or references to his other works, notably the lecture-cycles
of those years. Many of these are better known to students, and such
relationships — they could of course be multiplied — will
help in making thoroughly intelligible what this particular cycle
contains.
This booklet
is what is said in the sub-title: help in the study of another, the
essential work. I always had in mind while writing, that those using
it — individuals or study-groups — would have
Rudolf Steiner's lectures before them, in the original or in the
English version, even as I had. Readers familiar with certain
elements, at least, of Anthroposophy may indeed find in it an
introduction to this spiritual science of the Nation-Souls, but it
will scarcely satisfy unless it leads them on to the actual
lecture-cycle, the contents of which it indicates rather than
summarizes. For those on the other hand who already know the
lectures, it may be of value as a brief reminder of the
extraordinarily rich and varied contents of this course, and of how
the subject is developed.
GEORGE
KAUFMANN.
Michaelmas, 1938.
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