Vox populi, vox dei

 

Rudolf Steiner:

We should train ourselves to acquire understanding for the many-sidedness of human beings, and gain inner tolerance. It should interest us, what is conceived by another soul quite differently than what we ourselves have thought. For we should have the feeling, this other thought complements our own.

Let us say there are a number of people, ten individuals (a sketch was made), I am one of them, the other nine are there. I now say to myself, I think about certain matters in one way, the second person in another way, the third again differently, and so on, all varying in some degree. All are right, none are right. If we sense the approximate arithmetical middle of all this, if in this context we feel able to take up everything with the same love, irrespective of whether we say it, or others say it, learning to feel ourselves within the totality, then we join in hastening toward the purpose that exists for the human beings of the future. We must strive for this “hastening.” We must strive for it simply in order to gain a feeling for true social life. We must learn to feel ourselves standing within what is comprised by the genius of language, by what is comprised by the life of rights, by the rights-genius. We must learn to stand within what is encompassed by the mutually shared economic genius. Only this living feeling of being within a totality that has to be consciously acquired in the age of the consciousness-soul—only this propels the human being toward humanity's future destination. However, we cannot attain this approach to the human being's future destination in any other way than by extending our interests ever further, in other words, in learning to overcome ourselves more and more. Yes, my dear friends, in taking counsel with oneself quite honestly, one will after all find in the end, that actually what is of least interest in the whole world is what one is able to think and feel about oneself within the narrow confines of the “I.” Indeed, in our age many people occupy their thoughts and feelings to a great extent within the most immediate boundaries of their “I.” Hence their life is so boring and hence they are so dissatisfied with life. We never become interesting in always only circling around this midpoint. In contrast to this, if we look out, always focusing on how the external world shines toward us, if we expand our interests ever farther, then our “I” becomes interesting by virtue of giving us a standpoint for observing the world. Then our “I” becomes significant through the fact that, just from this point of the “I,” only we are capable of seeing the world, as no other person can. Another person sees it from a different standpoint.

However, if we remain within ourselves, circling continuously around our own self, we contemplate in fact only what we have in common with all other people. And then, in the end every other person loses interest for us—and ultimately the whole world actually loses interest for us. A widening of interest is above all what is striven for by means of spiritual science. However, in order to experience this widening of interest it is necessary for us to educate ourselves to become receptive for what approaches us from outside, so that we really can take up something new. People do not reject spiritual science because it is difficult—it is not actually difficult—they repudiate it for the reason that it does not roll on in the well-worn trains of thought they are used to, since it requires them to engage in new trains of thought. People reject everything that calls for new trains of thought.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive CW 190 March 30, 1919