Someone who speaks of the ideal of race and nation and of tribal membership today is speaking of impulses which are part of the decline of humanity. If anyone now considers them to be progressive ideals to present to humanity, this is an untruth. Nothing is more designed to take humanity into its decline than the propagation of ideals of race, nation and blood. Nothing is more likely to prevent human progress than proclamations of national ideals belonging to earlier centuries which continue to be preserved by the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. The true ideal must arise from what we find in the world of the spirit, not in the blood.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 177 – Fall of the Spirits of Darkness: Lecture 12: The Spirits of Light and the Spirits of Darkness – Dornach, 26 October 1917
Translated by Anna R. Meuss
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