The lowest species of human beings give evidence of this quality only to
a very small degree, so that often they do not go beyond the formation
of the family society. With an increasing readiness to place their
immediate personal interests in the background, the capacity for
organizing more extensive communities develops.
The readiness to sacrifice one's personal work and, if necessary, even
one's life for others shows its most highly developed form in the Aryan
race. The greatness of the Aryan is not based on his intellectual
powers, but rather on his willingness to devote all his faculties to the
service of the community. Here the instinct for self-preservation has
reached its noblest form; for the Aryan willingly subordinates his own
ego to the common weal and when necessity calls he will even sacrifice
his own life for the community.
The constructive powers of the Aryan and that peculiar ability he has
for the building up of a culture are not grounded in his intellectual
gifts alone. If that were so they might only be destructive and could
never have the ability to organize; for the latter essentially depends
on the readiness of the individual to renounce his own personal opinions
and interests and to lay both at the service of the human group. By
serving the common weal he receives his reward in return. For example,
he does not work directly for himself but makes his productive work a
part of the activity of the group to which he belongs, not only for his
own benefit but for the general. The spirit underlying this attitude is
expressed by the word: WORK, which to him does not at all signify a
means of earning one's daily livelihood but rather a productive activity
which cannot clash with the interests of the community. Whenever human
activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for
self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary, etc.
This mental attitude, which forces self-interest to recede into the
background in favour of the common weal, is the first prerequisite for
any kind of really human civilization. It is out of this spirit alone
that great human achievements have sprung for which the original doers
have scarcely ever received any recompense but which turns out to be the
source of abundant benefit for their descendants. It is this spirit
alone which can explain why it so often happens that people can endure a
harsh but honest existence which offers them no returns for their toil
except a poor and modest livelihood. But such a livelihood helps to
consolidate the foundations on which the community exists. Every worker
and every peasant, every inventor, state official, etc., who works
without ever achieving fortune or prosperity for himself, is a
representative of this sublime idea, even though he may never become
conscious of the profound meaning of his own activity.
Everything that may be said of that kind of work which is the
fundamental condition of providing food and the basic means of human
progress is true even in a higher sense of work that is done for the
protection of man and his civilization. The renunciation of one's own
life for the sake of the community is the crowning significance of the
idea of all sacrifice. In this way only is it possible to protect what
has been built up by man and to assure that this will not be destroyed
by the hand of man or of nature.
In the German language we have a word which admirably expresses this
underlying spirit of all work: It is Pflichterfüllung, which means the
service of the common weal before the consideration of one's own
interests. The fundamental spirit out of which this kind of activity
springs is the contradistinction of 'Egotism' and we call it 'Idealism'.
By this we mean to signify the willingness of the individual to make
sacrifices for the community and his fellow-men.
