“Today’s striving for the spirit cannot involve merely knowing about the spirit; what is appropriate for the present striving, for today’s striving for the spirit is to have an understanding of the connection between the spiritual world and the world into which we have been born and in which we live between birth and death.”

—Rudolf Steiner, from Michael’s Mission: Revealing the Essential Secrets of Human Nature (CW 194)

In the lectures from which the above quotation comes from, given 101 years ago, just after the end of The Great War, Rudolf Steiner points to the responsibilities that were placed upon the victors in that war, mentioning specifically the English and Americans. “Becoming the bearer of external dominance at this time amounts to taking on and living within the forces of destruction, the forces of human sickness. That which human beings are going to carry over into the future is what will be born out of the new seed of the spirit. It will be necessary to take great care of this . . . .” “There is little comprehension of the fact that all thoughts about social life must be born out of the underlying character of a time and place.” (Michael’s Mission)

Separate from this, but perhaps connected, John F. Gardner beheld that the three American figures, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman, were, in a sense, both prophets and representatives of the good spirit of America, which has a kind of destiny of its own. This unique and, we believe, important and still relevant book, American Heralds of the Spirit, is now back in print.