So, since this "giving" is in reality the main principle of terrestrial human evolution and is the axis around which all daily existence turns, it is quite inevitable that the course of this existence is turbulent, noisy, jarring, unstable, bumpy and jolting as long as this "axis" has no solid foundation but swings along with the dominating centrifugal force of the terrestrial human "desire to take". What terrestrial mankind is sighing and groaning under today is therefore the connection of its own existence to that destabilised axis. And so "the salvation of the world", "the liberation of mankind" or "the redemption of the world" consists in stabilising this axis, so that it becomes the really central, fixed regulating point of balance for all terrestrial human mental oscillation. In so doing, all the now so well-known terrible states of imbalance in the oscillation we call war, killing, mutilation, executions, robbery, plundering and punishment – with their bloodstaining of everything that is noble, peaceful, beautiful, loving and instructive or vitalising – will cease, and a lasting peace and harmony can without disturbance come to replace the present spectacle of murder, and turn existence into song, music and creative joy.
      The development of the principle of giving is thus the salvation of the world. And we see too that this principle is the soul of all wisdom and, in a specially adapted way, is what is most important in the present greatest world religions. From them it enters terrestrial human mentality as the basis for the formation of morality and reverberates more and more in its jurisprudence, laws or judicial system, politics and social administration.
      Since the principle of giving is the opposite of the principle of coercion, wherever the former develops it will result in greater and greater freedom for society as well as for individual human beings. As an expression of this, we see throughout history how the despotic or dictatorial monarchies have had to change more and more into democracies, free states or republics.
      While under the former kind of government the individual human being was an absolutely powerless subject of an autocratic ruler over his life and death, and over his material position and appearance, he has, under the latter, become a participating unit in the very government of society. He has gained the so-called "right to vote". He takes part in electing and deciding to whom the governing power is to be given, and the laws and provisions they may put forward. Despotism thus becomes a relic of the past, a mental museum piece.
      That people in certain countries have nonetheless had to put such a "museum piece" in the form of dictatorship on the throne can be due only to a far too dominating majority of souls on the evolutionary step of the subjects of the past, beings who have not to a sufficient extent outlived the effects of dictatorial imperfections and who have not experienced that one single human being's unrestricted power over souls on very different evolutionary steps can never in the long run lead to harmony unless the dictator or ruler has unrestricted insight into all the mental aspects of every single step on the scale of evolution that his subjects at any given time may represent. But in order to gain such an insight a dictator must have attained a very high level of mental or spiritual initiation. However, since this initiation can be attained only through the complete evolution of neighbourly love in one's heart, and as the consequence of this must be that one completely outgrows the desire for power and that this desire for power degenerates, and since this outgrowing must in turn result in the desire to create freedom for everyone and joy in creating this freedom, one understands that someone who is so highly initiated cannot be a dictator. But, if an initiate cannot be a dictator, such a position must always be filled by a non-initiate, which in turn means a being who cannot have perfect mental insight into the spiritual phenomena in the behaviour of the subjects over whom he has seized the right to unrestrictedly command and rule. He juggles with and is in command of forces that he does not completely understand and whose laws he cannot therefore obey. The result of this must of necessity be a hazardous coercion of these forces. Since these forces are the mentality of his subjects, his nature will thus result in oppression. Oppression of the mentality creates a desire or longing for freedom, a longing among the oppressed to slough off their yoke because it arrests their life's growth; it puts evolution in a straitjacket.
      But since no armour is strong enough in the long run to be material for a hard-wearing "straitjacket" for evolution or to stop the course of life, any such armour in the form of dictatorship is inevitably bound to crack amidst all its apparently glorious lust for power. Life knows no hindrance.
      It is true that democracy also represents a power that must sometimes be felt by many as coercion and oppression. But this oppression cannot be anything like as dominating and overbearing as unrestricted dictatorship, where any criticism, opposition or objection can inflict the death penalty on its source and is thus extremely dangerous.
      In a democracy every social provision and every law is a result of representatives of all spheres of interest. If a provision becomes too problematic or unnecessary, the desire for its abolition gradually affects the voting majority, who can eliminate it. It is a matter of course that with such a form of government – where everyone, through their right to vote, has the opportunity to make their insight tell and has the right to have a voice in decisions for or against the implementation of a decree – a misuse of state power cannot be expressed to the degree that it can in a dictatorship where the power is given unrestrictedly to a single being, and where every single one of the state's other citizens is therefore completely robbed of any kind of influence on the form of government or any right to participate in it. It is therefore also established as fact that this cannot possibly be anything other than an expression of the whims and ambition of the dictator or ruler, his naivety as well as his intelligence, his bad characteristics as well as his good ones. A single wrong impulse from him can easily lead a people to disaster. Dictatorship can therefore never in the long run become the bulwark against downfall and degradation that democracy is, where no big, decisive impulse from the government has any influence or power before it is sanctioned by the majority of the people who have a voice. And before this impulse reaches such a stage it has of necessity to be the result of this majority's considerations for and against it, and it is thereby to a greater extent guaranteed to be the expression of sober reflection and consideration than when it is the expression of a dictator's sudden decision, which does not have to be confronted with the insight or consideration of others.
      Now one may perhaps object that democracy's form of government is far too slow, and that the fact that everyone has the right to be consulted creates only a political tug-of-war that delays and prolongs all decisions. But is a cultivated people so busy that it does not have time to let its decisions or resolutions receive the fullest possible consideration or deliberation but must blindly leave them to only one of its millions of brains? And can such busyness be an expression of culture? And can a people or society grow in culture and spirit by binding its millions of brains to a way of thinking that is controlled and regimented beforehand? Would doing so not choke its intellect? Is it not a fact that organs that are not used degenerate and perish? If one never used more than one of one's ten fingers, the other nine would inevitably wither and become useless or die. If one never spoke, one would lose the ability to speak. Does one not also think that one would ultimately lose one's sight if one were forced to live for years in total darkness? Indeed, life does not tolerate anything superfluous. Anything that is not used must die. And does one not pay dearly for the speed achieved by the dictatorship in its matters of government when this speed can be reached only by putting millions of its brains, and thereby the main part of its intellectuality, in a straitjacket? Can a people grow culturally by reducing or limiting its ability to think? Is this not just as foolish as claiming that a man is running up a staircase at the same time as he is running down it?
      Since the way to the development of all intellectuality and culture goes through freedom to think and freedom to criticise, which means to point out shortcomings or faults, freedom to put forward ideas and notions that do not lie precisely within the authorised horizon or what has become official practice, and absolute freedom to use one's right to vote to be freely and openly for or against any projected proposal in the administration of the state or the social order, no dictatorship whatsoever could ever constitute a true, civilised state because dictatorship exists, as is known, only by imprisoning or limiting the freedom of the intellectuality that is the essential vital nerve, impulse or unshakable foundation of every real civilised culture.
      That dictatorships have such highly developed technology and great industrial plants is not an expression of true culture; it is merely an expression of something that can be learned; it is merely a result of recipes. These results become expressions of culture or true civilisation only through what they are used for. If the brilliant technology and great industrial plants are very widely used for the creation of instruments of murder, refined explosives and firearms, bombers and submarines, poisonous gases and so on, then they are only an expression of the fact that their sources are merely "primitive people" who have put on "modern clothes". Then it is a case of the "bushman" or "Fuegian" acquiring modern weapons. Then it is a case of conquest-seeking wild tribes of the past hiding themselves today in military processions and parades. And so one better understands that they must have dictators. The worship of chiefs is still not outlived in their consciousness, just as it is essential in any warlike manifestation. Here one must have a dictator. On a battlefield one cannot negotiate about the plan of campaign. That would give the enemy only an initial advantage. Here the soldier must blindly obey the general. Here it is a matter of speed and promptness. Here one attains joy of living from making a surprise attack on one's opposition or "enemy" or totally crushing them. But can a people be regarded as cultured or really civilised merely because it has transferred the way of life and discipline of war of wild tribes to its own form of government? I can see only that such a nation has in fact become nothing but a "barracks" seething with superior "generals" or the dictator's powerful henchmen and downtrodden, performing slaves in the form of insignificant "private soldiers".
      As dictatorship can exist only through its subjects losing their liberty, it must always be in a state of war. It is not in the nature of living beings willingly to let themselves be mentally or materially bound. So dictatorship must all the time battle with this nature, which is not simply mental resistance but, on the contrary, the growth of life itself in the mentality of the subjects. And this growth cannot be stopped, but will, as previously mentioned, ultimately burst the straitjacket of dictatorship.
      Dictatorship is thus a fight against life itself and evolution itself, thus forming the sharpest contrast to the principle of giving. It is a regime of might that has its domicile only in zones where "Valhalla", albeit unconsciously, is still the all-overshadowing, shining and glorious ideal against which everything in existence must pale, zones in which "right" is still but a nebulous idea. To the extent that beings are still on these evolutionary steps, where "might" and not "right" is the absolutely leading ideal, they can therefore praise dictatorship. But if they have reached zones in evolution where "right" has begun to go before "might", then the morality of the sword will disintegrate and the seeds of a new world in which "right" and thereby freedom for the growth of all higher forms of life will begin to be seen in the distance.
      Since this new world is one of freedom, it is the world of the principle of giving, for no form of gift whatsoever can exist without being an expression of some kind of setting free. Any gift whatsoever is thus the same as "setting free". The first more or less visible result of the effect of such an atmosphere of freedom on terrestrial human society, which is bound by the animal traditions of might, is what we today call "democracy". That this democracy in its present form is far from representing evolution's final goal for democracy is naturally a matter of course. From a cosmic point of view democracy is, so to speak, only in its infancy. It must fight against its individuals' still strong dictatorial tendencies both within its present domain of power and outside it. The animal traditions can be changed just as little by sudden liberation as by sudden coercion. Truly setting the being free can be brought about only by its own evolution. True mental freedom is thus something that comes with growth, just like a being's transformation from child to adult. It cannot be dictated or conjured up on the spur of the moment by experiments or commands.
      But democracy has the advantage over dictatorship in that it lets life adapt to evolution by guaranteeing every single one of its citizens the right to vote or have a voice. As they change their point of view and gain more insight and become more gifted, what they are interested in voting for changes. And through their right to vote they have a voice in bringing what they are voting for into contact with their changed interest. In this way democracy is a form of government that continuously and bloodlessly transforms itself in harmony with the growing mental changes and demands that evolution must result in at any given time.
      Since dictatorship cannot possibly give its citizens this freedom or right to have a voice without ceasing to be a dictatorship, it can never be in harmony with evolution beyond those steps in evolution where mental life is still so little developed that it does not feel oppressed or restricted by the regimentation of dictatorship.
      But mental life grows. Since the result of evolution is an increase in freedom, and since dictatorship is coercion, there will inevitably come a time when all dictatorship will have to cease in favour of democracy, which, with its changeable and movable structure, can follow evolution and, with its liberating nature, keep abreast of the growing mental demands or obstacles, whether they be in the artistic, scientific or purely economic area. Dictatorship is thus the past. Democracy is the future.
      Since democracy gives its citizens freedom to change in accordance with evolution, according as their voting majority grows to want this change, and this freedom must normally take into account or be somewhat subdued by the voting minority or opposition of the citizens of this democracy, there thereby arising a certain guarantee that rashness cannot occur and that thorough deliberation cannot be avoided, democracy becomes in fact a cultivation of life's own granting of freedom to the growing terrestrial human mentality on a level corresponding to evolution. Democracy is thus the only means whereby the granting of the growth of life or the transformation of the flock from animal to human being in the most bloodless way can be revealed or practised by the cosmic principle of giving. True democracy is thus the creation of an opening in the terrestrial mental sphere that is growing in freedom through which the flock, in a way that is adapted to them, can ultimately be given unhindered access to the greatest gift of life: the widest possible or unrestricted evolution of spirit and culture, of wisdom and love and the consequent unshakably associated creation of an all-outshining peace and harmony as a fact in daily life on Earth.