We have now touched upon the principle of giving or the principle of setting free and seen that it is Nature's own method of working and that where people go against this principle, coercion or resistance arises. There arises a loss of liberty, the direct effects of which can be absolutely nothing other than "stunting" or "deformation". We have seen something of this truth through our contact with dictatorship and democracy. We have seen that dictatorship is a phenomenon within which almost all the mental life forces, which means the people's thousands of brains, are put out of action so that only the functioning of one single brain (the dictator's) is allowed to unfold itself in the great body of the nation, which must of necessity cause this body of the nation ultimately to wither or languish from a purely cultural point of view, even if it perhaps in the first instance appears to shine as regards power or conquests. We have also seen that democracy is a body in perfect health and full spiritual activity because all the centres of its brain are able to unfold themselves and, through the right of the originators of these centres to have a voice, can more or less find expression in the life of society, which in this way becomes an ocean of new ideas, new manifestations or movements upwards in spirit and culture. We have thus seen that the principle of giving or setting free thus makes democracy one with life, while the principle of coercion makes dictatorship identical to death.
      But since the principle of setting free thus has such an overriding effect on the flock, it is not so remarkable that mankind's greatest leaders, prophets and wise men, founders of religions and world redeemers, through religions, books and behaviour, unceasingly state that the absolutely most important thing is love. Love is the principle of giving or setting free in its purest form. "Love seeks not its own", which means that love is a mental attitude whose trend of thought elicits joy in letting the welfare of others go before one's own. It is a way of living that can elicit only the highest feeling of happiness in "sacrificing oneself for others", that is, the perfect, one hundred per cent giving of oneself to life or one's surroundings, the perfect, one hundred per cent giving of freedom to all other living beings to evolve and to experience life.
      But who within terrestrial mankind has reached as far as this? Well, the answer to this must be very negative. The above-mentioned society is precisely on a step where almost no one is so evolved that they can be the recipient of such an all-outshining cosmic gift – the gift of all other people sacrificing themselves for them – and for which reason there is likewise almost no one who has evolved sufficiently to be able to give this gift or to such an overwhelming extent give himself for others. But we will shortly go into this problem in more detail so that all those who are interested can see for themselves how much they are in contact with love or the greatest principle of life, so that they thereby can ascertain their real spiritual position in their course towards the highest happiness.
      That the principle of giving has gradually become a factor that one cannot get away from in modern society cannot be unfamiliar for very many. We live in a time where the social conditions are such that they have made it quite common, indeed extremely common, that "gifts" are "given" and "received". There are philanthropic institutions, there is social welfare, there are collections in church collection boxes, there are collections for missionary workers, people donate money to provide Christmas dinners for the poor and holidays for impoverished children. Large, wealthy firms and people as rich as Croesus give fortunes away to public authorities, to art, science, expeditions and so on. We will not go into these forms of giving in more detail, but merely hint that it cannot be disputed that they are irrefutable proof of the penetration of terrestrial human egoism by a new and better world. It is Nature's own great principle of life, "giving rather than receiving", that thus publicly and privately is beginning to break through egoism's animal principle of obstructing, "receiving rather than giving".
      Despite the fact that this latter principle is so ingeniously well organised through business and advertising that it controls the economy of the masses and makes the meagre savings of millions of poor people flow in strong currents into its banks and financial institutions or financial concerns where they accumulate as assets worth billions, Nature's own great principle of giving forces these assets, in the form of the above-mentioned social gifts, to flow back to society.
      Even if this returning of assets to terrestrial society is, as previously mentioned, naturally still only at its feeble beginner or embryo stage, it is, however, sufficient for one to see here the great basic principle of life itself, that is, the cycle. Just as the ocean cannot retain the mass of water accrued from the continents through rivers and streams, but, in the form of rain, mist and morning dew, must give it back to the soil, the oceans of money cannot in the long run continue to retain the masses of assets accrued through the streams and rivers of business and advertising but must, in the form of the above-mentioned public and private forms of giving, begin to flow back to society.
      Perfecting this giving back or this cycle so that all zones get the economic moisture, summer rain and morning dew they need – thus making poverty, which is a financial desert-like state, a problem of the past – is the mission of democracy. And this mission is thus the opening of the gate of freedom, which is absolutely the only thing through which a rational and practical world redemption can reach its peak on the continents of the Earth.