As the fate of mankind at the present time takes the shape of a world crisis that, in the form of unemployment, poverty, ill health, revolution, killing of foetuses, murder, suicide, vices, perversities, unhappy marriages, irreligiousness and mental illness, is felt as a burden of such increasing magnitude that no individual human being can, in the long run, be untouched by it, an absolute overview of what is actually happening will not only be of immediate importance but will in fact be an absolute necessity if there is to be any talk at all of bringing this crisis to an end. Does not mankind then have such an overview? It does have science after all. It has wonderful universities, colleges and schools for the development of intelligence. It has laboratories for analysing substances. It has observatories for the study of the position of the earth in space. Indeed, this is very true. Nevertheless it is, generally speaking, absolutely ignorant about what it is witnessing. For if it really had the correct overview then it must, to judge from its behaviour, without doubt be classified as abnormal or mentally ill. It owns immeasurable wealth, but lives in poverty. It has inexhaustible sources of nourishment, but is starving. It has at its disposal extraordinary conditions for the development of heating, but is cold. It has the most wonderful prerequisites for health, but suffers from an untold number of illnesses. It is in possession of immeasurable "horsepower" or means to make the elements work for it, but still eats its bread in the sweat of its brow. It has governments, ministers, presidents, kings and dictators, but lives in chaos and darkness. It has churches, temples, prophets and world redeemers through which and through whom the great commandment "Love one another" or "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" has been preached as the road to life for thousands of years, but it nonetheless represents great ingenuity in the production of munitions and instruments of murder. So, if mankind possesses an absolute overview of its own power then a psychoanalysis of it will show that it is completely abnormal.
      But fortunately this is not the case. Mankind is completely normal. It experiences things and uses the experiences. It invents and discovers things. It acquires knowledge and, through this, acquires power. It finds itself in a steadily upward evolution. It has far greater power and possesses far greater creative abilities than it did only a hundred years ago. But if it has nevertheless not been able to subdue the earth, this is because it does not yet have enough experience, and therefore also does not have the control over itself that is necessary for it to be able to avoid the disharmonies in which it lives.