To be sure, brilliant leaders can hold great goals before a Folk’s eyes, so that it can be further diverted from material things in order to serve higher spiritual ideals. In general, the merely material interest will rise in exact proportion as ideal spiritual outlooks are in the process of disappearing. The more primitive the spiritual life of man, the more animallike he becomes, until finally he regards food intake as the one and only aim of life. Hence a Folk can quite well endure a certain limitation of material goals, as long as it is given compensation in the form of active ideals. But if these ideals are not to result in the ruin of a Folk, they should never exist unilaterally at the expense of material nourishment, so that the health of the nation seems to be threatened by them. For a starved Folk will indeed either collapse in consequence of its physical undernourishment, or perforce bring about a change in its situation. Sooner or later, however, physical collapse brings spiritual collapse in its train. Then all ideals also come to an end. Thus ideals are good and healthy as long as they keep on strengthening a Folk’s inner and general forces, so that in the last analysis they can again be of benefit in waging the struggle for existence. Ideals which do not serve this purpose are evil, though they may appear a thousand times outwardly beautiful, because they remove a Folk more and more from the reality of life.

But the bread which a Folk requires is conditioned by the living space at its disposal. A healthy Folk, at least, will always seek to find the satisfaction of its needs on its own soil. Any other condition is pathological and dangerous, even if it makes possible the sustenance of a Folk for centuries. World trade, world economy, tourist traffic, and so on, and so forth, are all transient means for securing a nation’s sustenance. They are dependent upon factors which are partly beyond calculation, and which, on the other hand, lie beyond a nation’s power. At all times the surest foundation for the existence of a Folk has been its own soil.