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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75958 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922.
+
+THE DECAY AND THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION
+
+PART I
+
+BY
+
+ALBERT SCHWEITZER
+
+D.THEOL.; D.PHIL.; D.MED. (STRASSBURG)
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+
+C. T. CAMPION M.A. (OXON.) (SOMETIME OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD)
+
+A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 1923
+
+
+
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain by_ THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS,LTD., LONDON AND
+TONBRIDGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+To ANNIE FISCHER IN DEEPEST GRATITUDE
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR’S PREFACE
+
+“The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization” is the first part of a
+complete philosophy of civilization with which I have been occupied
+since the year 1900.
+
+The second part, entitled “Civilization and Ethics”, will appear
+immediately. The third is called “The World-View_(_*_)_ of Reverence
+for Life”. The fourth has to do with the civilized State.
+
+That over which I have toiled since 1900 has been finally ripened in
+the stillness of the primeval forest of Equatorial Africa. There,
+during the years 1914-17, the clear and definite lines of this
+philosophy of civilization have been developed.
+
+The first part, “The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization”, is a
+kind of introduction to the philosophy of civilization. It states the
+problem of civilization.
+
+Entering on the question as to what is the real essential nature of
+civilization, I come to the pronouncement that this is ultimately
+ethical. I know that in thus stating the problem as a moral one I [pg
+viii] shall surprise and even disgust the spirit of our times, which
+is accustomed to move amidst æsthetic, historical and material
+considerations. I imagine, however, that I am myself enough of an
+artist and also of an historian to be able to comprehend the æsthetic
+and historical elements in civilization, and that, as a modern
+physician and surgeon, I am sufficiently modern to appreciate the
+glamour of the technical and material attainments of our age.
+
+Notwithstanding this, I have come to the conviction that the æsthetic
+and the historical elements, and the magnificent extension of our
+material knowledge and power, do not themselves form the essence of
+civilization, but that this depends on the mental disposition of the
+individuals and nations who exist in the world. All other things are
+merely accompanying circumstances of civilization, which have nothing
+to do with its real essence.
+
+Creative, artistic, intellectual, and material attainments can only
+show their full and true effects when the continued existence and
+development of civilization have been secured by founding civilization
+itself on a mental disposition which is truly ethical. It is only in
+his struggle to become ethical that man comes to possess real value as
+a personality; it is only under the influence of ethical convictions
+that the various relations of human society are formed in such a way
+that individuals and peoples can [pg ix] develop in an ideal manner.
+If the ethical foundation is lacking, then civilization collapses,
+even when in other directions creative and intellectual forces of the
+strongest nature are at work.
+
+This moral conception of civilization, which makes me almost a
+stranger amidst the intellectual life of my time, I express clearly
+and unhesitatingly, in order to arouse amongst my contemporaries
+reflection as to what civilization really is. We shall not succeed in
+re-establishing our civilization on an enduring basis until we rid
+ourselves completely of the superficial concept of civilization which
+now holds us in thrall, and give ourselves up again to the ethical
+view which obtained in the eighteenth century.
+
+The second point which I desire should obtain currency is that of the
+connection between civilization and our theory of the universe. At the
+present time no regard is paid to this connection. In fact, the period
+in which we are living altogether misses the significance of having a
+theory of the universe. It is the common conviction nowadays, of
+educated and uneducated alike, that humanity will progress quite
+satisfactorily without any theory of the universe at all.
+
+The real fact is that all human progress depends on progress in its
+theory of the universe, whilst, conversely, decadence is conditioned
+by a similar [pg x] decadence in this theory. Our loss of real
+civilization is due to our lack of a theory of the universe.
+
+Only as we again succeed in attaining a strong and worthy theory of
+the universe, and find in it strong and worthy convictions, shall we
+again become capable of producing a new civilization. It is this
+apparently abstract and paradoxical truth of which I proclaim myself
+the champion.
+
+Civilization, put quite simply, consists in our giving ourselves, as
+human beings, to the effort to attain the perfecting of the human race
+and the actualization of progress of every sort in the circumstances
+of humanity and of the objective world. This mental attitude, however,
+involves a double predisposition: firstly, we must be prepared to act
+affirmatively toward the world and life; secondly, we must become
+ethical.
+
+Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning to the world and to
+life shall we be able also to give ourselves to such action as will
+produce results of real value. As long as we look on our existence in
+the world as meaningless, there is no point whatever in desiring to
+effect anything in the world. We become workers for that universal
+spiritual and material progress which we call civilization only in so
+far as we affirm that the world and life possess some sort of meaning,
+or, which is the same thing, only in so far as we think
+optimistically.
+
+[pg xi]
+
+Civilization originates when men become inspired by a strong and clear
+determination to attain progress, and consecrate themselves, as a
+result of this determination, to the service of life and of the world.
+It is only in ethics that we can find the driving force for such
+action, transcending, as it does, the limits of our own existence.
+
+Nothing of real value in the world is ever accomplished without
+enthusiasm and self-sacrifice.
+
+But it is impossible to convince men of the truth of world- and
+life-affirmation and of the real value of ethics by mere declamation.
+The affirmative and ethical mentality which characterizes these
+beliefs must originate in man himself as the result of an inner
+spiritual relation to the world. Only then will they accompany him as
+strong, clear, and constant convictions, and condition his every
+thought and action.
+
+To put it in another way: world- and life-affirmation must be the
+products of thought about the world and life. Only as the majority of
+individuals attain to this result of thought and continue under its
+influence will a true and enduring civilization make progress in the
+world. Should the mental disposition towards world- and
+life-affirmation and towards ethics begin to wane, or become dim and
+obscured, we shall be incapable of working for true civilization, nay,
+more, we shall be unable even to [pg xii] form a correct concept of
+what such civilization ought to be.
+
+And this is the fate which has befallen us. We are bereft of any
+theory of the universe. Therefore, instead of being inspired by a
+profound and powerful spirit of affirmation of the world and of life,
+we allow ourselves, both as individuals and as nations, to be driven
+hither and thither by a type of such affirmation which is both
+confused and superficial. Instead of adopting a determined ethical
+attitude, we exist in an atmosphere of mere ethical phrases or declare
+ourselves ethical sceptics.
+
+How is it that we have got into this state of lacking a theory of the
+universe? It is because hitherto the world- and life-affirming and
+ethical theory of the universe had no convincing and permanent
+foundation in thought. We thought again and again that we had found
+such a basis for it; but it lost power again and again without our
+being aware that it was doing so, until, finally, we have been
+obliged, for more than a generation past, to resign ourselves more and
+more to a complete lack of any world-theory at all.
+
+Thus, in this introductory part of my work, I proclaim two truths and
+conclude with a great note of interrogation. The truths are the
+following: The basic ethical character of civilization, and the
+connection between civilization and our theories of [pg xiii] the
+universe. The question with which I conclude is this: Is it at all
+possible to find a real and permanent foundation in thought for a
+theory of the universe which shall be both ethical and affirmative of
+the world and of life?
+
+The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the
+meaninglessness and hopelessness which characterize the thoughts and
+convictions of men to-day, and reaching a state of fresh hope and
+fresh determination. We shall be capable of this, however, only when
+the majority of individuals discover for themselves both an ethic and
+a profound and steadfast attitude of world- and life-affirmation, in a
+theory of the universe at once convincing and based on reflection.
+
+Without such a general spiritual experience there is no possibility of
+holding our world back from the ruin and disintegration towards which
+it is being hastened. It is our duty then to rouse ourselves to fresh
+reflection about the world and life.
+
+In “Civilization and Ethics”, the second part of this philosophy of
+civilization, I describe the road along which thought has led me to
+world- and life-affirmation and to ethics. The root-idea of my theory
+of the universe is that my relation to my own being and to the
+objective world is determined by reverence for life. This reverence
+for life is given as an element of my will-to-live, and becomes
+clearly [pg xiv] conscious of itself as I reflect about my life and
+about the world. In the mental attitude of reverence for life which
+should characterize my contact with all forms of life, both ethics and
+world- and life-affirmation are involved. It is not any kind of
+insight into the essential nature of the world which determines my
+relation to my own existence and to the existence which I encounter in
+the world, but rather only and solely my own will-to-live which has
+developed the power of reflection about itself and the world.
+
+The theory of the universe characterized by reverence for life is a
+type of mysticism arrived at by self-consistent thought when persisted
+in to its ultimate conclusion. Surrendering himself to the guidance of
+this mysticism, man finds a meaning for his life in that he strives to
+accomplish his own spiritual and ethical self-fulfilment, and,
+simultaneously and in the same act, helps forward all the processes of
+spiritual and material progress which have to be actualized in the
+world.
+
+I do not know how many, or how few, will allow themselves to be
+persuaded to travel with me on the road indicated above. What I desire
+above all things—and this is the crux of the whole affair—is that we
+should all recognize fully that our present entire lack of any theory
+of the universe is the ultimate source of all the catastrophes and
+misery of [pg xv] our times, and that we should toil in concert for a
+theory of the universe and of life, in order that thus we may arrive
+at a mental disposition which shall make us really and truly civilized
+men.
+
+It was a great joy to me to be afforded the opportunity of putting
+forward, in the _Dale Lectures_, delivered in Oxford, the views on
+which this philosophy of civilization is based.
+
+I would tender my deepest thanks to my friends, Mr. C. T. Campion,
+M.A., now of Grahamstown, South Africa, and Dr. J. P. Naish, of
+Oxford. Mr. Campion is the translator of this first part of the
+“Philosophy of Civilization”. Dr. Naish has seen the book through the
+press and translated this preface.
+
+ALBERT SCHWEITZER.
+
+Strasbourg, Alsace.
+
+_February_, 1923.
+
+
+
+
+[pg xvi]
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I How Philosophy is Responsible for the Collapse of
+Civilization [1]
+
+CHAPTER II Hindrances to Civilization in our Economic and Spiritual
+Life [15]
+
+CHAPTER III Civilization essentially Ethical in Character [35]
+
+CHAPTER IV The Way to the Restoration of Civilization [62]
+
+CHAPTER V Civilization and Theories of the Universe [80]
+
+
+[pg xvii]
+
+
+
+
+THE DECAY AND THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HOW PHILOSOPHY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION
+
+
+Our self-deception as to the real conditions of our civilization. The
+collapse of the theory of the universe on which our ideals were based.
+The superficial character of modern philosophizing.
+
+We are living to-day under the sign of the collapse of civilization.
+The situation has not been produced by the war; the latter is only a
+manifestation of it. The spiritual atmosphere has solidified into
+actual facts, which again react on it with disastrous results in every
+respect. This interaction of material and spiritual has assumed a most
+unhealthy character. Just below a mighty cataract we are driving along
+in a current full of formidable eddies, and it will need the most
+gigantic efforts to rescue the vessel of our fate from the dangerous
+side channel into which we have [pg 002] allowed it to drift, and
+bring it back into the main stream, if, indeed, we can hope to do so
+at all.
+
+We have drifted out of the stream of civilization because there was
+amongst us no real reflection upon what civilization is. It is true
+that at the end of the last century and the beginning of this there
+appeared a number of works on civilization with the most varied
+titles; but, as though in obedience to some secret order, they made no
+attempt to settle and make clear the conditions of our intellectual
+life, but devoted themselves exclusively to its origin and history.
+They gave us a relief map of civilization marked with roads which men
+had observed or invented, and which led us over hill and dale through
+the fields of history from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.
+It was a triumph for the historical sense of the authors. The crowds
+whom these works instructed were filled with satisfied contentment
+when they understood that their civilization was the organic product
+of so many centuries of the working of spiritual and social forces,
+but no one worked out and described the content of our spiritual life.
+No one tested its value from the point of view of the nobility of its
+ideas, and its ability to produce real progress.
+
+Thus we crossed the threshold of the twentieth century with an
+unshakable conceit of ourselves, [pg 003] and whatever was written at
+that time about our civilization only confirmed us in our ingenuous
+belief in its high value. Anyone who expressed doubt was regarded with
+astonishment. Many, indeed, who were on the road to error, stopped and
+returned to the main road again because they were afraid of the path
+which led off to the side. Others continued along the main road, but
+in silence; the understanding and insight which were at work in them
+only condemned them to isolation.
+
+It is clear now to everyone that the suicide of civilization is in
+progress. What yet remains of it is no longer safe. It is still
+standing, indeed, because it was not exposed to the destructive
+pressure which overwhelmed the rest, but, like the rest, is built upon
+rubble, and the next landslide will very likely carry it away.
+
+But what was it that preceded and led up to this loss of power in the
+innate forces of civilization?
+
+The age of the Illuminati and of rationalism had put forward ethical
+ideals, based on reason, concerning the development of the individual
+to true manhood, his position in society, the material and spiritual
+problems which arose out of society, the relations of the different
+nations to each other, and their issue in a humanity which should be
+united in [pg 004] the pursuit of the highest moral and spiritual
+objects. These ideals had begun, both in philosophy and in general
+thought, to get into contact with reality and to alter the general
+environment. In the course of three or four generations there had been
+such progress made, both in the ideas underlying civilization and in
+their material embodiment, that the age of true civilization seemed to
+have dawned upon the world and to be assured of an uninterrupted
+development.
+
+But about the middle of the nineteenth century this mutual
+understanding and co-operation between ethical ideals and reality
+began to break down, and in the course of the next few decades it
+disappeared more and more completely. Without resistance, without
+complaint, civilization abdicated. Its ideas lagged behind, as though
+they were too exhausted to keep pace with it. How did this come about?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The decisive element in the production of this result was philosophy’s
+renunciation of her duty.
+
+In the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth it was
+philosophy which led and guided thought in general. She had busied
+herself with the questions which presented themselves to mankind at
+each successive period, and had kept the [pg 005] thought of civilized
+man actively reflecting upon them. Philosophy at that time included
+within herself an elementary philosophizing about man, society, race,
+humanity and civilization, which produced in a perfectly natural way a
+living popular philosophy that controlled the general thought, and
+maintained the enthusiasm for civilization.
+
+But that ethical, and at the same time optimistic, view of things in
+which the Illuminati and rationalism had laid the foundations of this
+healthy popular philosophy, was unable in the long run to meet the
+criticism levelled at it by pure thought. Its naïve dogmatism raised
+more and more prejudice against it. Kant tried to provide the
+tottering building with new foundations, undertaking to alter the
+rationalistic view of things in accordance with the demands of a
+deeper theory of knowledge, without, however, making any change in its
+essential spiritual elements. Goethe, Schiller and other intellectual
+giants of the age, showed, by means of criticism both kindly and
+malicious, that rationalism was rather popular philosophy than real
+philosophy, but they were not in a position to put into the place of
+what they destroyed anything new which could give the same effective
+support to the ideas about civilization which were current in the
+general thought of the time.
+
+[pg 006]
+
+Fichte, Hegel, and other philosophers, who, for all their criticism of
+rationalism, paid homage to its ethical ideals, attempted to establish
+a similar ethical and optimistic view of things by speculative
+methods, that is by logical and metaphysical discussion of pure being
+and its development into a universe. For three or four decades they
+succeeded in deceiving themselves and others with this supposedly
+creative and inspiring illusion, and in doing violence to reality in
+the interests of their theory of the universe. But at last the natural
+sciences, which all this time had been growing stronger and stronger,
+rose up against them, and, with a plebeian enthusiasm for the truth of
+reality, reduced to ruins the magnificent creations of their
+imagination.
+
+Since that time the ethical ideas on which civilization rests have
+been wandering about the world, poverty-stricken and homeless. No
+theory of the universe has been advanced which can give them a solid
+foundation; in fact, not one has made its appearance which can claim
+for itself solidity and inner consistency. The age of philosophic
+dogmatism had come definitely to an end, and after that nothing was
+recognized as truth except the science which described reality.
+General theories of the universe no longer appeared as fixed stars;
+they [pg 007] were regarded as resting on hypothesis, and ranked no
+higher than comets.
+
+The same weapon which struck down the dogmatism of knowledge about the
+universe struck down also the dogmatic enunciation of spiritual ideas.
+The early simple rationalism, the critical rationalism of Kant, and
+the speculative rationalism of the great philosophers of the
+nineteenth century had all alike done violence to reality in two ways.
+They had given a position above that of the facts of science to the
+views which they had arrived at by pure thought, and they had also
+preached a series of ethical ideals which were meant to replace by new
+ones the various existing relations in the ideas and the material
+environment of mankind. When the first of these two forms of violence
+was proved to be a mistaken one, it became questionable whether the
+second could still be allowed the justification which it had hitherto
+enjoyed. The doctrinaire methods of thought which made the existing
+world nothing but material for the production of a purely theoretical
+sketch of a better future were replaced by sympathetic attempts to
+understand the historical origin of existing things for which Hegel’s
+philosophy had prepared the way.
+
+With a general mentality of this description, a real combination of
+ethical ideals with reality was no [pg 008] longer possible; there was
+not the freedom from prejudice which that required, and so there came
+a weakening of the convictions which were the driving power of
+civilization. So, too, an end was put to that justifiable violence to
+human convictions and circumstances without which the reforming work
+of civilization can make no advance, because it was bound up with that
+other unjustifiable violence to reality. That is the tragic element in
+the psychological development of our spiritual life during the latter
+half of the nineteenth century.
+
+Rationalism, then, had been dismissed; but with it went also the
+optimistic convictions as to the moral meaning of the universe and of
+humanity, of society and of man, to which it had given birth, though
+the conviction still exerted so much influence that no attention was
+paid to the catastrophe which had really begun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philosophy did not realize that the power of the ideas about
+civilization which had been entrusted to it was becoming a doubtful
+quantity. At the end of one of the most brilliant works on the history
+of philosophy which appeared at the close of the nineteenth century
+philosophy is defined as the process “by which there comes to
+completion, step by step, [pg 009] and with ever clearer and surer
+consciousness, that conviction about the value of civilization the
+universal validity of which it is the object of philosophy itself to
+affirm.” But the author has forgotten the essential point, viz., that
+there was a time when philosophy did not merely convince itself of the
+value of civilization, but also let its convictions go forth as
+fruitful ideas destined to influence the general thought, while from
+the middle of the nineteenth century onwards these convictions had
+become more and more of the nature of hoarded and unproductive
+capital.
+
+Once philosophy had been an active worker producing universal
+convictions about civilization. Now, after the collapse in the middle
+of the nineteenth century, this same philosophy had become a mere
+drawer of dividends, concentrating her activities far from the world
+on what she had managed to save. She had become a mere science, which
+sifted the results of the historical and natural sciences, and
+collected from them material for a future theory of the universe,
+carrying on with this object in view a learned activity in all
+branches of knowledge. At the same time she became more and more
+absorbed in the study of her own past. Philosophy came to mean
+practically the history of philosophy, but the creative spirit had
+left her. She became more and [pg 010] more a philosophy which
+contained no real thought. She reflected, indeed, on the results
+achieved by the individual sciences, but she lost the power of thought
+about fundamental problems.
+
+She looked back with condescending pity on the rationalism which she
+had outstripped. She prided herself on being able to trace her descent
+through Kant, on having been shown by Hegel the inner meaning of
+history, and on being at work to-day in close sympathy with the
+natural sciences. But for all that she was poorer than the poorest
+rationalism, because she now carried on in imagination only, and not
+in reality, the recognized work of philosophy, which the latter had
+practised so zealously. Rationalism, for all its simplicity, had been
+a working philosophy, but philosophy herself had now become, for all
+her insight, merely a pedantic philosophy of degenerates. She still
+played, indeed, some sort of _rôle_ in schools and universities, but
+she had no longer any message for the great world.
+
+In spite of all her learning, she had become a stranger to the world,
+and the problems of life which occupied men and the whole thought of
+the age had no part in her activities. Her way lay apart from the
+general spiritual life, and just as she derived no stimulus from the
+latter, so she gave none back. Refusing to concern herself with
+fundamental [pg 011] problems, she contained no fundamental philosophy
+which could become a philosophy of the people.
+
+From this impotence came the aversion to all generally intelligible
+philosophizing which is so characteristic of her. Popular philosophy
+was for her merely a review, prepared for the use of the crowd,
+simplified, and therefore rendered inferior, of the results given by
+the individual sciences which she had herself sifted and put together
+in view of a future theory of the universe. She was wholly unconscious
+of several things, viz., that there is a popular philosophy which
+arises out of such a review; that it is just the province of
+philosophy to deal with the primary, deeper questions about which
+individuals and the crowd are thinking, or ought to be thinking, to
+apply to them more comprehensive and more thorough methods of thought,
+and then restore them to general currency; and, finally, that the
+value of any philosophy is in the last resort to be measured by its
+capacity, or incapacity, to transform itself into a living philosophy
+of the people.
+
+Whatever is deep is also simple, and can be reproduced as such, if
+only its relation to the whole of reality is preserved. It is then
+something abstract, which secures for itself a many-sided life as soon
+as it comes into contact with facts.
+
+[pg 012]
+
+Whatever of inquiring thought there was among the general public was
+therefore compelled to languish, because our philosophy refused either
+to acknowledge or to help it. It found in front of it a deep chasm
+which it could not cross.
+
+Of gold coinage, minted in the past, philosophy had abundance;
+hypotheses about a soon to be developed theological theory of the
+universe filled her vaults like unminted bullion; but food with which
+to appease the spiritual hunger of the present she did not possess.
+Deceived by her own riches, she had neglected to plant any ground with
+nourishing crops, and therefore, ignoring the hunger of the age, she
+left the latter to its fate.
+
+That pure thought never managed to construct a theory of the universe
+of an optimistic, ethical character, and to build up on that for a
+foundation the ideals which go to produce civilization, was not the
+fault of philosophy; it was a fact which became evident as thought
+developed. But philosophy was guilty of a wrong to our age in that it
+did not admit the fact, but remained wrapped up in its illusion, as
+though this were really a help to the progress of civilization.
+
+The ultimate vocation of philosophy is to be the guide and guardian of
+the general reason, and it was her duty, in the circumstances of the
+time, to confess [pg 013] to our world that ethical ideals were no
+longer supported by any general theory of the universe, but were, till
+further notice, left to themselves, and must make their way in the
+world by their own innate power. She ought to have shown us that we
+have to fight on behalf of the ideals on which our civilization rests.
+She ought to have tried to give these ideals an independent existence
+by virtue of their own inner value and inner truth, and so to keep
+them alive and active without any extraneous help from a corresponding
+theory of the universe. No effort should have been spared to direct
+the attention of the cultured and the uncultured alike to the problem
+of the ideals of civilization.
+
+But philosophy philosophized about everything except civilization. She
+went on working undeviatingly at the establishment of a theoretical
+view of the universe, as though by means of it everything could be
+restored, and did not reflect that this theory, even if it were
+completed, would be constructed only out of history and science, and
+would accordingly be unoptimistic and unethical, and would remain for
+ever an “impotent theory of the universe,” which could never call
+forth the energies needed for the establishment and maintenance of the
+ideals of civilization.
+
+So little did philosophy philosophize about [pg 014] civilization that
+she did not even notice that she herself and the age along with her
+were losing more and more of it. In the hour of peril the watchman who
+ought to have kept us awake was himself asleep, and the result was
+that we put up no fight at all on behalf of our civilization.
+
+
+
+
+
+[pg 015]
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HINDRANCES TO CIVILIZATION IN OUR ECONOMIC AND SPIRITUAL LIFE
+
+
+The unfree economic position of the modern man. The undeveloped
+condition of the modern man. The modern man’s want of humanity. The
+lack of spiritual independence in the man of to-day.
+
+Even if the abdication of thought has been, as we have seen, the
+decisive factor in the collapse of our civilization, there are yet a
+number of other causes which combine with it to hinder our progress in
+this regard. They are to be found in the field of spiritual as well as
+in that of economic activity, and depend, above all, on the
+interaction between the two, an interaction which is unsatisfactory
+and continually becoming more so.
+
+The capacity of the modern man for progress in civilization is
+diminished because the circumstances in which he finds himself placed
+injure him psychically and stunt his personality.
+
+The development of civilization comes about—to put it quite
+generally—by individual men thinking out ideals which aim at the
+progress of the whole, and then so fitting them to the realities of
+life that [pg 016] they assume the shape in which they can influence
+most effectively the circumstances of the time. A man’s ability to be
+a pioneer of progress, that is, to understand what civilization is and
+to work for it, depends, therefore, on his being a thinker and on his
+being free. He must be the former if he is to be capable of
+comprehending his ideals and putting them into shape. He must be free
+in order to be in a position to launch his ideals out into the general
+life. The more completely his activities are taken up in any way by
+the struggle for existence, the more strongly will the impulse to
+improve his own condition find expression in the ideals of his
+thought. Ideals of self-interest then get mixed up with and spoil his
+ideals of civilization.
+
+Material and spiritual freedom are closely bound up with one another.
+Civilization presupposes free men, for only by free men can it be
+thought out and brought to realization.
+
+But among mankind to-day both freedom and the capacity for thought
+have been sadly diminished.
+
+If society had so developed that a continually widening circle of the
+population could enjoy a modest, but well-assured, condition of
+comfort, civilization would have been much more helped than it has
+been by all the material conquests which are lauded in its name. These
+do, indeed, make [pg 017] mankind as a whole less dependent upon
+nature, but at the same time they diminish the number of free and
+independent lives. The artisan who was his own master becomes the
+factory hand through the compulsion of machinery. Because in the
+complicated business world of to-day only undertakings with abundant
+capital behind them can maintain their existence, the place of the
+small, independent dealer is being taken more and more completely by
+the employee. Even the classes which still possess a larger or smaller
+amount of property or maintain a more or less independent activity get
+drawn more and more completely into the struggle for existence because
+of the insecurity of present conditions under the economic system of
+to-day.
+
+The lack of freedom which results is made worse still because the
+factory system creates continually growing agglomerations of people
+who are thereby compulsorily separated from the soil which feeds them,
+from their own homes and from nature. Hence comes serious psychical
+injury. There is only too much truth in the paradoxical saying that
+abnormal life begins with the loss of one’s own field and
+dwelling-place.
+
+Civilization is, it is true, furthered to a certain extent by the
+self-regarding ideals produced by the [pg 018] groups of people who
+unite and co-operate in defence of their similarly threatened
+interests in so far as they seek to obtain an improvement in their
+material, and thereby also in their spiritual, environment. But these
+ideals are a danger to the idea of civilization as such, because the
+form which they assume is either not at all, or very imperfectly,
+determined by the really universal interests of the community. The
+consideration of civilization as such is held back by the competition
+between the various self-regarding ideals which go under its name.
+
+To the want of freedom we have to add the evil of overwork. For two or
+three generations numbers of individuals have been living as workers
+merely, not as human beings. Whatever can be said in a general way
+about the moral and spiritual significance of labour has no bearing on
+what they have to do. An excessive amount of labour is the rule to-day
+in every department of industry, with the result that the labourer’s
+spiritual element cannot possibly thrive. This overwork hits him
+indirectly even in his childhood, for his parents, caught in the
+inexorable toils of work, cannot devote themselves to his up-bringing
+as they should. Thus his development is robbed of something which can
+never be made good, and later in life, when he himself is the slave of
+over-long hours, he feels more and [pg 019] more the need of external
+distractions. To spend the time left to him for leisure in
+self-cultivation, or in serious intercourse with his fellows or with
+books, requires a mental collectedness and a self-control which he
+finds very difficult. Complete idleness, forgetfulness, and diversion
+from his usual activities are a physical necessity. He does not want
+to think, and seeks not self-improvement, but entertainment, that kind
+of entertainment, moreover, which makes least demand upon his
+spiritual faculties.
+
+The mentality of this mass of individuals, spiritually relaxed and
+incapable of self-collectedness, reacts upon all those institutions
+which ought to serve the cause of culture, and therewith of
+civilization. The theatre takes a second place behind the pleasure
+resort or the picture show, and the instructive book behind the
+diverting one. An ever increasing proportion of periodicals and
+newspapers have to accommodate themselves to the necessity of putting
+their matter before their readers in the shape which lets it be
+assimilated most easily. A comparison of the average newspapers of
+to-day with those of fifty or sixty years ago shows how thoroughly
+such publications have had to change their methods in this respect.
+
+When once the spirit of superficiality has penetrated [pg 020] into
+the institutions which ought to sustain the spiritual life, these
+exercise on their part a reflex influence on the society which they
+have brought to this condition, and force on all alike this state of
+mental vacuity.
+
+How completely this want of thinking power has become a second nature
+in men to-day is shown by the kind of sociability which it produces.
+When two of them meet for a conversation each is careful to see that
+their talk does not go beyond generalities or develop into a real
+exchange of ideas. No one has anything of his own to give out, and
+everyone is haunted by a sort of terror lest anything original should
+be demanded from him.
+
+The spirit produced in such a society of never-concentrated minds is
+rising among us as an ever growing force, and it results in a lowered
+conception of what man should be. In ourselves, as in others we look
+for nothing but vigour in productive work and resign ourselves to the
+abandonment of any higher ideal.
+
+When we consider this want of freedom and of mental concentration, we
+see that the conditions of life for the inhabitants of our big cities
+are as unfavourable as they could be. Naturally, then, those
+inhabitants are in most danger on their spiritual side. It is doubtful
+whether big cities [pg 021] have ever been foci of civilization in the
+sense that in them there has arisen the ideal of a man well and truly
+developed as a spiritual personality; to-day, at any rate, the
+condition of things is such that true civilization needs to be rescued
+from the spirit that issues from them and their inhabitants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, besides the hindrance caused to civilization by the modern man’s
+lack of freedom and of the power of mental concentration, there is a
+further hindrance caused by his imperfect development. The enormous
+increase of human knowledge and power, in specialized thoroughness as
+well as in extent, necessarily leads to individual activities being
+limited more and more to well-defined departments. Human labour is
+organized and co-ordinated so that specialization may enable
+individuals to make the highest and most effective possible
+contribution. The results obtained are amazing, but the spiritual
+significance of the work for the worker suffers. There is no call upon
+the whole man, only upon some of his faculties, and this has a reflex
+effect upon his nature as a whole. The faculties which build up
+personality and are called out by comprehensive and varied tasks are
+ousted by the less comprehensive ones, which from this point of view
+are, in the [pg 022] general sense of the word, less spiritual. The
+artisan of to-day does not understand his trade as a whole in the way
+in which his predecessor did. He no longer learns, like the latter, to
+work the wood or the metal through all the stages of manufacture; many
+of these stages have already been carried out by men and machines
+before the material comes into his hands. Consequently his
+reflectiveness, his imagination, and his skill are no longer called
+out by ever varying difficulties in the work, and his creative and
+artistic powers are atrophied. In place of the normal
+self-consciousness which is promoted by work into the doing of which
+he must put his whole power of thought and his whole personality,
+there comes a self-satisfaction which is content with a fragmentary
+ability which, it may be admitted, is perfect, and this
+self-satisfaction is persuaded by its perfection in mastering details
+to overlook its imperfection in dealing with the whole.
+
+In all professions, most clearly perhaps in the pursuit of science, we
+can recognize the spiritual danger with which specialization threatens
+not only individuals, but the spiritual life of the community. It is
+already noticeable, too, that education is carried on now by teachers
+who have not a wide enough outlook to make their scholars understand
+the interconnection of the individual sciences, and [pg 023] to be
+able to give them a mental horizon as wide as it should be.
+
+Then, as if specialization and the organization of work, where it is
+unavoidable, were not already injurious enough to the soul of the
+modern man, it is pursued and built up where it could be dispensed
+with. In administration, in education, and in every kind of calling
+the natural sphere of activity is narrowed as far as possible by rules
+and superintendence. How much less free in many countries is the
+elementary school teacher of to-day compared with what he was once!
+How lifeless and impersonal has his teaching become as a result of all
+these limitations!
+
+Thus through our methods of work we have suffered loss spiritually and
+as individuals just in proportion as the material output of our
+collective activity has increased. Here, too, is an illustration of
+that tragic law which says that every gain brings with it, somehow or
+other, a corresponding loss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But man to-day is in danger not only through his lack of freedom, of
+the power of mental concentration, and of the opportunity for
+all-round development: he is in danger of losing his humanity.
+
+The normal attitude of man to man is made very [pg 024] difficult for
+us. Owing to the hurry in which we live, to the increased facilities
+for intercourse, and to the necessity for living and working with many
+others in an overcrowded locality, we meet each other continually, and
+in the most varied relations, as strangers. Our circumstances do not
+allow us to deal with each other as man to man, for the limitations
+placed upon the activities of the natural man are so general and so
+unbroken that we get accustomed to them, and no longer feel our
+mechanical, impersonal intercourse to be something that is unnatural.
+We no longer feel uncomfortable that in such a number of situations we
+can no longer be men among men, and at last we give up trying to be
+so, even when it would be possible and proper.
+
+In this respect, too, the soul of the townsman is influenced most
+unfavourably by his circumstances, and that influence, in its turn,
+works most unfavourably on the mentality of society.
+
+Thus we tend to forget our relationship with our fellows, and are on
+the path towards inhumanity. Wherever there is lost the consciousness
+that every man is an object of concern for us just because he is man,
+civilization and morals are shaken, and the advance to fully developed
+inhumanity is only a question of time.
+
+As a matter of fact, the most utterly inhuman [pg 025] thoughts have
+been current among us for two generations past in all the ugly
+clearness of language and with the authority of logical principles.
+There has been created a social mentality which discourages humanity
+in individuals. The courtesy produced by natural feeling disappears,
+and in its place comes a behaviour which shows entire indifference,
+even though it is decked out more or less thoroughly in a code of
+manners. The standoffishness and want of sympathy which are shown so
+clearly in every way to strangers are no longer felt as being really
+rudeness, but pass for the behaviour of the man of the world. Our
+society has also ceased to allow to all men, as such, a human value
+and a human dignity; many sections of the human race have become
+merely raw material and property in human form. We have talked for
+decades with ever increasing light-mindedness about war and conquest,
+as if these were merely operations on a chess-board; how was this
+possible save as the result of a tone of mind which no longer pictured
+to itself the fate of individuals, but thought of them only as figures
+or objects belonging to the material world? When the war broke out the
+inhumanity within us had a free course. And what an amount of
+insulting stuff, some decently veiled, some openly coarse, about the
+coloured races, has made its appearance during the last decades, and
+passed for truth and [pg 026] reason, in our colonial literature and
+our parliaments, and so become an element in general public opinion!
+Twenty years ago there was a discussion in one of our Continental
+parliaments about some deported negroes who had been allowed to die of
+hunger and thirst; and there was no protest or comment when, in a
+statement from the tribune, it was said that they “had been lost”
+(“_eingegangen_” or “_crêvé_”), as though it were a question of
+cattle!
+
+In the education and the school books of to-day the duty of humanity
+is relegated to an obscure corner, as though it were no longer true
+that it is the first thing necessary in the training of personality,
+and as if it were not a matter of great importance to maintain it as a
+strong influence in our human race against the influence of outer
+circumstances. It has not been so always. There was a time when it was
+a ruling influence not only in schools, but in literature, even down
+to the book of adventures. Defoe’s hero, Robinson Crusoe, is
+continually reflecting on the subject of humane conduct, and he feels
+himself so responsible for loyalty to this duty that when defending
+himself he is continually thinking how he can sacrifice the smallest
+number of human lives; he is so faithful, indeed, to this duty of
+humanity, that the story of his adventures acquires thereby quite a
+peculiar character. Is [pg 027] there among works of this kind to-day
+a single one in which we shall find anything like it?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another hindrance to civilization to-day is the over-organization of
+our public life.
+
+While it is certain that a properly ordered environment is the
+condition and, at the same time, the result of civilization, it is
+also undeniable that, after a certain point has been reached, external
+organization is developed at the expense of spiritual life.
+Personality and ideas are then subordinated to institutions, when it
+is really these which ought to influence the latter and keep them
+inwardly alive.
+
+If a comprehensive organization is established in any department of
+social life, the results are at first magnificent, but after a time
+they fall off. It is the already existing resources which are realized
+at the start, but later on the destructive influence of such
+organization on what is living and original is clearly seen in its
+natural results, and the more consistently the organization is
+enlarged, the more strongly its effect is felt in the repression of
+creative and spiritual activity. There are modern States which cannot
+recover either economically or spiritually from the paralysing effects
+of a concentration which dates from a very early period of their
+history.
+
+[pg 028]
+
+The conversion of a wood into a park and its maintenance as such may
+be a step towards carrying out several different objects, but it is
+all over then with the rich vegetation which would assure its future
+condition in nature’s own way.
+
+Political, religious and economic associations aim to-day at forming
+themselves in such a way as will combine the greatest possible inner
+cohesion with the highest possible degree of external activity.
+Constitution, discipline, and everything that belongs to
+administration are brought to a perfection hitherto unknown. They
+attain their object, but just in proportion as they do so these
+centres of activity cease to work as living organizations, and come
+more and more to resemble perfected machines. Their inner life loses
+in richness and variety because the personalities of which they are
+composed must needs decay in character.
+
+Our whole spiritual life nowadays has its course within organizations.
+From childhood up the man of to-day has his mind so full of the
+thought of discipline that he loses the sense of his own individuality
+and can only see himself as thinking in the spirit of some group or
+other of his fellows. A thorough discussion between one idea and
+another or between one man and another, such as constituted the
+greatness of the eighteenth century, is never met [pg 029] with now.
+But at that time fear of public opinion was a thing unknown. All ideas
+had then to justify themselves to the individual reason. To-day it is
+the rule—and no one questions it—always to take into account the views
+which prevail in organized society. The individual starts by taking it
+for granted that both for himself and his neighbours there are certain
+views already established which they cannot hope to alter, views which
+are determined by nationality, creed, political party, social
+position, and other elements in one’s surroundings. These views are
+protected by a kind of taboo, and are not only kept sacred from
+criticism, but are not a legitimate subject of conversation. This kind
+of intercourse, in which we mutually abjure our natural quality as
+thinking beings, is euphemistically described as respect for other
+people’s convictions, as if there could be any convictions at all
+where there is no thought.
+
+The modern man is lost in the mass in a way which is without precedent
+in history, and this is perhaps the most characteristic trait in him.
+His diminished concern about his own nature makes him as it is
+susceptible, to an extent that is almost pathological, to the views
+which society and its organs of expression have put, ready made, into
+circulation. Since, over and above this, society, [pg 030] with its
+well-constructed organization, has become a power of as yet unknown
+strength in the spiritual life, man’s want of independence in the face
+of it has become so serious that he is almost ceasing to claim a
+spiritual existence of his own. He is like a rubber ball which has
+lost its elasticity, and preserves indefinitely every impression that
+is made upon it. He is under the thumb of the mass, and he draws from
+it the opinions on which he lives, whether the question at issue is
+national or political or one of his own belief or unbelief.
+
+Yet this abnormal subjection to external influences does not strike
+him as being a weakness. He looks upon it as an achievement, and in
+his unlimited spiritual devotion to the interests of the community he
+thinks he is preserving the greatness of the modern man. He
+intentionally exaggerates our natural social instincts into something
+fantastically great.
+
+It is just because we thus renounce the indefeasible rights of the
+individual that our race can neither produce new ideas nor make
+current ones serviceable for new objects; its only experience is that
+prevailing ideas obtain more and more authority, take on a more and
+more one-sided development, and live on till they have produced their
+last and most dangerous consequences.
+
+Thus we have entered on a new mediæval period. [pg 031] The general
+determination of society has put freedom of thought out of fashion,
+because the majority renounce the privilege of thinking as free
+personalities, and let themselves be guided in everything by those who
+belong to the various groups and cliques.
+
+Spiritual freedom, then, we shall recover only when the majority of
+individuals become once more spiritually independent and self-reliant,
+and discover their natural and proper relation to those organizations
+in which their souls have been entangled. But liberation from the
+Middle Ages of to-day will be a much more difficult process than that
+which freed the peoples of Europe from the first Middle Ages. The
+struggle then was against external authority established in the course
+of history. To-day the task is to get the mass of individuals to work
+themselves out of the condition of spiritual weakness and dependence
+to which they have brought themselves. Could there be a harder task?
+
+Moreover, no one as yet clearly perceives what a condition of
+spiritual poverty is ours to-day. Every year the spread of opinions
+which have no thought behind them is carried further by the masses,
+and the methods of this process have been so perfected, and have met
+with such a ready welcome, that our [pg 032] confidence in being able
+to raise to the dignity of public opinion the silliest of statements,
+wherever it seems necessary to get them currently accepted, has no
+need to justify itself before acting.
+
+During the war the control of thought was made complete. Propaganda
+definitely took the place of truth.
+
+With independence of thought thrown overboard, we have, as was
+inevitable, lost our faith in truth. Our spiritual life is
+disorganized, for the over-organization of our external environment
+leads to the organization of our absence of thought.
+
+Not only in the intellectual sphere, but in the moral also, the
+relation between the individual and the community has been upset. With
+the surrender of his own personal opinion the modern man surrenders
+also his personal moral judgment.
+
+In order that he may find good what the mass declares to be such,
+whether in word or deed, and may condemn what it declares to be bad,
+he suppresses the scruples which stir in him. He does not allow them
+to find utterance either with others or with himself. There are no
+stumbling-blocks which his feeling of unity with the herd does not
+enable him to surmount, and thus he loses his judgment in that of the
+mass, and his own morality in theirs.
+
+Above all, he is thus made capable of excusing [pg 033] everything
+that is meaningless, cruel, unjust, or bad in the behaviour of his
+nation. Unconsciously to themselves, the majority of the members of
+our barbarian civilised States give less and less time to reflection
+as moral personalities, so that they may not be continually coming
+into inner conflict with their fellows as a body, and continually
+having to get over things which they feel to be wrong.
+
+Public opinion helps them by popularizing the idea that the actions of
+the community are not to be judged so much by the standards of
+morality as by those of expediency, but they suffer injury to their
+souls. If we find among men of to-day only too few whose human and
+moral sensibility is still undamaged, the chief reason is that the
+majority have offered up their personal morality on the altar of their
+country, instead of remaining at variance with the mass and acting as
+a force which impels the latter along the road to perfection.
+
+Not only between the economic and the spiritual, then, but also
+between the mass of men and individuals, there has developed a
+condition of unfavourable action and reaction. In the days of
+rationalism and serious philosophy the individual got help and support
+from society through the general confidence in the victory of the
+rational and moral, which society never failed to acknowledge [pg 034]
+as something which explained and justified itself. Individuals were
+then carried along by the mass; we are stifled by it. The bankruptcy
+of the civilized State, which becomes more manifest every decade, is
+ruining the man of to-day. The demoralization of the individual by the
+mass is in full swing.
+
+The man of to-day pursues his dark journey in a time of darkness, as
+one who has no freedom, no mental collectedness, no all-round
+development, as one who loses himself in an atmosphere of inhumanity,
+who surrenders his spiritual independence and his moral judgment to
+the organized society in which he lives, and who finds himself in
+every direction up against hindrances to the temper of true
+civilization. Of the dangerous position in which he is placed
+philosophy has no understanding, and therefore makes no attempt to
+help him. She does not even urge him to reflection on what is
+happening to himself.
+
+The terrible truth that with the progress of history and the economic
+development of the world it is becoming not easier, but harder, to
+develop true civilization, has never found utterance.
+
+
+
+
+[pg 035]
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CIVILIZATION ESSENTIALLY ETHICAL IN CHARACTER
+
+
+What is civilization? Origin of the unethical conception of
+civilization. Our sense of reality. Our historical sense. Nationalism.
+National civilization. Our misleading trust in facts and organization.
+The true sense for reality.
+
+This question ought to have been pressing itself on the attention of
+all men who consider themselves civilized, but it is remarkable that
+in the world’s literature generally one hardly finds that it has been
+put at all until to-day, and still more rarely is any answer given. It
+was supposed that there was no need for a definition of civilization,
+since we already possessed the thing itself. If the question was ever
+touched upon, it was considered to be sufficiently settled with
+references to history and the present day. But now, when events are
+bringing us inexorably to the consciousness that we live in a
+dangerous medley of civilization and barbarism, we must, whether we
+wish to or not, try to determine the nature of true civilization.
+
+For a quite general definition we may say that civilization is
+progress, material and spiritual progress, on the part of individuals
+as of the mass.
+
+[pg 036]
+
+In what does it consist? First of all in a lessening of the strain
+imposed on individuals and on the mass by the struggle for existence.
+The establishment of as favourable conditions of living as possible
+for all is a demand which must be made partly for its own sake, partly
+with a view to the spiritual and moral perfecting of individuals,
+which is the ultimate object of civilization.
+
+The struggle for existence is a double one: man has to assert himself
+in nature and against nature, and similarly also among his fellow-men
+and against them.
+
+A diminution of the struggle is secured by strengthening the supremacy
+of reason over both external nature and human nature, and making it
+subserve as accurately as possible the ends proposed.
+
+Civilization is then twofold in its nature: it realizes itself in the
+supremacy of reason, first, over the forces of nature, and, secondly,
+over the dispositions of men.
+
+Which of these kinds of progress is most truly progress in
+civilization? The latter, though it is the least open to observation.
+Why? For two reasons. First, the supremacy which we secure by reason
+over external nature represents not unqualified progress, but a
+progress which brings with its advantages also disadvantages which may
+work in the direction of barbarism. The reason why the economic
+circumstances of our time endanger our civilization is to be sought
+for partly in the fact that we have pressed [pg 037] into our service
+natural forces which can be embodied in machines. But with that there
+must be such a supremacy of reason over the dispositions of men that
+they, and the nations which they form, will not use against one
+another the power which the control of these forces gives them, and
+thus plunge one another into a struggle for existence which is far
+more terrible than that between men in a state of nature.
+
+A normal claim to be civilized can, then, only be reckoned as valid
+when it recognizes this distinction between what is essential in
+civilization and what is not.
+
+Both kinds of progress can, indeed, be called spiritual in the sense
+that they both rest upon a spiritual activity in man, yet we may call
+the supremacy over natural forces material progress because in it
+material objects are mastered and turned to man’s use. The supremacy
+of reason over human dispositions, on the other hand, is a spiritual
+achievement in another sense, in that it means the working of spirit
+upon spirit, _i.e._, of one section of the power of reflexion upon
+another section of it.
+
+And what is meant by the supremacy of the reason over human
+dispositions? It means that both individuals and the mass let their
+willing be determined by the material and spiritual good of the whole
+and the individuals that compose it; that [pg 038] is to say, their
+actions are ethical. Ethical progress is, then, that which is truly of
+the essence of civilization, and has only one significance; material
+progress is that which is not of the essential at all, and may have a
+twofold effect on the development of civilization. This moral
+conception of civilization will strike some people as rationalistic
+and old-fashioned. It accords better with the spirit of our times to
+conceive of civilization as a natural manifestation of life in the
+course of human evolution, but one with most interesting
+complications. We are concerned, however, not with what is ingenious,
+but with what is true. In this case the simple is the true—the
+inconvenient truth with which it is our laborious task to deal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The attempts to distinguish between civilization as what the Germans
+call “Kultur” and civilization as mere material progress aim at making
+the world familiar with the idea of an unethical form of civilization
+side by side with the ethical, and at clothing the former with a word
+of historical meaning. But nothing in the history of the word
+“civilization” justifies such attempts. The word, as commonly used
+hitherto, means the same as the German “Kultur”, viz., the development
+of man to a state of higher organization and a higher [pg 039] moral
+standard. Some languages prefer one word; others prefer the other. The
+German usually speaks of “Kultur”, the Frenchman usually of
+“civilisation”, but the establishment of a difference between them is
+justified neither philologically nor historically. We can speak of
+ethical and unethical “Kultur” or of ethical and unethical
+“civilisation”, but not of “Kultur” and “civilisation”.
+
+But how did it come about that we lost the idea that the ethical has a
+decisive meaning and value as part of civilization?
+
+All attempts at civilization hitherto have been a matter of processes
+in which the forces of progress were at work in almost every
+department of life. Great achievements in art, architecture,
+administration, economics, industry, commerce, and colonization
+succeeded each other with a spiritual impetus which produced a higher
+conception of the universe. Any ebb of the tide of civilization made
+itself felt in the material sphere as well as in the ethical and
+spiritual, earlier, as a rule, in the former than in the latter. Thus
+in Greek civilization there set in as early as the time of Aristotle
+an incomprehensible arrest of science and political achievement,
+whereas the ethical movement only reached its completion in the
+following centuries in that great work of education which was
+undertaken in the ancient [pg 040] world by the Stoic philosophy. In
+the Chinese, Indian and Jewish civilizations ability in dealing with
+material things was from the start, and always remained, at a lower
+level than the spiritual and ethical efforts of these races.
+
+In the movement of civilization which began with the Renaissance,
+there were both material and spiritual-ethical forces of progress at
+work side by side, as though in rivalry with each other, and this
+continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then,
+however, something unprecedented happened: man’s ethical energy died
+away, while the conquests achieved by his spirit in the material
+sphere increased by leaps and bounds. Thus for several decades our
+civilization enjoyed the great advantages of its material progress
+while as yet it hardly felt the consequences of the dying down of the
+ethical movement. People lived on in the conditions produced. By that
+movement without seeing clearly that their position was no longer a
+tenable one and preparing to face the storm that was brewing in the
+relations between the nations and within the nations themselves. In
+this way our own age, having never taken the trouble to reflect,
+arrived at the opinion that civilization consists primarily in
+scientific, technical and artistic achievements, and that it can reach
+its goal without ethics, or, at any rate, with a minimum of them.
+
+[pg 041]
+
+Public opinion bowed down before this merely external conception of
+civilization because it was exclusively represented by persons whose
+position in society and scientific culture seemed to show them to be
+competent to judge in matters of the spiritual life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What was the result of our giving up the ethical conception of
+civilization, and therewith all attempts to bring reasoned ethical
+ideals into effective relation with reality? It was that instead of
+using thought to produce ideals which fitted in with reality, we left
+reality without any ideals at all. Instead of discussing together the
+essential elements, such as population, State, Church, society,
+progress, which decide the character of our social development and
+that of mankind generally, we contented ourselves with starting from
+what is given by experience. Only forces and tendencies which were
+already at work were to be considered. Fundamental truths and
+convictions which ought to produce logical or ethical compulsion we
+would no longer acknowledge. We refused to believe that any ideas
+could be applicable to reality except those derived from experience.
+Thus ideals which had been knowingly and intentionally lowered
+dominated our spiritual life and the whole world.
+
+[pg 042]
+
+How we glorified our practical common-sense, which was to give us such
+power in dealing with the world! Yet we were behaving, really, like
+boys who give themselves up exultingly to the forces of nature and
+whizz down a hill on their toboggan without asking themselves whether
+they will be able to steer their vehicle successfully when they come
+to the next bend or the next unexpected obstacle.
+
+It is only a conviction which is based upon reasoned ethical ideals
+that is capable of producing free activity, _i.e._, activity
+deliberately planned with a view to its object. In proportion as
+ideals taken from the workaday world are combined with it, reality
+influences reality. But then the human soul acts merely as an agent of
+debasing change.
+
+Events which are to produce practical results within us are worked
+upon and moulded by our mentality. This mentality has a certain
+character, and on that character depends the nature of those
+value-judgments which rule our relation to facts.
+
+Normally this character is to be found in the reasoned ideas which our
+reflection upon reality brings into existence. If these disappear
+there is not left a void in which “events in themselves” can affect
+us, but the control of our mentality passes now to the opinions and
+feelings which hitherto have been ruled and kept under by our reasoned
+ideas. When the virgin forest is cut down, brushwood [pg 043] springs
+up where the big trees were formerly. Whenever our great convictions
+are destroyed their place is taken by smaller ones which carry out in
+inferior fashion the functions of the former.
+
+With the giving up of ethical ideals which accompanies our passion for
+reality our practical efficiency is not, therefore, improved, but
+diminished. It does not make the man of to-day a cool observer and
+calculator such as he supposes himself to be, for he is under the
+influence of opinions and emotions which are created in him by facts.
+All unconsciously he mixes with what is the work of his reason so much
+of what is emotional that the one spoils the other. Within this circle
+move the judgments and impulses of our society, whether we deal with
+the largest questions or the smallest. Individuals and nations alike,
+we deal indiscriminately with real and imaginary values, and it is
+just this confused medley of real and unreal, of sober thought and
+capacity for enthusiasm for the unmeaning, that makes the mentality of
+the modern man so puzzling and so dangerous.
+
+Our sense of reality, then, means this, that, as a result of emotional
+and short-sighted calculations of advantage, we let one fact issue
+immediately in another, and so on indefinitely. As we are not
+consciously aiming at any definitely planned goal, our activity may
+really be described as a kind of natural happening.
+
+[pg 044]
+
+We react to facts in the most irrational way. Without plan or
+foundations we build our future into the circumstances of the time and
+leave it exposed to the destructive effects of the chaotic jostling
+that goes on amongst them. “Firm ground at last”! we cry, and sink
+helpless in the stream of events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The blindness with which we endure this fate is made worse by our
+belief in our historical sense, which, in this connection, is nothing
+else than our sense of reality prolonged backwards. We believe
+ourselves to be a critical generation which, thanks to its thorough
+knowledge of the past, is in a position to understand the direction
+which events are destined to take from the present to the future. We
+add to the ideals which have been taken from existing reality others
+which we borrow from history.
+
+The achievements of historical science reached by the nineteenth
+century do, indeed, deserve our admiration, but it is another question
+whether our generation, for all its possession of an historical
+science, possesses a true historical sense.
+
+Historical sense, in the full meaning of the term, implies a critical
+objectivity in the face of far-off and recent events alike. To keep
+this faculty free from the bias of opinions and interests when we are
+[pg 045] estimating facts is a power which even our historians do not
+possess. As long as they are dealing with a period so remote that it
+has no bearing on the present they are critical so far as the views of
+the school to which they belong allow it. But if the past stands in
+any real connection with “to-day”, we can perceive at once in their
+estimate the influence of their particular standpoint, rational,
+religious, social or economic.
+
+It is significant that while during the last few decades the learning
+of our historians has, no doubt, increased, their critical objectivity
+has not. Previous investigators kept this ideal before their eyes in
+much greater purity than have those of to-day; we have gone so far
+that we no longer seriously make the demand that in scientific
+dealings with the past there shall be a suppression of all prejudices
+which spring from nationality or creed. It is quite common nowadays to
+see the greatest learning bound up with the strongest bias. In our
+historical literature the highest positions are occupied by works
+written with propagandist aims.
+
+So little educative influence has science had on our historians that
+they have often espoused as passionately as anyone the opinions of
+their own people instead of calling the latter to a thoughtful
+estimate of the facts, as was their duty to their profession; they
+have remained nothing but men [pg 046] of learning. They have not even
+started on the task for which they entered the service of
+civilization, and the hopes of civilization, which in the middle of
+the nineteenth century rested on the rise of a science of history,
+have been as little fulfilled as those which were bound up with the
+demand for national States and democratic forms of government.
+
+The generation that has been brought up by teachers such as these has
+naturally not much idea of an elevated or active conception of events.
+Accurately viewed, its characteristic feature is not so much that we
+understand our past better than earlier generations understood theirs,
+but rather that we attribute to the past an extraordinarily increased
+meaning for the present. Now and again we actually substitute it for
+the latter. It is not enough for us that what has been is present in
+its results in what now is; we want to have it always with us, and to
+feel ourselves determined by it.
+
+In this effort to be continually experiencing our historical process
+of becoming, and to acknowledge it, we replace our normal relation to
+the past by an artificial one, and wishing to find within the past the
+whole of our present, we misuse it in order to deduce from it, and to
+legitimize by an appeal to it, our claims, our opinions, our feelings
+and our passions. Under the very eyes of our historical learning there
+springs up a manufactured history for popular use, [pg 047] in which
+the current national and confessional ideas are unreservedly approved
+and upheld, and our school history books become regular culture beds
+of historical lies.
+
+The misuse of history is a necessity for us. The ideas and
+dispositions which rule us cannot be justified by reason; nothing is
+left for us but to give them foundations in history.
+
+It is significant that we have no real interest in what is valuable in
+the past. Its great spiritual achievements are mechanically
+registered, but we do not let ourselves be touched by them. Still less
+do we accept them as a heritage; nothing has any value for us except
+what can be squared with our plans, passions, feelings, and æsthetic
+moods of to-day. With these we live ourselves by lies into the past,
+and then assert with unshaken assurance that we have our roots in it.
+
+This is the character of the reverence we pay to history. Blinded by
+what we consider or declare to be past and done with, we lose all
+sense for what is to happen, so that of nothing can we say: “It is
+finished,” nothing now gets accomplished. Again and again we let what
+is past rise up artificially in what is present, and endow bygone
+facts with a persistence of being which makes wholly impossible the
+normal development of our peoples. Just as our sense of reality makes
+us lose ourselves in [pg 048] present-day events, so does our
+historical compel us to do the same in those of the past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From these two things, our sense of reality and our historical sense,
+is born the nationalism to which we must refer the external
+catastrophe in which the decadence of our civilization finds its
+completion.
+
+What is nationalism? It is an ignoble patriotism, exaggerated till it
+has lost all meaning, which bears the same relation to the noble and
+healthy kind as the fixed idea of an imbecile does to normal
+conviction.
+
+How does it develop among us?
+
+About the beginning of the nineteenth century the course of thought
+gave the national State its rightful position, starting for this from
+the axiom that it, as a natural and homogeneous organism, was better
+calculated than any other to make the ideal of the civilized State a
+working reality. In Fichte’s addresses to the German nation the
+nation-State is summoned to the bar of the moral reason and learns
+that it has to submit in all things to the latter. It gives the
+necessary promise and straightway receives a commission to bring the
+civilized State into existence. It is given emphatically to understand
+that it must recognize as its highest task the [pg 049] continuous and
+steady development of the purely human element in the nation’s life.
+It is to seek greatness by representing the ideas which can bring
+healing to the nations. Its citizens are urged to show their
+membership of it not through the lower, but through the higher,
+patriotism, that is, not to overvalue its external greatness and
+power, but to be careful to take for their aim “the unfolding of what
+is eternal and Godlike in the world,” and to see that their objects
+coincide with the highest aims of humanity. Thus national feeling is
+placed under the guardianship of reason, morality and civilization.
+The cult of patriotism as such is to be considered as barbarism; it
+does, indeed, announce itself to be such by the purposeless wars which
+it necessarily brings in its train.
+
+In this way the idea of nationality was raised to the level of a
+valuable ideal of civilization. When civilization began to decline,
+its other ideals all fell also, but the idea of nationality maintained
+itself because it had transferred itself to the sphere of reality. It
+incorporated henceforward all that remained of civilization, and
+became the ideal which summed up all others. Here, then, we have the
+explanation of the mentality of our age, which concentrates all the
+enthusiasm of which it is capable on the idea of nationality, and
+believes itself to possess in that all moral and spiritual good
+things.
+
+[pg 050]
+
+But with the decay of civilization the character of the idea of
+nationality changed. The guardianship exercised over it by the other
+moral ideals to which it had hitherto been subordinate now ceased,
+since these were themselves on trial, and the nationalist idea began a
+career of independence. It asserted, of course, that it was working in
+the service of civilization, but it was, in truth, only an idea of
+reality with a halo of civilization round it, and it was guided by no
+ethical ideals, but only by the instincts which deal with reality.
+
+That reason and morality shall not be allowed to contribute a word to
+the formation of nationalist ideas and aspirations is demanded by the
+mass of men to-day as a sparing of their holiest feelings.
+
+If in earlier times the decay of civilization did not produce any such
+confusion in the sentiments of the various nations, this was because
+the idea of nationality had not then been raised in the same way to be
+the ideal of civilization. It was, therefore, impossible that it
+should insinuate itself into the place of the true ideals of
+civilization, and through abnormal nationalist conceptions and
+dispositions bring into active existence an elaborate system of
+uncivilization.
+
+That in nationalism we have to do not so much with things as with the
+unhealthy way in which they [pg 051] are dealt with in the imagination
+of the crowd, is clear from its whole behaviour. It claims to be
+following a policy of practical results (Realpolitik); in reality it
+by no means represents the uncompromisingly businesslike view of all
+the questions of home and foreign policy, but side by side with its
+egoism displays a certain amount of enthusiasm. Its practical policy
+is an over-valuation of certain questions of territorial economic
+interests, an over-valuation which has been elevated to a dogma and
+idealized, and is now supported by popular sentiment. It fights for
+its demands without having established any properly thought-out
+calculation of their real value. In order to be able to dispute the
+possession of millions of value, the modern State loaded itself with
+armaments costing hundreds of millions. Meaning to care for the
+protection and extension of its trade, it loaded the latter with
+imposts which imperilled its power of competing with its rivals much
+more than did any of the measures taken by those rivals.
+
+Its practical politics were, therefore, in truth impracticable
+politics, because they allowed popular sentiment to come in, and
+thereby made the simplest questions insoluble. This style of politics
+put economic interests in the shop window, while it kept in the
+warehouse the ideas about greatness and conquest which belong to
+nationalism.
+
+[pg 052]
+
+Every civilized State, in order to increase its power, gathered allies
+wherever it could. Thus half-civilized and uncivilized races were
+summoned by civilized ones to fight against the civilized neighbours
+of the latter, and these helpers were not content with the subordinate
+_rôle_ which had been assigned to them. They acquired more and more
+influence on the course of events, till they were at last in a
+position to decide when the civilized nations of Europe should begin
+to fight each other about them. Thus has Nemesis come upon us for
+abandoning our wishes and betraying to the uncivilized world all that
+we still possessed of things that were of universal value.
+
+It was significant of the unhealthy character of nationalism’s
+“practical” politics that it tried in every possible way to deck
+itself out with a tinsel imitation of idealism. The struggle for power
+became one for right and civilization; the alliances for the promotion
+of their selfish interests which various nations made with one another
+against all the rest were made to appear to be friendships and
+spiritual affinities. As such they were dated back into the past, even
+though history had a great deal more to say about hereditary quarrels
+than about spiritual relationships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[pg 053]
+
+Finally, nationalism was not content with putting aside, in the sphere
+of politics generally, all attempts to bring into existence a really
+civilized humanity; it distorted the very idea of civilization itself
+and talked of national civilization.
+
+Once there was what was known just simply as civilization, and every
+civilized nation strove to possess it in its purest and most fully
+developed form. In this respect nationality had in the idea of
+civilization at that time something much more original and less spoilt
+than it has in the same idea to-day. If, in spite of this, there was
+no impulse among the nations to separate the spiritual life of each
+from that of its neighbours, we have a proof that nationality is not
+in itself the strong element in the people that demanded this. Such a
+claim as is made to-day to have a _national civilization_ is an
+unhealthy phenomenon. It presupposes that the civilized peoples of
+to-day have lost their healthy nature, and no longer follow instincts,
+but theories. They percuss and sound their souls to such an extent
+that these are no longer capable of any natural action. They analyse
+and describe them so continuously that in thinking of what they ought
+to be they forget what they actually are. Questions of spiritual
+differences between races are discussed so subtly, and with such
+obstinacy and dogmatism, that the talk works like an obsession, and
+the [pg 054] peculiarities that are said to exist make their
+appearance like imaginary diseases.
+
+In every department of life more and more effort is devoted to making
+clearly visible in the results which follow from them the emotions,
+the ideas, and the reasonings of the mass of the people. Any
+peculiarity preserved and fostered in this way shows that its natural
+counterpart has perished. The individual element in the personality of
+a people no longer, as something unconscious or half conscious, plays
+with varying lights on the totality of the nation’s spiritual life. It
+becomes an artifice, a fashion, a self-advertisement, a mania. There
+is bred in the nation a mass of thought, the serious results of which
+in every department become more evident year by year. The spiritual
+life of some of the leading civilized nations has already, in
+comparison with earlier days, taken on a monotonous tone such as makes
+an observer feel anxious.
+
+The unnatural character of this development shows itself not only in
+its results, but in the part which it allows to be played by conceit,
+self-importance, and self-deception. Anything valuable in a
+personality or a successful undertaking is attributed to some special
+excellence in the national character. Foreign soil is assumed to be
+incapable of producing the same or anything similar, and in most
+countries this vanity has grown to such a [pg 055] height that the
+greatest follies are no longer beyond its reach.
+
+It goes without saying that there follows a serious decline in the
+spiritual element in the national civilization. The spirituality is,
+moreover, only a kind of disguise; it has in reality an avowedly
+materialist character. It is a distillation from all the external
+achievements of the nation in question and appears in partnership with
+its economic and political demands. While alleged to be grounded in
+the national peculiarities, nationalist civilization will not, as we
+should normally expect, remain limited to the nation itself; it feels
+called upon to impose itself upon others and make them happy! Modern
+nations seek markets for their civilization, as they do for their
+manufactures!
+
+National civilization, therefore, is matter for propaganda and for
+export, and the necessary publicity is secured by liberal expenditure.
+The necessary phrases can be obtained ready-made and need only be
+strung together. Thus the world has inflicted on it a competition
+between national civilizations, and between these civilization itself
+comes off badly.
+
+The nations of Europe entered the Middle Ages side by side as the
+heirs of the Greco-Roman world, and lived side by side with the freest
+mutual intercourse through the Renaissance, the period of the [pg 056]
+Illuminati, and of the philosophy of more recent times. But we no
+longer believe that they, with their offshoots in the other
+continents, form an indivisible unit of civilization. If, however, in
+this latest age, the differences in their spiritual life have begun to
+stand out more distinctly, the cause of it is that the level of
+civilization has sunk. When the tide ebbs, shallows which separate
+bodies of deep water become visible; while the tide is flowing they
+are out of sight.
+
+How closely the nations which form the great body of civilized
+humanity are still interrelated spiritually is shown by the fact that
+they have all side by side suffered the same decadence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With our sense of reality is bound up, further, the false confidence
+which we have in facts. We live in an atmosphere of optimism, as if
+the contradictions which show themselves in the world arranged
+themselves automatically so as to promote well-thought-out progress,
+and reconciled themselves in syntheses in which the valuable parts of
+the thesis and the antithesis coalesced.
+
+In justification of this optimism appeal is made, both rightly and
+wrongly, to Hegel. It cannot be denied that he is the spiritual father
+of our sense of reality; he is the first thinker who tried to be just
+[pg 057] to things as they exist. We have been trained by him to
+realize the method of progress in thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as
+they show themselves in the course of events. But his optimism was not
+a simple optimism about facts, as ours is. He lived still in the
+spiritual world of rationalism, and believed in the power of ethical
+ideas worked out by reason; that was why he believed also in the
+certainty of uninterrupted spiritual progress. And it was because this
+was something upon which he could rely that he undertook to show how
+it was to be seen in the successive phases of events, and at the same
+time how it made itself a reality in the stream of outward facts. By
+emphasizing, however, the progressive purpose, which he finds immanent
+in the course of events, so strongly that it is possible to forget the
+ethical-spiritual presuppositions of his belief in progress, he is
+preparing the way for the despiritualized optimism about reality which
+has for decades been misleading us. Between the facts themselves there
+is nothing but an endless series of contradictions.The fresh mediating
+fact in which they counteract each other so as to make progress
+possible they cannot of themselves produce. This fact can only assert
+itself if the contradictions resolve themselves in a reasoned view in
+which there are ethical ideas about the condition of things which [pg
+058] it is sought to realize. These are the formative principles for
+the new element which is to arise out of the contradictories, and it
+is only in this reasoned ethical view that the latter cease to be
+blind, leading to no issue.
+
+It was because we assumed the existence of principles, of progress, in
+the facts, that we viewed the advance of history, in which our future
+was being prepared, as progress in civilization, even though evolution
+condemned our optimism. And even now, when facts of the most terrible
+character cry out loudly against it, we shrink from giving up our
+creed. It no longer, indeed, gives us any real enlightenment, but the
+alternative, which bases optimism on belief in the ethical spirit,
+means such a revolution in our mode of thought that we find it
+difficult to take it into consideration.
+
+With our reliance upon facts is bound up our reliance on
+organizations. The activities and the aims of our time are penetrated
+by a kind of obsession that if we could only succeed in perfecting or
+reforming in one direction or another the institutions of our public
+and social life, the progress demanded by civilization would begin of
+itself. We are, indeed, far enough from unanimity as to the plan
+needed for the reform of our arrangements: one section sketches out an
+anti-democratic plan; [pg 059] others believe that our mistake lies in
+the fact that democratic principles have not yet been applied
+consistently; others, again, see salvation only in a Socialist or
+Communist organization of society. But all agree in attributing our
+present condition, with its absence of true civilization, to a failure
+of our institutions; all look for the attainment of such civilization
+to a new organization of society; all unite in thinking that with new
+institutions there would arise a new spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this terrible confusion are entangled not only the unreflecting
+masses, but also many of the most earnest amongst us. The materialism
+of our age has reversed the relation between the spiritual and the
+actual. It believes that something with spiritual value can result
+from the working of facts. It was even expected that the war would
+bring us a spiritual regeneration! In reality, however, the relation
+between them works in the opposite direction. A spiritual element of
+real value can, if it is present, influence the moulding of reality so
+as to bring about desired results, and can thus produce facts in
+support of itself. All institutions and organizations have only a
+relative significance. With the most diverse social and political [pg
+060] arrangements, the various civilized nations have all sunk to the
+same depth of barbarism. What we have experienced, and are still
+experiencing, must surely convince us that the spirit is everything
+and that institutions count for very little. Our institutions are a
+failure because the spirit of barbarism is at work in them. The best
+planned improvements in the organization of our society (though we are
+quite right in trying to secure them) cannot help us at all until we
+become at the same time capable of imparting a new spirit to our age.
+
+The difficult problems with which we have to deal, even those which
+lie entirely in the material and economic sphere, are in the last
+resort only to be solved by an inner change of character. The wisest
+reforms in organization can only carry them a little nearer solution,
+never to the goal. The only conceivable way of bringing about a
+reconstruction of our world on new lines is first of all to become new
+men ourselves under the old circumstances, and then as a society in a
+new frame of mind so to smooth out the opposition between nations that
+a condition of true civilization may again become possible. Everything
+else is more or less wasted labour, because we are thereby building
+not on the spirit, but on what is merely external.
+
+In the sphere of human events which decide the future of mankind
+reality consists in an inner [pg 061] conviction, not in given outward
+facts. Firm ground for our feet we find in reasoned ethical ideals.
+Are we going to draw from the spirit strength to create new conditions
+and turn our faces again to civilization, or are we going to continue
+to draw our spirit from our surroundings and go down with it to ruin?
+That is the fateful question with which we are confronted.
+
+The true sense for reality is that insight which tells us that only
+through ethical ideas about things can we arrive at a normal relation
+to reality. Only so can man and society win all the power over events
+that they are able to use. Without that power we are, whatever we may
+choose to do, delivered over into bondage to them.
+
+What is going on to-day between nations and within them throws a
+glaring illumination upon this truth. The history of our time is
+characterized by a lack of reason which has no parallel in the past.
+Future historians will one day analyse this history in detail, and
+test by means of it their learning and their freedom from prejudice.
+But for all future times there will be, as there is for to-day, only
+one explanation, viz., that we sought to live and to carry on with a
+civilization which had no ethical principle behind it.
+
+
+
+
+[pg 062]
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WAY TO THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION
+
+
+Civilization-ideals have become powerless. Evolution and decay in the
+history of civilization. The reform of institutions and the reform of
+convictions. The individual as the sole agent of the restoration of
+civilization. The difficulties which beset the restoration of
+civilization.
+
+The ethical conception of civilization, then, is the only one that can
+be justified.
+
+But where is the road that can bring us back from barbarism to
+civilization? Is there such a road at all?
+
+The unethical conception of civilization answers: “No.” To it all
+symptoms of decay are symptoms of old age, and civilization, just like
+any other natural process of growth, must after a certain period of
+time reach its final end. There is nothing, therefore, for us to do,
+so it says, but to take the causes of this as quite natural, and do
+our best at any rate to find interesting the unedifying phenomena of
+its senility, which testify to the gradual loss of the ethical
+character of civilization.
+
+In the thinking then which surrenders itself to our sense of reality,
+optimism and pessimism are inextricably intermingled. If our optimism
+about [pg 063] reality is proved untenable, the optimism which thinks
+that continuous progress evolves itself among the facts as such, then
+the spirit which from above contemplates and analyses the situation
+turns without much concern to the mild pessimistic supposition that
+civilization has reached its Indian summer.
+
+The ethical spirit cannot join in this little game of “Optimism or
+pessimism?” It sees the symptoms of decay as what they really are,
+viz., something terrible. It asks itself with a shudder what will
+become of the world if this dying process really goes on unchecked.
+The condition of civilization is a source of pain to it, for
+civilization is not an object which it is interesting to analyse, but
+the hope on which its thoughts fly out over the future existence of
+the race. Belief in the possibility of a renewal of civilization is an
+actual part of its life; that is why it can no longer quiet itself
+with what contents the sense of reality as it hovers between optimism
+and pessimism.
+
+Those who regard the decay of civilization as something quite normal
+and natural console themselves with the thought that it is not
+civilization, but a civilization, which is falling a prey to
+dissolution; that there will be a new age and a new race in which
+there will blossom a new civilization. But that is a mistake. The
+earth no longer has in reserve, as it had once, gifted peoples as yet
+unused, [pg 064] who can relieve us and take our place in some distant
+future as leaders of the spiritual life. We already know all those
+which the earth has to dispose of. There is not one among them which
+is not already taking such a part in our civilization that its
+spiritual fate is determined by our own. All of them, the gifted and
+the ungifted, the distant and the near, have felt the influence of
+those forces of barbarism which are at work among us. All of them are,
+like ourselves, diseased, and only as we recover can they recover.
+
+It is not the civilization of a race, but that of mankind, present and
+future alike, that we must give up as lost, if belief in a rebirth of
+our civilization is a vain thing.
+
+But it need not be so given up. If the ethical is the essential
+element in civilization, decadence changes into renaissance as soon as
+ethical activities are set to work again in our convictions and in the
+ideas which we undertake to stamp upon reality. The attempt to bring
+this about is well worth making, and it should be world-wide.
+
+It is true that the difficulties that have to be reckoned with in this
+undertaking are so great that only the strongest faith in the power of
+the ethical spirit will let us venture on it.
+
+First among them towers up the inability of our generation to
+understand what is and must be. [pg 065] The men of the Renaissance
+and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century drew courage to desire
+the renewal of the world through ideas from their conviction of the
+absolute indefensibility of the material and spiritual conditions
+under which they lived. Unless with us, too, the many come to some
+such conviction, we must continue incapable of taking in hand this
+work, in which we must imitate them. But the many obstinately refuse
+to see things as they are, and hold with all their might to the most
+optimistic view of them that is possible. For this power, however, of
+idealizing with continually lowering ideals the reality which is felt
+to be ever less and less satisfying, pessimism also is partly
+responsible. Our generation, though so proud of its many achievements,
+no longer believes in the one thing which is all-essential: the
+spiritual advance of mankind. Having given up the expectation of this,
+it can put up with the present age without feeling such suffering as
+would compel it, for very pain, to long for a new one. What a task it
+will be to break the fetters of unthinking optimism and unthinking
+pessimism which hold us prisoners, and so to do what will pave the way
+for the renewal of civilization!
+
+A second difficulty besetting the work which lies before us is that it
+is a piece of reconstruction. The ideas of civilization which our age
+needs are not new [pg 066] and strange to it. They have been in the
+possession of mankind already, and are to be found in many an
+antiquated formula. We have fundamentally nothing else to do than to
+restore to them the respect in which they were once held, and again
+regard them seriously as we bring them into relation with the reality
+which lies before us for treatment.
+
+To make what is used up usable—is there a harder task? “It is an
+impossible one,” says history. “Never hitherto have worn-out ideas
+risen to new power among the peoples who have worn them out. Their
+disappearance has always been a final one.”
+
+That is true. In the history of civilization we find nothing but
+discouragement for our task. Anyone who finds history speaking
+optimistically lends her a language which is not her own.
+
+Yet from the history of the past we can infer only what has been, not
+what will be. Even if it proves that no single people has ever lived
+through the decay of its civilization and a rebirth of it, we know at
+once that this, which has never happened yet, must happen with us, and
+therefore we cannot be content to say that the reasoned ethical ideas
+on which civilization rests get worn out in the course of history, and
+console ourselves with the reflection that this is exactly in
+accordance with the ordinary processes of nature. We require to know
+why it has [pg 067] so happened hitherto, and to draw an explanation,
+not from the analogy of nature, but from the laws of spiritual life.
+We want to get into our hands the key of the secret, so that we may
+with it unlock the new age, the age in which the worn out becomes
+again unworn and the spiritual and ethical can no longer get worn out.
+We must study the history of civilization otherwise than as our
+predecessors did, or we shall be finally lost.
+
+Why do not thoughts which contribute to civilization retain the
+convincing power which they once had, and which they deserve on
+account of their content? Why do they lose the evidential force of
+their moral and rational character? Why do traditional truths cease to
+be realities and pass from mouth to mouth as mere phrases?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is this an unavoidable fate, or is the well drying up because our
+thinking did not go down to the permanent level of the water?
+
+Moreover, it is not merely that the past survives among us as
+something valueless; it may cast a poisonous shade over us. There are
+thoughts on which we have never let our minds work directly because we
+found them ready formulated in history. Ideas which we have inherited
+do not let the truth [pg 068] which is in them come out into active
+service, but show it through a kind of dead mask. The worn out
+achievements which pass over from a decadent civilization into the
+current of a new age often become like rejected products of
+metabolism, and act as poisons.
+
+Granted that the Teutonic nations received a powerful stimulus to
+civilization at the Renaissance by reverting to the ideas of
+Greco-Roman thinkers, not less true is it that for many centuries they
+had been kept by that same Greco-Roman civilization in a condition of
+spiritual dependence which was wholly in contradiction to their native
+character. They took over from it decadent ideas which were for a long
+time a hindrance to their normal spiritual life, and thence came that
+strange mixture of strength and weakness which is the chief
+characteristic of the Middle Ages. The dangerous elements in the
+Greco-Roman civilization of the past still show themselves in our
+spiritual life. It is because Oriental and Greek conceptions which
+have had their day are still current among us that we bleed to death
+over problems which otherwise would have no existence for us. How much
+we suffer from the one fact that to-day and for several centuries past
+our thoughts about religion have been under the hereditary foreign
+domination of Jewish transcendentalism and Greek metaphysics, and,
+instead of [pg 069] being able to express themselves naturally, have
+suffered continual distortion!
+
+Because ideas get worn out in this way, and in this condition hinder
+the thinking of later generations, there is no continuity in the
+spiritual progress of mankind, but only a confused succession of ups
+and downs. The threads get broken, or knotted, or lost, or when tied
+up again get tied wrongly. Hitherto it has been thought possible to
+interpret this up-and-down movement optimistically because it was
+universally held that the Renaissance and the age of the Illuminati
+were quite natural successors of the Greco-Roman civilization, and it
+was assumed further that, as a permanent result of this, renewed
+civilizations would spring up in the place of exhausted ones, and thus
+continual progress be assured. But this generalization cannot
+justifiably be drawn from such observations. It was because new
+peoples came on the scene, who had been only superficially touched by
+the decadent civilizations and now produced others of their own, that
+it was possible to see this succession of ups and downs ending in an
+ascent. As a matter of fact, however, our newer civilization was not
+in any organic connection with the Greco-Roman, even if it did take
+its first steps with the help of the crutches which the latter
+provided; it may be [pg 070] described more truly as the reaction of a
+healthy spirit against the worn out ideas which were thus offered to
+it. The essential element in the process was the contact of what was
+worn out with the fresh thought of young peoples.
+
+To-day, however, all our thought is losing its power in its contact
+with the worn-out ideas of our expiring civilization, or—in the case
+of the Hindus and the Chinese—of our own and other expiring
+civilizations. The up-and-down movement will end, therefore, not in
+slow progress, but in unbroken descent—unless we can succeed in giving
+the worn out ideas a renewal of their youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another great difficulty in the way of the regeneration of our
+civilization lies in the fact that it must be an internal process, and
+not an external as well, and that, therefore, there is no place for
+healthy co-operation between the material and the spiritual. From the
+Renaissance to the middle of the nineteenth century the men who
+carried on the work of civilization could expect help towards
+spiritual progress from achievements in the sphere of external
+organization. Demands in each of these spheres stood side by side in
+their programme and were pushed on simultaneously. They were convinced
+that while working to transform [pg 071] the institutions of public
+life they were producing results which would call forth the
+development of the new spiritual life. Success in one sphere
+strengthened at once the hopes and the energies that were at work in
+the other. They laboured for the progressive democratization of the
+State with the idea of thereby spreading through the world the rule of
+grace and justice.
+
+We, who have lived to see the spiritual bankruptcy of all the
+institutions which they created, can no longer work in this way
+simultaneously at the reform of institutions and the revival of the
+spiritual element. The help which such co-operation would give is
+denied us. We cannot even reckon any longer on the old co-operation
+between knowledge and thought. Once these two were allies. The latter
+fought for freedom and in so doing made a road for the former, and, on
+the other hand, all the results attained by knowledge worked for the
+general good of the spiritual life in that the reign of law in nature
+was more and more clearly demonstrated, and the reign of prejudice was
+becoming continually more restricted. The alliance also strengthened
+the thought that the well-being of mankind must be based upon
+spiritual laws. Thus knowledge and thought joined in establishing the
+authority of reason and the rational tone of mind.
+
+[pg 072]
+
+To-day thought gets no help from science, and the latter stands facing
+it independent and unconcerned. The newest scientific knowledge may be
+allied with an entirely unreflecting view of the universe. It
+maintains that it is concerned only with the establishment of
+individual facts, since it is only by means of these that scientific
+knowledge can maintain its practical character; the co-ordination of
+the different branches of knowledge and the utilization of the results
+to form a theory of the universe are, it says, not its business. Once
+every man of science was also a thinker who counted for something in
+the general spiritual life of his generation. Our age has discovered
+how to divorce knowledge from thought, with the result that we have,
+indeed, a science which is free, but hardly any science left which
+reflects.
+
+Thus we no longer have available for the renewal of our spiritual life
+any of the natural external helps which we used to have. We are called
+upon for a single kind of effort only, and have to work like men who
+are rebuilding the damaged foundations of a cathedral under the weight
+of the massive building. There is no progress in the world of
+phenomena to encourage us to persevere; an immense revolution has to
+be brought about without the aid of any collateral revolutionary
+activities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[pg 073]
+
+Again, the renewal of civilization is hindered by the fact that it is
+so exclusively the individual personality which must be looked to as
+the agent in the new movement.
+
+The renewal of civilization has nothing to do with movements which
+bear the character of experiences of the crowd; there are never
+anything but reactions to external happenings. But civilization can
+only revive when there shall come into being in a number of
+individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among
+the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually
+win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its
+character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the
+slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in
+individuals.
+
+The final decision as to what the future of a society shall be depends
+not on how near its organization is to perfection, but on the degrees
+of worthiness in its individual members. The most important, and yet
+the least easily determinable, element in history is the series of
+unobtrusive general changes which take place in the individual
+dispositions of the many. These are what precede and cause the
+happenings, and this is why it is so difficult to understand
+thoroughly the men and the [pg 074] events of past times. The
+character and worth of individuals among the mass and the way they
+work themselves into membership of the whole body, receiving
+influences from it and giving others back, we can even to-day only
+partially and uncertainly understand.
+
+One thing, however, is clear. Where the collective body works more
+strongly on the individual than the latter does upon it, the result is
+deterioration, because the noble element on which everything depends,
+viz., the spiritual and moral worthiness of the individual, is thereby
+necessarily constricted and hampered. Decay of the spiritual and moral
+life then sets in, which renders society incapable of understanding
+and solving the problems which it has to face. Thereupon, sooner or
+later, it is involved in catastrophe.
+
+That is the condition in which we are now, and that is why it is the
+duty of individuals to rise to a higher conception of their
+capabilities and undertake again the function which only the
+individual can perform, that of producing new spiritual-ethical ideas.
+If this does not come about in a multitude of cases nothing can save
+us.
+
+A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The
+existing one is maintained by the Press, by propaganda, by
+organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its
+[pg 075] disposal. This unnatural way of spreading ideas must be
+opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies
+solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for
+new truth. Unarmed, and following the human spirit’s primitive and
+natural fighting method, it must attack the other, which faces it, as
+Goliath faced David, in the mighty armour of the age.
+
+About the struggle which must needs ensue no historical analogy can
+tell us much. The past has, no doubt, seen the struggle of the
+free-thinking individual against the fettered spirit of a whole
+society, but the problem has never presented itself on the scale on
+which it does to-day, because the fettering of the collective spirit
+as it is fettered to-day by modern organizations, modern
+unreflectiveness, and modern popular passions, is a phenomenon without
+precedent in history.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Will the man of to-day have strength to carry out what the spirit
+demands from him, and what the age would like to make impossible?
+
+In the over-organized societies which in a hundred ways have him in
+their power, is he destined to become once more an independent
+personality and [pg 076] to exert influence back upon them? They will
+use every means to keep him in that condition of impersonality which
+suits them. They fear personality because the spirit and the truth,
+which they would like to muzzle, find in it a means of expressing
+themselves. And their power is, unfortunately, as great as their fear.
+
+There is a tragic alliance between society as a whole and its economic
+conditions. With a grim relentlessness those conditions tend to bring
+up the man of to-day as a being without freedom, without
+self-collectedness, without independence, in short as a human being so
+full of deficiencies that he lacks the qualities of humanity. And they
+are the last things that we can change. Even if it should be granted
+us that the spirit should begin its work, we shall only slowly and
+incompletely gain power over these forces. There is, in fact, being
+demanded from the will that which our conditions of life refuse to
+allow.
+
+And how heavy the tasks that the spirit has to take in hand! It has to
+create the power of understanding the truth that is really true where
+at present nothing is current but propagandist truth. It has to depose
+ignoble patriotism, and enthrone the noble kind of patriotism which
+aims at ends that are worthy of the whole of mankind, in circles where
+the hopeless issues of past and present [pg 077] political activities
+keep nationalist passions aglow even among those who in their hearts
+would fain be free from them. It has to get the fact that civilization
+is an interest of all men and of humanity as a whole recognized again
+in places where national civilization is to-day worshipped as an idol,
+and the notion of a humanity with a common civilization lies broken to
+fragments. It has to maintain our faith in the civilized State, even
+though our modern States, spiritually and economically ruined by the
+war, have no time to think about the tasks of civilization, and dare
+not devote their attention to anything but how to use every possible
+means, even those which undermine the conception of justice, to
+collect money with which to prolong their own existence. It has to
+unite us by giving us a single ideal of civilized man, and this in a
+world where one nation has robbed its neighbour of all faith in
+humanity, idealism, righteousness, reasonableness, and truthfulness,
+and all alike have come under the domination of powers which are
+plunging us ever deeper into barbarism. It has to get attention
+concentrated on civilization while the growing difficulty of making a
+living absorbs the masses more and more in material cares, and makes
+all other things seem to them to be mere shadows. It has to give us
+faith in the possibility of [pg 078] progress while the reaction of
+the economic on the spiritual becomes more pernicious every day and
+contributes to an ever growing demoralization. It has to provide us
+with a capacity for hope at a time when not only secular and religious
+institutions and associations, but the men, too, who are looked upon
+as leaders, continually fail us, when artists and men of learning show
+themselves as supporters of barbarism, and notabilities who pass for
+thinkers, and behave outwardly as such, are revealed, when crises
+come, as being nothing more than writers and members of academies.
+
+All these hindrances stand in the path of the will to civilization. A
+dull despair hovers about us. How well we now understand the men of
+the Greco-Roman decadence, who stood before events incapable of
+resistance, and, leaving the world to its fate, withdrew upon their
+inner selves! Like them, we are bewildered by our experience of life.
+Like them, we hear enticing voices which say to us that the one thing
+which can still make life tolerable is to live for the day. We must,
+we are told, renounce every wish to think or hope about anything
+beyond our own fate. We must find rest in resignation.
+
+The recognition that civilization is founded on some sort of theory of
+the universe, and can be restored only through a spiritual awakening
+and a will for ethical good in the mass of mankind, compels [pg 079]
+us to make clear to ourselves those difficulties in the way of a
+rebirth of civilization which ordinary reflection would overlook. But
+at the same time it raises us above all considerations of possibility
+or impossibility. If the ethical spirit provides a sufficient standing
+ground in the sphere of events for making civilization a reality, then
+we shall get civilization, provided that we return to a suitable
+theory of the universe and the convictions to which this properly
+gives birth.
+
+The history of our decadence preaches the truth that when hope is dead
+the spirit becomes the deciding court of appeal, and this truth will
+in the future find in us a sublime and noble fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+[pg 080]
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CIVILIZATION AND THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE
+
+
+The regeneration of our theory of the universe and the restoration of
+civilization. A reflective theory of the universe; rationalism and
+mysticism. The optimistic-ethical theory as a theory of civilization.
+The regeneration of our ideas by reflection about the meaning of life.
+
+The greatest of all the spirit’s tasks is to produce a theory of the
+universe (_Weltanschauung__(_*_)_), for in such a theory all the
+ideas, convictions and activities of an age have their roots, and it
+is only when we have arrived at one which is compatible with
+civilization that we are capable of holding the ideas and convictions
+which are the conditions of civilization in general.
+
+What is meant by a theory of the universe? It is the content of the
+thoughts of society and the individuals which compose it about the
+nature and object of the world in which they live, and the position
+and the destiny of mankind and of individual men within it. What
+significance have the society in which I live and I myself in the
+world? What do we want to do in the world, what do we [pg 081] hope to
+get from it, and what is our duty to it? The answer given by the
+majority to these fundamental questions about existence decides what
+the spirit is in which they and their age live.
+
+Is not this putting too high the value of a theory of the universe?
+
+At present, certainly, the majority do not, as a rule, attain to any
+properly thought-out theory, nor do they feel the need of deriving
+their ideas and convictions from such a source. They are in tune, more
+or less, with all the tones which pervade the age in which they live.
+
+But who are the musicians who have produced these tones? They are the
+personalities who have thought out theories of the universe, and drawn
+from them the ideas, more or less valuable, which are current amongst
+us to-day. In this way all thoughts, whether those of individuals or
+those of society, go back ultimately, in some way or other, to a
+theory of the universe. Every age lives in the consciousness of what
+has been provided for it by the thinkers under whose influence it
+stands.
+
+Plato was wrong in holding that the philosophers of a State should
+also be its governors. Their supremacy is a different and a higher one
+than that which consists in taking cognizance of laws and ordinances
+and giving effect to official authority. [pg 082] They are the
+officers of the general staff who sit in the background thinking out,
+with more or less clearness of vision, the details of the battle which
+is to be fought. Those who play their part in the public eye are the
+subordinate officers who, for their variously sized units, convert the
+general directions of the staff into orders of the day: namely, that
+the forces will start at such and such a time, move in this or that
+direction, and occupy this or that point. Kant and Hegel have
+commanded millions who had never read a line of their writings, and
+who did not even know that they were obeying their orders.
+
+Those who command, whether it be in a large or a small sphere, can
+only carry out what is already in the thought of the age. They do not
+build the instrument on which they have to play, but are merely given
+a seat at it. Nor do they compose the piece they have to play; it is
+simply put before them, and they cannot alter it; they can only
+reproduce it with more or less skill and success. If it is
+meaningless, they cannot do much to improve it, but neither, if it is
+good, can they damage it seriously.
+
+To the question, then, whether it is personalities or ideas which
+decide the fate of an age, the answer is that the age gets its ideas
+from personalities. If the thinkers of a certain period produce a
+worthy theory of the universe, then ideas pass into currency [pg 083]
+which guarantee progress; if they are not capable of such production,
+then decadence sets in in some form or other. Every theory of the
+universe draws after it its own special results in history.
+
+The fall of the Roman Empire in spite of that empire’s having over it
+so many rulers of conspicuous ability, may be traced ultimately to the
+fact that ancient philosophy produced no theory of the universe with
+ideas which tended to that empire’s preservation. With the rise of
+Stoicism, as the definitive answer of the philosophic thought of
+antiquity, the fate of the world down to the Middle Ages was decided.
+The idea of resignation, noble idea as it is, could not ensure
+progress in a world-wide empire. The efforts of its strongest emperors
+were useless. The yarn with which they had to weave was rotten.
+
+In the eighteenth century, under the rule, in most places, of
+insignificant rococo-sovereigns and rococo-ministers, a progressive
+movement began among the nations of Europe which was unique in the
+history of the world. Why? The thinkers of the Illuminati and of
+rationalism produced a worthy theory of the universe from which worthy
+ideas were spread among mankind.
+
+But when history began to shape itself in accordance with these ideas,
+the thought which had [pg 084] produced the progress came to a halt,
+and we have now a generation which is squandering the precious
+heritage it has received from the past, and is living in a world of
+ruins, because it cannot complete the building which that past began.
+Even had our rulers and statesmen been less short-sighted than they
+actually were, they would not in the long run have been able to avert
+the catastrophe which burst upon us. Both the inner and the outer
+collapse of civilization were latent in the circumstances produced by
+the prevalent view of the universe. The rulers, small and great alike,
+did not [nothing but] act in accordance with the spirit of the age.
+
+With the disappearance of the influence exerted by the _Aufklärung_,
+rationalism, and the serious philosophy of the early nineteenth
+century, the seeds were sown of the world-war to come. Then began to
+disappear also the ideas and convictions which would have made
+possible a solution on right lines of the controversies which arise
+between nations.
+
+Thus the course of events brought us into a position in which we had
+to get along without any real theory of the universe. The collapse of
+philosophy and the rise and influence of scientific modes of thought
+made it impossible to arrive at an idealist theory which should
+satisfy thought. Moreover, our age is poorer in deep thinkers than
+perhaps any preceding one. There were a few [pg 085] strong spirits
+who, with varied knowledge, and with devoted efforts, offered the
+world some patchwork thought; there were some dazzling comets; but
+that was all that was granted us. Their products in the way of world
+theories were good enough to interest a circle of academic culture, or
+to delight a few believing followers, but the people as a whole were
+entirely untouched.
+
+We began, therefore, to persuade ourselves that it was, after all,
+possible to get through without any theory of the universe. The
+feeling that we needed to stir ourselves up to ask questions about the
+world and life, and to come to a decision upon them, gradually died
+away. In the unreflective condition to which we had surrendered
+ourselves, we took, to meet the claims of our own life and the
+nation’s life, the chance ideas provided by our feeling for reality.
+During more than a generation and a half we had proof enough and to
+spare that the theory which is the result of absence of theory is the
+most worthless of all, involving not only ruin to the spiritual life,
+but ruin universal. For where there is no general staff to think out
+its plan of campaign for any generation its subordinate officers lead
+it, as in actual warfare so in the sphere of ideas, from one
+profitless adventure to another.
+
+The reconstruction of our age, then, can begin [pg 086] only with a
+reconstruction of a theory of the universe. There is hardly anything
+more urgent in its claim on us than this which seems to be so far off
+and abstract. Only when we have made ourselves at home again in the
+solid thought-building of a theory which can support a civilization,
+and when we take from it, all of us in co-operation, ideas which can
+stimulate our life and work, only then can there again arise a society
+which shall possess ideals with magnificent aims and be able to bring
+these into effective agreement with reality. It is from new ideas that
+we must build history anew.
+
+For individuals as for the community, life without a theory of things
+is a pathological disturbance of the higher capacity for
+self-direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What conditions must a theory of the universe fulfil to enable it to
+create a civilization?
+
+First, and defined generally, it must be the product of thought.
+Nothing but what is born of thought and addresses itself to thought
+can be a spiritual power affecting the whole of mankind. Only what has
+been well turned over in the thought of the many, and thus recognized
+as truth, possesses a natural power of conviction which will work on
+other minds and will continue to be effective. Only where there is a
+constant appeal to the need [pg 087] of a reflective view of things
+are all man’s spiritual capacities called into activity.
+
+Our age has a kind of artistic prejudice against a reflective theory
+of the universe. We are still children of the Romantic movement to a
+greater extent than we realize. What that movement produced in
+opposition to the _Aufklärung_ and to rationalism seems to us valid
+for all ages against any theory that would found itself solely on
+thought. In such a theory of the universe we can see beforehand the
+world dominated by a barren intellectualism, convictions governed by
+mere utility, and a shallow optimism, which together throw a wet
+blanket over all human genius and enthusiasm.
+
+In a great deal of the opposition which it offered to rationalism the
+reaction of the early nineteenth century was right. Nevertheless it
+remains true that it despised and distorted what was, in spite of all
+its imperfections, the greatest and most valuable manifestation of the
+spiritual life of man that the world has yet seen. Down through all
+circles of cultured and uncultured alike there prevailed at that time
+a belief in thought and a reverence for truth. For that reason alone
+that age stands higher than any which preceded it, and much higher
+than our own.
+
+At no price must the feelings and phrases of [pg 088] Romanticism be
+allowed to prevent our generation from forming a clear conception of
+what reason really is. It is no dry intellectualism which would
+suppress all the manifold movements of our inner life, but the
+totality of all the functions of our spirit in their living action and
+interaction. In it our intellect and our will hold that mysterious
+intercourse which determines the character of our spiritual being.
+These fundamental ideas which it produces contain all that we can feel
+or imagine about our destiny and that of mankind, and give our whole
+being its direction and its value. The enthusiasm which comes from
+thought has the same relation to that which rises from the cauldron of
+feeling as the wind which sweeps the heights has to that which eddies
+about between the hills. If we venture once more to seek help from the
+light of reason, we shall no longer keep ourselves down at the level
+of a generation which has ceased to be capable of enthusiasm, but
+shall follow the deep and noble passion inspired by great and sublime
+ideals. This will so fill and expand our being that that by which we
+now live will seem to be merely a petty kind of excitement, and will
+disappear.
+
+Rationalism is more than a movement of thought which realized itself
+at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
+centuries. It is a necessary phenomenon in all normal spiritual life.
+[pg 089] All real progress in the world is in the last analysis
+produced by rationalism.
+
+It is true that the intellectual productions of the period which we
+designate historically as the rationalistic are incomplete and
+unsatisfactory, but the principle, which was then established, of
+basing our views of the universe on thought and thought alone, is
+valid for all time. Even if the tree’s earliest fruit did not ripen
+perfectly, the tree itself remains, nevertheless, the tree of life for
+the life of our spirit.
+
+All the movements that have claimed to take the place of rationalism
+stand far below it in the matter of achievement. From speculative
+thought, from history, from feeling, from æsthetics, from science,
+they tried to construct a theory of the universe, grubbing at
+haphazard in the world around them instead of excavating
+scientifically. Rationalism alone chose the right place for its
+digging, and dug systematically, according to plan. If it found only
+metal of small value, that was because, with the means at its
+disposal, it could not go deep enough. Impoverished and ruined as we
+are because we sought as mere adventurers, we must make up our minds
+to sink another shaft in the ground where rationalism worked, and to
+go down through all the strata to see whether we cannot find the gold
+which must certainly be there.
+
+[pg 090]
+
+To think out to the end a theory of the universe which has been
+produced by thought—that is the only possible way of finding our
+bearings amid the confusion of the world of thought to-day.
+
+Philosophical, historical, and scientific questions with which it was
+not capable of dealing overwhelmed the earlier rationalism like an
+avalanche, and buried it in the middle of its journey. The new
+rational theory of the universe must work its way out of this chaos.
+Leaving itself freely open to the whole influence of the world of
+fact, it must explore every path offered by reflection and knowledge
+in its effort to reach the ultimate meaning of being and life, and to
+see whether it can solve some of the riddles which they present.
+
+The ultimate knowledge, in which man recognizes his own being as a
+part of the All, belongs, they say, to the realm of mysticism, by
+which is meant that he does not reach it by the method of ordinary
+reflection, but somehow or other lives himself into it.
+
+But why assume that the road of thought must suddenly stop at the
+frontier of mysticism? It is true that pure reason has hitherto called
+a halt whenever it came into this neighbourhood, for it was unwilling
+to go beyond the point at which it could still exhibit everything as
+part of a smooth, logical plan. Mysticism, on its side, always
+depreciated [pg 091] pure reason as much as it could, to prevent at
+all costs the idea from gaining currency that it was in any way bound
+to give an account to reason. And yet, although they refuse to
+recognize each other, the two belong to each other.
+
+It is in reason that intellect and will, which in our nature are
+mysteriously bound up together, seek to come to a mutual
+understanding. The ultimate knowledge that we strive to acquire is
+knowledge of life, which intellect looks at from without, will from
+within. Since life is the ultimate object of knowledge, our ultimate
+knowledge is necessarily our thinking experience of life, but this
+does not lie outside the sphere of reason, but within reason itself.
+Only when the will has thought out its relation to the intellect, has
+come, as far as it can, into line with it, has penetrated it, and in
+it become logical, is it in a position to comprehend itself, so far as
+its nature allows this, as a part of the universal will-to-live and a
+part of being in general. If it merely leaves the intellect on one
+side, it loses itself in confused imaginings, while the intellect,
+which, like the rationalism of the past, will not allow that in order
+to understand life it must finally lose itself in thinking experience,
+renounces all hope of constructing a deep and firmly based theory of
+the universe.
+
+[pg 092]
+
+Thus reflection, when pursued to the end, lead somewhere and somehow
+to a living mysticism which is for all men everywhere a necessary
+element of thought.
+
+Doubts whether the mass of men can ever attain to that level of
+reflection about themselves and the world which is demanded by a
+reflective theory of the universe, are quite justifiable if the man of
+to-day is taken as an example of the race. But he, with his diminished
+need of thought, is a pathological phenomenon.
+
+In reality there is given in the mental endowment of the average man a
+capacity for thought which to the individual makes the creation of a
+reflective theory of things of his own not only possible, but under
+normal conditions even a necessity. The great movements of
+illumination in ancient and modern times help to maintain the
+confident belief that there is in the mass of mankind a power of
+thought on fundamentals which can be roused to activity. This belief
+is strengthened by observation of mankind and intercourse with the
+young. A fundamental impulse to reflect about the universe stirs us
+during those years in which we begin to think independently. Later on
+we let it languish, even though feeling clearly that we thereby
+impoverish ourselves and become less capable of what is good. We are
+like springs of water which no longer run [pg 093] because they have
+not been watched and have gradually become choked with rubbish.
+
+More than any other age has our own neglected to watch the thousand
+springs of thought; hence the drought in which we are pining. But if
+we only go on to remove the rubbish which conceals the water, the
+sands will be irrigated again, and life will spring up where hitherto
+there has been only a desert.
+
+Certainly there are guides and the guided in the department of
+world-theories, as in others. So far the independence of the mass of
+men remains a relative one. The question is only whether the influence
+of the guides leads to dependence or independence. The latter brings
+with it a development in the direction of truthfulness; the former
+means the death of that virtue.
+
+Every being who calls himself a man is meant to develop into a real
+personality within a reflective theory of the universe which he has
+created for himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of what character must the theory be if ideas and convictions
+about civilization are to be based on it?
+
+That theory of the universe is optimistic which [pg 094] gives
+existence the preference as against non-existence and thus affirms
+life as something possessing value in itself. From this attitude to
+the universe and to life results the impulse to raise existence, in so
+far as our influence can affect it, to its highest level of value.
+Thence originates activity directed to the improvement of the living
+conditions of individuals, of society, of nations and of humanity,
+from which spring the external achievements of civilization, the
+lordship of spirit over the powers of nature, and the higher social
+organization.
+
+Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection
+of his own personality. In itself it is quite independent of whether
+the theory of the universe is pessimistic or optimistic. But its
+sphere of action is contracted or widened according as it appears in
+connection with a theory of the first or the second type.
+
+In the determinist-pessimistic theory of the universe, as we have it
+in the thought of the Brāhmans or of Schopenhauer, ethics has nothing
+whatever to do with the objective world. It aims solely at securing
+the self-perfection of the individual as this comes to pass in inner
+freedom and disconnection from the world and the spirit of the world.
+
+But the scope of ethics is extended in proportion [pg 095] as it
+develops and strengthens a connection with a theory of the universe
+which is affirmative toward the world and life. Its aim is now the
+inner perfection of the individual and at the same time the direction
+of his activity so as to take effect on other men and on the objective
+world. It is true that in face of the objective world and its spirit
+ethics no longer holds itself up to man as an aim in itself. By its
+means man is to become capable of acting among men and in the world as
+a higher and purer force, and thus to do his part towards the
+actualization of the ideal of general progress.
+
+Thus the optimistic-ethical theory of the universe works in
+partnership with ethics to produce civilization. Neither is capable of
+doing so by itself. Optimism supplies confidence that the
+world-process has somehow or other a spiritual-sensible aim, and that
+the improvement of the general relations of the world and of society
+promotes the spiritual-moral perfection of the individual. From ethics
+is derived ability to develop the purposive state of mind necessary to
+produce action on the world and society and to cause the co-operation
+of all our achievements to secure the spiritual and moral perfection
+of the individual which is the final end of civilization.
+
+Once we have recognized that the energies which spring out of a theory
+of the universe, and impel us to [pg 096] create a civilization, are
+rooted in the ethical and the optimistic, we get light on the question
+why and how our ideals of civilization got worn out. This question is
+not to be answered by good or bad analogies from nature. The decisive
+answer is that they got worn out because we had not succeeded in
+establishing the ethical and optimistic elements on a sufficiently
+firm foundation.
+
+If we should analyse the process in which the ideas and convictions
+that produce civilization reveal themselves, it would be found that
+whenever an advance has been registered, either the optimist or the
+ethical element in the theory of the universe has proved more
+attractive than usual, and has had as its consequence a progressive
+development. When civilization is decaying there is the same chain of
+causation, but it works negatively. The building is damaged or falls
+in because the optimist element or the ethical, or both, give way like
+a weak foundation. No amount of inquiry will give any other reason for
+the changes. All imaginable ideas and convictions of that character
+spring from optimism and the ethical impulse. If these two pillars are
+strong enough, we need have no fears about the building.
+
+The future of civilization depends, therefore, on whether it is
+possible for thought to reach a theory of the universe which will have
+a more secure and [pg 097] fundamental hold on optimism and the
+ethical impulse than its predecessors have had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We Westerners dream of a theory of the universe which corresponds to
+our impulse to action and at the same time justifies it. We have not
+been able to formulate such a theory definitely. At present we are in
+the state of possessing merely an impulse without any definite
+orientation. The spirit of the age drives us into action without
+allowing us to attain any clear view of the objective world and of
+life. It claims our toil inexorably in the service of this or that
+end, this or that achievement. It keeps us in a sort of intoxication
+of activity so that we may never have time to reflect and to ask
+ourselves what this restless sacrifice of ourselves to ends and
+achievements really has to do with the meaning of the world and of our
+lives. And so we wander hither and thither in the gathering dusk
+formed by lack of any definite theory of the universe like homeless,
+drunken mercenaries, and enlist indifferently in the service of the
+common and the great without distinguishing between them. And the more
+hopeless becomes the condition of the world in which this adventurous
+impulse to action and progress ranges to and fro, the more bewildered
+[pg 098] becomes our whole conception of things and the more
+purposeless and irrational the doings of those who have enlisted under
+the banner of such an impulse.
+
+How little reflection is present in the Western impulse to action
+becomes evident when this tries to square its ideas with those of the
+Far East. For thought in the Far East has been constantly occupied in
+its search for the meaning of life, and forces us to consider the
+problem of the meaning of our own restlessness, the problem which we
+Westerners burke so persistently. We are utterly at a loss when we
+contemplate the ideas which are presented to us in Indian thought. We
+turn away from the intellectual presumption which we find there. We
+are conscious of the unsatisfying and incomplete elements in the ideal
+of cessation from action. We feel instinctively that the
+will-to-progress is justified not only in its aspect as directed to
+the spiritual perfection of personality, but also in that which looks
+towards the general and material.
+
+For ourselves we dare to allege that we adventurers, who take up an
+affirmative attitude toward the world and toward life, however great
+and even ghastly our mistakes may be, can yet show not only greater
+material, but also greater spiritual and ethical, contributions than
+can those who lie under the ban of a theory of the universe
+characterized by cessation from action.
+
+[pg 099]
+
+And yet, all the same, we cannot feel ourselves completely justified
+in the face of these strange Eastern theories. They have in them
+something full of nobility which retains its hold on us, even
+fascinates us. This tinge of nobility comes from the fact that these
+convictions are born of a search for a theory of the universe and for
+the meaning of life. With us, on the other hand, activist instincts
+and impulses take the place of a theory of the universe. We have no
+theory affirming the world and life to oppose to the negative theory
+of these thinkers, no thought which has found a basis for an
+optimistic conception of existence to oppose to this other, which has
+arrived at a pessimistic conception.
+
+The reawakening of the Western spirit must thus begin by our people,
+educated and simple alike, becoming conscious of their lack of a
+theory of the universe and feeling the horror of their consequent
+position. We can no longer be satisfied to make shift with substitutes
+for such a theory. What is the basis of the will-to-activity and
+progress which impels both to great actions and to terrible deeds, and
+which tries to keep us from reflection? We must bend all our energies
+to the solution of this problem.
+
+There is only one way in which we can hope to emerge from the
+meaningless state in which we are [pg 100] now held captive into one
+informed with meaning. Each one of us must turn to contemplate his own
+being, and we must all give ourselves to co-operative reflection so as
+to discover how our will to action and to progress may be
+intellectually based on the way in which we interpret our own lives
+and the life around us, and the meaning which we give to these.
+
+The great revision of the convictions and ideals in which and for
+which we live will only take place when, by constantly proclaiming
+them, we have given currency among our contemporaries to ideas and
+thoughts other and better than those by which they are dominated at
+the moment. Only thus will the many come to reflect about the meaning
+of life and to reorientate, revise and make over again their ideals of
+action and of progress, asking themselves whether these have a meaning
+in accord with that which we attribute to our life itself. This
+personal reflection about final and elemental things is the one and
+only reliable way of measuring values. My willing and doing have real
+meaning and value only in proportion as the aims which action sets
+before itself can be justified as being in direct accord with my
+interpretation of my own and of other life. All else, however much it
+may pass current as approved by tradition, usage, and public opinion,
+is vain and dangerous.
+
+It seems, indeed, a matter for scorn and derision [pg 101] that we
+should urge men to anything so remote as a return to reflection about
+the meaning of life at a time when the sufferings and the follies of
+the nations have become so intense and so extended, when unemployment
+and poverty and starvation are rife, when power is being dissipated on
+all sides in the most shameless and senseless way, and when organized
+human life is dislocated in every direction. But only when the general
+population begins to reflect in this way will forces come into being
+which will be able to effect something to counterbalance all this ruin
+and misery. Whatever other measures it is attempted to carry out will
+have doubtful and altogether inadequate results.
+
+When in the spring the withered grey of the pastures gives place to
+green, this is due to the millions of young shoots which sprout up
+freshly from the old roots. In like manner the revival of thought
+which is essential for our time can only come through a transformation
+of the opinions and ideals of the many brought about by individual and
+universal reflection about the meaning of life and of the world.
+
+But are we sure of being able to think out that affirmation of the
+world and of life, which is such a powerful impulse in us, into a
+theory of the world and of life from which a stream of energy
+productive [pg 102] of intelligible life and action may convincingly
+and constantly proceed? How are we to succeed in doing what the spirit
+of the Western world during past generations has in vain toiled to
+accomplish?
+
+Even if thought, once more awakened, should only attain to an
+incomplete and unsatisfying theory of the universe, yet this, as the
+truth to which we have ourselves worked through, would be of more
+value than a complete lack of any theory at all, or, alternatively,
+than any sort of authoritative theory to which, neglecting the demands
+of true thought, we cling on account of its supposed intrinsic value
+without having any real and thorough belief in it.
+
+The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous
+faith in truth and open confession of the same. The most profound
+religious experience, too, is not alien to thought, but must be
+capable of derivation from this if it is to be given a true and deep
+basis. Mere reflection about the meaning of life has already value in
+itself. If such reflection should again come into being amongst us,
+the ideals, born of vanity and of suffering, which now flourish in
+rank profusion like evil weeds among the convictions of the generality
+of people, would infallibly wither away and die. How much would
+already be accomplished towards our salvation from our present
+circumstances if only we would all give up three minutes every evening
+to gazing up into the infinite [pg 103] world of the starry heavens
+and meditating on it, or if in taking part in a funeral procession we
+would reflect on the enigma of life and death, instead of engaging in
+thoughtless conversation as we follow behind the coffin! The ideals,
+born of folly and suffering, of those who make public opinion and
+direct public events, would have no more power over men if they once
+began to reflect about eternity and mortality, existence and
+dissolution, and thus learnt to distinguish between true and false
+standards, between those which possess real value and those which do
+not. The old-time rabbis used to teach that the kingdom of God would
+come if only the whole of Israel would really keep a single Sabbath
+simultaneously! How much more is it true that the injustice and
+violence and untruth, which are now bringing so much disaster on the
+human race, would lose their power if only a single real trace of
+reflection about the meaning of the world and of life should appear
+amongst us!
+
+But is there not a danger in challenging men with this question about
+the meaning of life and in demanding that our impulse to action should
+justify and clarify itself in such reflection as that of which we have
+spoken? Shall we not lose, in acceding to this demand, some
+irreplaceable element of naïve enthusiasm?
+
+[pg 104]
+
+We need not thus be anxious as to how strong or how weak our impulse
+to action will prove to be when it shall have arrived, as the result
+of intellectual reflection, at an interpretation of life. Only that
+has real meaning for life which is given as an element of our
+interpretation of life. It is not the quantity, but the quality, of
+activity that really matters. What is needed is that our
+will-to-action should become conscious of itself and should cease to
+work blindly.
+
+But perhaps, it may be objected, we shall end in the resignation of
+agnosticism, and shall be obliged to confess that we cannot discover
+any meaning in the universe or in life.
+
+If thought is to set out on its journey unhampered, it must be
+prepared for anything, even for arrival at intellectual agnosticism.
+But even if our will-to-action is destined to wrestle endlessly and
+unavailingly with an agnostic view of the universe and of life, still
+this painful disenchantment is better for it than persistent refusal
+to think out its position at all. For this disenchantment does, at any
+rate, mean that we are clear as to what we are doing.
+
+There is, however, no necessity whatever for such an attitude of
+resignation. We feel that a position of affirmation regarding the
+world and life is something which is in itself both necessary and
+valuable. Therefore it is at least likely that a foundation can be [pg
+105] found for it in thought. Since it is an innate element of our
+will-to-live, it must be possible to comprehend it as a necessary
+corollary to our interpretation of life. Perhaps we shall have to look
+elsewhere than we have done hitherto for the real basis of that theory
+of the universe which carries with it affirmation of the world and of
+life. Previous thought imagined that it could deduce the meaning of
+life from its interpretation of the universe. It may be that we shall
+be obliged to resign ourselves to abandon the problem of the
+interpretation of the universe and to find the meaning of our life in
+the will-to-live as this exists in ourselves.
+
+The ways along which we have to struggle toward the goal may be veiled
+in darkness, yet the direction in which we must travel is clear. We
+must reflect together about the meaning of life; we must strive
+together to attain to a theory of the universe affirmative of the
+world and of life, in which the impulse to action which we experience
+as a necessary and valuable element of our being may find
+justification, orientation, clarity and depth, may receive a fresh
+access of moral strength, and be retempered, and thus become capable
+of formulating, and of acting on, definite ideals of civilization,
+inspired by the spirit of true humanitarianism.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+* _Weltanschauung_. Translated ‘theory of the universe’ throughout the
+first part and elsewhere in this preface.
+
+* Translated “world-view” throughout the second part of these
+Lectures.
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+The formatting of both the .htm and .txt files followed that of two
+similar books, The Quest of the Historical Jesus and The Mystery of
+the Kingdom of God, already in Project Gutenberg.
+
+In the .txt version I have used utf8 encoding and the following
+markers:
+
+1. italic text surrounded by _
+2. footnote references in the form
+_(_number_)_
+
+I have included page numbers in the format [pg xxx] for both .htm and
+.txt.
+
+I made several hyphenation choices, mostly forced by de-hyphenation at
+the ends of lines:
+
+1. world-theory
+2. overcoming
+3. self-regarding
+4. never-concentrated
+5. over-organization
+6. over-valuation
+7. self-importance
+8. rococo-ministers
+9. non-existence
+
+In addition, on page 5 of the .pdf file on Internet Archive, the
+display of this page was corrupted in my copy. As pointed out by
+an editor, this has been corrected in the current version at Internet
+Archive.
+
+On page 84 the word “not” in the sentence:
+
+“The rulers, small and great alike, did not act in accordance with
+the spirit of the age.”
+
+was changed to “[nothing but]”. The original German is:
+
+“Die kleinen und die großen Regierenden taten nichts anderes, als daß
+sie im Geiste der Zeit handelten.”
+
+Google Translate (4/25/2025) renders this as:
+
+“The small and the big rulers did nothing other than act in the spirit
+of the times.”
+
+The printed sentence in the book is either a typo or a mis-translation.
+It does not fit the sense of the author who means that the rulers
+themselves are not to blame for the collapse of civilization but rather
+it is the fault of the “spirit of the age”.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75958 ***
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+Version created for Project Gutenberg April 2025</p>
+eBook version 1.1
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+</head>
+<body class="tei">
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75958 ***</div>
+<hr class="page">
+<div class="tei" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 120%">The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922.</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.73em"><span style="font-size: 173%">THE DECAY AND THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 120%">THE PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 120%">PART I</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.20em"><span style="font-size: 120%">BY</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.44em"><span style="font-size: 144%">ALBERT SCHWEITZER</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">D.THEOL.; D.PHIL.; D.MED. (STRASSBURG)</p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.44em"><span style="font-size: 144%">TRANSLATED BY</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.20em"><span style="font-size: 120%">C. T. CAMPION</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.20em"><span>M.A. (OXON.)</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.20em"><span>(SOMETIME OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD)</span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">A. &amp; C. BLACK, LTD.</p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1</p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">1923</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><hr class="page">
+<div class="tei" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 90%"><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i></span></p>
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 90%">THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS,LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center">
+<img alt="Cover Art" src="images/cover.jpg" id="img_images_cover.jpg">
+</div>
+
+<p><hr class="page">
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<p style="text-align: center; line-height: 0; margin-bottom: 2em">To</p>
+<p style="line-height: 0; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2em">ANNIE FISCHER</p>
+<p style="line-height: 0; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2em">IN</p>
+<p style="line-height: 0; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2em">DEEPEST GRATITUDE</p>
+
+<p><hr class="page">
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_p" class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em">
+<span style="font-size: 173%">AUTHOR’S PREFACE</span></h2>
+
+<p>“The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization”
+is the first part of a complete philosophy of
+civilization with which I have been occupied since
+the year 1900.</p>
+
+<p>The second part, entitled “Civilization and
+Ethics”, will appear immediately. The third is
+called “The World-View<a id="in1-ref" href="#in1">*</a> of Reverence for Life”.
+The fourth has to do with the civilized State.</p>
+
+<p>That over which I have toiled since 1900 has been
+finally ripened in the stillness of the primeval forest
+of Equatorial Africa. There, during the years
+1914-17, the clear and definite lines of this philosophy
+of civilization have been developed.</p>
+
+<p>The first part, “The Decay and the Restoration
+of Civilization”, is a kind of introduction to the
+philosophy of civilization. It states the problem of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Entering on the question as to what is the real
+essential nature of civilization, I come to the pronouncement
+that this is ultimately ethical. I know
+that in thus stating the problem as a moral one I
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pageviii">[pg viii]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgviii"></a>
+shall surprise and even disgust the spirit of our
+times, which is accustomed to move amidst æsthetic,
+historical and material considerations. I imagine,
+however, that I am myself enough of an artist and
+also of an historian to be able to comprehend the
+æsthetic and historical elements in civilization, and
+that, as a modern physician and surgeon, I am sufficiently
+modern to appreciate the glamour of the
+technical and material attainments of our age.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this, I have come to the conviction
+that the æsthetic and the historical elements,
+and the magnificent extension of our material knowledge
+and power, do not themselves form the essence
+of civilization, but that this depends on the mental
+disposition of the individuals and nations who exist
+in the world. All other things are merely accompanying
+circumstances of civilization, which have
+nothing to do with its real essence.</p>
+
+<p>Creative, artistic, intellectual, and material attainments
+can only show their full and true effects when
+the continued existence and development of civilization
+have been secured by founding civilization
+itself on a mental disposition which is truly ethical.
+It is only in his struggle to become ethical that man
+comes to possess real value as a personality; it is
+only under the influence of ethical convictions that
+the various relations of human society are formed
+in such a way that individuals and peoples can
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pageix">[pg ix]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgix"></a>
+develop in an ideal manner. If the ethical foundation
+is lacking, then civilization collapses, even
+when in other directions creative and intellectual
+forces of the strongest nature are at work.</p>
+
+<p>This moral conception of civilization, which makes
+me almost a stranger amidst the intellectual life of
+my time, I express clearly and unhesitatingly, in
+order to arouse amongst my contemporaries reflection
+as to what civilization really is. We shall not
+succeed in re-establishing our civilization on an
+enduring basis until we rid ourselves completely of
+the superficial concept of civilization which now
+holds us in thrall, and give ourselves up again to
+the ethical view which obtained in the eighteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>The second point which I desire should obtain
+currency is that of the connection between civilization
+and our theory of the universe. At the present
+time no regard is paid to this connection. In fact,
+the period in which we are living altogether misses
+the significance of having a theory of the universe.
+It is the common conviction nowadays, of educated
+and uneducated alike, that humanity will progress
+quite satisfactorily without any theory of the
+universe at all.</p>
+
+<p>The real fact is that all human progress depends
+on progress in its theory of the universe, whilst,
+conversely, decadence is conditioned by a similar
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagex">[pg x]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgx"></a>
+decadence in this theory. Our loss of real civilization
+is due to our lack of a theory of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Only as we again succeed in attaining a strong and
+worthy theory of the universe, and find in it strong
+and worthy convictions, shall we again become
+capable of producing a new civilization. It is this
+apparently abstract and paradoxical truth of which
+I proclaim myself the champion.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization, put quite simply, consists in our
+giving ourselves, as human beings, to the effort to
+attain the perfecting of the human race and the
+actualization of progress of every sort in the circumstances
+of humanity and of the objective world.
+This mental attitude, however, involves a double
+predisposition: firstly, we must be prepared to act
+affirmatively toward the world and life; secondly,
+we must become ethical.</p>
+
+<p>Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning
+to the world and to life shall we be able also to give
+ourselves to such action as will produce results of
+real value. As long as we look on our existence in
+the world as meaningless, there is no point whatever
+in desiring to effect anything in the world. We
+become workers for that universal spiritual and
+material progress which we call civilization only in
+so far as we affirm that the world and life possess
+some sort of meaning, or, which is the same thing,
+only in so far as we think optimistically.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexi">[pg xi]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxi"></a></p>
+
+<p>Civilization originates when men become inspired
+by a strong and clear determination to attain progress,
+and consecrate themselves, as a result of this
+determination, to the service of life and of the world.
+It is only in ethics that we can find the driving force
+for such action, transcending, as it does, the limits
+of our own existence.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of real value in the world is ever accomplished
+without enthusiasm and self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>But it is impossible to convince men of the truth
+of world- and life-affirmation and of the real value
+of ethics by mere declamation. The affirmative and
+ethical mentality which characterizes these beliefs
+must originate in man himself as the result of an
+inner spiritual relation to the world. Only then
+will they accompany him as strong, clear, and constant
+convictions, and condition his every thought
+and action.</p>
+
+<p>To put it in another way: world- and
+life-affirmation must be the products of thought about
+the world and life. Only as the majority of individuals
+attain to this result of thought and continue
+under its influence will a true and enduring civilization
+make progress in the world. Should the mental
+disposition towards world- and life-affirmation and
+towards ethics begin to wane, or become dim and
+obscured, we shall be incapable of working for true
+civilization, nay, more, we shall be unable even to
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexii">[pg xii]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxii"></a>
+form a correct concept of what such civilization
+ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the fate which has befallen us. We
+are bereft of any theory of the universe. Therefore,
+instead of being inspired by a profound and powerful
+spirit of affirmation of the world and of life, we
+allow ourselves, both as individuals and as nations,
+to be driven hither and thither by a type of such
+affirmation which is both confused and superficial.
+Instead of adopting a determined ethical attitude,
+we exist in an atmosphere of mere ethical phrases
+or declare ourselves ethical sceptics.</p>
+
+<p>How is it that we have got into this state of lacking
+a theory of the universe? It is because hitherto
+the world- and life-affirming and ethical theory of
+the universe had no convincing and permanent
+foundation in thought. We thought again and again
+that we had found such a basis for it; but it lost
+power again and again without our being aware that
+it was doing so, until, finally, we have been obliged,
+for more than a generation past, to resign ourselves
+more and more to a complete lack of any world-theory
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in this introductory part of my work, I
+proclaim two truths and conclude with a great note
+of interrogation. The truths are the following:
+The basic ethical character of civilization, and the
+connection between civilization and our theories of
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexiii">[pg xiii]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxiii"></a>
+the universe. The question with which I conclude
+is this: Is it at all possible to find a real and permanent
+foundation in thought for a theory of the
+universe which shall be both ethical and affirmative
+of the world and of life?</p>
+
+<p>The future of civilization depends on our overcoming
+the meaninglessness and hopelessness which
+characterize the thoughts and convictions of men
+to-day, and reaching a state of fresh hope and fresh
+determination. We shall be capable of this, however,
+only when the majority of individuals discover
+for themselves both an ethic and a profound
+and steadfast attitude of world- and life-affirmation,
+in a theory of the universe at once convincing and
+based on reflection.</p>
+
+<p>Without such a general spiritual experience there
+is no possibility of holding our world back from the
+ruin and disintegration towards which it is being
+hastened. It is our duty then to rouse ourselves to
+fresh reflection about the world and life.</p>
+
+<p>In “Civilization and Ethics”, the second part of
+this philosophy of civilization, I describe the road
+along which thought has led me to world- and
+life-affirmation and to ethics. The root-idea of my
+theory of the universe is that my relation to my
+own being and to the objective world is determined
+by reverence for life. This reverence for life is given
+as an element of my will-to-live, and becomes clearly
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexiv">[pg xiv]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxiv"></a>
+conscious of itself as I reflect about my life and about
+the world. In the mental attitude of reverence for
+life which should characterize my contact with all
+forms of life, both ethics and world- and life-affirmation
+are involved. It is not any kind of insight into
+the essential nature of the world which determines
+my relation to my own existence and to the existence
+which I encounter in the world, but rather
+only and solely my own will-to-live which has
+developed the power of reflection about itself and
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of the universe characterized by
+reverence for life is a type of mysticism arrived at
+by self-consistent thought when persisted in to its
+ultimate conclusion. Surrendering himself to the
+guidance of this mysticism, man finds a meaning
+for his life in that he strives to accomplish his own
+spiritual and ethical self-fulfilment, and, simultaneously
+and in the same act, helps forward all the
+processes of spiritual and material progress which
+have to be actualized in the world.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how many, or how few, will allow
+themselves to be persuaded to travel with me on
+the road indicated above. What I desire above all
+things—and this is the crux of the whole affair—is
+that we should all recognize fully that our present
+entire lack of any theory of the universe is the ultimate
+source of all the catastrophes and misery of
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexv">[pg xv]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxv"></a>
+our times, and that we should toil in concert for a
+theory of the universe and of life, in order that thus
+we may arrive at a mental disposition which shall
+make us really and truly civilized men.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great joy to me to be afforded the opportunity
+of putting forward, in the <i>Dale Lectures</i>,
+delivered in Oxford, the views on which this philosophy
+of civilization is based.</p>
+
+<p>I would tender my deepest thanks to my friends,
+Mr. C. T. Campion, M.A., now of Grahamstown,
+South Africa, and Dr. J. P. Naish, of Oxford. Mr.
+Campion is the translator of this first part of the
+“Philosophy of Civilization”. Dr. Naish has seen
+the book through the press and translated this
+preface.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">ALBERT SCHWEITZER.</p>
+
+<p>Strasbourg, Alsace.</p>
+
+<p><i>February</i>, 1923.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexvi">[pg xvi]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxvi"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="page">
+<p class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em">
+<span style="font-size: 173%; text-align: center">CONTENTS</span></p>
+<ul class="tei tei-index">
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-top: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_1" style="font-size: 130%">CHAPTER I</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_1" style="font-size: 100%">How Philosophy is Responsible for the Collapse of Civilization [1]</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-top: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_2" style="font-size: 130%">CHAPTER II</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_2" style="font-size: 100%">Hindrances to Civilization in our Economic and Spiritual Life [15]</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-top: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_3" style="font-size: 130%">CHAPTER III</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_3" style="font-size: 100%">Civilization essentially Ethical in Character [35]</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-top: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_4" style="font-size: 130%">CHAPTER IV</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_4" style="font-size: 100%">The Way to the Restoration of Civilization [62]</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-top: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_5" style="font-size: 130%">CHAPTER V</a></li>
+<li style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1em"><a href="#mbp_toc_5" style="font-size: 100%">Civilization and Theories of the Universe [80]</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagexvii">[pg xvii]</span><a class="tei" id="Pgxvii"></a></p>
+
+<p><hr class="page">
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h1 style="font-size: 150%; text-align: center">THE DECAY AND THE<br>
+RESTORATION OF<br>
+CIVILIZATION</h1>
+
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_1">CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h4>HOW PHILOSOPHY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE
+COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Our self-deception as to the real conditions of our civilization. The
+collapse of the theory of the universe on which our ideals were based.
+The superficial character of modern philosophizing.</p>
+
+<p class="drop">We are living to-day under the sign of the
+collapse of civilization. The situation has not been
+produced by the war; the latter is only a manifestation
+of it. The spiritual atmosphere has
+solidified into actual facts, which again react
+on it with disastrous results in every respect.
+This interaction of material and spiritual has
+assumed a most unhealthy character. Just below
+a mighty cataract we are driving along in a
+current full of formidable eddies, and it will need the
+most gigantic efforts to rescue the vessel of our fate
+from the dangerous side channel into which we have
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page002">[pg 002]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg001"></a>
+allowed it to drift, and bring it back into the main
+stream, if, indeed, we can hope to do so at all.</p>
+
+<p>We have drifted out of the stream of civilization
+because there was amongst us no real reflection upon
+what civilization is. It is true that at the end of the
+last century and the beginning of this there appeared
+a number of works on civilization with the most
+varied titles; but, as though in obedience to some
+secret order, they made no attempt to settle and
+make clear the conditions of our intellectual life, but
+devoted themselves exclusively to its origin and
+history. They gave us a relief map of civilization
+marked with roads which men had observed or
+invented, and which led us over hill and dale
+through the fields of history from the Renaissance
+to the twentieth century. It was a triumph for the
+historical sense of the authors. The crowds whom
+these works instructed were filled with satisfied
+contentment when they understood that their
+civilization was the organic product of so many
+centuries of the working of spiritual and social forces,
+but no one worked out and described the content of
+our spiritual life. No one tested its value from the
+point of view of the nobility of its ideas, and its
+ability to produce real progress.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we crossed the threshold of the twentieth
+century with an unshakable conceit of ourselves,
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page003">[pg 003]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg003"></a>
+and whatever was written at that time about our
+civilization only confirmed us in our ingenuous belief
+in its high value. Anyone who expressed doubt was
+regarded with astonishment. Many, indeed, who
+were on the road to error, stopped and returned to
+the main road again because they were afraid of the
+path which led off to the side. Others continued
+along the main road, but in silence; the understanding
+and insight which were at work in them
+only condemned them to isolation.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear now to everyone that the suicide of
+civilization is in progress. What yet remains of it
+is no longer safe. It is still standing, indeed,
+because it was not exposed to the destructive pressure
+which overwhelmed the rest, but, like the rest,
+is built upon rubble, and the next landslide will
+very likely carry it away.</p>
+
+<p>But what was it that preceded and led
+up to this loss of power in the innate forces of
+civilization?</p>
+
+<p>The age of the Illuminati and of rationalism had
+put forward ethical ideals, based on reason, concerning
+the development of the individual to true
+manhood, his position in society, the material and
+spiritual problems which arose out of society, the
+relations of the different nations to each other, and
+their issue in a humanity which should be united in
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page004">[pg 004]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg004"></a>
+the pursuit of the highest moral and spiritual
+objects. These ideals had begun, both in philosophy
+and in general thought, to get into contact with
+reality and to alter the general environment. In
+the course of three or four generations there had
+been such progress made, both in the ideas underlying
+civilization and in their material embodiment,
+that the age of true civilization seemed to have
+dawned upon the world and to be assured of an
+uninterrupted development.</p>
+
+<p>But about the middle of the nineteenth century
+this mutual understanding and co-operation between
+ethical ideals and reality began to break down, and
+in the course of the next few decades it disappeared
+more and more completely. Without resistance,
+without complaint, civilization abdicated. Its ideas
+lagged behind, as though they were too exhausted
+to keep pace with it. How did this come about?</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>The decisive element in the production of this
+result was philosophy’s renunciation of her duty.</p>
+
+<p>In the eighteenth century and the early part of the
+nineteenth it was philosophy which led and guided
+thought in general. She had busied herself with
+the questions which presented themselves to mankind
+at each successive period, and had kept the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page005">[pg 005]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg005"></a>
+thought of civilized man actively reflecting upon
+them. Philosophy at that time included within
+herself an elementary philosophizing about man,
+society, race, humanity and civilization, which produced
+in a perfectly natural way a living popular
+philosophy that controlled the general thought, and
+maintained the enthusiasm for civilization.</p>
+
+<p>But that ethical, and at the same time optimistic,
+view of things in which the Illuminati and
+rationalism had laid the foundations of this healthy
+popular philosophy, was unable in the long run to
+meet the criticism levelled at it by pure thought.
+Its naïve dogmatism raised more and more prejudice
+against it. Kant tried to provide the tottering
+building with new foundations, undertaking to alter
+the rationalistic view of things in accordance with
+the demands of a deeper theory of knowledge, without,
+however, making any change in its essential
+spiritual elements. Goethe, Schiller and other
+intellectual giants of the age, showed, by means of
+criticism both kindly and malicious, that rationalism
+was rather popular philosophy than real philosophy,
+but they were not in a position to put into the place
+of what they destroyed anything new which could
+give the same effective support to the ideas about
+civilization which were current in the general
+thought of the time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page006">[pg 006]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg006"></a></p>
+
+<p>Fichte, Hegel, and other philosophers, who, for all
+their criticism of rationalism, paid homage to its
+ethical ideals, attempted to establish a similar
+ethical and optimistic view of things by speculative
+methods, that is by logical and metaphysical discussion
+of pure being and its development into a
+universe. For three or four decades they succeeded
+in deceiving themselves and others with this
+supposedly creative and inspiring illusion, and in
+doing violence to reality in the interests of their
+theory of the universe. But at last the natural
+sciences, which all this time had been growing
+stronger and stronger, rose up against them, and,
+with a plebeian enthusiasm for the truth of reality,
+reduced to ruins the magnificent creations of their
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Since that time the ethical ideas on which civilization
+rests have been wandering about the world,
+poverty-stricken and homeless. No theory of the
+universe has been advanced which can give them a
+solid foundation; in fact, not one has made its
+appearance which can claim for itself solidity and
+inner consistency. The age of philosophic dogmatism
+had come definitely to an end, and after that
+nothing was recognized as truth except the science
+which described reality. General theories of the
+universe no longer appeared as fixed stars; they
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page007">[pg 007]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg007"></a>
+were regarded as resting on hypothesis, and ranked
+no higher than comets.</p>
+
+<p>The same weapon which struck down the dogmatism
+of knowledge about the universe struck down
+also the dogmatic enunciation of spiritual ideas.
+The early simple rationalism, the critical rationalism
+of Kant, and the speculative rationalism of the great
+philosophers of the nineteenth century had all alike
+done violence to reality in two ways. They had
+given a position above that of the facts of science to
+the views which they had arrived at by pure thought,
+and they had also preached a series of ethical ideals
+which were meant to replace by new ones the various
+existing relations in the ideas and the material
+environment of mankind. When the first of these
+two forms of violence was proved to be a mistaken
+one, it became questionable whether the second
+could still be allowed the justification which it had
+hitherto enjoyed. The doctrinaire methods of
+thought which made the existing world nothing but
+material for the production of a purely theoretical
+sketch of a better future were replaced by sympathetic
+attempts to understand the historical origin
+of existing things for which Hegel’s philosophy had
+prepared the way.</p>
+
+<p>With a general mentality of this description, a real
+combination of ethical ideals with reality was no
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page008">[pg 008]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg008"></a>
+longer possible; there was not the freedom from
+prejudice which that required, and so there came a
+weakening of the convictions which were the driving
+power of civilization. So, too, an end was put to
+that justifiable violence to human convictions and
+circumstances without which the reforming work of
+civilization can make no advance, because it was
+bound up with that other unjustifiable violence to
+reality. That is the tragic element in the psychological
+development of our spiritual life during the
+latter half of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Rationalism, then, had been dismissed; but with
+it went also the optimistic convictions as to the
+moral meaning of the universe and of humanity, of
+society and of man, to which it had given birth,
+though the conviction still exerted so much influence
+that no attention was paid to the catastrophe which
+had really begun.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>Philosophy did not realize that the power of the
+ideas about civilization which had been entrusted
+to it was becoming a doubtful quantity. At the end
+of one of the most brilliant works on the history of
+philosophy which appeared at the close of the nineteenth
+century philosophy is defined as the process
+“by which there comes to completion, step by step,
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page009">[pg 009]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg009"></a>
+and with ever clearer and surer consciousness, that
+conviction about the value of civilization the
+universal validity of which it is the object of
+philosophy itself to affirm.” But the author has
+forgotten the essential point, viz., that there was a
+time when philosophy did not merely convince itself
+of the value of civilization, but also let its convictions
+go forth as fruitful ideas destined to influence the
+general thought, while from the middle of the nineteenth
+century onwards these convictions had
+become more and more of the nature of hoarded and
+unproductive capital.</p>
+
+<p>Once philosophy had been an active worker
+producing universal convictions about civilization.
+Now, after the collapse in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, this same philosophy had become a
+mere drawer of dividends, concentrating her activities
+far from the world on what she had managed to
+save. She had become a mere science, which sifted
+the results of the historical and natural sciences, and
+collected from them material for a future theory of
+the universe, carrying on with this object in view a
+learned activity in all branches of knowledge. At
+the same time she became more and more absorbed
+in the study of her own past. Philosophy came to
+mean practically the history of philosophy, but the
+creative spirit had left her. She became more and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page010">[pg 010]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg010"></a>
+more a philosophy which contained no real thought.
+She reflected, indeed, on the results achieved by the
+individual sciences, but she lost the power of
+thought about fundamental problems.</p>
+
+<p>She looked back with condescending pity on the
+rationalism which she had outstripped. She prided
+herself on being able to trace her descent through
+Kant, on having been shown by Hegel the inner
+meaning of history, and on being at work to-day in
+close sympathy with the natural sciences. But for
+all that she was poorer than the poorest rationalism,
+because she now carried on in imagination only, and
+not in reality, the recognized work of philosophy,
+which the latter had practised so zealously.
+Rationalism, for all its simplicity, had been a
+working philosophy, but philosophy herself had
+now become, for all her insight, merely a pedantic
+philosophy of degenerates. She still played, indeed,
+some sort of <i>rôle</i> in schools and universities, but she
+had no longer any message for the great world.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all her learning, she had become a
+stranger to the world, and the problems of life which
+occupied men and the whole thought of the age had
+no part in her activities. Her way lay apart from
+the general spiritual life, and just as she derived no
+stimulus from the latter, so she gave none back.
+Refusing to concern herself with fundamental
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page011">[pg 011]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg011"></a>
+problems, she contained no fundamental philosophy
+which could become a philosophy of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>From this impotence came the aversion to all
+generally intelligible philosophizing which is so
+characteristic of her. Popular philosophy was for
+her merely a review, prepared for the use of the
+crowd, simplified, and therefore rendered inferior,
+of the results given by the individual sciences which
+she had herself sifted and put together in view of a
+future theory of the universe. She was wholly
+unconscious of several things, viz., that there is a
+popular philosophy which arises out of such a
+review; that it is just the province of philosophy to
+deal with the primary, deeper questions about which
+individuals and the crowd are thinking, or ought to
+be thinking, to apply to them more comprehensive
+and more thorough methods of thought, and then
+restore them to general currency; and, finally, that
+the value of any philosophy is in the last resort to be
+measured by its capacity, or incapacity, to transform
+itself into a living philosophy of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever is deep is also simple, and can be
+reproduced as such, if only its relation to the whole
+of reality is preserved. It is then something
+abstract, which secures for itself a many-sided life
+as soon as it comes into contact with facts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page012">[pg 012]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg012"></a></p>
+
+<p>Whatever of inquiring thought there was among
+the general public was therefore compelled to
+languish, because our philosophy refused either to
+acknowledge or to help it. It found in front of it a
+deep chasm which it could not cross.</p>
+
+<p>Of gold coinage, minted in the past, philosophy
+had abundance; hypotheses about a soon to be
+developed theological theory of the universe filled
+her vaults like unminted bullion; but food with
+which to appease the spiritual hunger of the present
+she did not possess. Deceived by her own riches,
+she had neglected to plant any ground with nourishing
+crops, and therefore, ignoring the hunger of the
+age, she left the latter to its fate.</p>
+
+<p>That pure thought never managed to construct
+a theory of the universe of an optimistic, ethical
+character, and to build up on that for a foundation
+the ideals which go to produce civilization, was not
+the fault of philosophy; it was a fact which became
+evident as thought developed. But philosophy was
+guilty of a wrong to our age in that it did not admit
+the fact, but remained wrapped up in its illusion,
+as though this were really a help to the progress of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The ultimate vocation of philosophy is to be the
+guide and guardian of the general reason, and it was
+her duty, in the circumstances of the time, to confess
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page013">[pg 013]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg013"></a>
+to our world that ethical ideals were no longer
+supported by any general theory of the universe,
+but were, till further notice, left to themselves, and
+must make their way in the world by their own
+innate power. She ought to have shown us that
+we have to fight on behalf of the ideals on which our
+civilization rests. She ought to have tried to give
+these ideals an independent existence by virtue of
+their own inner value and inner truth, and so to keep
+them alive and active without any extraneous help
+from a corresponding theory of the universe. No
+effort should have been spared to direct the attention
+of the cultured and the uncultured alike to the
+problem of the ideals of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>But philosophy philosophized about everything
+except civilization. She went on working undeviatingly
+at the establishment of a theoretical view of
+the universe, as though by means of it everything
+could be restored, and did not reflect that this theory,
+even if it were completed, would be constructed only
+out of history and science, and would accordingly
+be unoptimistic and unethical, and would remain for
+ever an “impotent theory of the universe,” which
+could never call forth the energies needed for the
+establishment and maintenance of the ideals of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>So little did philosophy philosophize about
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page014">[pg 014]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg014"></a>
+civilization that she did not even notice that she
+herself and the age along with her were losing more
+and more of it. In the hour of peril the watchman
+who ought to have kept us awake was
+himself asleep, and the result was that we put up no
+fight at all on behalf of our civilization.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page015">[pg 015]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg015"></a></p>
+
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_2">CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h4>HINDRANCES TO CIVILIZATION IN OUR ECONOMIC
+AND SPIRITUAL LIFE</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The unfree economic position of the modern man. The undeveloped
+condition of the modern man. The modern man’s want of humanity.
+The lack of spiritual independence in the man of to-day.</p>
+
+<p class="drop">Even if the abdication of thought has been, as we
+have seen, the decisive factor in the collapse of our
+civilization, there are yet a number of other causes
+which combine with it to hinder our progress in this
+regard. They are to be found in the field of
+spiritual as well as in that of economic activity, and
+depend, above all, on the interaction between the
+two, an interaction which is unsatisfactory and
+continually becoming more so.</p>
+
+<p>The capacity of the modern man for progress
+in civilization is diminished because the circumstances
+in which he finds himself placed injure him
+psychically and stunt his personality.</p>
+
+<p>The development of civilization comes about—to
+put it quite generally—by individual men thinking
+out ideals which aim at the progress of the whole,
+and then so fitting them to the realities of life that
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page016">[pg 016]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg016"></a>
+they assume the shape in which they can influence
+most effectively the circumstances of the time. A
+man’s ability to be a pioneer of progress, that is, to
+understand what civilization is and to work for it,
+depends, therefore, on his being a thinker and on his
+being free. He must be the former if he is to be
+capable of comprehending his ideals and putting
+them into shape. He must be free in order to be in
+a position to launch his ideals out into the general
+life. The more completely his activities are taken
+up in any way by the struggle for existence, the more
+strongly will the impulse to improve his own condition
+find expression in the ideals of his thought.
+Ideals of self-interest then get mixed up with and
+spoil his ideals of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Material and spiritual freedom are closely bound
+up with one another. Civilization presupposes free
+men, for only by free men can it be thought out and
+brought to realization.</p>
+
+<p>But among mankind to-day both freedom and the
+capacity for thought have been sadly diminished.</p>
+
+<p>If society had so developed that a continually
+widening circle of the population could enjoy a
+modest, but well-assured, condition of comfort,
+civilization would have been much more helped
+than it has been by all the material conquests which
+are lauded in its name. These do, indeed, make
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page017">[pg 017]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg017"></a>
+mankind as a whole less dependent upon nature,
+but at the same time they diminish the number of
+free and independent lives. The artisan who was
+his own master becomes the factory hand through
+the compulsion of machinery. Because in the
+complicated business world of to-day only undertakings
+with abundant capital behind them can
+maintain their existence, the place of the small,
+independent dealer is being taken more and more
+completely by the employee. Even the classes
+which still possess a larger or smaller amount of
+property or maintain a more or less independent
+activity get drawn more and more completely into
+the struggle for existence because of the insecurity
+of present conditions under the economic system of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The lack of freedom which results is made worse
+still because the factory system creates continually
+growing agglomerations of people who are thereby
+compulsorily separated from the soil which feeds
+them, from their own homes and from nature.
+Hence comes serious psychical injury. There is
+only too much truth in the paradoxical saying that
+abnormal life begins with the loss of one’s own
+field and dwelling-place.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization is, it is true, furthered to a certain
+extent by the self-regarding ideals produced by the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page018">[pg 018]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg018"></a>
+groups of people who unite and co-operate in defence
+of their similarly threatened interests in so far as
+they seek to obtain an improvement in their material,
+and thereby also in their spiritual, environment.
+But these ideals are a danger to the idea of civilization
+as such, because the form which they assume
+is either not at all, or very imperfectly, determined
+by the really universal interests of the community.
+The consideration of civilization as such is held
+back by the competition between the various
+self-regarding ideals which go under its name.</p>
+
+<p>To the want of freedom we have to add the evil
+of overwork. For two or three generations numbers
+of individuals have been living as workers merely,
+not as human beings. Whatever can be said in a
+general way about the moral and spiritual significance
+of labour has no bearing on what they have
+to do. An excessive amount of labour is the rule
+to-day in every department of industry, with the
+result that the labourer’s spiritual element cannot
+possibly thrive. This overwork hits him indirectly
+even in his childhood, for his parents, caught in the
+inexorable toils of work, cannot devote themselves
+to his up-bringing as they should. Thus his
+development is robbed of something which can
+never be made good, and later in life, when he himself
+is the slave of over-long hours, he feels more and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page019">[pg 019]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg019"></a>
+more the need of external distractions. To spend
+the time left to him for leisure in self-cultivation, or
+in serious intercourse with his fellows or with books,
+requires a mental collectedness and a self-control
+which he finds very difficult. Complete idleness,
+forgetfulness, and diversion from his usual activities
+are a physical necessity. He does not want to
+think, and seeks not self-improvement, but entertainment,
+that kind of entertainment, moreover,
+which makes least demand upon his spiritual
+faculties.</p>
+
+<p>The mentality of this mass of individuals,
+spiritually relaxed and incapable of self-collectedness,
+reacts upon all those institutions which ought
+to serve the cause of culture, and therewith of
+civilization. The theatre takes a second place
+behind the pleasure resort or the picture show, and
+the instructive book behind the diverting one. An
+ever increasing proportion of periodicals and newspapers
+have to accommodate themselves to the
+necessity of putting their matter before their
+readers in the shape which lets it be assimilated
+most easily. A comparison of the average newspapers
+of to-day with those of fifty or sixty years
+ago shows how thoroughly such publications have
+had to change their methods in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>When once the spirit of superficiality has penetrated
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page020">[pg 020]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg020"></a>
+into the institutions which ought to sustain
+the spiritual life, these exercise on their part a
+reflex influence on the society which they have
+brought to this condition, and force on all alike this
+state of mental vacuity.</p>
+
+<p>How completely this want of thinking power has
+become a second nature in men to-day is shown by
+the kind of sociability which it produces. When
+two of them meet for a conversation each is careful
+to see that their talk does not go beyond generalities
+or develop into a real exchange of ideas. No one
+has anything of his own to give out, and everyone
+is haunted by a sort of terror lest anything original
+should be demanded from him.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit produced in such a society of
+never-concentrated minds is rising among us as an ever
+growing force, and it results in a lowered conception
+of what man should be. In ourselves, as in others
+we look for nothing but vigour in productive work
+and resign ourselves to the abandonment of any
+higher ideal.</p>
+
+<p>When we consider this want of freedom and of
+mental concentration, we see that the conditions of
+life for the inhabitants of our big cities are as
+unfavourable as they could be. Naturally, then,
+those inhabitants are in most danger on their
+spiritual side. It is doubtful whether big cities
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page021">[pg 021]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg021"></a>
+have ever been foci of civilization in the sense that
+in them there has arisen the ideal of a man well and
+truly developed as a spiritual personality; to-day,
+at any rate, the condition of things is such that true
+civilization needs to be rescued from the spirit that
+issues from them and their inhabitants.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But, besides the hindrance caused to civilization
+by the modern man’s lack of freedom and of the
+power of mental concentration, there is a further
+hindrance caused by his imperfect development.
+The enormous increase of human knowledge and
+power, in specialized thoroughness as well as in extent,
+necessarily leads to individual activities being
+limited more and more to well-defined departments.
+Human labour is organized and co-ordinated so
+that specialization may enable individuals to make
+the highest and most effective possible contribution.
+The results obtained are amazing, but the spiritual
+significance of the work for the worker suffers.
+There is no call upon the whole man, only upon some
+of his faculties, and this has a reflex effect upon his
+nature as a whole. The faculties which build up
+personality and are called out by comprehensive
+and varied tasks are ousted by the less comprehensive
+ones, which from this point of view are, in the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page022">[pg 022]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg022"></a>
+general sense of the word, less spiritual. The artisan
+of to-day does not understand his trade as a whole
+in the way in which his predecessor did. He no
+longer learns, like the latter, to work the wood or the
+metal through all the stages of manufacture; many
+of these stages have already been carried out by
+men and machines before the material comes into
+his hands. Consequently his reflectiveness, his
+imagination, and his skill are no longer called out
+by ever varying difficulties in the work, and his
+creative and artistic powers are atrophied. In
+place of the normal self-consciousness which is
+promoted by work into the doing of which he must
+put his whole power of thought and his whole
+personality, there comes a self-satisfaction which is
+content with a fragmentary ability which, it may be
+admitted, is perfect, and this self-satisfaction is
+persuaded by its perfection in mastering details to
+overlook its imperfection in dealing with the whole.</p>
+
+<p>In all professions, most clearly perhaps in the
+pursuit of science, we can recognize the spiritual
+danger with which specialization threatens not only
+individuals, but the spiritual life of the community.
+It is already noticeable, too, that education is
+carried on now by teachers who have not a wide
+enough outlook to make their scholars understand
+the interconnection of the individual sciences, and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page023">[pg 023]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg023"></a>
+to be able to give them a mental horizon as wide as
+it should be.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if specialization and the organization of
+work, where it is unavoidable, were not already
+injurious enough to the soul of the modern man, it
+is pursued and built up where it could be dispensed
+with. In administration, in education, and in every
+kind of calling the natural sphere of activity is
+narrowed as far as possible by rules and superintendence.
+How much less free in many countries
+is the elementary school teacher of to-day compared
+with what he was once! How lifeless and impersonal
+has his teaching become as a result of all these
+limitations!</p>
+
+<p>Thus through our methods of work we have
+suffered loss spiritually and as individuals just in
+proportion as the material output of our collective
+activity has increased. Here, too, is an illustration
+of that tragic law which says that every gain brings
+with it, somehow or other, a corresponding loss.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>But man to-day is in danger not only through
+his lack of freedom, of the power of mental concentration,
+and of the opportunity for all-round
+development: he is in danger of losing his humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The normal attitude of man to man is made very
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page024">[pg 024]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg024"></a>
+difficult for us. Owing to the hurry in which we
+live, to the increased facilities for intercourse, and
+to the necessity for living and working with many
+others in an overcrowded locality, we meet each
+other continually, and in the most varied relations,
+as strangers. Our circumstances do not allow us to
+deal with each other as man to man, for the limitations
+placed upon the activities of the natural man
+are so general and so unbroken that we get accustomed
+to them, and no longer feel our mechanical,
+impersonal intercourse to be something that is
+unnatural. We no longer feel uncomfortable that
+in such a number of situations we can no longer be
+men among men, and at last we give up trying to be
+so, even when it would be possible and proper.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect, too, the soul of the townsman is
+influenced most unfavourably by his circumstances,
+and that influence, in its turn, works most
+unfavourably on the mentality of society.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we tend to forget our relationship with our
+fellows, and are on the path towards inhumanity.
+Wherever there is lost the consciousness that every
+man is an object of concern for us just because he is
+man, civilization and morals are shaken, and the
+advance to fully developed inhumanity is only a
+question of time.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the most utterly inhuman
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page025">[pg 025]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg025"></a>
+thoughts have been current among us for two
+generations past in all the ugly clearness of language
+and with the authority of logical principles. There
+has been created a social mentality which discourages
+humanity in individuals. The courtesy
+produced by natural feeling disappears, and in its
+place comes a behaviour which shows entire
+indifference, even though it is decked out more or
+less thoroughly in a code of manners. The standoffishness
+and want of sympathy which are shown so
+clearly in every way to strangers are no longer felt as
+being really rudeness, but pass for the behaviour
+of the man of the world. Our society has also ceased
+to allow to all men, as such, a human value and a
+human dignity; many sections of the human race
+have become merely raw material and property in
+human form. We have talked for decades with
+ever increasing light-mindedness about war and
+conquest, as if these were merely operations on a
+chess-board; how was this possible save as the result
+of a tone of mind which no longer pictured to itself
+the fate of individuals, but thought of them only as
+figures or objects belonging to the material world?
+When the war broke out the inhumanity within us
+had a free course. And what an amount of insulting
+stuff, some decently veiled, some openly coarse,
+about the coloured races, has made its appearance
+during the last decades, and passed for truth and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page026">[pg 026]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg026"></a>
+reason, in our colonial literature and our parliaments,
+and so become an element in general public
+opinion! Twenty years ago there was a discussion
+in one of our Continental parliaments about some
+deported negroes who had been allowed to die of
+hunger and thirst; and there was no protest or
+comment when, in a statement from the tribune, it
+was said that they “had been lost” (“<i>eingegangen</i>”
+or “<i>crêvé</i>”), as though it were a question of cattle!</p>
+
+<p>In the education and the school books of to-day
+the duty of humanity is relegated to an obscure
+corner, as though it were no longer true that it is the
+first thing necessary in the training of personality,
+and as if it were not a matter of great importance
+to maintain it as a strong influence in our human
+race against the influence of outer circumstances.
+It has not been so always. There was a time when
+it was a ruling influence not only in schools, but in
+literature, even down to the book of adventures.
+Defoe’s hero, Robinson Crusoe, is continually
+reflecting on the subject of humane conduct, and he
+feels himself so responsible for loyalty to this duty
+that when defending himself he is continually
+thinking how he can sacrifice the smallest number
+of human lives; he is so faithful, indeed, to this duty
+of humanity, that the story of his adventures
+acquires thereby quite a peculiar character. Is
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page027">[pg 027]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg027"></a>
+there among works of this kind to-day a single one
+in which we shall find anything like it?</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Another hindrance to civilization to-day is the
+over-organization of our public life.</p>
+
+<p>While it is certain that a properly ordered
+environment is the condition and, at the same time,
+the result of civilization, it is also undeniable that,
+after a certain point has been reached, external
+organization is developed at the expense of spiritual
+life. Personality and ideas are then subordinated
+to institutions, when it is really these which ought to
+influence the latter and keep them inwardly alive.</p>
+
+<p>If a comprehensive organization is established in
+any department of social life, the results are at first
+magnificent, but after a time they fall off. It is the
+already existing resources which are realized at the
+start, but later on the destructive influence of such
+organization on what is living and original is clearly
+seen in its natural results, and the more consistently
+the organization is enlarged, the more strongly its
+effect is felt in the repression of creative and spiritual
+activity. There are modern States which cannot
+recover either economically or spiritually from the
+paralysing effects of a concentration which dates
+from a very early period of their history.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page028">[pg 028]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg028"></a></p>
+
+<p>The conversion of a wood into a park and its
+maintenance as such may be a step towards carrying
+out several different objects, but it is all over then
+with the rich vegetation which would assure its
+future condition in nature’s own way.</p>
+
+<p>Political, religious and economic associations aim
+to-day at forming themselves in such a way as will
+combine the greatest possible inner cohesion with
+the highest possible degree of external activity.
+Constitution, discipline, and everything that belongs
+to administration are brought to a perfection
+hitherto unknown. They attain their object, but
+just in proportion as they do so these centres of
+activity cease to work as living organizations, and
+come more and more to resemble perfected machines.
+Their inner life loses in richness and variety because
+the personalities of which they are composed must
+needs decay in character.</p>
+
+<p>Our whole spiritual life nowadays has its course
+within organizations. From childhood up the man
+of to-day has his mind so full of the thought of
+discipline that he loses the sense of his own individuality
+and can only see himself as thinking in the
+spirit of some group or other of his fellows. A
+thorough discussion between one idea and another
+or between one man and another, such as constituted
+the greatness of the eighteenth century, is never met
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page029">[pg 029]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg029"></a>
+with now. But at that time fear of public opinion
+was a thing unknown. All ideas had then to justify
+themselves to the individual reason. To-day it is
+the rule—and no one questions it—always to take
+into account the views which prevail in organized
+society. The individual starts by taking it for
+granted that both for himself and his neighbours
+there are certain views already established which they
+cannot hope to alter, views which are determined
+by nationality, creed, political party, social position,
+and other elements in one’s surroundings. These
+views are protected by a kind of taboo, and are not
+only kept sacred from criticism, but are not a
+legitimate subject of conversation. This kind of
+intercourse, in which we mutually abjure our
+natural quality as thinking beings, is euphemistically
+described as respect for other people’s convictions,
+as if there could be any convictions at all where
+there is no thought.</p>
+
+<p>The modern man is lost in the mass in a way
+which is without precedent in history, and this is
+perhaps the most characteristic trait in him. His
+diminished concern about his own nature makes
+him as it is susceptible, to an extent that is almost
+pathological, to the views which society and its
+organs of expression have put, ready made, into
+circulation. Since, over and above this, society,
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page030">[pg 030]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg030"></a>
+with its well-constructed organization, has become
+a power of as yet unknown strength in the spiritual
+life, man’s want of independence in the face of it
+has become so serious that he is almost ceasing to
+claim a spiritual existence of his own. He is like
+a rubber ball which has lost its elasticity, and preserves
+indefinitely every impression that is made
+upon it. He is under the thumb of the mass, and he
+draws from it the opinions on which he lives,
+whether the question at issue is national or political
+or one of his own belief or unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this abnormal subjection to external influences
+does not strike him as being a weakness. He
+looks upon it as an achievement, and in his unlimited
+spiritual devotion to the interests of the community
+he thinks he is preserving the greatness of the modern
+man. He intentionally exaggerates our natural
+social instincts into something fantastically great.</p>
+
+<p>It is just because we thus renounce the indefeasible
+rights of the individual that our race can
+neither produce new ideas nor make current ones
+serviceable for new objects; its only experience is
+that prevailing ideas obtain more and more authority,
+take on a more and more one-sided development,
+and live on till they have produced their last
+and most dangerous consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we have entered on a new mediæval period.
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page031">[pg 031]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg031"></a>
+The general determination of society has put freedom
+of thought out of fashion, because the majority
+renounce the privilege of thinking as free personalities,
+and let themselves be guided in everything
+by those who belong to the various groups and
+cliques.</p>
+
+<p>Spiritual freedom, then, we shall recover only
+when the majority of individuals become once more
+spiritually independent and self-reliant, and discover
+their natural and proper relation to those
+organizations in which their souls have been
+entangled. But liberation from the Middle Ages
+of to-day will be a much more difficult process than
+that which freed the peoples of Europe from the
+first Middle Ages. The struggle then was against
+external authority established in the course of
+history. To-day the task is to get the mass of
+individuals to work themselves out of the condition
+of spiritual weakness and dependence to which they
+have brought themselves. Could there be a harder
+task?</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, no one as yet clearly perceives what a
+condition of spiritual poverty is ours to-day. Every
+year the spread of opinions which have no thought
+behind them is carried further by the masses, and
+the methods of this process have been so perfected,
+and have met with such a ready welcome, that our
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page032">[pg 032]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg032"></a>
+confidence in being able to raise to the dignity of
+public opinion the silliest of statements, wherever
+it seems necessary to get them currently accepted,
+has no need to justify itself before acting.</p>
+
+<p>During the war the control of thought was made
+complete. Propaganda definitely took the place of
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>With independence of thought thrown overboard,
+we have, as was inevitable, lost our faith in truth.
+Our spiritual life is disorganized, for the
+over-organization of our external environment leads to
+the organization of our absence of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Not only in the intellectual sphere, but in the
+moral also, the relation between the individual
+and the community has been upset. With the
+surrender of his own personal opinion the modern
+man surrenders also his personal moral judgment.</p>
+
+<p>In order that he may find good what the mass
+declares to be such, whether in word or deed, and
+may condemn what it declares to be bad, he suppresses
+the scruples which stir in him. He does not
+allow them to find utterance either with others or
+with himself. There are no stumbling-blocks which
+his feeling of unity with the herd does not enable
+him to surmount, and thus he loses his judgment in
+that of the mass, and his own morality in theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, he is thus made capable of excusing
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page033">[pg 033]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg033"></a>
+everything that is meaningless, cruel, unjust, or bad
+in the behaviour of his nation. Unconsciously to
+themselves, the majority of the members of our
+barbarian civilised States give less and less time to
+reflection as moral personalities, so that they may
+not be continually coming into inner conflict with
+their fellows as a body, and continually having to
+get over things which they feel to be wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion helps them by popularizing the
+idea that the actions of the community are not to be
+judged so much by the standards of morality as by
+those of expediency, but they suffer injury to their
+souls. If we find among men of to-day only too
+few whose human and moral sensibility is still
+undamaged, the chief reason is that the majority
+have offered up their personal morality on the altar
+of their country, instead of remaining at variance
+with the mass and acting as a force which impels
+the latter along the road to perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Not only between the economic and the spiritual,
+then, but also between the mass of men and
+individuals, there has developed a condition of
+unfavourable action and reaction. In the days of
+rationalism and serious philosophy the individual
+got help and support from society through the
+general confidence in the victory of the rational and
+moral, which society never failed to acknowledge
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page034">[pg 034]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg034"></a>
+as something which explained and justified itself.
+Individuals were then carried along by the mass;
+we are stifled by it. The bankruptcy of the civilized
+State, which becomes more manifest every
+decade, is ruining the man of to-day. The demoralization
+of the individual by the mass is in full swing.</p>
+
+<p>The man of to-day pursues his dark journey in a
+time of darkness, as one who has no freedom, no
+mental collectedness, no all-round development, as
+one who loses himself in an atmosphere of inhumanity,
+who surrenders his spiritual independence
+and his moral judgment to the organized society in
+which he lives, and who finds himself in every direction
+up against hindrances to the temper of true civilization.
+Of the dangerous position in which he is placed
+philosophy has no understanding, and therefore
+makes no attempt to help him. She does not even
+urge him to reflection on what is happening to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The terrible truth that with the progress of
+history and the economic development of the world
+it is becoming not easier, but harder, to develop true
+civilization, has never found utterance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page035">[pg 035]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg035"></a></p>
+
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_3">CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h4>CIVILIZATION ESSENTIALLY ETHICAL IN CHARACTER</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">What is civilization? Origin of the unethical conception of civilization.
+Our sense of reality. Our historical sense. Nationalism. National
+civilization. Our misleading trust in facts and organization. The true
+sense for reality.</p>
+
+<p class="drop">This question ought to have been pressing itself
+on the attention of all men who consider themselves
+civilized, but it is remarkable that in the world’s
+literature generally one hardly finds that it has
+been put at all until to-day, and still more rarely
+is any answer given. It was supposed that there
+was no need for a definition of civilization, since
+we already possessed the thing itself. If the
+question was ever touched upon, it was considered
+to be sufficiently settled with references to history
+and the present day. But now, when events are
+bringing us inexorably to the consciousness that we
+live in a dangerous medley of civilization and
+barbarism, we must, whether we wish to or not,
+try to determine the nature of true civilization.</p>
+
+<p>For a quite general definition we may say that
+civilization is progress, material and spiritual
+progress, on the part of individuals as of the mass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page036">[pg 036]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg036"></a></p>
+
+<p>In what does it consist? First of all in a lessening
+of the strain imposed on individuals and on the mass
+by the struggle for existence. The establishment of
+as favourable conditions of living as possible for all
+is a demand which must be made partly for its own
+sake, partly with a view to the spiritual and moral
+perfecting of individuals, which is the ultimate
+object of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle for existence is a double one: man has
+to assert himself in nature and against nature, and
+similarly also among his fellow-men and against them.</p>
+
+<p>A diminution of the struggle is secured by strengthening
+the supremacy of reason over both external
+nature and human nature, and making it subserve
+as accurately as possible the ends proposed.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization is then twofold in its nature: it realizes
+itself in the supremacy of reason, first, over the forces
+of nature, and, secondly, over the dispositions of men.</p>
+
+<p>Which of these kinds of progress is most truly
+progress in civilization? The latter, though it is the
+least open to observation. Why? For two reasons.
+First, the supremacy which we secure by reason over
+external nature represents not unqualified progress,
+but a progress which brings with its advantages also
+disadvantages which may work in the direction of
+barbarism. The reason why the economic circumstances
+of our time endanger our civilization is to be
+sought for partly in the fact that we have pressed
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page037">[pg 037]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg037"></a>
+into our service natural forces which can be
+embodied in machines. But with that there must
+be such a supremacy of reason over the dispositions
+of men that they, and the nations which they form,
+will not use against one another the power which the
+control of these forces gives them, and thus plunge
+one another into a struggle for existence which is
+far more terrible than that between men in a state
+of nature.</p>
+
+<p>A normal claim to be civilized can, then, only be
+reckoned as valid when it recognizes this distinction
+between what is essential in civilization and what is
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Both kinds of progress can, indeed, be called
+spiritual in the sense that they both rest upon a
+spiritual activity in man, yet we may call the
+supremacy over natural forces material progress
+because in it material objects are mastered and
+turned to man’s use. The supremacy of reason over
+human dispositions, on the other hand, is a spiritual
+achievement in another sense, in that it means the
+working of spirit upon spirit, <i>i.e.</i>, of one section
+of the power of reflexion upon another section of it.</p>
+
+<p>And what is meant by the supremacy of the
+reason over human dispositions? It means that
+both individuals and the mass let their willing be
+determined by the material and spiritual good of
+the whole and the individuals that compose it; that
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page038">[pg 038]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg038"></a>
+is to say, their actions are ethical. Ethical progress
+is, then, that which is truly of the essence of civilization,
+and has only one significance; material
+progress is that which is not of the essential at all,
+and may have a twofold effect on the development of
+civilization. This moral conception of civilization
+will strike some people as rationalistic and old-fashioned.
+It accords better with the spirit of our
+times to conceive of civilization as a natural manifestation
+of life in the course of human evolution, but
+one with most interesting complications. We are
+concerned, however, not with what is ingenious, but
+with what is true. In this case the simple is the
+true—the inconvenient truth with which it is our
+laborious task to deal.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The attempts to distinguish between civilization
+as what the Germans call “Kultur” and civilization
+as mere material progress aim at making the
+world familiar with the idea of an unethical form
+of civilization side by side with the ethical, and at
+clothing the former with a word of historical
+meaning. But nothing in the history of the word
+“civilization” justifies such attempts. The word,
+as commonly used hitherto, means the same as the
+German “Kultur”, viz., the development of man
+to a state of higher organization and a higher
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page039">[pg 039]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg039"></a>
+moral standard. Some languages prefer one word;
+others prefer the other. The German usually
+speaks of “Kultur”, the Frenchman usually of
+“civilisation”, but the establishment of a difference
+between them is justified neither philologically nor
+historically. We can speak of ethical and unethical
+“Kultur” or of ethical and unethical “civilisation”,
+but not of “Kultur” and “civilisation”.</p>
+
+<p>But how did it come about that we lost the idea
+that the ethical has a decisive meaning and value
+as part of civilization?</p>
+
+<p>All attempts at civilization hitherto have been a
+matter of processes in which the forces of progress
+were at work in almost every department of life.
+Great achievements in art, architecture, administration,
+economics, industry, commerce, and colonization
+succeeded each other with a spiritual impetus
+which produced a higher conception of the universe.
+Any ebb of the tide of civilization made itself felt
+in the material sphere as well as in the ethical and
+spiritual, earlier, as a rule, in the former than in the
+latter. Thus in Greek civilization there set in as
+early as the time of Aristotle an incomprehensible
+arrest of science and political achievement, whereas
+the ethical movement only reached its completion
+in the following centuries in that great work of
+education which was undertaken in the ancient
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page040">[pg 040]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg040"></a>
+world by the Stoic philosophy. In the Chinese,
+Indian and Jewish civilizations ability in dealing
+with material things was from the start, and always
+remained, at a lower level than the spiritual and
+ethical efforts of these races.</p>
+
+<p>In the movement of civilization which began with
+the Renaissance, there were both material and
+spiritual-ethical forces of progress at work side by
+side, as though in rivalry with each other, and this
+continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth
+century. Then, however, something unprecedented
+happened: man’s ethical energy died away, while
+the conquests achieved by his spirit in the material
+sphere increased by leaps and bounds. Thus for
+several decades our civilization enjoyed the great
+advantages of its material progress while as yet it
+hardly felt the consequences of the dying down of
+the ethical movement. People lived on in the
+conditions produced. By that movement without
+seeing clearly that their position was no longer a
+tenable one and preparing to face the storm that
+was brewing in the relations between the nations
+and within the nations themselves. In this way
+our own age, having never taken the trouble to
+reflect, arrived at the opinion that civilization
+consists primarily in scientific, technical and artistic
+achievements, and that it can reach its goal without
+ethics, or, at any rate, with a minimum of them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page041">[pg 041]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg041"></a></p>
+
+<p>Public opinion bowed down before this merely
+external conception of civilization because it was
+exclusively represented by persons whose position in
+society and scientific culture seemed to show them to
+be competent to judge in matters of the spiritual life.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>What was the result of our giving up the
+ethical conception of civilization, and therewith
+all attempts to bring reasoned ethical ideals into
+effective relation with reality? It was that instead
+of using thought to produce ideals which fitted
+in with reality, we left reality without any ideals
+at all. Instead of discussing together the essential
+elements, such as population, State, Church,
+society, progress, which decide the character of our
+social development and that of mankind generally,
+we contented ourselves with starting from what is
+given by experience. Only forces and tendencies
+which were already at work were to be considered.
+Fundamental truths and convictions which ought
+to produce logical or ethical compulsion we would
+no longer acknowledge. We refused to believe that
+any ideas could be applicable to reality except those
+derived from experience. Thus ideals which had
+been knowingly and intentionally lowered dominated
+our spiritual life and the whole world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page042">[pg 042]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg042"></a></p>
+
+<p>How we glorified our practical common-sense,
+which was to give us such power in dealing with the
+world! Yet we were behaving, really, like boys who
+give themselves up exultingly to the forces of nature
+and whizz down a hill on their toboggan without
+asking themselves whether they will be able to steer
+their vehicle successfully when they come to the
+next bend or the next unexpected obstacle.</p>
+
+<p>It is only a conviction which is based upon
+reasoned ethical ideals that is capable of producing
+free activity, <i>i.e.</i>, activity deliberately planned with
+a view to its object. In proportion as ideals taken
+from the workaday world are combined with it,
+reality influences reality. But then the human
+soul acts merely as an agent of debasing change.</p>
+
+<p>Events which are to produce practical results
+within us are worked upon and moulded by our
+mentality. This mentality has a certain character,
+and on that character depends the nature of those
+value-judgments which rule our relation to facts.</p>
+
+<p>Normally this character is to be found in the
+reasoned ideas which our reflection upon reality
+brings into existence. If these disappear there is
+not left a void in which “events in themselves” can
+affect us, but the control of our mentality passes now
+to the opinions and feelings which hitherto have
+been ruled and kept under by our reasoned ideas.
+When the virgin forest is cut down, brushwood
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page043">[pg 043]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg043"></a>
+springs up where the big trees were formerly.
+Whenever our great convictions are destroyed their
+place is taken by smaller ones which carry out in
+inferior fashion the functions of the former.</p>
+
+<p>With the giving up of ethical ideals which accompanies
+our passion for reality our practical efficiency
+is not, therefore, improved, but diminished. It does
+not make the man of to-day a cool observer and
+calculator such as he supposes himself to be, for he is
+under the influence of opinions and emotions which
+are created in him by facts. All unconsciously he
+mixes with what is the work of his reason so much of
+what is emotional that the one spoils the other.
+Within this circle move the judgments and impulses
+of our society, whether we deal with the largest questions
+or the smallest. Individuals and nations alike,
+we deal indiscriminately with real and imaginary
+values, and it is just this confused medley of real and
+unreal, of sober thought and capacity for enthusiasm
+for the unmeaning, that makes the mentality of the
+modern man so puzzling and so dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Our sense of reality, then, means this, that, as a
+result of emotional and short-sighted calculations
+of advantage, we let one fact issue immediately in
+another, and so on indefinitely. As we are not
+consciously aiming at any definitely planned goal,
+our activity may really be described as a kind of
+natural happening.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page044">[pg 044]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg044"></a></p>
+
+<p>We react to facts in the most irrational way.
+Without plan or foundations we build our future
+into the circumstances of the time and leave it
+exposed to the destructive effects of the chaotic
+jostling that goes on amongst them. “Firm ground
+at last”! we cry, and sink helpless in the stream
+of events.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>The blindness with which we endure this fate is
+made worse by our belief in our historical sense,
+which, in this connection, is nothing else than our
+sense of reality prolonged backwards. We believe
+ourselves to be a critical generation which, thanks
+to its thorough knowledge of the past, is in a
+position to understand the direction which events
+are destined to take from the present to the future.
+We add to the ideals which have been taken from
+existing reality others which we borrow from history.</p>
+
+<p>The achievements of historical science reached by
+the nineteenth century do, indeed, deserve our
+admiration, but it is another question whether our
+generation, for all its possession of an historical
+science, possesses a true historical sense.</p>
+
+<p>Historical sense, in the full meaning of the term,
+implies a critical objectivity in the face of far-off and
+recent events alike. To keep this faculty free from
+the bias of opinions and interests when we are
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page045">[pg 045]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg045"></a>
+estimating facts is a power which even our
+historians do not possess. As long as they are
+dealing with a period so remote that it has no bearing
+on the present they are critical so far as the views
+of the school to which they belong allow it. But
+if the past stands in any real connection with
+“to-day”, we can perceive at once in their estimate
+the influence of their particular standpoint, rational,
+religious, social or economic.</p>
+
+<p>It is significant that while during the last few
+decades the learning of our historians has, no doubt,
+increased, their critical objectivity has not. Previous
+investigators kept this ideal before their eyes in
+much greater purity than have those of to-day; we
+have gone so far that we no longer seriously make
+the demand that in scientific dealings with the past
+there shall be a suppression of all prejudices which
+spring from nationality or creed. It is quite
+common nowadays to see the greatest learning
+bound up with the strongest bias. In our historical
+literature the highest positions are occupied by
+works written with propagandist aims.</p>
+
+<p>So little educative influence has science had on
+our historians that they have often espoused as
+passionately as anyone the opinions of their own
+people instead of calling the latter to a thoughtful
+estimate of the facts, as was their duty to their
+profession; they have remained nothing but men
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page046">[pg 046]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg046"></a>
+of learning. They have not even started on the task
+for which they entered the service of civilization, and
+the hopes of civilization, which in the middle of the
+nineteenth century rested on the rise of a science of
+history, have been as little fulfilled as those which
+were bound up with the demand for national States
+and democratic forms of government.</p>
+
+<p>The generation that has been brought up by
+teachers such as these has naturally not much idea
+of an elevated or active conception of events.
+Accurately viewed, its characteristic feature is not
+so much that we understand our past better than
+earlier generations understood theirs, but rather that
+we attribute to the past an extraordinarily increased
+meaning for the present. Now and again we
+actually substitute it for the latter. It is not enough
+for us that what has been is present in its results in
+what now is; we want to have it always with us,
+and to feel ourselves determined by it.</p>
+
+<p>In this effort to be continually experiencing our
+historical process of becoming, and to acknowledge
+it, we replace our normal relation to the past by an
+artificial one, and wishing to find within the past the
+whole of our present, we misuse it in order to deduce
+from it, and to legitimize by an appeal to it, our
+claims, our opinions, our feelings and our passions.
+Under the very eyes of our historical learning there
+springs up a manufactured history for popular use,
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page047">[pg 047]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg047"></a>
+in which the current national and confessional ideas
+are unreservedly approved and upheld, and our
+school history books become regular culture beds of
+historical lies.</p>
+
+<p>The misuse of history is a necessity for us. The
+ideas and dispositions which rule us cannot be
+justified by reason; nothing is left for us but to give
+them foundations in history.</p>
+
+<p>It is significant that we have no real interest in
+what is valuable in the past. Its great spiritual
+achievements are mechanically registered, but we do
+not let ourselves be touched by them. Still less do
+we accept them as a heritage; nothing has any
+value for us except what can be squared with our
+plans, passions, feelings, and æsthetic moods of
+to-day. With these we live ourselves by lies into
+the past, and then assert with unshaken assurance
+that we have our roots in it.</p>
+
+<p>This is the character of the reverence we pay to
+history. Blinded by what we consider or declare
+to be past and done with, we lose all sense for what
+is to happen, so that of nothing can we say: “It is
+finished,” nothing now gets accomplished. Again
+and again we let what is past rise up artificially in
+what is present, and endow bygone facts with a
+persistence of being which makes wholly impossible
+the normal development of our peoples. Just as
+our sense of reality makes us lose ourselves in
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page048">[pg 048]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg048"></a>
+present-day events, so does our historical
+compel us to do the same in those of the past.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>From these two things, our sense of reality and
+our historical sense, is born the nationalism to
+which we must refer the external catastrophe in
+which the decadence of our civilization finds its
+completion.</p>
+
+<p>What is nationalism? It is an ignoble patriotism,
+exaggerated till it has lost all meaning, which bears
+the same relation to the noble and healthy kind as
+the fixed idea of an imbecile does to normal
+conviction.</p>
+
+<p>How does it develop among us?</p>
+
+<p>About the beginning of the nineteenth century
+the course of thought gave the national State its
+rightful position, starting for this from the axiom
+that it, as a natural and homogeneous organism, was
+better calculated than any other to make the ideal
+of the civilized State a working reality. In Fichte’s
+addresses to the German nation the nation-State is
+summoned to the bar of the moral reason and learns
+that it has to submit in all things to the latter. It
+gives the necessary promise and straightway receives
+a commission to bring the civilized State into
+existence. It is given emphatically to understand
+that it must recognize as its highest task the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page049">[pg 049]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg049"></a>
+continuous and steady development of the purely
+human element in the nation’s life. It is to seek
+greatness by representing the ideas which can bring
+healing to the nations. Its citizens are urged to
+show their membership of it not through the lower,
+but through the higher, patriotism, that is, not to
+overvalue its external greatness and power, but to
+be careful to take for their aim “the unfolding of
+what is eternal and Godlike in the world,” and to see
+that their objects coincide with the highest aims of
+humanity. Thus national feeling is placed under
+the guardianship of reason, morality and civilization.
+The cult of patriotism as such is to be considered as
+barbarism; it does, indeed, announce itself to be
+such by the purposeless wars which it necessarily
+brings in its train.</p>
+
+<p>In this way the idea of nationality was raised to
+the level of a valuable ideal of civilization. When
+civilization began to decline, its other ideals all fell
+also, but the idea of nationality maintained itself
+because it had transferred itself to the sphere of
+reality. It incorporated henceforward all that
+remained of civilization, and became the ideal
+which summed up all others. Here, then, we have
+the explanation of the mentality of our age, which
+concentrates all the enthusiasm of which it is capable
+on the idea of nationality, and believes itself to
+possess in that all moral and spiritual good things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page050">[pg 050]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg050"></a></p>
+
+<p>But with the decay of civilization the character
+of the idea of nationality changed. The guardianship
+exercised over it by the other moral ideals to
+which it had hitherto been subordinate now ceased,
+since these were themselves on trial, and the
+nationalist idea began a career of independence.
+It asserted, of course, that it was working in the
+service of civilization, but it was, in truth, only an
+idea of reality with a halo of civilization round it,
+and it was guided by no ethical ideals, but only by
+the instincts which deal with reality.</p>
+
+<p>That reason and morality shall not be allowed to
+contribute a word to the formation of nationalist
+ideas and aspirations is demanded by the mass
+of men to-day as a sparing of their holiest
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>If in earlier times the decay of civilization did not
+produce any such confusion in the sentiments of the
+various nations, this was because the idea of
+nationality had not then been raised in the same
+way to be the ideal of civilization. It was, therefore,
+impossible that it should insinuate itself into
+the place of the true ideals of civilization, and
+through abnormal nationalist conceptions and dispositions
+bring into active existence an elaborate
+system of uncivilization.</p>
+
+<p>That in nationalism we have to do not so much
+with things as with the unhealthy way in which they
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page051">[pg 051]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg051"></a>
+are dealt with in the imagination of the crowd, is
+clear from its whole behaviour. It claims to be
+following a policy of practical results (Realpolitik);
+in reality it by no means represents the uncompromisingly
+businesslike view of all the questions
+of home and foreign policy, but side by side with
+its egoism displays a certain amount of enthusiasm.
+Its practical policy is an over-valuation of certain
+questions of territorial economic interests, an
+over-valuation which has been elevated to a dogma and
+idealized, and is now supported by popular sentiment.
+It fights for its demands without having
+established any properly thought-out calculation of
+their real value. In order to be able to dispute the
+possession of millions of value, the modern State
+loaded itself with armaments costing hundreds of
+millions. Meaning to care for the protection and
+extension of its trade, it loaded the latter with
+imposts which imperilled its power of competing
+with its rivals much more than did any of the
+measures taken by those rivals.</p>
+
+<p>Its practical politics were, therefore, in truth
+impracticable politics, because they allowed popular
+sentiment to come in, and thereby made the simplest
+questions insoluble. This style of politics put
+economic interests in the shop window, while it kept
+in the warehouse the ideas about greatness and
+conquest which belong to nationalism.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page052">[pg 052]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg052"></a></p>
+
+<p>Every civilized State, in order to increase its
+power, gathered allies wherever it could. Thus
+half-civilized and uncivilized races were summoned
+by civilized ones to fight against the civilized neighbours
+of the latter, and these helpers were not
+content with the subordinate <i>rôle</i> which had been
+assigned to them. They acquired more and more
+influence on the course of events, till they were at
+last in a position to decide when the civilized nations
+of Europe should begin to fight each other about
+them. Thus has Nemesis come upon us for abandoning
+our wishes and betraying to the uncivilized
+world all that we still possessed of things that were
+of universal value.</p>
+
+<p>It was significant of the unhealthy character of
+nationalism’s “practical” politics that it tried in
+every possible way to deck itself out with a tinsel
+imitation of idealism. The struggle for power
+became one for right and civilization; the alliances
+for the promotion of their selfish interests which
+various nations made with one another against all
+the rest were made to appear to be friendships and
+spiritual affinities. As such they were dated back
+into the past, even though history had a great deal
+more to say about hereditary quarrels than about
+spiritual relationships.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page053">[pg 053]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg053"></a></p>
+
+<p>Finally, nationalism was not content with putting
+aside, in the sphere of politics generally, all attempts
+to bring into existence a really civilized humanity;
+it distorted the very idea of civilization itself and
+talked of national civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Once there was what was known just simply as
+civilization, and every civilized nation strove to
+possess it in its purest and most fully developed
+form. In this respect nationality had in the idea
+of civilization at that time something much more
+original and less spoilt than it has in the same idea
+to-day. If, in spite of this, there was no impulse
+among the nations to separate the spiritual life of
+each from that of its neighbours, we have a proof
+that nationality is not in itself the strong element
+in the people that demanded this. Such a claim as
+is made to-day to have a <i>national civilization</i> is an
+unhealthy phenomenon. It presupposes that the
+civilized peoples of to-day have lost their healthy
+nature, and no longer follow instincts, but theories.
+They percuss and sound their souls to such an
+extent that these are no longer capable of any
+natural action. They analyse and describe them
+so continuously that in thinking of what they ought
+to be they forget what they actually are. Questions
+of spiritual differences between races are discussed
+so subtly, and with such obstinacy and dogmatism,
+that the talk works like an obsession, and the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page054">[pg 054]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg054"></a>
+peculiarities that are said to exist make their
+appearance like imaginary diseases.</p>
+
+<p>In every department of life more and more effort
+is devoted to making clearly visible in the results
+which follow from them the emotions, the ideas, and
+the reasonings of the mass of the people. Any
+peculiarity preserved and fostered in this way shows
+that its natural counterpart has perished. The
+individual element in the personality of a people
+no longer, as something unconscious or half conscious,
+plays with varying lights on the totality of the
+nation’s spiritual life. It becomes an artifice, a
+fashion, a self-advertisement, a mania. There is bred
+in the nation a mass of thought, the serious results
+of which in every department become more evident
+year by year. The spiritual life of some of the
+leading civilized nations has already, in comparison
+with earlier days, taken on a monotonous tone such
+as makes an observer feel anxious.</p>
+
+<p>The unnatural character of this development
+shows itself not only in its results, but in the part
+which it allows to be played by conceit,
+self-importance, and self-deception. Anything valuable
+in a personality or a successful undertaking is
+attributed to some special excellence in the national
+character. Foreign soil is assumed to be incapable
+of producing the same or anything similar, and in
+most countries this vanity has grown to such a
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page055">[pg 055]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg055"></a>
+height that the greatest follies are no longer beyond
+its reach.</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that there follows a serious
+decline in the spiritual element in the national
+civilization. The spirituality is, moreover, only a
+kind of disguise; it has in reality an avowedly
+materialist character. It is a distillation from all
+the external achievements of the nation in question
+and appears in partnership with its economic and
+political demands. While alleged to be grounded
+in the national peculiarities, nationalist civilization
+will not, as we should normally expect, remain
+limited to the nation itself; it feels called upon to
+impose itself upon others and make them happy!
+Modern nations seek markets for their civilization,
+as they do for their manufactures!</p>
+
+<p>National civilization, therefore, is matter for
+propaganda and for export, and the necessary
+publicity is secured by liberal expenditure. The
+necessary phrases can be obtained ready-made and
+need only be strung together. Thus the world has
+inflicted on it a competition between national
+civilizations, and between these civilization itself
+comes off badly.</p>
+
+<p>The nations of Europe entered the Middle Ages
+side by side as the heirs of the Greco-Roman world,
+and lived side by side with the freest mutual intercourse
+through the Renaissance, the period of the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page056">[pg 056]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg056"></a>
+Illuminati, and of the philosophy of more recent
+times. But we no longer believe that they, with
+their offshoots in the other continents, form an
+indivisible unit of civilization. If, however, in this
+latest age, the differences in their spiritual life have
+begun to stand out more distinctly, the cause of it is
+that the level of civilization has sunk. When the
+tide ebbs, shallows which separate bodies of deep
+water become visible; while the tide is flowing they
+are out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>How closely the nations which form the great
+body of civilized humanity are still interrelated
+spiritually is shown by the fact that they have all
+side by side suffered the same decadence.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>With our sense of reality is bound up, further, the
+false confidence which we have in facts. We live in
+an atmosphere of optimism, as if the contradictions
+which show themselves in the world arranged themselves
+automatically so as to promote well-thought-out
+progress, and reconciled themselves in syntheses
+in which the valuable parts of the thesis and the
+antithesis coalesced.</p>
+
+<p>In justification of this optimism appeal is made,
+both rightly and wrongly, to Hegel. It cannot be
+denied that he is the spiritual father of our sense of
+reality; he is the first thinker who tried to be just
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page057">[pg 057]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg057"></a>
+to things as they exist. We have been trained by
+him to realize the method of progress in thesis, antithesis,
+and synthesis as they show themselves in the
+course of events. But his optimism was not a
+simple optimism about facts, as ours is. He lived
+still in the spiritual world of rationalism, and believed
+in the power of ethical ideas worked out by reason;
+that was why he believed also in the certainty of
+uninterrupted spiritual progress. And it was because
+this was something upon which he could rely that
+he undertook to show how it was to be seen in the
+successive phases of events, and at the same time
+how it made itself a reality in the stream of outward
+facts. By emphasizing, however, the progressive
+purpose, which he finds immanent in the course of
+events, so strongly that it is possible to forget the
+ethical-spiritual presuppositions of his belief in
+progress, he is preparing the way for the despiritualized
+optimism about reality which has for decades
+been misleading us. Between the facts themselves
+there is nothing but an endless series of contradictions.
+The fresh mediating fact in which they
+counteract each other so as to make progress
+possible they cannot of themselves produce. This
+fact can only assert itself if the contradictions
+resolve themselves in a reasoned view in which there
+are ethical ideas about the condition of things which
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page058">[pg 058]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg058"></a>
+it is sought to realize. These are the formative
+principles for the new element which is to arise out
+of the contradictories, and it is only in this reasoned
+ethical view that the latter cease to be blind, leading
+to no issue.</p>
+
+<p>It was because we assumed the existence of
+principles, of progress, in the facts, that we viewed
+the advance of history, in which our future was
+being prepared, as progress in civilization, even
+though evolution condemned our optimism. And
+even now, when facts of the most terrible character
+cry out loudly against it, we shrink from giving
+up our creed. It no longer, indeed, gives us
+any real enlightenment, but the alternative,
+which bases optimism on belief in the ethical
+spirit, means such a revolution in our mode of
+thought that we find it difficult to take it into
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>With our reliance upon facts is bound up our
+reliance on organizations. The activities and the
+aims of our time are penetrated by a kind of obsession
+that if we could only succeed in perfecting or
+reforming in one direction or another the institutions
+of our public and social life, the progress demanded
+by civilization would begin of itself. We are,
+indeed, far enough from unanimity as to the plan
+needed for the reform of our arrangements: one
+section sketches out an anti-democratic plan;
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page059">[pg 059]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg059"></a>
+others believe that our mistake lies in the fact that
+democratic principles have not yet been applied
+consistently; others, again, see salvation only in a
+Socialist or Communist organization of society.
+But all agree in attributing our present condition,
+with its absence of true civilization, to a failure of
+our institutions; all look for the attainment of such
+civilization to a new organization of society; all
+unite in thinking that with new institutions there
+would arise a new spirit.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>In this terrible confusion are entangled not
+only the unreflecting masses, but also many of
+the most earnest amongst us. The materialism
+of our age has reversed the relation between the
+spiritual and the actual. It believes that something
+with spiritual value can result from the
+working of facts. It was even expected that the
+war would bring us a spiritual regeneration! In
+reality, however, the relation between them works in
+the opposite direction. A spiritual element of real
+value can, if it is present, influence the moulding of
+reality so as to bring about desired results, and can
+thus produce facts in support of itself. All institutions
+and organizations have only a relative significance.
+With the most diverse social and political
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page060">[pg 060]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg060"></a>
+arrangements, the various civilized nations have all
+sunk to the same depth of barbarism. What we
+have experienced, and are still experiencing, must
+surely convince us that the spirit is everything and
+that institutions count for very little. Our institutions
+are a failure because the spirit of barbarism
+is at work in them. The best planned improvements
+in the organization of our society (though we
+are quite right in trying to secure them) cannot help
+us at all until we become at the same time capable
+of imparting a new spirit to our age.</p>
+
+<p>The difficult problems with which we have to deal,
+even those which lie entirely in the material and
+economic sphere, are in the last resort only to be
+solved by an inner change of character. The wisest
+reforms in organization can only carry them a little
+nearer solution, never to the goal. The only
+conceivable way of bringing about a reconstruction
+of our world on new lines is first of all to become new
+men ourselves under the old circumstances, and then
+as a society in a new frame of mind so to smooth out
+the opposition between nations that a condition of
+true civilization may again become possible. Everything
+else is more or less wasted labour, because we
+are thereby building not on the spirit, but on what
+is merely external.</p>
+
+<p>In the sphere of human events which decide the
+future of mankind reality consists in an inner
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page061">[pg 061]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg061"></a>
+conviction, not in given outward facts. Firm
+ground for our feet we find in reasoned ethical
+ideals. Are we going to draw from the spirit
+strength to create new conditions and turn our
+faces again to civilization, or are we going to continue
+to draw our spirit from our surroundings and
+go down with it to ruin? That is the fateful question
+with which we are confronted.</p>
+
+<p>The true sense for reality is that insight which tells
+us that only through ethical ideas about things can
+we arrive at a normal relation to reality. Only so
+can man and society win all the power over events
+that they are able to use. Without that power we
+are, whatever we may choose to do, delivered over
+into bondage to them.</p>
+
+<p>What is going on to-day between nations and
+within them throws a glaring illumination upon this
+truth. The history of our time is characterized by
+a lack of reason which has no parallel in the past.
+Future historians will one day analyse this history
+in detail, and test by means of it their learning
+and their freedom from prejudice. But for all
+future times there will be, as there is for to-day,
+only one explanation, viz., that we sought to live
+and to carry on with a civilization which had no
+ethical principle behind it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page062">[pg 062]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg062"></a></p>
+
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_4">CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h4>THE WAY TO THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Civilization-ideals have become powerless. Evolution and decay in
+the history of civilization. The reform of institutions and the reform
+of convictions. The individual as the sole agent of the restoration of
+civilization. The difficulties which beset the restoration of civilization.</p>
+
+<p class="drop">The ethical conception of civilization, then, is
+the only one that can be justified.</p>
+
+<p>But where is the road that can bring us back from
+barbarism to civilization? Is there such a road at
+all?</p>
+
+<p>The unethical conception of civilization answers:
+“No.” To it all symptoms of decay are symptoms
+of old age, and civilization, just like any other natural
+process of growth, must after a certain period of
+time reach its final end. There is nothing, therefore,
+for us to do, so it says, but to take the causes of this
+as quite natural, and do our best at any rate to find
+interesting the unedifying phenomena of its senility,
+which testify to the gradual loss of the ethical
+character of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>In the thinking then which surrenders itself to
+our sense of reality, optimism and pessimism are
+inextricably intermingled. If our optimism about
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page063">[pg 063]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg063"></a>
+reality is proved untenable, the optimism which
+thinks that continuous progress evolves itself among
+the facts as such, then the spirit which from above
+contemplates and analyses the situation turns without
+much concern to the mild pessimistic supposition
+that civilization has reached its Indian summer.</p>
+
+<p>The ethical spirit cannot join in this little game of
+“Optimism or pessimism?” It sees the symptoms
+of decay as what they really are, viz., something
+terrible. It asks itself with a shudder what will
+become of the world if this dying process really goes
+on unchecked. The condition of civilization is a
+source of pain to it, for civilization is not an
+object which it is interesting to analyse, but the
+hope on which its thoughts fly out over the future
+existence of the race. Belief in the possibility of a
+renewal of civilization is an actual part of its life;
+that is why it can no longer quiet itself with what
+contents the sense of reality as it hovers between
+optimism and pessimism.</p>
+
+<p>Those who regard the decay of civilization as
+something quite normal and natural console themselves
+with the thought that it is not civilization,
+but a civilization, which is falling a prey to dissolution;
+that there will be a new age and a new race in
+which there will blossom a new civilization. But
+that is a mistake. The earth no longer has in
+reserve, as it had once, gifted peoples as yet unused,
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page064">[pg 064]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg064"></a>
+who can relieve us and take our place in some
+distant future as leaders of the spiritual life. We
+already know all those which the earth has to dispose
+of. There is not one among them which is not
+already taking such a part in our civilization that
+its spiritual fate is determined by our own. All of
+them, the gifted and the ungifted, the distant and
+the near, have felt the influence of those forces of
+barbarism which are at work among us. All of
+them are, like ourselves, diseased, and only as we
+recover can they recover.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the civilization of a race, but that of
+mankind, present and future alike, that we must
+give up as lost, if belief in a rebirth of our civilization
+is a vain thing.</p>
+
+<p>But it need not be so given up. If the ethical is
+the essential element in civilization, decadence
+changes into renaissance as soon as ethical activities
+are set to work again in our convictions and in the
+ideas which we undertake to stamp upon reality.
+The attempt to bring this about is well worth
+making, and it should be world-wide.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the difficulties that have to be
+reckoned with in this undertaking are so great that
+only the strongest faith in the power of the ethical
+spirit will let us venture on it.</p>
+
+<p>First among them towers up the inability of our
+generation to understand what is and must be.
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page065">[pg 065]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg065"></a>
+The men of the Renaissance and the Illuminati of
+the eighteenth century drew courage to desire the
+renewal of the world through ideas from their conviction
+of the absolute indefensibility of the material
+and spiritual conditions under which they lived.
+Unless with us, too, the many come to some such
+conviction, we must continue incapable of taking in
+hand this work, in which we must imitate them.
+But the many obstinately refuse to see things as they
+are, and hold with all their might to the most
+optimistic view of them that is possible. For this
+power, however, of idealizing with continually
+lowering ideals the reality which is felt to be ever
+less and less satisfying, pessimism also is partly
+responsible. Our generation, though so proud of
+its many achievements, no longer believes in the
+one thing which is all-essential: the spiritual
+advance of mankind. Having given up the expectation
+of this, it can put up with the present age
+without feeling such suffering as would compel it,
+for very pain, to long for a new one. What a task
+it will be to break the fetters of unthinking optimism
+and unthinking pessimism which hold us prisoners,
+and so to do what will pave the way for the renewal
+of civilization!</p>
+
+<p>A second difficulty besetting the work which lies
+before us is that it is a piece of reconstruction. The
+ideas of civilization which our age needs are not new
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page066">[pg 066]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg066"></a>
+and strange to it. They have been in the possession
+of mankind already, and are to be found in many an
+antiquated formula. We have fundamentally nothing
+else to do than to restore to them the respect
+in which they were once held, and again regard them
+seriously as we bring them into relation with the
+reality which lies before us for treatment.</p>
+
+<p>To make what is used up usable—is there a
+harder task? “It is an impossible one,” says
+history. “Never hitherto have worn-out ideas risen
+to new power among the peoples who have worn
+them out. Their disappearance has always been
+a final one.”</p>
+
+<p>That is true. In the history of civilization we
+find nothing but discouragement for our task. Anyone
+who finds history speaking optimistically lends
+her a language which is not her own.</p>
+
+<p>Yet from the history of the past we can infer only
+what has been, not what will be. Even if it proves
+that no single people has ever lived through the
+decay of its civilization and a rebirth of it, we know
+at once that this, which has never happened yet,
+must happen with us, and therefore we cannot be
+content to say that the reasoned ethical ideas on
+which civilization rests get worn out in the course
+of history, and console ourselves with the reflection
+that this is exactly in accordance with the ordinary
+processes of nature. We require to know why it has
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page067">[pg 067]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg067"></a>
+so happened hitherto, and to draw an explanation,
+not from the analogy of nature, but from the laws of
+spiritual life. We want to get into our hands the
+key of the secret, so that we may with it unlock the
+new age, the age in which the worn out becomes
+again unworn and the spiritual and ethical can no
+longer get worn out. We must study the history
+of civilization otherwise than as our predecessors
+did, or we shall be finally lost.</p>
+
+<p>Why do not thoughts which contribute to
+civilization retain the convincing power which they
+once had, and which they deserve on account of
+their content? Why do they lose the evidential
+force of their moral and rational character? Why
+do traditional truths cease to be realities and pass
+from mouth to mouth as mere phrases?</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>Is this an unavoidable fate, or is the well drying
+up because our thinking did not go down to the
+permanent level of the water?</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is not merely that the past survives
+among us as something valueless; it may cast a
+poisonous shade over us. There are thoughts on
+which we have never let our minds work directly
+because we found them ready formulated in history.
+Ideas which we have inherited do not let the truth
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page068">[pg 068]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg068"></a>
+which is in them come out into active service, but
+show it through a kind of dead mask. The worn
+out achievements which pass over from a decadent
+civilization into the current of a new age often
+become like rejected products of metabolism, and
+act as poisons.</p>
+
+<p>Granted that the Teutonic nations received a
+powerful stimulus to civilization at the Renaissance
+by reverting to the ideas of Greco-Roman thinkers,
+not less true is it that for many centuries they had
+been kept by that same Greco-Roman civilization in
+a condition of spiritual dependence which was wholly
+in contradiction to their native character. They
+took over from it decadent ideas which were for a
+long time a hindrance to their normal spiritual life,
+and thence came that strange mixture of strength
+and weakness which is the chief characteristic of the
+Middle Ages. The dangerous elements in the
+Greco-Roman civilization of the past still show
+themselves in our spiritual life. It is because
+Oriental and Greek conceptions which have had
+their day are still current among us that we bleed
+to death over problems which otherwise would have
+no existence for us. How much we suffer from the
+one fact that to-day and for several centuries past
+our thoughts about religion have been under the
+hereditary foreign domination of Jewish transcendentalism
+and Greek metaphysics, and, instead of
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page069">[pg 069]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg069"></a>
+being able to express themselves naturally, have
+suffered continual distortion!</p>
+
+<p>Because ideas get worn out in this way, and in
+this condition hinder the thinking of later generations,
+there is no continuity in the spiritual progress
+of mankind, but only a confused succession of ups
+and downs. The threads get broken, or knotted,
+or lost, or when tied up again get tied wrongly.
+Hitherto it has been thought possible to interpret
+this up-and-down movement optimistically because
+it was universally held that the Renaissance and
+the age of the Illuminati were quite natural
+successors of the Greco-Roman civilization, and it
+was assumed further that, as a permanent result of
+this, renewed civilizations would spring up in the
+place of exhausted ones, and thus continual progress
+be assured. But this generalization cannot justifiably
+be drawn from such observations. It was
+because new peoples came on the scene, who had
+been only superficially touched by the decadent
+civilizations and now produced others of their
+own, that it was possible to see this succession of
+ups and downs ending in an ascent. As a matter
+of fact, however, our newer civilization was not
+in any organic connection with the Greco-Roman,
+even if it did take its first steps with the help of the
+crutches which the latter provided; it may be
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page070">[pg 070]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg070"></a>
+described more truly as the reaction of a healthy
+spirit against the worn out ideas which were thus
+offered to it. The essential element in the process
+was the contact of what was worn out with the fresh
+thought of young peoples.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, however, all our thought is losing its
+power in its contact with the worn-out ideas of our
+expiring civilization, or—in the case of the Hindus
+and the Chinese—of our own and other expiring
+civilizations. The up-and-down movement will end,
+therefore, not in slow progress, but in unbroken
+descent—unless we can succeed in giving the worn
+out ideas a renewal of their youth.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>Another great difficulty in the way of the regeneration
+of our civilization lies in the fact that it
+must be an internal process, and not an external
+as well, and that, therefore, there is no place for
+healthy co-operation between the material and the
+spiritual. From the Renaissance to the middle
+of the nineteenth century the men who carried
+on the work of civilization could expect help
+towards spiritual progress from achievements in the
+sphere of external organization. Demands in each
+of these spheres stood side by side in their
+programme and were pushed on simultaneously.
+They were convinced that while working to transform
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page071">[pg 071]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg071"></a>
+the institutions of public life they were
+producing results which would call forth the
+development of the new spiritual life. Success in
+one sphere strengthened at once the hopes and the
+energies that were at work in the other. They
+laboured for the progressive democratization of the
+State with the idea of thereby spreading through the
+world the rule of grace and justice.</p>
+
+<p>We, who have lived to see the spiritual bankruptcy
+of all the institutions which they created, can
+no longer work in this way simultaneously at the
+reform of institutions and the revival of the spiritual
+element. The help which such co-operation would
+give is denied us. We cannot even reckon any
+longer on the old co-operation between knowledge
+and thought. Once these two were allies. The
+latter fought for freedom and in so doing made a
+road for the former, and, on the other hand, all
+the results attained by knowledge worked for the
+general good of the spiritual life in that the reign
+of law in nature was more and more clearly
+demonstrated, and the reign of prejudice was
+becoming continually more restricted. The alliance
+also strengthened the thought that the well-being of
+mankind must be based upon spiritual laws. Thus
+knowledge and thought joined in establishing the
+authority of reason and the rational tone of mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page072">[pg 072]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg072"></a></p>
+
+<p>To-day thought gets no help from science, and the
+latter stands facing it independent and unconcerned.
+The newest scientific knowledge may be allied with
+an entirely unreflecting view of the universe. It
+maintains that it is concerned only with the establishment
+of individual facts, since it is only by means
+of these that scientific knowledge can maintain its
+practical character; the co-ordination of the
+different branches of knowledge and the utilization
+of the results to form a theory of the universe are,
+it says, not its business. Once every man of science
+was also a thinker who counted for something in the
+general spiritual life of his generation. Our age has
+discovered how to divorce knowledge from thought,
+with the result that we have, indeed, a science which
+is free, but hardly any science left which reflects.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we no longer have available for the renewal
+of our spiritual life any of the natural external helps
+which we used to have. We are called upon for a
+single kind of effort only, and have to work like men
+who are rebuilding the damaged foundations of a
+cathedral under the weight of the massive building.
+There is no progress in the world of phenomena to
+encourage us to persevere; an immense revolution
+has to be brought about without the aid of any
+collateral revolutionary activities.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page073">[pg 073]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg073"></a></p>
+
+<p>Again, the renewal of civilization is hindered by
+the fact that it is so exclusively the individual
+personality which must be looked to as the agent
+in the new movement.</p>
+
+<p>The renewal of civilization has nothing to do with
+movements which bear the character of experiences
+of the crowd; there are never anything but reactions
+to external happenings. But civilization can
+only revive when there shall come into being in a
+number of individuals a new tone of mind independent
+of the one prevalent among the crowd and
+in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will
+gradually win influence over the collective one,
+and in the end determine its character. It is only
+an ethical movement which can rescue us from
+the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into
+existence only in individuals.</p>
+
+<p>The final decision as to what the future of a
+society shall be depends not on how near its
+organization is to perfection, but on the degrees of
+worthiness in its individual members. The most
+important, and yet the least easily determinable,
+element in history is the series of unobtrusive general
+changes which take place in the individual dispositions
+of the many. These are what precede and
+cause the happenings, and this is why it is so
+difficult to understand thoroughly the men and the
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page074">[pg 074]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg074"></a>
+events of past times. The character and worth of
+individuals among the mass and the way they
+work themselves into membership of the whole
+body, receiving influences from it and giving others
+back, we can even to-day only partially and
+uncertainly understand.</p>
+
+<p>One thing, however, is clear. Where the collective
+body works more strongly on the individual
+than the latter does upon it, the result is deterioration,
+because the noble element on which everything
+depends, viz., the spiritual and moral worthiness of
+the individual, is thereby necessarily constricted
+and hampered. Decay of the spiritual and moral
+life then sets in, which renders society incapable of
+understanding and solving the problems which it has
+to face. Thereupon, sooner or later, it is involved
+in catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>That is the condition in which we are now, and
+that is why it is the duty of individuals to rise to a
+higher conception of their capabilities and undertake
+again the function which only the individual can
+perform, that of producing new spiritual-ethical
+ideas. If this does not come about in a multitude
+of cases nothing can save us.</p>
+
+<p>A new public opinion must be created privately
+and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained
+by the Press, by propaganda, by organization, and
+by financial and other influences which are at its
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page075">[pg 075]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg075"></a>
+disposal. This unnatural way of spreading ideas
+must be opposed by the natural one, which goes
+from man to man and relies solely on the truth of
+the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for
+new truth. Unarmed, and following the human
+spirit’s primitive and natural fighting method,
+it must attack the other, which faces it, as
+Goliath faced David, in the mighty armour of
+the age.</p>
+
+<p>About the struggle which must needs ensue no
+historical analogy can tell us much. The past has,
+no doubt, seen the struggle of the free-thinking
+individual against the fettered spirit of a whole
+society, but the problem has never presented itself
+on the scale on which it does to-day, because the
+fettering of the collective spirit as it is fettered
+to-day by modern organizations, modern unreflectiveness,
+and modern popular passions, is a
+phenomenon without precedent in history.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>Will the man of to-day have strength to carry
+out what the spirit demands from him, and what the
+age would like to make impossible?</p>
+
+<p>In the over-organized societies which in a hundred
+ways have him in their power, is he destined to
+become once more an independent personality and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page076">[pg 076]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg076"></a>
+to exert influence back upon them? They will
+use every means to keep him in that condition
+of impersonality which suits them. They fear
+personality because the spirit and the truth, which
+they would like to muzzle, find in it a means of
+expressing themselves. And their power is, unfortunately,
+as great as their fear.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tragic alliance between society as a
+whole and its economic conditions. With a grim
+relentlessness those conditions tend to bring up the
+man of to-day as a being without freedom, without
+self-collectedness, without independence, in short
+as a human being so full of deficiencies that he lacks
+the qualities of humanity. And they are the last
+things that we can change. Even if it should be
+granted us that the spirit should begin its work, we
+shall only slowly and incompletely gain power over
+these forces. There is, in fact, being demanded from
+the will that which our conditions of life refuse to
+allow.</p>
+
+<p>And how heavy the tasks that the spirit has to
+take in hand! It has to create the power of understanding
+the truth that is really true where at
+present nothing is current but propagandist truth.
+It has to depose ignoble patriotism, and enthrone
+the noble kind of patriotism which aims at ends
+that are worthy of the whole of mankind, in circles
+where the hopeless issues of past and present
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page077">[pg 077]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg077"></a>
+political activities keep nationalist passions aglow
+even among those who in their hearts would fain be
+free from them. It has to get the fact that civilization
+is an interest of all men and of humanity as a
+whole recognized again in places where national
+civilization is to-day worshipped as an idol, and
+the notion of a humanity with a common civilization
+lies broken to fragments. It has to maintain
+our faith in the civilized State, even though our
+modern States, spiritually and economically ruined
+by the war, have no time to think about the
+tasks of civilization, and dare not devote their
+attention to anything but how to use every
+possible means, even those which undermine the
+conception of justice, to collect money with which
+to prolong their own existence. It has to unite
+us by giving us a single ideal of civilized man,
+and this in a world where one nation has robbed
+its neighbour of all faith in humanity, idealism,
+righteousness, reasonableness, and truthfulness, and
+all alike have come under the domination of powers
+which are plunging us ever deeper into barbarism.
+It has to get attention concentrated on civilization
+while the growing difficulty of making a living
+absorbs the masses more and more in material cares,
+and makes all other things seem to them to be mere
+shadows. It has to give us faith in the possibility of
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page078">[pg 078]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg078"></a>
+progress while the reaction of the economic on the
+spiritual becomes more pernicious every day and
+contributes to an ever growing demoralization. It
+has to provide us with a capacity for hope at a time
+when not only secular and religious institutions and
+associations, but the men, too, who are looked upon
+as leaders, continually fail us, when artists and men
+of learning show themselves as supporters of
+barbarism, and notabilities who pass for thinkers,
+and behave outwardly as such, are revealed, when
+crises come, as being nothing more than writers and
+members of academies.</p>
+
+<p>All these hindrances stand in the path of the will
+to civilization. A dull despair hovers about us.
+How well we now understand the men of the
+Greco-Roman decadence, who stood before events
+incapable of resistance, and, leaving the world to its
+fate, withdrew upon their inner selves! Like them,
+we are bewildered by our experience of life. Like
+them, we hear enticing voices which say to us that
+the one thing which can still make life tolerable is to
+live for the day. We must, we are told, renounce
+every wish to think or hope about anything beyond
+our own fate. We must find rest in resignation.</p>
+
+<p>The recognition that civilization is founded on
+some sort of theory of the universe, and can be
+restored only through a spiritual awakening and a
+will for ethical good in the mass of mankind, compels
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page079">[pg 079]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg079"></a>
+us to make clear to ourselves those difficulties in the
+way of a rebirth of civilization which ordinary
+reflection would overlook. But at the same time
+it raises us above all considerations of possibility or
+impossibility. If the ethical spirit provides a
+sufficient standing ground in the sphere of events
+for making civilization a reality, then we shall get
+civilization, provided that we return to a suitable
+theory of the universe and the convictions to which
+this properly gives birth.</p>
+
+<p>The history of our decadence preaches the truth
+that when hope is dead the spirit becomes the
+deciding court of appeal, and this truth will in
+the future find in us a sublime and noble fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page080">[pg 080]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg080"></a></p>
+
+<p class="chapter"></p>
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_5">CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h4>CIVILIZATION AND THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The regeneration of our theory of the universe and the restoration of
+civilization. A reflective theory of the universe; rationalism and
+mysticism. The optimistic-ethical theory as a theory of civilization.
+The regeneration of our ideas by reflection about the meaning of life.</p>
+
+<p class="drop">The greatest of all the spirit’s tasks is to produce
+a theory of the universe (<i>Weltanschauung</i><a id="in2-ref" href="#in2">*</a>), for in
+such a theory all the ideas, convictions and activities
+of an age have their roots, and it is only when we
+have arrived at one which is compatible with civilization
+that we are capable of holding the ideas and
+convictions which are the conditions of civilization
+in general.</p>
+
+<p>What is meant by a theory of the universe? It
+is the content of the thoughts of society and the
+individuals which compose it about the nature and
+object of the world in which they live, and the
+position and the destiny of mankind and of individual
+men within it. What significance have the
+society in which I live and I myself in the world?
+What do we want to do in the world, what do we
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page081">[pg 081]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg081"></a>
+hope to get from it, and what is our duty to it?
+The answer given by the majority to these fundamental
+questions about existence decides what the
+spirit is in which they and their age live.</p>
+
+<p>Is not this putting too high the value of a theory
+of the universe?</p>
+
+<p>At present, certainly, the majority do not, as a
+rule, attain to any properly thought-out theory, nor
+do they feel the need of deriving their ideas and
+convictions from such a source. They are in tune,
+more or less, with all the tones which pervade the
+age in which they live.</p>
+
+<p>But who are the musicians who have produced
+these tones? They are the personalities who have
+thought out theories of the universe, and drawn
+from them the ideas, more or less valuable, which
+are current amongst us to-day. In this way all
+thoughts, whether those of individuals or those of
+society, go back ultimately, in some way or other,
+to a theory of the universe. Every age lives in the
+consciousness of what has been provided for it by
+the thinkers under whose influence it stands.</p>
+
+<p>Plato was wrong in holding that the philosophers
+of a State should also be its governors. Their
+supremacy is a different and a higher one than that
+which consists in taking cognizance of laws and
+ordinances and giving effect to official authority.
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page082">[pg 082]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg082"></a>
+They are the officers of the general staff who sit in
+the background thinking out, with more or less
+clearness of vision, the details of the battle which is
+to be fought. Those who play their part in the
+public eye are the subordinate officers who, for their
+variously sized units, convert the general directions
+of the staff into orders of the day: namely, that the
+forces will start at such and such a time, move in
+this or that direction, and occupy this or that point.
+Kant and Hegel have commanded millions who had
+never read a line of their writings, and who did not
+even know that they were obeying their orders.</p>
+
+<p>Those who command, whether it be in a large or
+a small sphere, can only carry out what is already
+in the thought of the age. They do not build the
+instrument on which they have to play, but are
+merely given a seat at it. Nor do they compose the
+piece they have to play; it is simply put before
+them, and they cannot alter it; they can only
+reproduce it with more or less skill and success.
+If it is meaningless, they cannot do much to improve
+it, but neither, if it is good, can they damage it
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>To the question, then, whether it is personalities
+or ideas which decide the fate of an age, the answer
+is that the age gets its ideas from personalities. If
+the thinkers of a certain period produce a worthy
+theory of the universe, then ideas pass into currency
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page083">[pg 083]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg083"></a>
+which guarantee progress; if they are not
+capable of such production, then decadence sets in
+in some form or other. Every theory of the universe
+draws after it its own special results in history.</p>
+
+<p>The fall of the Roman Empire in spite of that
+empire’s having over it so many rulers of conspicuous
+ability, may be traced ultimately to the
+fact that ancient philosophy produced no theory of
+the universe with ideas which tended to that
+empire’s preservation. With the rise of Stoicism,
+as the definitive answer of the philosophic thought
+of antiquity, the fate of the world down to the
+Middle Ages was decided. The idea of resignation,
+noble idea as it is, could not ensure progress in a
+world-wide empire. The efforts of its strongest
+emperors were useless. The yarn with which they
+had to weave was rotten.</p>
+
+<p>In the eighteenth century, under the rule, in most
+places, of insignificant rococo-sovereigns and
+rococo-ministers, a progressive movement began among
+the nations of Europe which was unique in the
+history of the world. Why? The thinkers of the
+Illuminati and of rationalism produced a worthy
+theory of the universe from which worthy ideas
+were spread among mankind.</p>
+
+<p>But when history began to shape itself in accordance
+with these ideas, the thought which had
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page084">[pg 084]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg084"></a>
+produced the progress came to a halt, and we have
+now a generation which is squandering the precious
+heritage it has received from the past, and is living
+in a world of ruins, because it cannot complete the
+building which that past began. Even had our
+rulers and statesmen been less short-sighted than
+they actually were, they would not in the long run
+have been able to avert the catastrophe which
+burst upon us. Both the inner and the outer
+collapse of civilization were latent in the circumstances
+produced by the prevalent view of the
+universe. The rulers, small and great alike, did [nothing but]
+act in accordance with the spirit of the age.</p>
+
+<p>With the disappearance of the influence exerted
+by the <i>Aufklärung</i>, rationalism, and the serious
+philosophy of the early nineteenth century, the seeds
+were sown of the world-war to come. Then began
+to disappear also the ideas and convictions which
+would have made possible a solution on right lines
+of the controversies which arise between nations.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the course of events brought us into a
+position in which we had to get along without any
+real theory of the universe. The collapse of
+philosophy and the rise and influence of scientific
+modes of thought made it impossible to arrive at
+an idealist theory which should satisfy thought.
+Moreover, our age is poorer in deep thinkers than
+perhaps any preceding one. There were a few
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page085">[pg 085]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg085"></a>
+strong spirits who, with varied knowledge, and with
+devoted efforts, offered the world some patchwork
+thought; there were some dazzling comets; but
+that was all that was granted us. Their products
+in the way of world theories were good enough to
+interest a circle of academic culture, or to delight a
+few believing followers, but the people as a whole
+were entirely untouched.</p>
+
+<p>We began, therefore, to persuade ourselves that
+it was, after all, possible to get through without any
+theory of the universe. The feeling that we needed
+to stir ourselves up to ask questions about the world
+and life, and to come to a decision upon them,
+gradually died away. In the unreflective condition
+to which we had surrendered ourselves, we took, to
+meet the claims of our own life and the nation’s life,
+the chance ideas provided by our feeling for reality.
+During more than a generation and a half we
+had proof enough and to spare that the theory
+which is the result of absence of theory is the most
+worthless of all, involving not only ruin to the
+spiritual life, but ruin universal. For where there
+is no general staff to think out its plan of campaign
+for any generation its subordinate officers lead it,
+as in actual warfare so in the sphere of ideas, from
+one profitless adventure to another.</p>
+
+<p>The reconstruction of our age, then, can begin
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page086">[pg 086]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg086"></a>
+only with a reconstruction of a theory of the
+universe. There is hardly anything more urgent
+in its claim on us than this which seems to be so far
+off and abstract. Only when we have made ourselves
+at home again in the solid thought-building
+of a theory which can support a civilization, and
+when we take from it, all of us in co-operation, ideas
+which can stimulate our life and work, only then
+can there again arise a society which shall possess
+ideals with magnificent aims and be able to bring
+these into effective agreement with reality. It is
+from new ideas that we must build history anew.</p>
+
+<p>For individuals as for the community, life without
+a theory of things is a pathological disturbance of
+the higher capacity for self-direction.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>What conditions must a theory of the universe
+fulfil to enable it to create a civilization?</p>
+
+<p>First, and defined generally, it must be the
+product of thought. Nothing but what is born of
+thought and addresses itself to thought can be a
+spiritual power affecting the whole of mankind.
+Only what has been well turned over in the thought
+of the many, and thus recognized as truth, possesses
+a natural power of conviction which will work on
+other minds and will continue to be effective.
+Only where there is a constant appeal to the need
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page087">[pg 087]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg087"></a>
+of a reflective view of things are all man’s spiritual
+capacities called into activity.</p>
+
+<p>Our age has a kind of artistic prejudice against a
+reflective theory of the universe. We are still
+children of the Romantic movement to a greater
+extent than we realize. What that movement
+produced in opposition to the <i>Aufklärung</i> and to
+rationalism seems to us valid for all ages against
+any theory that would found itself solely on thought.
+In such a theory of the universe we can see beforehand
+the world dominated by a barren intellectualism,
+convictions governed by mere utility, and
+a shallow optimism, which together throw a wet
+blanket over all human genius and enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>In a great deal of the opposition which it offered
+to rationalism the reaction of the early nineteenth
+century was right. Nevertheless it remains true
+that it despised and distorted what was, in spite of
+all its imperfections, the greatest and most valuable
+manifestation of the spiritual life of man that the
+world has yet seen. Down through all circles of
+cultured and uncultured alike there prevailed at
+that time a belief in thought and a reverence for
+truth. For that reason alone that age stands
+higher than any which preceded it, and much
+higher than our own.</p>
+
+<p>At no price must the feelings and phrases of
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page088">[pg 088]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg088"></a>
+Romanticism be allowed to prevent our generation
+from forming a clear conception of what reason
+really is. It is no dry intellectualism which would
+suppress all the manifold movements of our inner
+life, but the totality of all the functions of our spirit
+in their living action and interaction. In it our
+intellect and our will hold that mysterious intercourse
+which determines the character of our
+spiritual being. These fundamental ideas which it
+produces contain all that we can feel or imagine
+about our destiny and that of mankind, and give our
+whole being its direction and its value. The
+enthusiasm which comes from thought has the same
+relation to that which rises from the cauldron of
+feeling as the wind which sweeps the heights has to
+that which eddies about between the hills. If we
+venture once more to seek help from the light of
+reason, we shall no longer keep ourselves down at
+the level of a generation which has ceased to be
+capable of enthusiasm, but shall follow the deep and
+noble passion inspired by great and sublime ideals.
+This will so fill and expand our being that that by
+which we now live will seem to be merely a petty
+kind of excitement, and will disappear.</p>
+
+<p>Rationalism is more than a movement of thought
+which realized itself at the end of the eighteenth and
+the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. It is a
+necessary phenomenon in all normal spiritual life.
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page089">[pg 089]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg089"></a>
+All real progress in the world is in the last analysis
+produced by rationalism.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the intellectual productions of the
+period which we designate historically as the
+rationalistic are incomplete and unsatisfactory, but
+the principle, which was then established, of basing
+our views of the universe on thought and thought
+alone, is valid for all time. Even if the tree’s earliest
+fruit did not ripen perfectly, the tree itself remains,
+nevertheless, the tree of life for the life of our spirit.</p>
+
+<p>All the movements that have claimed to take the
+place of rationalism stand far below it in the matter
+of achievement. From speculative thought, from
+history, from feeling, from æsthetics, from science,
+they tried to construct a theory of the universe,
+grubbing at haphazard in the world around them
+instead of excavating scientifically. Rationalism
+alone chose the right place for its digging, and dug
+systematically, according to plan. If it found only
+metal of small value, that was because, with the
+means at its disposal, it could not go deep enough.
+Impoverished and ruined as we are because we
+sought as mere adventurers, we must make up our
+minds to sink another shaft in the ground where
+rationalism worked, and to go down through all
+the strata to see whether we cannot find the gold
+which must certainly be there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page090">[pg 090]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg090"></a></p>
+
+<p>To think out to the end a theory of the universe
+which has been produced by thought—that is the
+only possible way of finding our bearings amid the
+confusion of the world of thought to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophical, historical, and scientific questions
+with which it was not capable of dealing overwhelmed
+the earlier rationalism like an avalanche,
+and buried it in the middle of its journey. The new
+rational theory of the universe must work its way
+out of this chaos. Leaving itself freely open to the
+whole influence of the world of fact, it must explore
+every path offered by reflection and knowledge in its
+effort to reach the ultimate meaning of being and
+life, and to see whether it can solve some of the
+riddles which they present.</p>
+
+<p>The ultimate knowledge, in which man recognizes
+his own being as a part of the All, belongs, they say,
+to the realm of mysticism, by which is meant that
+he does not reach it by the method of ordinary
+reflection, but somehow or other lives himself
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>But why assume that the road of thought must
+suddenly stop at the frontier of mysticism? It is
+true that pure reason has hitherto called a halt
+whenever it came into this neighbourhood, for it
+was unwilling to go beyond the point at which it
+could still exhibit everything as part of a smooth,
+logical plan. Mysticism, on its side, always depreciated
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page091">[pg 091]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg091"></a>
+pure reason as much as it could, to prevent
+at all costs the idea from gaining currency that it
+was in any way bound to give an account to reason.
+And yet, although they refuse to recognize each
+other, the two belong to each other.</p>
+
+<p>It is in reason that intellect and will, which in our
+nature are mysteriously bound up together, seek
+to come to a mutual understanding. The ultimate
+knowledge that we strive to acquire is knowledge of
+life, which intellect looks at from without, will from
+within. Since life is the ultimate object of knowledge,
+our ultimate knowledge is necessarily our
+thinking experience of life, but this does not lie
+outside the sphere of reason, but within reason itself.
+Only when the will has thought out its relation to
+the intellect, has come, as far as it can, into line
+with it, has penetrated it, and in it become logical,
+is it in a position to comprehend itself, so far as its
+nature allows this, as a part of the universal will-to-live
+and a part of being in general. If it merely
+leaves the intellect on one side, it loses itself in
+confused imaginings, while the intellect, which, like
+the rationalism of the past, will not allow that in
+order to understand life it must finally lose itself in
+thinking experience, renounces all hope of constructing
+a deep and firmly based theory of the
+universe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page092">[pg 092]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg092"></a></p>
+
+<p>Thus reflection, when pursued to the end, lead
+somewhere and somehow to a living mysticism
+which is for all men everywhere a necessary element
+of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Doubts whether the mass of men can ever attain
+to that level of reflection about themselves and the
+world which is demanded by a reflective theory of
+the universe, are quite justifiable if the man of to-day
+is taken as an example of the race. But he, with
+his diminished need of thought, is a pathological
+phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>In reality there is given in the mental endowment
+of the average man a capacity for thought which to
+the individual makes the creation of a reflective
+theory of things of his own not only possible, but
+under normal conditions even a necessity. The
+great movements of illumination in ancient and
+modern times help to maintain the confident belief
+that there is in the mass of mankind a power of
+thought on fundamentals which can be roused to
+activity. This belief is strengthened by observation
+of mankind and intercourse with the young.
+A fundamental impulse to reflect about the universe
+stirs us during those years in which we begin to think
+independently. Later on we let it languish, even
+though feeling clearly that we thereby impoverish
+ourselves and become less capable of what is good.
+We are like springs of water which no longer run
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page093">[pg 093]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg093"></a>
+because they have not been watched and have
+gradually become choked with rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>More than any other age has our own neglected
+to watch the thousand springs of thought; hence
+the drought in which we are pining. But if we only
+go on to remove the rubbish which conceals the
+water, the sands will be irrigated again, and life will
+spring up where hitherto there has been only a
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there are guides and the guided in the
+department of world-theories, as in others. So far
+the independence of the mass of men remains a
+relative one. The question is only whether the
+influence of the guides leads to dependence or
+independence. The latter brings with it a development
+in the direction of truthfulness; the former
+means the death of that virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Every being who calls himself a man is meant
+to develop into a real personality within a reflective
+theory of the universe which he has created for
+himself.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>But of what character must the theory be if ideas
+and convictions about civilization are to be based
+on it?</p>
+
+<p>That theory of the universe is optimistic which
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page094">[pg 094]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg094"></a>
+gives existence the preference as against
+non-existence and thus affirms life as something possessing
+value in itself. From this attitude to the
+universe and to life results the impulse to raise
+existence, in so far as our influence can affect it,
+to its highest level of value. Thence originates
+activity directed to the improvement of the living
+conditions of individuals, of society, of nations and of
+humanity, from which spring the external achievements
+of civilization, the lordship of spirit over
+the powers of nature, and the higher social
+organization.</p>
+
+<p>Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the
+inner perfection of his own personality. In itself
+it is quite independent of whether the theory of the
+universe is pessimistic or optimistic. But its sphere
+of action is contracted or widened according as it
+appears in connection with a theory of the first or
+the second type.</p>
+
+<p>In the determinist-pessimistic theory of the
+universe, as we have it in the thought of the Brāhmans
+or of Schopenhauer, ethics has nothing
+whatever to do with the objective world. It aims
+solely at securing the self-perfection of the individual
+as this comes to pass in inner freedom and disconnection
+from the world and the spirit of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But the scope of ethics is extended in proportion
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page095">[pg 095]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg095"></a>
+as it develops and strengthens a connection with a
+theory of the universe which is affirmative toward
+the world and life. Its aim is now the inner perfection
+of the individual and at the same time the
+direction of his activity so as to take effect on other
+men and on the objective world. It is true that in
+face of the objective world and its spirit ethics
+no longer holds itself up to man as an aim in itself.
+By its means man is to become capable of acting
+among men and in the world as a higher and purer
+force, and thus to do his part towards the actualization
+of the ideal of general progress.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the optimistic-ethical theory of the universe
+works in partnership with ethics to produce civilization.
+Neither is capable of doing so by itself.
+Optimism supplies confidence that the world-process
+has somehow or other a spiritual-sensible aim, and
+that the improvement of the general relations of the
+world and of society promotes the spiritual-moral
+perfection of the individual. From ethics is derived
+ability to develop the purposive state of mind
+necessary to produce action on the world and society
+and to cause the co-operation of all our achievements
+to secure the spiritual and moral perfection of the
+individual which is the final end of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Once we have recognized that the energies which
+spring out of a theory of the universe, and impel us to
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page096">[pg 096]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg096"></a>
+create a civilization, are rooted in the ethical and the
+optimistic, we get light on the question why and how
+our ideals of civilization got worn out. This question
+is not to be answered by good or bad analogies from
+nature. The decisive answer is that they got worn
+out because we had not succeeded in establishing the
+ethical and optimistic elements on a sufficiently firm
+foundation.</p>
+
+<p>If we should analyse the process in which the
+ideas and convictions that produce civilization
+reveal themselves, it would be found that whenever
+an advance has been registered, either the optimist
+or the ethical element in the theory of the universe
+has proved more attractive than usual, and has
+had as its consequence a progressive development.
+When civilization is decaying there is the same chain
+of causation, but it works negatively. The building
+is damaged or falls in because the optimist element
+or the ethical, or both, give way like a weak foundation.
+No amount of inquiry will give any other
+reason for the changes. All imaginable ideas and
+convictions of that character spring from optimism
+and the ethical impulse. If these two pillars are
+strong enough, we need have no fears about the
+building.</p>
+
+<p>The future of civilization depends, therefore, on
+whether it is possible for thought to reach a theory
+of the universe which will have a more secure and
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page097">[pg 097]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg097"></a>
+fundamental hold on optimism and the ethical
+impulse than its predecessors have had.</p>
+
+<div class="tei" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em">
+<img alt="sigla" src="images/sigla.jpg" width="128" height="33">
+</div>
+
+<p>We Westerners dream of a theory of the
+universe which corresponds to our impulse to
+action and at the same time justifies it. We
+have not been able to formulate such a theory
+definitely. At present we are in the state of possessing
+merely an impulse without any definite orientation.
+The spirit of the age drives us into action
+without allowing us to attain any clear view of the
+objective world and of life. It claims our toil
+inexorably in the service of this or that end, this or
+that achievement. It keeps us in a sort of intoxication
+of activity so that we may never have time
+to reflect and to ask ourselves what this restless
+sacrifice of ourselves to ends and achievements really
+has to do with the meaning of the world and of our
+lives. And so we wander hither and thither in the
+gathering dusk formed by lack of any definite theory
+of the universe like homeless, drunken mercenaries,
+and enlist indifferently in the service of the common
+and the great without distinguishing between them.
+And the more hopeless becomes the condition of the
+world in which this adventurous impulse to action
+and progress ranges to and fro, the more bewildered
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page098">[pg 098]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg098"></a>
+becomes our whole conception of things and the more
+purposeless and irrational the doings of those who
+have enlisted under the banner of such an impulse.</p>
+
+<p>How little reflection is present in the Western
+impulse to action becomes evident when this tries to
+square its ideas with those of the Far East. For
+thought in the Far East has been constantly occupied
+in its search for the meaning of life, and forces
+us to consider the problem of the meaning of our
+own restlessness, the problem which we Westerners
+burke so persistently. We are utterly at a loss when
+we contemplate the ideas which are presented to us
+in Indian thought. We turn away from the
+intellectual presumption which we find there. We
+are conscious of the unsatisfying and incomplete
+elements in the ideal of cessation from action. We
+feel instinctively that the will-to-progress is justified
+not only in its aspect as directed to the spiritual
+perfection of personality, but also in that which looks
+towards the general and material.</p>
+
+<p>For ourselves we dare to allege that we adventurers,
+who take up an affirmative attitude toward
+the world and toward life, however great and even
+ghastly our mistakes may be, can yet show not only
+greater material, but also greater spiritual and
+ethical, contributions than can those who lie under
+the ban of a theory of the universe characterized by
+cessation from action.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page099">[pg 099]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg099"></a></p>
+
+<p>And yet, all the same, we cannot feel ourselves
+completely justified in the face of these strange
+Eastern theories. They have in them something full
+of nobility which retains its hold on us, even fascinates
+us. This tinge of nobility comes from the fact
+that these convictions are born of a search for a
+theory of the universe and for the meaning of life.
+With us, on the other hand, activist instincts and
+impulses take the place of a theory of the universe.
+We have no theory affirming the world and life to
+oppose to the negative theory of these thinkers, no
+thought which has found a basis for an optimistic
+conception of existence to oppose to this other,
+which has arrived at a pessimistic conception.</p>
+
+<p>The reawakening of the Western spirit must thus
+begin by our people, educated and simple alike,
+becoming conscious of their lack of a theory of the
+universe and feeling the horror of their consequent
+position. We can no longer be satisfied to make
+shift with substitutes for such a theory. What is
+the basis of the will-to-activity and progress which
+impels both to great actions and to terrible deeds,
+and which tries to keep us from reflection? We
+must bend all our energies to the solution of this
+problem.</p>
+
+<p>There is only one way in which we can hope to
+emerge from the meaningless state in which we are
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page100">[pg 100]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg100"></a>
+now held captive into one informed with meaning.
+Each one of us must turn to contemplate his own
+being, and we must all give ourselves to co-operative
+reflection so as to discover how our will to action and
+to progress may be intellectually based on the way
+in which we interpret our own lives and the life
+around us, and the meaning which we give to these.</p>
+
+<p>The great revision of the convictions and ideals
+in which and for which we live will only take place
+when, by constantly proclaiming them, we have
+given currency among our contemporaries to ideas
+and thoughts other and better than those by which
+they are dominated at the moment. Only thus will
+the many come to reflect about the meaning of life
+and to reorientate, revise and make over again their
+ideals of action and of progress, asking themselves
+whether these have a meaning in accord with that
+which we attribute to our life itself. This personal
+reflection about final and elemental things is the one
+and only reliable way of measuring values. My
+willing and doing have real meaning and value only
+in proportion as the aims which action sets before
+itself can be justified as being in direct accord with
+my interpretation of my own and of other life.
+All else, however much it may pass current as
+approved by tradition, usage, and public opinion,
+is vain and dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>It seems, indeed, a matter for scorn and derision
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page101">[pg 101]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg101"></a>
+that we should urge men to anything so remote as
+a return to reflection about the meaning of life at a
+time when the sufferings and the follies of the
+nations have become so intense and so extended,
+when unemployment and poverty and starvation
+are rife, when power is being dissipated on all sides
+in the most shameless and senseless way, and when
+organized human life is dislocated in every direction.
+But only when the general population begins to
+reflect in this way will forces come into being which
+will be able to effect something to counterbalance
+all this ruin and misery. Whatever other measures
+it is attempted to carry out will have doubtful and
+altogether inadequate results.</p>
+
+<p>When in the spring the withered grey of the
+pastures gives place to green, this is due to the
+millions of young shoots which sprout up freshly
+from the old roots. In like manner the revival of
+thought which is essential for our time can only
+come through a transformation of the opinions and
+ideals of the many brought about by individual and
+universal reflection about the meaning of life and of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>But are we sure of being able to think out that
+affirmation of the world and of life, which is such
+a powerful impulse in us, into a theory of the world
+and of life from which a stream of energy productive
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page102">[pg 102]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg102"></a>
+of intelligible life and action may convincingly and
+constantly proceed? How are we to succeed in
+doing what the spirit of the Western world during
+past generations has in vain toiled to accomplish?</p>
+
+<p>Even if thought, once more awakened, should only
+attain to an incomplete and unsatisfying theory of
+the universe, yet this, as the truth to which we have
+ourselves worked through, would be of more value
+than a complete lack of any theory at all, or, alternatively,
+than any sort of authoritative theory to
+which, neglecting the demands of true thought, we
+cling on account of its supposed intrinsic value
+without having any real and thorough belief in it.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value
+is courageous faith in truth and open confession of
+the same. The most profound religious experience,
+too, is not alien to thought, but must be capable of
+derivation from this if it is to be given a true and
+deep basis. Mere reflection about the meaning of
+life has already value in itself. If such reflection
+should again come into being amongst us, the ideals,
+born of vanity and of suffering, which now flourish
+in rank profusion like evil weeds among the convictions
+of the generality of people, would infallibly
+wither away and die. How much would already be
+accomplished towards our salvation from our present
+circumstances if only we would all give up three
+minutes every evening to gazing up into the infinite
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page103">[pg 103]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg103"></a>
+world of the starry heavens and meditating on it,
+or if in taking part in a funeral procession we would
+reflect on the enigma of life and death, instead of
+engaging in thoughtless conversation as we follow
+behind the coffin! The ideals, born of folly and
+suffering, of those who make public opinion and
+direct public events, would have no more power over
+men if they once began to reflect about eternity and
+mortality, existence and dissolution, and thus learnt
+to distinguish between true and false standards,
+between those which possess real value and those
+which do not. The old-time rabbis used to teach
+that the kingdom of God would come if only the
+whole of Israel would really keep a single Sabbath
+simultaneously! How much more is it true that
+the injustice and violence and untruth, which are
+now bringing so much disaster on the human race,
+would lose their power if only a single real trace of
+reflection about the meaning of the world and of life
+should appear amongst us!</p>
+
+<p>But is there not a danger in challenging men with
+this question about the meaning of life and in
+demanding that our impulse to action should justify
+and clarify itself in such reflection as that of which
+we have spoken? Shall we not lose, in acceding to
+this demand, some irreplaceable element of naïve
+enthusiasm?</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page104">[pg 104]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg104"></a></p>
+
+<p>We need not thus be anxious as to how strong or
+how weak our impulse to action will prove to be
+when it shall have arrived, as the result of intellectual
+reflection, at an interpretation of life. Only
+that has real meaning for life which is given as an
+element of our interpretation of life. It is not the
+quantity, but the quality, of activity that really
+matters. What is needed is that our will-to-action
+should become conscious of itself and should cease
+to work blindly.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps, it may be objected, we shall end
+in the resignation of agnosticism, and shall be
+obliged to confess that we cannot discover any
+meaning in the universe or in life.</p>
+
+<p>If thought is to set out on its journey unhampered,
+it must be prepared for anything, even for arrival at
+intellectual agnosticism. But even if our will-to-action
+is destined to wrestle endlessly and unavailingly
+with an agnostic view of the universe and of
+life, still this painful disenchantment is better for it
+than persistent refusal to think out its position at
+all. For this disenchantment does, at any rate, mean
+that we are clear as to what we are doing.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, no necessity whatever for such
+an attitude of resignation. We feel that a position
+of affirmation regarding the world and life is something
+which is in itself both necessary and valuable.
+Therefore it is at least likely that a foundation can be
+<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page105">[pg 105]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg105"></a>
+found for it in thought. Since it is an innate
+element of our will-to-live, it must be possible to
+comprehend it as a necessary corollary to our interpretation
+of life. Perhaps we shall have to look
+elsewhere than we have done hitherto for the real
+basis of that theory of the universe which carries
+with it affirmation of the world and of life. Previous
+thought imagined that it could deduce the meaning
+of life from its interpretation of the universe. It
+may be that we shall be obliged to resign ourselves
+to abandon the problem of the interpretation of the
+universe and to find the meaning of our life in the
+will-to-live as this exists in ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The ways along which we have to struggle toward
+the goal may be veiled in darkness, yet the direction
+in which we must travel is clear. We must reflect
+together about the meaning of life; we must strive
+together to attain to a theory of the universe
+affirmative of the world and of life, in which the
+impulse to action which we experience as a necessary
+and valuable element of our being may find justification,
+orientation, clarity and depth, may receive a
+fresh access of moral strength, and be retempered,
+and thus become capable of formulating, and of
+acting on, definite ideals of civilization, inspired by
+the spirit of true humanitarianism.</p>
+
+<p><span class="tei tei-pb" id="page106">[pg 106]</span><a class="tei" id="Pg106"></a>
+
+<h2 id="mbp_toc_12">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#in1-ref" id="in1">*</a> <i>Weltanschauung</i>. Translated ‘theory
+of the universe’ throughout the first part and elsewhere in this preface.
+</p>
+
+<p><a href="#in2-ref" id="in2">*</a> Translated “world-view” throughout the second
+part of these Lectures.</p>
+
+<h2>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p>The formatting of both the .htm and .txt files followed that of two
+similar books, The Quest of the Historical Jesus and The Mystery of the Kingdom of
+God, already in Project Gutenberg.</p>
+
+<p>I made several hyphenation choices, mostly forced by de-hyphenation at the ends
+of lines:</p>
+
+<ul>
+    <li>1. world-theory</li>
+    <li>2. overcoming</li>
+    <li>3. self-regarding</li>
+    <li>4. never-concentrated</li>
+    <li>5. over-organization</li>
+    <li>6. over-valuation</li>
+    <li>7. self-importance</li>
+    <li>8. rococo-ministers</li>
+    <li>9. non-existence</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>In addition, on page 5 of the .pdf file on Internet Archive, the display of
+this page was corrupted in my copy. As pointed out by an editor, this has been
+corrected in the current version at Internet Archive.</p>
+
+<p>On page 84 the word "not" in the sentence:
+
+"The rulers, small and great alike, did not act in accordance with the spirit of the age.""
+
+was changed to "[nothing but]". The original German is:
+
+"Die kleinen und die großen Regierenden taten nichts anderes, als daß sie im Geiste der Zeit handelten."
+
+Google Translate (4/25/2025) renders this as:
+
+"The small and the big rulers did nothing other than act in the spirit of the times."
+
+The printed sentence in the book is either a typo or a mis-translation. It does not fit
+the sense of the author who means that the rulers themselves are not to blame for the collapse
+of civilization but rather it is the fault of the "spirit of the age".</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75958 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #75958 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75958)