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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 ***