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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 ***