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.
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.
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.
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.
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 [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.
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.
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.