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]