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]