THE WAY TO THE RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION
Civilization-ideals have become powerless. Evolution and decay in the
history of civilization. The reform of institutions and the reform of
convictions. The individual as the sole agent of the restoration of
civilization. The difficulties which beset the restoration of
civilization.
The ethical conception of civilization, then, is the only one that can
be justified.
But where is the road that can bring us back from barbarism to
civilization? Is there such a road at all?
The unethical conception of civilization answers: “No.” To it all
symptoms of decay are symptoms of old age, and civilization, just like
any other natural process of growth, must after a certain period of
time reach its final end. There is nothing, therefore, for us to do,
so it says, but to take the causes of this as quite natural, and do
our best at any rate to find interesting the unedifying phenomena of
its senility, which testify to the gradual loss of the ethical
character of civilization.
In the thinking then which surrenders itself to our sense of reality,
optimism and pessimism are inextricably intermingled. If our optimism
about [pg 063] reality is proved untenable, the optimism which thinks
that continuous progress evolves itself among the facts as such, then
the spirit which from above contemplates and analyses the situation
turns without much concern to the mild pessimistic supposition that
civilization has reached its Indian summer.
The ethical spirit cannot join in this little game of “Optimism or
pessimism?” It sees the symptoms of decay as what they really are,
viz., something terrible. It asks itself with a shudder what will
become of the world if this dying process really goes on unchecked.
The condition of civilization is a source of pain to it, for
civilization is not an object which it is interesting to analyse, but
the hope on which its thoughts fly out over the future existence of
the race. Belief in the possibility of a renewal of civilization is an
actual part of its life; that is why it can no longer quiet itself
with what contents the sense of reality as it hovers between optimism
and pessimism.
Those who regard the decay of civilization as something quite normal
and natural console themselves with the thought that it is not
civilization, but a civilization, which is falling a prey to
dissolution; that there will be a new age and a new race in which
there will blossom a new civilization. But that is a mistake. The
earth no longer has in reserve, as it had once, gifted peoples as yet
unused, [pg 064] who can relieve us and take our place in some distant
future as leaders of the spiritual life. We already know all those
which the earth has to dispose of. There is not one among them which
is not already taking such a part in our civilization that its
spiritual fate is determined by our own. All of them, the gifted and
the ungifted, the distant and the near, have felt the influence of
those forces of barbarism which are at work among us. All of them are,
like ourselves, diseased, and only as we recover can they recover.
It is not the civilization of a race, but that of mankind, present and
future alike, that we must give up as lost, if belief in a rebirth of
our civilization is a vain thing.
But it need not be so given up. If the ethical is the essential
element in civilization, decadence changes into renaissance as soon as
ethical activities are set to work again in our convictions and in the
ideas which we undertake to stamp upon reality. The attempt to bring
this about is well worth making, and it should be world-wide.
It is true that the difficulties that have to be reckoned with in this
undertaking are so great that only the strongest faith in the power of
the ethical spirit will let us venture on it.
First among them towers up the inability of our generation to
understand what is and must be. [pg 065] The men of the Renaissance
and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century drew courage to desire
the renewal of the world through ideas from their conviction of the
absolute indefensibility of the material and spiritual conditions
under which they lived. Unless with us, too, the many come to some
such conviction, we must continue incapable of taking in hand this
work, in which we must imitate them. But the many obstinately refuse
to see things as they are, and hold with all their might to the most
optimistic view of them that is possible. For this power, however, of
idealizing with continually lowering ideals the reality which is felt
to be ever less and less satisfying, pessimism also is partly
responsible. Our generation, though so proud of its many achievements,
no longer believes in the one thing which is all-essential: the
spiritual advance of mankind. Having given up the expectation of this,
it can put up with the present age without feeling such suffering as
would compel it, for very pain, to long for a new one. What a task it
will be to break the fetters of unthinking optimism and unthinking
pessimism which hold us prisoners, and so to do what will pave the way
for the renewal of civilization!
A second difficulty besetting the work which lies before us is that it
is a piece of reconstruction. The ideas of civilization which our age
needs are not new [pg 066] and strange to it. They have been in the
possession of mankind already, and are to be found in many an
antiquated formula. We have fundamentally nothing else to do than to
restore to them the respect in which they were once held, and again
regard them seriously as we bring them into relation with the reality
which lies before us for treatment.
To make what is used up usable—is there a harder task? “It is an
impossible one,” says history. “Never hitherto have worn-out ideas
risen to new power among the peoples who have worn them out. Their
disappearance has always been a final one.”
That is true. In the history of civilization we find nothing but
discouragement for our task. Anyone who finds history speaking
optimistically lends her a language which is not her own.
Yet from the history of the past we can infer only what has been, not
what will be. Even if it proves that no single people has ever lived
through the decay of its civilization and a rebirth of it, we know at
once that this, which has never happened yet, must happen with us, and
therefore we cannot be content to say that the reasoned ethical ideas
on which civilization rests get worn out in the course of history, and
console ourselves with the reflection that this is exactly in
accordance with the ordinary processes of nature. We require to know
why it has [pg 067] so happened hitherto, and to draw an explanation,
not from the analogy of nature, but from the laws of spiritual life.
We want to get into our hands the key of the secret, so that we may
with it unlock the new age, the age in which the worn out becomes
again unworn and the spiritual and ethical can no longer get worn out.
We must study the history of civilization otherwise than as our
predecessors did, or we shall be finally lost.
Why do not thoughts which contribute to civilization retain the
convincing power which they once had, and which they deserve on
account of their content? Why do they lose the evidential force of
their moral and rational character? Why do traditional truths cease to
be realities and pass from mouth to mouth as mere phrases?
* * * * *
Is this an unavoidable fate, or is the well drying up because our
thinking did not go down to the permanent level of the water?
Moreover, it is not merely that the past survives among us as
something valueless; it may cast a poisonous shade over us. There are
thoughts on which we have never let our minds work directly because we
found them ready formulated in history. Ideas which we have inherited
do not let the truth [pg 068] which is in them come out into active
service, but show it through a kind of dead mask. The worn out
achievements which pass over from a decadent civilization into the
current of a new age often become like rejected products of
metabolism, and act as poisons.
Granted that the Teutonic nations received a powerful stimulus to
civilization at the Renaissance by reverting to the ideas of
Greco-Roman thinkers, not less true is it that for many centuries they
had been kept by that same Greco-Roman civilization in a condition of
spiritual dependence which was wholly in contradiction to their native
character. They took over from it decadent ideas which were for a long
time a hindrance to their normal spiritual life, and thence came that
strange mixture of strength and weakness which is the chief
characteristic of the Middle Ages. The dangerous elements in the
Greco-Roman civilization of the past still show themselves in our
spiritual life. It is because Oriental and Greek conceptions which
have had their day are still current among us that we bleed to death
over problems which otherwise would have no existence for us. How much
we suffer from the one fact that to-day and for several centuries past
our thoughts about religion have been under the hereditary foreign
domination of Jewish transcendentalism and Greek metaphysics, and,
instead of [pg 069] being able to express themselves naturally, have
suffered continual distortion!
Because ideas get worn out in this way, and in this condition hinder
the thinking of later generations, there is no continuity in the
spiritual progress of mankind, but only a confused succession of ups
and downs. The threads get broken, or knotted, or lost, or when tied
up again get tied wrongly. Hitherto it has been thought possible to
interpret this up-and-down movement optimistically because it was
universally held that the Renaissance and the age of the Illuminati
were quite natural successors of the Greco-Roman civilization, and it
was assumed further that, as a permanent result of this, renewed
civilizations would spring up in the place of exhausted ones, and thus
continual progress be assured. But this generalization cannot
justifiably be drawn from such observations. It was because new
peoples came on the scene, who had been only superficially touched by
the decadent civilizations and now produced others of their own, that
it was possible to see this succession of ups and downs ending in an
ascent. As a matter of fact, however, our newer civilization was not
in any organic connection with the Greco-Roman, even if it did take
its first steps with the help of the crutches which the latter
provided; it may be [pg 070] described more truly as the reaction of a
healthy spirit against the worn out ideas which were thus offered to
it. The essential element in the process was the contact of what was
worn out with the fresh thought of young peoples.
To-day, however, all our thought is losing its power in its contact
with the worn-out ideas of our expiring civilization, or—in the case
of the Hindus and the Chinese—of our own and other expiring
civilizations. The up-and-down movement will end, therefore, not in
slow progress, but in unbroken descent—unless we can succeed in giving
the worn out ideas a renewal of their youth.
* * * * *
Another great difficulty in the way of the regeneration of our
civilization lies in the fact that it must be an internal process, and
not an external as well, and that, therefore, there is no place for
healthy co-operation between the material and the spiritual. From the
Renaissance to the middle of the nineteenth century the men who
carried on the work of civilization could expect help towards
spiritual progress from achievements in the sphere of external
organization. Demands in each of these spheres stood side by side in
their programme and were pushed on simultaneously. They were convinced
that while working to transform [pg 071] the institutions of public
life they were producing results which would call forth the
development of the new spiritual life. Success in one sphere
strengthened at once the hopes and the energies that were at work in
the other. They laboured for the progressive democratization of the
State with the idea of thereby spreading through the world the rule of
grace and justice.
We, who have lived to see the spiritual bankruptcy of all the
institutions which they created, can no longer work in this way
simultaneously at the reform of institutions and the revival of the
spiritual element. The help which such co-operation would give is
denied us. We cannot even reckon any longer on the old co-operation
between knowledge and thought. Once these two were allies. The latter
fought for freedom and in so doing made a road for the former, and, on
the other hand, all the results attained by knowledge worked for the
general good of the spiritual life in that the reign of law in nature
was more and more clearly demonstrated, and the reign of prejudice was
becoming continually more restricted. The alliance also strengthened
the thought that the well-being of mankind must be based upon
spiritual laws. Thus knowledge and thought joined in establishing the
authority of reason and the rational tone of mind.
[pg 072]
To-day thought gets no help from science, and the latter stands facing
it independent and unconcerned. The newest scientific knowledge may be
allied with an entirely unreflecting view of the universe. It
maintains that it is concerned only with the establishment of
individual facts, since it is only by means of these that scientific
knowledge can maintain its practical character; the co-ordination of
the different branches of knowledge and the utilization of the results
to form a theory of the universe are, it says, not its business. Once
every man of science was also a thinker who counted for something in
the general spiritual life of his generation. Our age has discovered
how to divorce knowledge from thought, with the result that we have,
indeed, a science which is free, but hardly any science left which
reflects.
Thus we no longer have available for the renewal of our spiritual life
any of the natural external helps which we used to have. We are called
upon for a single kind of effort only, and have to work like men who
are rebuilding the damaged foundations of a cathedral under the weight
of the massive building. There is no progress in the world of
phenomena to encourage us to persevere; an immense revolution has to
be brought about without the aid of any collateral revolutionary
activities.
* * * * *
[pg 073]
Again, the renewal of civilization is hindered by the fact that it is
so exclusively the individual personality which must be looked to as
the agent in the new movement.
The renewal of civilization has nothing to do with movements which
bear the character of experiences of the crowd; there are never
anything but reactions to external happenings. But civilization can
only revive when there shall come into being in a number of
individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among
the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually
win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its
character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the
slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in
individuals.
The final decision as to what the future of a society shall be depends
not on how near its organization is to perfection, but on the degrees
of worthiness in its individual members. The most important, and yet
the least easily determinable, element in history is the series of
unobtrusive general changes which take place in the individual
dispositions of the many. These are what precede and cause the
happenings, and this is why it is so difficult to understand
thoroughly the men and the [pg 074] events of past times. The
character and worth of individuals among the mass and the way they
work themselves into membership of the whole body, receiving
influences from it and giving others back, we can even to-day only
partially and uncertainly understand.
One thing, however, is clear. Where the collective body works more
strongly on the individual than the latter does upon it, the result is
deterioration, because the noble element on which everything depends,
viz., the spiritual and moral worthiness of the individual, is thereby
necessarily constricted and hampered. Decay of the spiritual and moral
life then sets in, which renders society incapable of understanding
and solving the problems which it has to face. Thereupon, sooner or
later, it is involved in catastrophe.
That is the condition in which we are now, and that is why it is the
duty of individuals to rise to a higher conception of their
capabilities and undertake again the function which only the
individual can perform, that of producing new spiritual-ethical ideas.
If this does not come about in a multitude of cases nothing can save
us.
A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The
existing one is maintained by the Press, by propaganda, by
organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its
[pg 075] disposal. This unnatural way of spreading ideas must be
opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies
solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for
new truth. Unarmed, and following the human spirit’s primitive and
natural fighting method, it must attack the other, which faces it, as
Goliath faced David, in the mighty armour of the age.
About the struggle which must needs ensue no historical analogy can
tell us much. The past has, no doubt, seen the struggle of the
free-thinking individual against the fettered spirit of a whole
society, but the problem has never presented itself on the scale on
which it does to-day, because the fettering of the collective spirit
as it is fettered to-day by modern organizations, modern
unreflectiveness, and modern popular passions, is a phenomenon without
precedent in history.
* * * * *
Will the man of to-day have strength to carry out what the spirit
demands from him, and what the age would like to make impossible?
In the over-organized societies which in a hundred ways have him in
their power, is he destined to become once more an independent
personality and [pg 076] to exert influence back upon them? They will
use every means to keep him in that condition of impersonality which
suits them. They fear personality because the spirit and the truth,
which they would like to muzzle, find in it a means of expressing
themselves. And their power is, unfortunately, as great as their fear.
There is a tragic alliance between society as a whole and its economic
conditions. With a grim relentlessness those conditions tend to bring
up the man of to-day as a being without freedom, without
self-collectedness, without independence, in short as a human being so
full of deficiencies that he lacks the qualities of humanity. And they
are the last things that we can change. Even if it should be granted
us that the spirit should begin its work, we shall only slowly and
incompletely gain power over these forces. There is, in fact, being
demanded from the will that which our conditions of life refuse to
allow.
And how heavy the tasks that the spirit has to take in hand! It has to
create the power of understanding the truth that is really true where
at present nothing is current but propagandist truth. It has to depose
ignoble patriotism, and enthrone the noble kind of patriotism which
aims at ends that are worthy of the whole of mankind, in circles where
the hopeless issues of past and present [pg 077] political activities
keep nationalist passions aglow even among those who in their hearts
would fain be free from them. It has to get the fact that civilization
is an interest of all men and of humanity as a whole recognized again
in places where national civilization is to-day worshipped as an idol,
and the notion of a humanity with a common civilization lies broken to
fragments. It has to maintain our faith in the civilized State, even
though our modern States, spiritually and economically ruined by the
war, have no time to think about the tasks of civilization, and dare
not devote their attention to anything but how to use every possible
means, even those which undermine the conception of justice, to
collect money with which to prolong their own existence. It has to
unite us by giving us a single ideal of civilized man, and this in a
world where one nation has robbed its neighbour of all faith in
humanity, idealism, righteousness, reasonableness, and truthfulness,
and all alike have come under the domination of powers which are
plunging us ever deeper into barbarism. It has to get attention
concentrated on civilization while the growing difficulty of making a
living absorbs the masses more and more in material cares, and makes
all other things seem to them to be mere shadows. It has to give us
faith in the possibility of [pg 078] progress while the reaction of
the economic on the spiritual becomes more pernicious every day and
contributes to an ever growing demoralization. It has to provide us
with a capacity for hope at a time when not only secular and religious
institutions and associations, but the men, too, who are looked upon
as leaders, continually fail us, when artists and men of learning show
themselves as supporters of barbarism, and notabilities who pass for
thinkers, and behave outwardly as such, are revealed, when crises
come, as being nothing more than writers and members of academies.
All these hindrances stand in the path of the will to civilization. A
dull despair hovers about us. How well we now understand the men of
the Greco-Roman decadence, who stood before events incapable of
resistance, and, leaving the world to its fate, withdrew upon their
inner selves! Like them, we are bewildered by our experience of life.
Like them, we hear enticing voices which say to us that the one thing
which can still make life tolerable is to live for the day. We must,
we are told, renounce every wish to think or hope about anything
beyond our own fate. We must find rest in resignation.
The recognition that civilization is founded on some sort of theory of
the universe, and can be restored only through a spiritual awakening
and a will for ethical good in the mass of mankind, compels [pg 079]
us to make clear to ourselves those difficulties in the way of a
rebirth of civilization which ordinary reflection would overlook. But
at the same time it raises us above all considerations of possibility
or impossibility. If the ethical spirit provides a sufficient standing
ground in the sphere of events for making civilization a reality, then
we shall get civilization, provided that we return to a suitable
theory of the universe and the convictions to which this properly
gives birth.
The history of our decadence preaches the truth that when hope is dead
the spirit becomes the deciding court of appeal, and this truth will
in the future find in us a sublime and noble fulfilment.
[pg 080]