30. New Year's Reflection by a Heretic

The last few years have brought us a considerable number of reflections on the cultural achievements of the past century. And in the two years that we still have to live through in this century, these reflections are likely to pile up to an immense number. Those who like to emphasize the self-evident may argue that the passing of a century is a purely coincidental turning point in the development of mankind and that, in a different chronology, this turning point could coincide with a completely different phase of this development. Such an objection cannot arise in the face of the suggestive effect of the fact that the century appears numerically as a whole.

In addition to this general point, there is another particular reason to take a look at the achievements of our culture and the directions it is currently taking at the turn of the century.

The next thing that strikes the observer is the enormous wealth of new conditions for mastering the forces of nature and the associated progress in the practical organization of life. From the railroad and steamship to the telephone, one would have to review the series of inventions with their tremendous effects if one were to revive this idea from the outside.

And it is no different with the new conditions that have been created to expand our knowledge of the world. What insights into nature are provided by spectral analysis, the discovery of Röntgen, the studies on the age of the human race, the organic theory of development and others, which I will naturally refrain from mentioning here, as I am only interested in pointing to these things.

Despite all these and many other achievements, for example in the field of art, the person with a deeper perspective cannot be very happy about the educational content of the time. Our highest spiritual needs demand something that time only provides in meagre quantities.

In Goethe's sense, one can say of education that it must lead to the highest bliss through the purest culture. Our education does not lead to this bliss. - It lets the finest spirits down when they seek to satisfy the most intimate needs of their minds. In this respect, the end of the century presents a different picture from its beginning. Consider how Fichte inflamed minds a hundred years ago when he sought to harmonize the totality of the formation of time with the innermost needs of the human spirit. Schelling and Hegel deepened the knowledge of external things in the same direction. And how the voices of these spirits were heard!

A complete change occurred around the middle of the century. The innumerable insights into external things that were coming at people seemed to completely eclipse the ability to gain insight into one's own soul and to seek harmony between the external and internal worlds.

This change is expressed in an almost paradoxical way by the low esteem in which philosophy and its proponents are held today. How does Nietzsche's view that the Greeks are so highly regarded because, unlike other peoples, they do not present prophets but their seven wise men as human ideals compare to this disdain?

We should not be surprised if, in the face of such phenomena, minds with deeper spiritual needs find the proud thought structures of scholasticism more satisfying than the ideas of our own time. Otto Willmann has written an excellent book, his "History of Idealism"¹ (Braunschweig 1894-97), in which he proclaims himself the eulogist of the worldview of past centuries. It must be admitted: the human spirit longs for that proud, comprehensive illumination of thought which human knowledge experienced in the philosophical systems of the scholastics. And this spirit will always be unsatisfied by confessions such as the one made by the great physicist Hermann Helmholtz in his Weimar Gods Speech* a few years ago. He said: in the face of the wealth of our present knowledge, it is hardly possible for a comprehensive spirit to emerge that encompasses the totality of this knowledge with a unified circle of ideas.

The urge of the human soul to integrate all knowledge into an overall view, from which the highest spiritual needs can be satisfied, is opposed in our time by the despondency of our thinking, which does not allow us to gain such an overall view.

This despondency is a characteristic feature of intellectual life at the turn of the century. It clouds our enjoyment of the achievements of the recent past.

Wherever someone appears who tries to draw up an overall picture of our knowledge, there are countless voices testifying to this despondency, emphasizing the impossibility of such an overall picture, claiming that our knowledge is far from being ready for such a conclusion. Such voices are also audible, defending the impossibility of such a conclusion. The human mind has just seen through the successes of the sciences how incapable it is of recognizing anything about those things that were once made objects of reflection by the philosophers.

If it were up to the opinion of the people who make such voices heard, one would be content to measure, weigh and compare things and phenomena, to examine them with the available apparatuses: but never would the question be raised as to the "higher meaning" of things and phenomena.

We have lost the unshakeable belief that thinking is called upon to solve the mysteries of the world. Only a few researchers, such as Ernst Haeckel, have the inclination to penetrate existing knowledge in such a way that such sense emerges. - It does not matter whether one agrees with the thoughts that Haeckel develops in his essay "Monism as a bond between religion and science" (Bonn 1892). The essential point is that here, with the means of our intellectual education, the question is raised: how can the human mind satisfy its needs through modern knowledge? This is the same question that the religions of all times and scholasticism sought to solve with their means of education.

The fact is, however, that thoughts of this kind have little effect today in the face of the general despondency, even cowardice, of human thought.

It is therefore not at all surprising that reaction in the intellectual field is rearing its head everywhere. As long as the scientifically educated thinkers are too discouraged to offer a substitute for the outdated religious ideas from the standpoint of their knowledge, people who have the need for a world view will fall back on the traditional ideas; and the few who arrange their lives according to a modern world view will remain singers without an audience. I would like to explain the reasons why the most advanced spirits of the present are so little understood.