27. “On the Psychology of Our Time” by Dr. R.M. Saitschik

Bern 1892, Fr. Semminger

Books in which a full, whole personality expresses itself are not often to be found. Here is one. Saitschick is a master at portraying some of the characteristic peculiarities of our time with a sharp edge. A spirited, purposeful individuality shimmers out at us from every page of the book. A sharp eye looks into the weaknesses of the present. I find the nervous, hasty, longing and purposeful, but also the machine-like, unimaginative hustle and bustle of our era drawn in the right strokes. Every sentence is such a line. Here are just a few examples: "We cannot see where time is taking us, an eerie darkness shrouds the future of our culture, the more powerful and distinctive our hearing has become." "Weltschmerz was already resounding on the threshold of our century, later to be elevated to a philosophical system of pessimism. The duality of reality and the ideal had to lead to a dualism in thinking and feeling." "Capitalism has turned man into a machine; our science, which serves and is influenced by capital, has reduced the scholar to a scientific machine." "Our society no longer possesses whole men who see in themselves a self-contained unity which stands in a definite and fixed relation to all nature; our society no longer has a world view." And the individual characteristics of the present are not merely enumerated, but the phenomena are consistently presented in their context, one illuminated and justified by the other, so that the title of the book "On the psychology of our time" seems fully justified. I was particularly touched by the fact that the author knows how to correctly assess a fundamental error of our time: cowardice in matters of thought. No one is able to recognize the truth who does not have the philosophical courage to penetrate the depths of problems. We must boldly stretch out our spiritual feelers to their full length if they are to be touched by things in the right way. Those who immediately draw them in at the slightest resistance can never reach reality. The dullness of our thinking is our fundamental evil. Instead of boldly drilling into the world, we shy away from every difficulty and sense the limits of knowledge everywhere.