I. The Difference Between Man and Animal

The article is now out of date. The danger has not diminished, but since all his arguments were based on the then existing thirst for war, they are now superannuated. For us here, however, the first part of what I read out must be of special interest—“a fearful destiny beckons to the white races and seems to me an absolute certainty unless a period of the supremacy of great wisdom succeeds that of passion and delusion.” For, as an abstract truth, this is in fact undeniably right. And when anyone expresses the opinion that the only salvation for mankind lies in turning to a supreme science of wisdom and not to any other political or social quackery, we must give recognition to such a fact, such a tendency of thought. At the same time, however, we may not forget that just those men who, it must be admitted, are deeply moved by the earnestness of the times, when it comes to saying: In what do these wise ideas consist that are to succeed the old deluded ideas? It is just such men who immediately fall back on any kind of deluded ideas that have become mere fine words. That is the tragedy, the fearful destiny, of our time, that men indeed became alive to the fact that it is necessary to turn to the spirit, and are then overcome by fear and anxiety when they should turn to it. Then they are at once ready, once more to seize upon the old delusive ideas which have driven mankind to the present fearful destiny. My dear friends, we need only take this example of a widespread tendency in ideas. Were you to ask a law abiding upholder of the Roman Catholic Church whether he was inclined to the belief that the old conceptions have brought us to this time of catastrophe and that they must be got rid of, do you think that he would really be disposed to recognise the necessity for reshaping the ideas that were unable to save men from this dreadful catastrophe? No! He would say that were men to turn again in the right way to Roman Catholicism they would at once became happy. And the reflection would not even enter his head that they have had 1900 years in which to practise their Roman Catholicism and yet have fallen into the catastrophe, that the least we must learn from the catastrophe is the need for a fresh impulse. This is only one example among many. Particularly where this point is concerned it is above all necessary frankly to focus attention on existing conditions.