The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922. CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS THE PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION PART II BY ALBERT SCHWEITZER D.THEOL.; D.PHIL.; D.MED. (STRASSBURG) _Second Edition_ TRANSLATED BY C. T. CAMPION M.A. (OXON.) A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 1929 _First Edition published November, 1923_ _Second Edition (revised), published in 1929_ To MY WIFE THE MOST LOYAL OF COMRADES _Printed in Great Britain._ PREFACE MY subject is the tragedy of the Western world-view._(_1_)_ While still a student I was surprised to find the history of thought always written merely as a history of philosophical systems, never as the history of man’s effort to arrive at a world-view. Later, when reflecting on the current of civilization in which I found myself living, I was struck by the strange and inexorable connexions which exist between civilization and our view of the world as a whole. Next I felt a still stronger compulsion to put to Western thought the question what it has been aiming at, and what result it has reached in the matter of world-view. What is there left of the achievements of our philosophy when it is stripped of its tinsel of learning? What has it to offer us when we demand from it those elemental ideas which we need if we are to take our position in life as men who are growing in character through the experience given by work? So I came to an unsparing reckoning up with Western thought. I recognized and admitted that it has sought for that world-view from which alone a deep and comprehensive civilization can come. It wanted to reach a position [pg vi] of world- and life-affirmation and on that foundation lay down that it is our duty to be active, to strive for progress of all kinds, and to create values. It wanted to reach an ethical system and on that foundation lay down that for the sake of serviceable activity we have to place our life at the service of ideas and of the other life around us. But it did not succeed in grounding its world- and life-affirming ethical world-view convincingly and permanently in thought. Our philosophy did nothing more than produce again and again unstable fragments of the serviceable world-view which hovered before its mind’s eye. Consequently our civilization also remained fragmentary and insecure. It was a fatal mistake that Western thought never admitted to itself the unsatisfying result of its search for a stable and serviceable world-view. Our philosophizing became less and less elemental, losing all connexion with the elementary questions which man must ask of life and of the world. More and more it found satisfaction in the handling of philosophic questions that were merely academic, and in an expert’s mastery of philosophical technique. It became more and more the captive of secondary things. Instead of real music it produced again and again mere bandmaster’s music, often magnificent stuff of its kind, but still only bandmaster’s music.