In Hegel’s world-view the connexion between ethics and belief in progress, in which the spiritual energy of modern times has always rested, is broken, and with the separation both are ruined. Ethics languish, and the belief in progress, now left to itself, becomes spiritless and powerless because it is now only a belief in immanent progress, and no longer a belief in progress of all kinds which is produced by enthusiasm. With Hegel there rises the spirit which borrows its ideals empirically from reality and believes in the progress of Humanity more than it labours to promote it. Hegel stands on the bridge of an ocean liner and explains to the passengers the wonders of the machinery in the vessel that is carrying them, and the mysteries of the [pg 149] calculation of its course. But he gives no thought to the necessary maintenance as before of the fires under the boilers. Hence the speed gradually diminishes until the vessel comes at last to a standstill. It no longer obeys the helm, and becomes a plaything of storms. [pg 150] CHAPTER XIV THE LATER UTILITARIANISM. BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ETHICS Beneke, Feuerbach, Laas, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill THE fact that speculative philosophy also is unable to establish the optimistic-ethical world-view upon nature-philosophy is not felt with all its weight in the intellectual life of Europe. In that philosophy we have, indeed, a form of thought which flames out like a flash of lightning and vanishes as quickly, but it is confined to Germany. The rest of Europe takes hardly any notice of Fichte and Hegel, just as, indeed, it paid scarcely any attention to Kant. It does not understand that these adventurous advances in the struggle for the optimistic-ethical world-view have been undertaken by leaders who see clearly that the battle is not to be won on the usual lines. The universal conviction is, of course, that the victory was won long before, and can no longer be disputed. It is only later that people in France and England see what Kant, Fichte, and Hegel aimed at, and what their significance was in the struggle for world-view. For the intellectual life of Europe, then, the world-view of rationalism still stands upright at a time when it has, in truth, already collapsed. Generally speaking a generation lives, of course, less by the world-view that has been produced within it than by that of the previous age. The light of a star is still visible to us when it has long ceased to exist. There is hardly anything in the world that clings so toughly to life as a world-view does.