Most people think that the crisis was produced by the war, but that is wrong. The war, with everything connected with it, is only a phenomenon of the condition of un-civilization in which we find ourselves. Even in States which took no part in the war, and on which the war had no direct influence, civilization is shaken, only the fact is not so clearly evident in them as in those which were hard hit by the consequences of its peculiarly cruel spiritual and material happenings. Yet is there any real, live thought going on among us about this collapse of civilization, and about possible ways of working ourselves up out of it? Scarcely! Clever men stumble about in seven-league boots in the history of civilization and try to make us understand that civilization is some kind of natural growth which blossoms out in definite peoples at definite times and then of necessity withers, so that new peoples with new civilizations must keep replacing the worn-out ones. When they are called upon, indeed, to complete their theory by telling us what peoples are destined to be our heirs, they are somewhat embarrassed. There are, in fact, no peoples to be seen whom one could imagine to be capable of even a portion of such a task. All the peoples of the earth have been in large measure under the influence both of our civilization [pg 002] and of our lack of it, so that they share more or less our fate. Among none of them are to be found thoughts which can lead to any considerable original movement of civilization. Let us put on one side cleverness and interesting surveys of the history of civilization, and busy ourselves in a practical way with the problem of our endangered civilization. Of what character is this degeneration in our civilization, and why has it come about?