The Rationalist world-view is optimistic and ethical, its optimism consisting in this, that it assumes as ruling in the world a general purposive adaptation which is directed to the perfecting of the world, and from this purposiveness the efforts of individual men and of mankind to secure material and spiritual progress derive meaning and importance and a guarantee of success. This world-view is ethical because it regards the ethical as something in accordance with reason, and on that ground demands from man that, putting egoistic interests behind him, he shall devote himself to all ideals that are waiting for realization, taking the ethical as in everything the standard by which to judge. A habit of humane thought is for the Rationalists an ideal which they can be induced by no consideration to resign. When at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the reaction against rationalism set in and criticism began to play upon it, its optimism was reproached as being superficial and its ethics as being sentimental. But the good it did, in spite of its manifold imperfections, by inspiring men with ideals of civilization grounded in reason, the spiritual movements which criticise it and take its place cannot develop in the same way. The energy of thought about civilization decreases imperceptibly but steadily. In proportion as the world-view of rationalism is left behind, the feeling for actuality makes its influence felt, until at last, from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, ideals are borrowed no longer from reason but from actuality, and we therewith sink still further into a state of uncivilization and lack of humanity. This is the clearest and the most important of all the facts which can be established in the history of our civilization. What has it to tell us? It tells us that there is a close connexion between civilization and world-view. Civilization is the product of an optimistic-ethical view of the world. [pg 008] Only in proportion as the prevalent world-view is one which is world- and life-affirming and at the same time ethical, do we find ideals of civilization put forward and kept influential in the habits of thought of individuals, and of society. That this inner relation between civilization and the world-view of civilized peoples has never received the attention that it deserves, is the result of there having been among us so little real meditation on the essential nature of civilization. What is civilization? It is the sum total of all progress made by men and mankind in every sphere of action and from every point of view, so far as this progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress.