It is true, indeed, that to believe in the possibility of transforming the modern state into the civilized state is a piece of heroism. The modern state finds itself to-day in an unprecedented condition of material and spiritual penury. Collapsing under the weight of debts, torn by economic and political struggles, stripped of all moral authority, and scarcely able any longer to maintain its authority in practical matters, it has to wrestle for its existence in a succession of fresh troubles. Whence is it to get power to develop, in the face of all these things, into a truly civilized state? What crises and catastrophes the modern state is still destined to go through cannot be foreseen. Its position is further endangered especially by the fact that it has far overstepped the limits of its natural sphere of operation. It is an extraordinarily complicated organism which intervenes in all social relationships, which tries to regulate everything, and therefore in every respect functions ineffectively; it tries to dominate economic life as it dominates spiritual life; and for its activities over this extensive field it works with machinery which in itself at once constitutes a danger. At some time and in some way or other the modern state must emerge from its financial trouble, and reduce its activity to a normal standard, but by what methods it can ever again get back to a natural and healthy condition remains still a riddle. The tragic thing is, then, that we have to belong to the unsympathetic and unhealthy modern state while cherishing [pg 283] the will to transform it into a civilized state. There is demanded from us an absolutely impossible achievement of faith in the power of the spirit. But the ethical world- and life-view gives us strength for the task. Living in the modern state and thinking out the ideal of the civilized state, we first of all put an end to the illusions which the former cherishes about itself. Only by the majority of its members taking up a critical attitude towards it can it come to itself again in reflexion about itself. The absolute impossibility of the continuance of the state in its present condition must become the universal conviction before things can become in any way better.