That is why I am undertaking what has never been attempted in this way before, viz. so to pose the problem of the Western world-view as to make the Western search for a world-view come to a halt and take account of itself. There are two points on which it must be clear before it proceeds to further exertion. The first is the overwhelming importance in the search for a world-view of the quality of the world-view sought. What is it that we want? We want to find the world- and life-affirmation and the ethical system which we need for that serviceable activity which gives our life a meaning, based on such thought about the world and life as finds a meaning in them also. If our search for a world-view is once thoroughly permeated by the recognition that everything turns upon these two fundamental questions, it is thereby saved from betaking itself to by-paths, thinking that by some happy disposition of fortune it can reach its goal along them. It will then [pg viii] not search for a “metaphysic,” thinking by means of it to reach a world-view, but it will search for a world-view and accept with it anything “metaphysical” that may turn up. From every point of view it will remain elemental. The second task which the conscious search for a world-view must not shirk, is the consideration of what is the real and ultimate nature of the process by which it has hitherto attempted to secure that serviceable world-view which hovered before it. Reflexion on this is necessary that it may make up its mind whether further advance along the road it has hitherto followed gives any prospect of success. Our philosophy ought to have been philosophizing long ago about the road along which it was going in search of a world-view. It never did so, and therefore was always running uselessly round and round in a circle. The process by which Western thought has hitherto sought for a world-view is doomed to be fruitless. It consisted simply in interpreting the world in the sense of world- and life-affirmation, that is, in attributing to the world a meaning which allowed it to conceive the aims of mankind and of individual men as having a meaning within it. This interpretation is acted upon by all Western philosophy. A few thinkers who venture to be un-Western and resolutely allow world- and life-negation and ethics to be made subjects of discussion, are side-currents which do not affect the main course of the river.