Is there, however, any sense in ploughing for the thousand and second time a field which has already been ploughed a thousand and one times? Has not everything which can be said about ethics already been said by Lao-tse, Confucius, the Buddha, and Zarathustra; by Amos and Isaiah; by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; by Epicurus and the Stoics; by Jesus and Paul; by the thinkers of the Renaissance, of the “Aufklärung,” and of Rationalism; by Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hume; by Spinoza and Kant; by Fichte and Hegel; by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others? Is there a possibility of getting beyond all these so materially contradictory convictions of the past to something new which will have a stronger and more lasting influence? Can the ethical kernel of the thoughts of all these men be collected into an idea of the ethical, which will unite all the energies to which they appeal? We must hope so, if we are not to despair of the fate of the human race. Does thought about ethics bring more ethics into the world? The confused picture offered us by the history of ethics is enough to make one sceptical about it. On the other hand, it is clear that ethical thinkers like Socrates, Kant, or Fichte had a moralizing influence on many of their [pg 022] contemporaries. From every revival of ethical reflexion there went forth ethical movements which made the contemporary generation fitter for its tasks. If any age lacks the minds which force it to reflect about the ethical, the level of its morality sinks and with it its capacity for answering the questions which present themselves to it. In the history of ethical thought we wander in the innermost circles of world-history. Of all the forces which mould reality morality is the first and foremost. It is the determining knowledge which we must wring from thought. Everything else is more or less secondary. For this reason everyone who believes that he can contribute something to help forward the ethical self-consciousness of society and of individuals has the right to speak now, although it is political and economic questions that the present day prescribes for study. For what is inopportune is really opportune. We can accomplish something lasting in the problems of political and economic life only if we approach them as men who are trying to think ethically. All those who help forward in any way our thought about ethics are working for the coming of peace and prosperity to the world. They are engaged in the higher politics, and the higher rational economics, and even if all they can do is nothing more than to bring ethical thinking to the fore, they have nevertheless done something valuable. All reflexion about ethics has as one result a raising and rousing of the general disposition to morality. The search for a basic principle of morality