supposed aids which are offered us are no more than mere pretences; and they become dangerous and harmful so far as they deceive us concerning the seriousness and tension of the situation. The feeling of tension was increased through the historical treatment which accompanied our inquiry. For, from the point of view of history, the present confusion shows itself to be not a temporary obscuring of an indisputable truth, or a tendency on the part of man to become feeble and weary in the appropriation of such a truth, but to involve in doubt the basal nature of truth itself: the meaning of our life as a whole was seen to have fallen into uncertainty. The systems of thought, in the light of which we have hitherto regarded reality and steered the oncoming flood of appearances, have broken up and dissolved. We have become defenceless in face of the impressions of the environment which affect us with increasing force, and impel us now in one direction, now in another. It is not simply this or that aspect in human existence, but the whole of man's nature which has become problematical in this dissolution. Formerly, the chief result of the effort of universal history had seemed to be that man rises more and more above nature and builds for himself a realm with new contents and new values. Now, the desire to be something higher than nature appears to be a bold presumption; the idea that man has a special position is ably contested, and every distinctive task is denied him. Man appears to be far too insignificant and to possess far too little freedom to be able to take up arms against the world and to obtain the mastery of it. Doubts such as these are all the more painful because they are the result of our own work; in that we toiled, investigated, and pressed forward, we undermined the foundations of our own life; our work has turned with destroying power against ourselves. With the increase of external results, life as a whole has become increasingly hollow; it has no longer an organising and governing centre. Is it to be wondered at if the finer spirits of our age are weary, disheartened, and repelled by the feeling of the disharmony of the whole of present culture, which calls for so much effort from man and yields him so little genuine happiness; speaks of truth and lives from semblance and pretence; assumes an imposing mien and utterly fails to satisfy when confronted with ultimate problems? Is not the power of attraction, which the figure of St. Francis of Assisi was recently able to acquire, an eloquent witness to the reality of the longing for more plainness and simplicity in life? And yet we cannot take up again the position occupied by an earlier age; we cannot take up a past phase unchanged. No return to the conditions of the past can bring satisfaction to the spiritual needs of the present, for a device of this kind always leads by a detour back again to the starting-point. Ultimately, it is from ourselves alone that