The Religion of Self 230 CHAPTER X An Ethical Inquisition 241 CHAPTER XI Vigorous Affirmations 258 CHAPTER XII Regeneration 290 REGENERATION CHAPTER I _WHO IS THE CRITIC?_ Voltaire said that if all the celestial bodies are inhabited, our earth must be the mad-house of the universe. To us who know the era of the great cynic only as recorded by the history of Dryasdusts, and the flippant memoirs and autobiographies of his contemporaries, his biting sarcasm cannot be considered undeserved. But, with regard to our own times, most of us would probably hesitate to brand our present state of culture, our modern civilization, as a fool’s paradise. It is a truism that an historical epoch can only be correctly studied at a distance in time, as the outlines of a mountain can only be studied at a distance in space. The actor in a piece, though intimately acquainted with his own part and the accessories with which he comes in contact, cannot form a just idea of the impression which the play, with its more or less successful rendering, its scenery, and other spectacular effects, produces on the mind of the average spectator. A super who is ignorant of stage management and of the precise results the manager aims at might deem many things going on behind the stage both foolish and ridiculous. To him the frantic efforts of some actor, or scene-shifter, to produce some ordinary effect might well appear as lunacy. The judgment we form concerning the time we live in runs a great risk of being biassed by the narrowness of the vista we can command. The interdependence of causes simultaneously at work, the co-operation of impulses active at a great distance, the peculiarities of circumstances surrounding each leading phenomenon, the real intentions of leading characters, secret motives in groups and parties—all this represents so many sealed books to the contemporary to be gradually opened only by future historians. There are no doubt many facilities ready to hand for the man who in modern times desires to study his own epoch, which were not available in the past. Distances are practically suppressed, the whole of civilized humanity has been placed in intimate connection, a highly developed Press records daily events everywhere in a minute fashion, to the making of books there is no end, and in every direction an elaborate mechanism is established for the obtaining of rapid and precise information. In fact, the _Kammergelehrte_, who, like Kant, would study the world-phenomenon without leaving his native town, would in our days stand a better chance of obtaining completer and exacter information than any philosopher before him.