What was the result of our giving up the ethical conception of civilization, and therewith all attempts to bring reasoned ethical ideals into effective relation with reality? It was that instead of using thought to produce ideals which fitted in with reality, we left reality without any ideals at all. Instead of discussing together the essential elements, such as population, State, Church, society, progress, which decide the character of our social development and that of mankind generally, we contented ourselves with starting from what is given by experience. Only forces and tendencies which were already at work were to be considered. Fundamental truths and convictions which ought to produce logical or ethical compulsion we would no longer acknowledge. We refused to believe that any ideas could be applicable to reality except those derived from experience. Thus ideals which had been knowingly and intentionally lowered dominated our spiritual life and the whole world. [pg 042] How we glorified our practical common-sense, which was to give us such power in dealing with the world! Yet we were behaving, really, like boys who give themselves up exultingly to the forces of nature and whizz down a hill on their toboggan without asking themselves whether they will be able to steer their vehicle successfully when they come to the next bend or the next unexpected obstacle. It is only a conviction which is based upon reasoned ethical ideals that is capable of producing free activity, _i.e._, activity deliberately planned with a view to its object. In proportion as ideals taken from the workaday world are combined with it, reality influences reality. But then the human soul acts merely as an agent of debasing change. Events which are to produce practical results within us are worked upon and moulded by our mentality. This mentality has a certain character, and on that character depends the nature of those value-judgments which rule our relation to facts. Normally this character is to be found in the reasoned ideas which our reflection upon reality brings into existence. If these disappear there is not left a void in which “events in themselves” can affect us, but the control of our mentality passes now to the opinions and feelings which hitherto have been ruled and kept under by our reasoned ideas. When the virgin forest is cut down, brushwood [pg 043] springs up where the big trees were formerly. Whenever our great convictions are destroyed their place is taken by smaller ones which carry out in inferior fashion the functions of the former.