Yet from the history of the past we can infer only what has been, not what will be. Even if it proves that no single people has ever lived through the decay of its civilization and a rebirth of it, we know at once that this, which has never happened yet, must happen with us, and therefore we cannot be content to say that the reasoned ethical ideas on which civilization rests get worn out in the course of history, and console ourselves with the reflection that this is exactly in accordance with the ordinary processes of nature. We require to know why it has [pg 067] so happened hitherto, and to draw an explanation, not from the analogy of nature, but from the laws of spiritual life. We want to get into our hands the key of the secret, so that we may with it unlock the new age, the age in which the worn out becomes again unworn and the spiritual and ethical can no longer get worn out. We must study the history of civilization otherwise than as our predecessors did, or we shall be finally lost. Why do not thoughts which contribute to civilization retain the convincing power which they once had, and which they deserve on account of their content? Why do they lose the evidential force of their moral and rational character? Why do traditional truths cease to be realities and pass from mouth to mouth as mere phrases? * * * * * Is this an unavoidable fate, or is the well drying up because our thinking did not go down to the permanent level of the water? Moreover, it is not merely that the past survives among us as something valueless; it may cast a poisonous shade over us. There are thoughts on which we have never let our minds work directly because we found them ready formulated in history. Ideas which we have inherited do not let the truth [pg 068] which is in them come out into active service, but show it through a kind of dead mask. The worn out achievements which pass over from a decadent civilization into the current of a new age often become like rejected products of metabolism, and act as poisons.