All these hindrances stand in the path of the will to civilization. A dull despair hovers about us. How well we now understand the men of the Greco-Roman decadence, who stood before events incapable of resistance, and, leaving the world to its fate, withdrew upon their inner selves! Like them, we are bewildered by our experience of life. Like them, we hear enticing voices which say to us that the one thing which can still make life tolerable is to live for the day. We must, we are told, renounce every wish to think or hope about anything beyond our own fate. We must find rest in resignation. The recognition that civilization is founded on some sort of theory of the universe, and can be restored only through a spiritual awakening and a will for ethical good in the mass of mankind, compels [pg 079] us to make clear to ourselves those difficulties in the way of a rebirth of civilization which ordinary reflection would overlook. But at the same time it raises us above all considerations of possibility or impossibility. If the ethical spirit provides a sufficient standing ground in the sphere of events for making civilization a reality, then we shall get civilization, provided that we return to a suitable theory of the universe and the convictions to which this properly gives birth. The history of our decadence preaches the truth that when hope is dead the spirit becomes the deciding court of appeal, and this truth will in the future find in us a sublime and noble fulfilment. [pg 080] CHAPTER V CIVILIZATION AND THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE The regeneration of our theory of the universe and the restoration of civilization. A reflective theory of the universe; rationalism and mysticism. The optimistic-ethical theory as a theory of civilization. The regeneration of our ideas by reflection about the meaning of life. The greatest of all the spirit’s tasks is to produce a theory of the universe (_Weltanschauung__(_*_)_), for in such a theory all the ideas, convictions and activities of an age have their roots, and it is only when we have arrived at one which is compatible with civilization that we are capable of holding the ideas and convictions which are the conditions of civilization in general. What is meant by a theory of the universe? It is the content of the thoughts of society and the individuals which compose it about the nature and object of the world in which they live, and the position and the destiny of mankind and of individual men within it. What significance have the society in which I live and I myself in the world? What do we want to do in the world, what do we [pg 081] hope to get from it, and what is our duty to it? The answer given by the majority to these fundamental questions about existence decides what the spirit is in which they and their age live. Is not this putting too high the value of a theory of the universe?