We began, therefore, to persuade ourselves that it was, after all, possible to get through without any theory of the universe. The feeling that we needed to stir ourselves up to ask questions about the world and life, and to come to a decision upon them, gradually died away. In the unreflective condition to which we had surrendered ourselves, we took, to meet the claims of our own life and the nation’s life, the chance ideas provided by our feeling for reality. During more than a generation and a half we had proof enough and to spare that the theory which is the result of absence of theory is the most worthless of all, involving not only ruin to the spiritual life, but ruin universal. For where there is no general staff to think out its plan of campaign for any generation its subordinate officers lead it, as in actual warfare so in the sphere of ideas, from one profitless adventure to another. The reconstruction of our age, then, can begin [pg 086] only with a reconstruction of a theory of the universe. There is hardly anything more urgent in its claim on us than this which seems to be so far off and abstract. Only when we have made ourselves at home again in the solid thought-building of a theory which can support a civilization, and when we take from it, all of us in co-operation, ideas which can stimulate our life and work, only then can there again arise a society which shall possess ideals with magnificent aims and be able to bring these into effective agreement with reality. It is from new ideas that we must build history anew. For individuals as for the community, life without a theory of things is a pathological disturbance of the higher capacity for self-direction. * * * * * What conditions must a theory of the universe fulfil to enable it to create a civilization? First, and defined generally, it must be the product of thought. Nothing but what is born of thought and addresses itself to thought can be a spiritual power affecting the whole of mankind. Only what has been well turned over in the thought of the many, and thus recognized as truth, possesses a natural power of conviction which will work on other minds and will continue to be effective. Only where there is a constant appeal to the need [pg 087] of a reflective view of things are all man’s spiritual capacities called into activity. Our age has a kind of artistic prejudice against a reflective theory of the universe. We are still children of the Romantic movement to a greater extent than we realize. What that movement produced in opposition to the _Aufklärung_ and to rationalism seems to us valid for all ages against any theory that would found itself solely on thought. In such a theory of the universe we can see beforehand the world dominated by a barren intellectualism, convictions governed by mere utility, and a shallow optimism, which together throw a wet blanket over all human genius and enthusiasm.