It seems, indeed, a matter for scorn and derision [pg 101] that we should urge men to anything so remote as a return to reflection about the meaning of life at a time when the sufferings and the follies of the nations have become so intense and so extended, when unemployment and poverty and starvation are rife, when power is being dissipated on all sides in the most shameless and senseless way, and when organized human life is dislocated in every direction. But only when the general population begins to reflect in this way will forces come into being which will be able to effect something to counterbalance all this ruin and misery. Whatever other measures it is attempted to carry out will have doubtful and altogether inadequate results. When in the spring the withered grey of the pastures gives place to green, this is due to the millions of young shoots which sprout up freshly from the old roots. In like manner the revival of thought which is essential for our time can only come through a transformation of the opinions and ideals of the many brought about by individual and universal reflection about the meaning of life and of the world. But are we sure of being able to think out that affirmation of the world and of life, which is such a powerful impulse in us, into a theory of the world and of life from which a stream of energy productive [pg 102] of intelligible life and action may convincingly and constantly proceed? How are we to succeed in doing what the spirit of the Western world during past generations has in vain toiled to accomplish? Even if thought, once more awakened, should only attain to an incomplete and unsatisfying theory of the universe, yet this, as the truth to which we have ourselves worked through, would be of more value than a complete lack of any theory at all, or, alternatively, than any sort of authoritative theory to which, neglecting the demands of true thought, we cling on account of its supposed intrinsic value without having any real and thorough belief in it.