Now and then such confusion of opinions is considered an advantage, the advantage of fertility. To be sure, it is fertility,—the fertility of fruitless attempts, of errors, and of fancies, the fertility of disorder and chaos. If this fertility be a cause of pride for science, then mathematics, physics, astronomy, and other exact sciences, are indeed to be pitied for having to forego this fertility of philosophy, and the privilege of being an arena for contradictory views. Without Peace and without Joy. After the hopeless shipwreck of the modern, godless thought, can we wonder at meeting frequently the despondency of _pessimism_? Is not pessimism the first born of scepticism? At the close of the nineteenth century we read, again and again, in reviews of the past and forecasts of the future, how the modern world stands perplexed before the riddles of life, confessing in pessimistic mood that it is dissatisfied and unhappy to the depth of its soul. With proud self-consciousness, boasting of knowledge and power of intellect, they had entered the nineteenth century, praising themselves in the words: How great, O man, thou standest at the century’s close, with palm of victory in thy hand, the fittest son of time! With heads bowed in shame these same representatives of modern thought make their exit from the same century. Of the number that voiced this sentiment we quote but one, Prof. _R. Eucken_, who wrote: “The greatness of the work is beyond doubt. This work more and more opens up and conquers the world, unfolds our powers, enriches our life, it leads us in quick victorious marches from triumph to triumph.... Thus, it is true, our desired objects have been attained, but they disclosed other things than we expected: the more our powers and ideas are attracted by the work, the more we must realize the neglect of the inner man and of his unappeased, ardent longing for happiness. Doubts spring up concerning the entire work; we must ask whether the new civilization be not too much a development of bare force, and too little a cultivation of the being, whether because of our strenuous attention to surroundings, the problems of innermost man are not neglected. There is also noticeable a sad lack in moral power: we feel powerless against selfish interests and overwhelming passions: mankind is more and more dividing itself into hostile sects and parties. And such doubts arouse to renewed vigour the old, eternal problems, which faithfully accompany our evolution through all its stages. Former times did not finally solve them, (?) but they were, at least to a degree, mollified and quieted. But now they are here again unmitigated and unobscured. The enigmatical of human existence is impressed upon us with unchecked strength, the darkness concerning the Whence and Whither, the dismal power of blind necessity, accident and sorrow