They have lost their way, puzzled by mazes and perplexed with error they are in hopeless confusion; a correlative of individualistic thinking. If the absolute subject and his experiences of life are the self-appointed court of last resort, the result must be anarchy and not accord. This is manifest; moreover, it is frankly admitted by the spokesmen of freethought.
This anarchy is described in vivid words by Prof. Paulsen, recently the indefatigable champion of freest thought: “We no longer have a Protestant philosophy, in the sense of a standard system. Hegel'sphilosophy was the last to occupy such a position. Anarchy rules ever since. The attempted rally around the name of Kant failed to put an end to the prevalent anarchy, or to the division into small fractions and individualisms. Then there is the mental neurasthenia of our times, the absolute lack of ideas, especially noticeable among so-called educated people.... Billboard art has found a counterpart in billboard-philosophy. Here, there, and everywhere we meet the cry: here [pg 294]is the saviour, the secret ruler, the magic doctor, who cures all ills of our diseased age.... After a while, the mob has again dispersed and the thing is forgotten” (“Philosophia Militans”).
“There is no uniform philosophic theory of the world, such as we, at least to a certain extent, used to have,” says Paulsen elsewhere, “the latest ideas are diverging in all directions of the compass.”When one buildeth up, and another pulleth down, what profit have they but the labour? (Ecclus. xxxiv. 28). “We have no metaphysics nowadays,” says R. Eucken in the same strain, “and there are not a few who are proud of it. They only would have the right to be so if our philosophy were in excellent shape, if, even without metaphysics, firm convictions ruled our life and actions, if great aims held us together and lifted us above the smallness of the merely human. The fact is an unlimited discordance, a pitiful insecurity in all matters of principle, a defencelessness against the petty human, and soullessness accompanied by superabounding exterior manifestation of life.”
This is the status of modern philosophy and also of liberal, Protestant, theology. Of views of the world, of notions and forms of Christianity, of ideas, essays and contributions to them, there is choice in abundance. Here, materialistic Monism is proclaimed, warranted to solve all riddles. There, spiritualistic Pantheism is retailed in endless varieties. Yonder, Agnosticism is strutting: no longer philosophy, but facts and reality, is its slogan. Then comes the long procession of ethical views of life: “Contemplations of life; theories of human existence surround us and court us in plenty; the coincidence of ample historical learning with active reflection induces manifold combinations, and makes it easy for the individual to draw pictures of this kind according to circumstance and mood; and so we see individual philosophies whirling about promiscuously, winning and losing the favour of the day, and shifting and transmuting themselves in kaleidoscopic change” (Eucken). Hegel, although he lectured with great assurance on his own system, lamented: “Every philosophy comes forth with the pretension to refute not only the preceding philosophy, but to remedy its defects, to have at last found the right thing.” But past experience shows, that to this philosophy, too, the passage from Holy Writ is applicable: “Behold, the feet that will carry thee away are already at the threshold.” Indeed, often it has come to pass that these philosophers themselves bury their ideas, preparatory to entering another camp. Consider the changes that men like [pg 295] Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Strauss, Nietzsche, have essayed in the short course of a few decades, and we are justified in assuming that they would again have changed their last ideas had death not interfered.
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 [pg 296]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 in our fate, the low and vulgar in the human soul, the difficult complications of the social body: all unite in the question: Has our existence any real sense or value? Is it not torn asunder to an extent that we shall be denied truth and peace for ever?... Hence it is readily understood why a gloomy pessimism is spreading more and more, why the depressed feeling of littleness and weakness is pervading mankind in the midst of its triumphs.”
Similar, and profoundly true, are the words spoken some years ago by a noted critic in the “Literarische Zentralblatt” (1900): “A painful lament and longing pervades our restless and peaceless time. The bulk of our knowledge is daily increasing, our technical ability hardly knows of difficulties it could not overcome ... and yet we are not satisfied. More and more frequently we meet with the tired, disheartened question: What's the use? We lack the one thing which would give support and impetus to our existence, a firm and assured view of the world. Or, to be more exact, we have found that we cannot live with the view of the world which in this century of enlightenment has stamped its imprint more and more upon our entire mental life. Materialism, in coarser or finer form, has penetrated deeply our habits of thought, even in those who would indignantly protest against being called materialists; the name seemed to imply scientific earnestness and liberal views. However, there was still left a considerable fund of old, idealistic values, and as long as we could draw upon them we saw in materialism only the power to clear up rooted prejudices, and to open the road for progress in every field. To the newer generation, however, little or nothing is left of this old fund, hence, having nothing else but materialism to depend upon, they are confronted by an appalling dreariness and emptiness of existence. And ever since the man on the street has absorbed the easy materialistic principles, and looks down from the height of his ‘scientific’ view of life contemptuously upon all reactionaries, we have become aware of the danger that imperils everything implied by the collective word ‘humanism.’ This explains the plethora of literature which in these days deals with the questions of a world philosophy.” Who is not reminded after reading this mournful confession of the words of St. Augustine: “Restless is our heart, till it finds rest in Thee”?
If it be true, then, that philosophical thought stands in closest connection with civilization, determining the latter in its loftier aspects, then the freedom of thought of modern subjectivism has proved its incompetence as a power for civilization; it can produce only a sham-civilization, it can incite the minds and keep them in nervous tension, until, tired of fruitless endeavour, they yield to pessimism. However painful it may be to admit it, this freedom of thought is and remains the principle of natural decadence of all the higher elements of a culture that is not determined by the number of guns, by steam-engines, and high-schools for girls, but which consists, chiefly, in a steadfast, ideal condition of reason and will, from which all else obtains significance and value. What further proof of intellectual and cultural incompetence can be demanded which this principle has not furnished already?