More urgent than ever has become the problem concerning the present situation of mankind as the upshot of past developments and in view of the possibilities of the future. On the one hand we see possibilities of decay and destruction, and on the other hand we see possibilities that a truly human life is now about to begin, but as between these conflicting alternatives, the prospect is obscure. […]
The guiding principles of western mankind are incompatible with the notion that a mere circular recurrence can be stable. Our reason tells us that every new cognition implies further possibilities. Reality does not exist as such, but has to be grasped by a cognition which is an active seizure. From decade to decade the rapidity of the relevant movements has increased. No longer is anything fixed. All things are put to the question and as far as possible transformed[…]
Since I cognise the epoch through my cognition of the whole, or regard the cognition of the epoch as a desirable aim, I am confidently opposed to those who repudiate the demands of the epoch as I cognise it. To me they seem renegades, shirkers, defeatists, deserters from the cause of reality. They are traitors who have hauled down the flag!
Of course one who thinks in this way cannot escape the dread of being, after all, untimely, unseasonable. He watches anxiously lest he should be left behind, afraid that, while reality continues its steady march, he may fall out of step. The supreme question, therefore, is, what ‘the time demands’. How delightful to be able to declare this, that, or the other to be pre-Kantian, old-fashioned, pre-war! With such phrases, a doom is sealed. Enough to say reproachfully: ‘You are behind the times; you are out of touch with realities; you fail to understand the new generation!’ Only the new is the true; youth alone stands in the foremost front of time. Be up-to-date at any cost! Such an impulse towards contemporary self-assertion culminates in a trumpeting of the present, a glorification of the passing show—as if there could be no shadow of a doubt as to what the present really is.