The deepest thinkers teach the
deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose
of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position,
which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the
ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated
it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy.
Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its
emotional content something else--whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or
naturalism--will always remain a failure.
Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the
Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its
individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous
cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at
the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul
was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of
antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul,
nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual
soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a
hermit's life in the desert, for instance.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195