separation from the rest of human culture. It implied a cleavage
between the different spheres of society which ruled out any genuine
solution of social problems.

I knew from history that religion and art had once exercised a function
which is to-day reserved for science, for they had given guidance in
even the most practical activities of human society. And in so doing
they had enhanced the quality of human living, whereas the influence of
science has had just the opposite effect. This power of guidance,
however, they had long since lost, and in view of this fact I came to
the conclusion that salvation must be looked for in the first place
from science. Here, in the thinking and knowing of man, was the root of
modern troubles; here must come a drastic revision, and here, if
possible, a completely new direction must be found.

Such views certainly flew in the face of the universal modern
conviction that the present mode of knowledge, with whose help so much
insight into the natural world has been won, is the only one possible,
given once for all to man in a form never to be changed. But is there
any need, I asked myself, to cling to this purely static notion of
man's capacity for gaining knowledge? Among the greatest achievements
of modern science, does not the conception of evolution take a foremost
place? And does not this teach us that the condition of a living
organism at any time is the result of the one preceding it, and that
the transition implies a corresponding functional enhancement? But if
we have once recognized this as an established truth, why should we
apply it to organisms at every stage of development except the
.highest, namely the human, where the organic form reveals and serves
the self-conscious spirit?