Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Germany in Travail
Spiritual resources which, released by the revolution, will give those principles the necessary force.
My chief concern was the study of these Spiritual forces. These may indeed manifest themselves in any of the larger fields of activity: in economics and politics, religion, education, or in art. I am not a student of economics or of politics. My investigations in this field were merely to test the state of mind with which the people were meeting the political Situa tion, and the spiritual attitude they assumed to the supreme economic problem of their daily bread. I found a situation so confused and so threatened by distress and passion, that positive Spiritual forces were exerting no in?uence over it as yet. I have not dared to venture upon a description of the religious life of new Germany. There were evidences of changes that may in time have large importance, but they do not lend themselves to either fair or adequate treatment. The institutional church of Germany had allowed itself to become so entirely a part of the state that, when the latter fell, a full Share of the discredit rested upon the church. The laws of the new government, intended to guarantee a greater freedom to religious expression, could do little to produce a new spirit. Whatever attempts at organized expression of a renewed re ligious Spirit I could find were quite apart from the church and so vague that any description would lead to false impressions. In liberal education a new Spirit is calmly exerting itself and is squarely and bravely meeting the new conditions. My main interest, however, is centered upon the mind and spirit of men and peoples as expressed in literature, and upon the Spiritual forces that men and peoples evidence in their attitude to the great expressions of literature.
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