CHRISTIANITY A N D T H E N E W AGE
gradually led by an internal process of logic to criticise the principles of their own knowledge and to lose confidence in their own freedom.
The self-affirmation of man gradually led to the denial of the spiritual foundations of his freedom and knowledge. This tendency shows itself in every department of modern thought.
In philosophy, it leads from the dogmatic rationalism of Descartes and the dogmatic empiricism of Locke to the radical scepticism of Hume and the subjectivism of later German thought. Reason is gradually stripped of its prerogatives until nothing is left to it but the bare ” a s if” of Vaihinger.
In science, the growth of man’s knowledge and his control over nature is accompanied by a growing sense of man’s dependence on material forces. He gradually loses his position of exception and superiority and sinks back into nature. He becomes a subordinate part of the great mechanical system that his scientific genius has created. In the same way, the economic process, which led to the exploitation of the world by man and the vast increase of his material resources, ends in the subjection of man to the rule of the machine and the mechanisation of human life. Finally, in the political and social sphere, the revolt against the mediaeval principle of hierarchy and the