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The New Fundamental Feeling: our Final Corruptibility.—In former times people sought to show the feeling of man's greatness by pointing to his divine descent. This, however, has now become a forbidden path, for the ape stands at its entrance, and likewise other fearsome animals, showing their teeth in a knowing fashion, as if to say, No further this way! Hence people now try the opposite direction: the road along which humanity is proceeding shall stand as an indication of their greatness and their relationship to God. But alas! this, too, is useless! At the far end of this path stands the funeral urn of the last man and grave-digger (with the inscription, Nihil humani a me alienum puto). To whatever height mankind may have developed—and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began!—there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with God and eternity at the end of their career on earth. What is to come will drag behind it that which has passed: why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama? Away with such sentimentalities!

The New Fundamental Feeling: our Final Corruptibility.—In former times people sought to show the feeling of man's greatness by pointing to his divine descent. This, however, has now become a forbidden path, for the ape stands at its entrance, and likewise other fearsome animals, showing their teeth in a knowing fashion, as if to say, No further this way! Hence people now try the opposite direction: the road along which humanity is proceeding shall stand as an indication of their greatness and their relationship to God. But alas! this, too, is useless! At the far end of this path stands the funeral urn of the last man and grave-digger (with the inscription, Nihil humani a me alienum puto). To whatever height mankind may have developed—and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began!—there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with God and eternity at the end of their career on earth. What is to come will drag behind it that which has passed: why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama? Away with such sentimentalities!

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial