Any keen mind of the years 1820, 1850, and 1880 could by simple a priori reasoning, foresee the gravity of the present historical situation, and in fact nothing is happening now which was not foreseen a hundred years ago. “The masses are advancing,” said Hegel in apocalyptic fashion. “Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe,” announced Comte. “I see the flood-tide of nihilism rising,” shrieked the mustachioed Nietzsche from a crag of the Engadine.
