[MA-245]
THE BELL-FOUNDING OF CULTURE
Culture has been made like a bell, within a covering of coarser, commoner material, falsehood, violence, the boundless extension of every individual "I," of every separate people this was the covering. Is it time to take it off? Has the liquid set, have the good and useful impulses, the habits of the nobler nature become so certain and so general that they no longer require to lean on metaphysics and the errors of religion, no longer have need of hardnesses and violence as powerful bonds between man and man, people and people? No sign from any God can any longer help us to answer this question; our own insight must decide. The earthly rule of man must be taken in hand by man himself, his "omniscience" must watch over the further fate of culture with a sharp eye.