[450] although, as Karl Barth says, we all are romantics by nature (he means, by history^a) [some laughter]-- it is regrettable that the TRUE meaning of romanticism^b, namely its heritage from the Renaissance^c vision of reality as the self-manifestation of the Divine, has been lost so much and, instead of that, this theistic or rationalistic dualism which suppresses the natural and makes it exclusively a means for human ends. Are we still able, and if so, to what degree, to contemplate quietly, natural realities--not only taking a car and running through it [i.e. nature] and having swimming and other exercises, if we don’t prefer to read the New York Times, sitting in a beautiful place--

are we able to contemplate the power of being^d in natural phenomena? Or is the dynamics of the gadgets, of the means-for-ends which again are the means for other ends, etc., so powerful upon our lives (now I speak here against myself) that we are not able any more to have this intuitive relationship to the divine depths which we also find in nature? And it is interesting that the creators of modern science^e, and today again some of the great scientists^f, try to make us understand that their work is--just as Kepler^g said when he discovered the ways of the planets--that this is a description of the divine Glory, and that for this reason he wants to give this. Now, is the ideal of personality^h not a way of cutting us off from the nature beside us,

as a manifestation of the ultimateⁱ which SPEAKS to us, and in which we are enriched in an encounter, by power of being^j, expressing the ground of being^k in itself and for us?--That is the first question. The second is with respect to other beings. No, let me introduce another thing which has to do with nature, before I come to the human--namely the technical forming of nature.