[482] theory, remaining in itself, without relationship to the events in the political and religious and social and economic life of the country. Humanism^a, especially during the 19th century in Germany, became identical with ivory-tower, and that means: only teaching, and only research for the sake of research: this alone is the function of the university.^b But the relationship to the life of the people, to the political realm, is something which is beneath the dignity of the university. This was the situation up to the First World War, 1914-19. After this period one thing became clear: the catastrophe of the First World War was rooted in the fact that the upper classes of Germany were not active participants of the political realm. They couldn't

prevent the militaristic powers from drawing Germany into the war, and after this they couldn't prevent the split of Germany into the parties, which at that time took over largely: the Social Democrats and the other sections of the German population. The universities at that time, at the time of my study, were almost INFINITELY removed from political thought and relationship to economic realities. They did not encourage [the] connection of philosophical, or literature, or other problems belonging to the humanities, to the actual situation in the life of the nation and the world. The result was that an empty space, a vacuum, developed in the minds of the

upper classes, and that into this empty space then, as is always the case with empty spaces, the forces of a primitive nationalism^c entered and produced the two Wars and ruined Germany as well as Europe. Now here you have something of the importance of these problems FAR BEYOND the petty politics of a campus; it goes far beyond them. It has importance for the whole