Critical Spirit and Modernity

It seems to me that with the development of the critical spirit we shall be able to realize, not merely our own selves, but the collective life of the race, and so to make ourselves absolutely modern, in the true meaning of the word modernity.

For he to whom the present is the only thing that is present knows nothing of the age in which he lives. . . . To know anything about oneself, one must know all about others. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathize, no dead mode of life that one cannot make alive.