4. A Mindset Distinct from the Three Already Characterized

While the representatives of the hitherto characterized views are rapidly being appreciated, the members of a fourth group, which in this context will be considered last, are by no means in such a favorable position. In contrast to the reliable and reasonable hard workers they can easily appear to be pigheaded and daydreamers remote from everyday life with complicated and incomprehensible motives stuck in theoretical idioms, who above all in view of the seriousness of the situation cannot lay claim to securing the attention of the active and industrious ones. By many they are regarded with mistrust, in so far as they are not even ridiculed and defamed, provided one does not consider oneself to be too noble to even look at them; there are after all but so few of these mavericks. Indeed, what moves them is at all not so easy to explain as those outlooks obvious to everyone. For these other ones aspire to something new and thereby resist the tried and tested habits of thought that naturally and with some justification balk at the unconventional and untried.

The basic view common to those mentioned last, even though it assumes the strongest differentiated individual mode of appearance, can initially be characterized in simple terms as follows:

An above all inward directed effort and a union of people with such aspirations is, according to this divergent view, for modern man of no great importance, if its basis does not constitute a contemporary individualized consciousness. Working at one’s own soul in a solitary or collective quest alone cannot reach this goal and has therefore no itself qualifying value; it rather runs the risk of falling into personal or group-oriented egoism. For a contemporary individualized consciousness only develops itself through fully conscious participation in the ways and means that modern man is active. The main characteristic of this type of employment is the devotion to the outer world, transforming its conditions, overcoming its oppressors, standing firm in view of the adversity originating from its realm and in general being prepared to persistently confront  all forms of evil. This devotion to the outer world  as well as the results of such an active stance are – if that is the only or main goal pursued – yet again for in the true sense modern man of no great importance. They require just as the devotion to the inner world to be supplemented. Such a supplement is given by a spiritually commensurate penetration of the world situation, i.e. the forms of consciousness and life in which free individuals can work together, thus an orientation undertaken with the seriousness of a worldview about the spiritual sense of being active in the outer world and working together in it. The inwardly directed form of activity as well as the outwardly directed one therefore miss, when nothing more is undertaken, the essential and thus lead astray.  That is at least the viewpoint which will now be considered in more detail.

In view of these misgivings the representatives of the third group will claim that the concern for a special way of thinking and action is superfluous, because they have taken up the union of both tendencies with their simultaneous best possible unfolding as their cause and as content of their activity