—But is the communal life of modern man not then of necessity sunk in the world of It? Can the two compartments of this life, economics and State, with their present extent and completeness of structure, be conceived to rest on any other basis but that of a deliberate renunciation of all “directness”, and a resolute rejection of every court of appeal which is “alien”, that is, which does not arise from this sphere itself? And if it is the experiencing and using I that rules here, the I that makes use of assets and work done in economics, and strivings and opinions in politics, must we not thank this unlimited mastery for the extensive and solid structure of the great “objective” products in these two circles? Is not, indeed, the productive greatness of the leading statesman and the leading economist bound up with the fact that he looks on the men with whom he has to deal not as bearers of the Thou that cannot be experienced but as centres of work and effort, whose particular capabilities it is his concern to estimate and utilise? Would his world not fall in on him if, instead of adding up He and He and He to make an It, be tried to calculate the sum of Thou and Thou and Thou—which never yields anything but Thou again? Would that not be to exchange formative mastery for fastidious dilettantism, and illuminating reason for cloudy fanaticism? And if we look from the leaders to the led, has not the very development in the nature of modern work and possession destroyed almost every trace of. living with what is over against them—of significant relation? It would be absurd to wish to return on this develop-ment—and if the absurd did come about, the enormous and nicely balanced apparatus of this civilisation, which alone makes life possible for the enormous numbers of men that have grown with it, would simultaneously be destroyed.
—Speechmaker, you speak too late. Just a little time ago you would have been able to believe in your speech, now you no longer can. For, a moment ago, you saw as I did, that the State is no longer led; the stokers still pile in the coal, but the leaders have now only the semblance of control over the madly racing machines. And in this moment, as you speak, you can hear as I do that the levers of economics are beginning to sound in an unusual way; the masters smile at you with superior assurance, but death is in their hearts. They tell you they suited the apparatus to the circumstances, but you notice that from now on they can only suit themselves to the apparatus—so long, that is to say, as it permits them. Their speakers teach you that economics is entering on the State’s inheritance, but you know that there is nothing to inherit except the tyranny of the exuberantly growing It, under which the I, leas and less able to master, dreams on that it is the ruler.