EVEN in times of peace there is neither harmony nor peace among—living beings. For in the hidden depths of life, behind the mask of peace, everything from worm to man is continually struggling for its existence. The one incessantly pursues and onpresses the other, the one rises while the other succumbs, and each tries to succeed at another's expense. Nevertheless, we do distinguish between times of war and times of peace. Only when there is an avowedly open struggle between two armies we call it war. This happens comparatively seldom, and we can survey the course of the matter from beginning to end, and mark its cause and effect. The insignificant constant struggles between individuals, which we know to exist, though we do not know the details and effects, these we call peace—because this distinction has become a matter of convention.
In the same way also in the spiritual world there is war and peace. There, too, we understand by peace the ceaseless insignificant struggles which the eye does not see, such as the struggle between conflicting views, conflicting needs, conflicting habits. Even the most trifling alteration in any one province of life, for example, the change of a letter in the spelling of a word, can only be brought about through strife ending in victory for one party. But these unimportant matters are carried on in silence and remain unnoticed by the liv-
ing generation. Only after a certain interval, when all these changes amount in the aggregate to something considerable, the educated look backward and perceive in their astonishment that everything, from views and manners of life down to language and pronunciation, has become, as it were by itself, greatly transformed from what it was formerly, without their knowing exactly how, when, and through whom it happened.
Constant, gradual development—this, then, is known as peace. Occasionally, however, it happens that there is also war in the spiritual world, an open struggle between intellectual armies, between two theories, the new and the old. The preparations for this war are made in secret, in the hidden depths of the gradual evolution. When everything is ready, the struggle bursts forth with violence, and in a short space brings about important changes.
The nature of these changes, as well as the general course of the war, depend mainly on the nature of the new theory which caused the whole storm: whether it be exclusively negative or both positive and negative.
A new positive theory makes its appearance when the gradual evolution has matured in the minds of a select few a new positive tendency: the belief in a new truth or the sensation of a new need—in most