Chapter III: The Suicide of Thought Summary and Analysis

The problem in the modern world is not the lack of virtue, it is that the virtues still exist but without proper proportion and restriction. The virtue of love, for example, is exercised in such an unbridled fashion by some that they denounce the notion that anyone could act wrongly, because that would be mean spirited and, apparently, not a loving thing to do. This problem exists in the intellectual realm, too. In previous times, humility meant that man doubted himself but revered truth; in the modern world, man has unlimited confidence in himself and doubts whether there really is anything such as truth. This is still, in some sense, humility, but it is not the ambition of man which is humbled, but rather his reason. For example, the truly humble...