and so disposed has currency. 1bis type of representation is not first created by blinking, but the other way around : the blinking is a consequence of a type of representation already dominant. What type? The type that constitutes the metaphysical basis of the age called the Modern Age, which is not ending now but only just beginning, since the Being that prevails in it is only now unfolding into the predestined totality of beings. This metaphysical basis of the modem age cannot be explained in a few sentences. I refer you to a lecture I gave here in 1958, published in my book Timber Tracks under the title "The Time of the World View."
"We have invented happiness, say the last men, and blink."
We shall see to it from every angle, with the aid of our sociology, psychology and psychotherapy, and by some other means besides, that all men are soon placed in identical conditions of identical happiness in the identical way, and that the identity of the welfare of all men is secured. Yet, despite this invention of happiness, man is driven from one world war into the next. With a wink the nations are informed that peace is the elimination of war, but that meanwhile this peace which eliminates war can be secured only by war. Against this war-peace, in turn, we launch a peace offensive whose attacks can hardly be called peaceful. War—the securing of peace; and peace—the elimination of war. How is peace to be secured by what it eliminates? Something is fundamentally out of joint here, or perhaps it has never yet been in joint. Meanwhile, "war" and "peace" are still like the two sticks that savages rub together to make fire. Meanwhile, the last man must move in a realm of ideas which blink at everything and can do nothing else but blink, in consequence of an unearthly fate that for bids modern man to look beyond himself and his type of