3. General Political Considerations of My Vienna Period
I am convinced today that in general, making exception for persons of extraordinary talent, a man should not be publicly active in politics before his thirtieth year. He should not do so because up to this time he has usually been building a general platform, from which he can examine the various political problems and definitely determine his own attitude to them. Only after he has thus gained a fundamental world-concept, and so has stabilized his own way of looking at the individual questions of the day, should the man, now at least inwardly mature, be allowed to take part in the political guidance of the community.
Otherwise he is in danger some day of having either to change his previous attitude in fundamental questions, or, contrary to his better knowledge and insight, to cling to a view which his understanding and convictions have long since rejected. The first alternative is very painful to him personally, since, being himself undecided, he can no longer rightfully expect his adherents’ faith in him to have the old unshakable solidity; but to his followers such an about-face of their leader means complete confusion in addition to their feeling a certain shamefacedness toward those they have previously attacked. The second alternative brings about a result which is particularly common today: the less the leader continues to believe in what he says, the more hollow and superficial grows his defense, and the viler his choice of means. Then he no longer dreams of working seriously for his political revelations (no one dies for something he does not himself believe in), and his demands upon his followers grow proportionately greater and more impudent, until at last he sacrifices his remaining fragment of leadership, to end up as a “politician.” He
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