II

THE OUTLINE OF A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND CONSIDERATIONS

Our inquiry ended in a definite negation; it showed the present condition of things to be marked by severe internal conflict and in danger of dissolution from within. Many movements of thought and life cross, disturb, limit, and oppose one another. Since what to one seems a wholesome truth seems to another pernicious error, all inner community of life disappears, and with it all firmness of conviction and joy of creative activity. The more these conflicting tendencies develop the more do they crush and destroy all the traditional elements of our life; the more are the spiritual contents and goods, which the necessities of life compel us to adhere to, deprived of their basis in the depths of the soul. The confusion which prevails in the present time, with its continual change, its rapid alteration of circumstances, its power to convey the most diverse impressions, its production of ever new combinations, might even attract and entertain us if it were no more than a drama. But if the confusion is more than this, if it includes our destiny and is meant to signify the whole of our life, then, by reason of its detrimental effects upon the whole of life and upon man’s inwardness, and by reason of its lack of content and soul, it must completely fail to satisfy us, and must provoke an energetic resistance. True, a condition of things so full of contradictions has also its advantages; it accords to the activity of the individual the greatest liberty and gives him a feeling of supremacy; its dissolution of everything previously regarded as fixed enables uncontrolled feeling and unstable mood to acquire power, and at one time to flatter man pleasantly, and at another to carry him away impetuously. The individual’s attainment of freedom, however, gives as yet no content to life; and the feeling of supremacy is as yet not a real supremacy. These feelings and tendencies, which, within a wider whole of life, certainly serve to add to its animation, inevitably lead to a state of vagueness and emptiness when they put themselves forward as the whole. The supposed aids which are offered us are no more than mere pretences; and they become dangerous and harmful so far as they deceive us concerning the seriousness and tension of the situation.

The feeling of tension was increased through the historical treatment which accompanied our inquiry. For, from the point of view of history, the present confusion shows itself to be not a temporary obscuring of an indisputable truth, or a tendency on the part of man to become feeble and weary in the appropriation of such a truth, but to involve in doubt the basal nature of truth itself: the meaning of our life as a whole was seen to have fallen into uncertainty. The systems of thought, in the light of which we have hitherto regarded reality and steered the oncoming flood of appearances, have broken up and dissolved. We have become defenceless in face of the impressions of the environment which affect us with increasing force, and impel us now in one direction, now in another. It is not simply this or that aspect in human existence, but the whole of man’s nature which has become problematical in this dissolution. Formerly, the chief result of the effort of universal history had seemed to be that man rises more and more above nature and builds for himself a realm with new contents and new values. Now, the desire to be something higher than nature appears to be a bold presumption; the idea that man has a special position is ably contested, and every distinctive task is denied him. Man appears to be far too insignificant and to possess far too little freedom to be able to take up arms against the world and to obtain the mastery of it. Doubts such as these are all the more painful because they are the result of our own work; in that we toiled, investigated, and pressed forward, we undermined the foundations of our own life; our work has turned with destroying power against ourselves. With the increase of external results, life as a whole has become increasingly hollow; it has no longer an organising and governing centre. Is it to be wondered at if the finer spirits of our age are weary, disheartened, and repelled by the feeling of the disharmony of the whole of present culture, which calls for so much effort from man and yields him so little genuine happiness; speaks of truth and lives from semblance and pretence; assumes an imposing mien and utterly fails to satisfy when confronted with ultimate problems? Is not the power of attraction, which the figure of St. Francis of Assisi was recently able to acquire, an eloquent witness to the reality of the longing for more plainness and simplicity in life? And yet we cannot take up again the position occupied by an earlier age; we cannot take up a past phase unchanged. No return to the conditions of the past can bring satisfaction to the spiritual needs of the present, for a device of this kind always leads by a detour back again to the starting-point. Ultimately, it is from ourselves alone that help can come; and we can have recourse to no means other than those of the living present.

First of all, our state of necessity must be admitted to the full, and the danger of a further degeneration of life in respect of its spiritual nature adequately estimated. It is always a gain to obtain a clear idea of the condition of the matter in question and to grasp the problem as a whole. For, through this, we are saved not only from illusions leading to error, but also from the authority of the mere present and from a feeling of anxiety and fear in the presence of contemporary opinion. If this age is in a state of such uncertainty; if it achieves so little for that which concerns the foundations of our spiritual existence, then neither its agreement can impress us, nor its opposition appal us; but the endeavour to make life firm again can seek confidently what is needful for it, and, with care in regard to what it shall affirm and deny, can follow the way which its own necessities point out.

One fact in particular must tend to increase our confidence in this endeavour: the fact, namely, that a negative result, which proceeds from our own work, cannot be a mere negation, but must contain an affirmative element within it. From what reason could the traditional systems of life have become inadequate to man other than that they do not satisfy a demand that we ourselves make upon them, and must make upon them? It is plain that we need and seek more than we possess, and this seeking betrays that our being is wider or deeper than was assumed in those systems. Why did each of the different systems become inadequate, unless it was that life itself rejected as too narrow the standard involved in them? Why was it impossible to regard the different systems as having a certain validity, to allow them to continue side by side, and divide our existence amongst them, if not because we cannot possibly give up all claim to an inner unity? If, then, the present confusion is rooted in a wrong relation between our desire and our achievement, we need not faint-heartedly surrender ourselves to it. It is plain that there is something higher in us, which we have to arouse to life and realise to its fullest extent. We may be confident that the necessity of our being, which gave rise to the desire, will also reveal some way by which it may be satisfied.

A closer consideration of the results of our inquiry leaves no doubt with regard to the direction which research has to take to accomplish its task. Diverse, fundamentally different systems passed in review before us; each came forward as the unadorned and true expression of a reality that seemed common to them all; their struggle appeared to be a conflict concerning the interpretation of this reality. It became evident, however, that the conflict is, on the contrary, in regard not to the interpretation but the fundamental nature of reality; different realities arise which are irreconcilably opposed. The systems do not originate in a common and secure basis: the basis itself is sought, and may assume various forms. The conflict therefore is much more over ultimate problems than is usually supposed; it arises primarily out of the nature of life itself, out of the inner movement which advances against the illimitable world around us, and seeks to gain the mastery over it. Our life and our world acquire a definite character only by our taking up such a movement of counteraction, the particular nature of which decides over all further moulding of life. We have seen that when we ourselves became active we took up and emphasised one of the possibilities which lie within the range of our life, and held it as supreme over all the rest; we took as the fundamental relation one of the relations of which our life is capable, as, for example, the relation to God, to the immanent reason of the universe, to nature, to society, to one’s own individuality. A particular sphere of life was thus marked out; a scheme of life was yielded which appeared capable of taking up all experience into itself: according to the starting-point adopted, we sketched a distinctive outline and sought to include the whole content of human industry, man’s universe of work—as we might call it—in order to lead to our own perfection. This scheme, assumed to be true, then had to show what it was capable of; a powerful effort was brought forth to overcome the resistance of a world which, even when it was grasped from within, still remained alien to our nature; and, ultimately, to form the whole into a unity. We were not, as it were, an empty vessel into which a content flows from outside, but we generated from within a movement which went onward and onward, and desired to take up everything in itself; it was a matter of radically transforming the external into an inner life. We could succeed in this only in that life self-consciously pressed forward to win new powers; formed connections, branches, and graduations; accomplished an inner construction; and with progressive self-elevation became an all-inclusive whole, which did not possess a reality by the side of itself, but itself became complete reality. Thus, life took possession of the world only in that it widened itself from within to the world, and, in the appropriation of everything alien to it, advanced from the original outline to full concreteness.

According to the results of our inquiry, the chief decision in the struggle with regard to the nature of the world also depends upon our type of life. We convinced ourselves that there was no conception of life common to the different systems, but that from its starting-point, throughout its whole development, each of them shaped life differently from the others; and we saw that the differences even went as far as complete opposition. Each system of life had its own kind of experience; each formed its own instruments for the appropriation of the world; each saw of the infinite that in particular which corresponded to the main direction of its own movement. A consideration of all the facts makes it quite clear that a decision depends neither upon externals nor upon the individual, but upon the inner life and the whole; and further, that cognition does not give a solution to the problems of life, but that life itself has to reach a solution through its own organisation and construction, its own advance and creative activity.

However, that which was the compelling and deciding power in the systems of the present day—the struggle for life itself—has not attained to complete recognition in them. Rather, they were too quick to begin to occupy themselves with objects, and sought to show themselves superior in this respect to their rivals; the attention to results prevented the correct appreciation and estimation of experience itself. The impossibility of coming to an agreement concerning the object then forced us back to the life-process; and we were led to the view that the object appeared different because we ourselves placed something different into it, and that we saw less the object itself than ourselves and our life in the object. Thus we were induced to place our attention chiefly on the subject; but then there was a strong tendency to leave the world outside as a special realm; and the division of work between subject and object drove us still further into uncertainty. In the midst of such confusion, we did not come to the point of making a decision; we did not attain the position from which alone an agreement is possible; at one time one system, at another time another carried us away. We failed to recognise that, however much we come into contact externally, we live spiritually in separate worlds; that, while using the same expressions, we speak different languages, and therefore cannot possibly understand one another.

The gain is by no means an insignificant one, and a distinctive treatment arises, if we become clearly conscious of the fact that the shaping of the process of life itself is the chief object of conflict; that the movement is not one between world and life, but lies entirely within life; and that the essential matter is the perfecting of life itself. The recognition of this fact leads us to an immanent mode of treatment that has many advantages. The facts involved are now seen to lie deeper. The source of experiences is not so much the relation to the environment as the movement and expansion of life itself. Striving and conduct may now involve a certain concreteness; indeed, the actual experiencing of limitations and negations may lead to an elevation above them. The type of life does not seek to justify itself, to show its truth, through harmony with an external world; it is justified by its own advance, its increase in strength, and its upward growth. It is only a justification of this kind, a justification within its own realm, that can acquire a power to convince and to restore again to life that concreteness of which, in opposition to the excess of unrestrained reflection and vague feeling, it is to-day in the direst need. If we desire to arise above this state of division, and to attain a greater unity, we can achieve our aim only by the power of an inner unification of our life.

Instead, therefore, of considering the internal from the point of view of the external, we must consider the external from the point of view of the internal; our knowledge must be essentially a knowledge of self, our experience an experience of self, if we would come any nearer to the attainment of the aim. Our inner nature is not given to us as something complete; it has first to be aroused to life and developed; we need to attain to a state of self-determining activity if we would reach the highest that we are capable of. From the recognition of the necessity of greater activity, and of seeking the roots of the problem at greater depths, we become aware of a new relation of thought to life. Although thought may involve certain fundamental forms, and may adhere to them in all its activity, it is life in its totality, as we understand it, which first gives to thought its more detailed form, a characteristic nature, clear aims and sure tendencies. Thought, therefore, is inseparable from the movement and the advance of life; all hope of progress rests on the hope of a further deepening of life; a revealing of new relations, and a development of new powers. It is not from mere knowledge, but only from the movement of life as a whole that we can make any advance; but the life here referred to is one that includes knowledge, and not one that takes up a position independent of knowledge, and, in opposition to it, bases itself on supposed practical needs.

A treatment such as the one we have indicated has to be followed in the investigation upon which we are about to enter. The chief aim of this investigation is to reveal and to call forth life; it is not its chief aim to interpret life in conceptual terms. It is from this position, therefore, that we ask the question—which the conflict of the different systems of life forced upon us—whether a unity transcending the oppositions exists in us and can be aroused to life through our self-determining activity. It is from this position also that we ask the further question—which springs out of the struggle between the older and the newer modes of thought—whether ultimately man must give up the superior position which from early times he has adjudged himself, or whether an inner elevation is possible which gives him the power to cope with new tasks and new conditions. Whether such a treatment leads to a positive result is a question of fact; and what the answer to this is cannot be decided by a preliminary consideration, but only by the actual investigation.

I. THE MAIN THESIS

(a) THE ASCENT TO THE MAIN THESIS

The most expeditious way of arriving at a comprehensive conception of human life is to begin with the impression which we get of it as a whole; ascertain what problems arise from this, and seek to make what headway we can in solving them until we reach a stage where the necessity of a particular assertion becomes apparent. From the outset, however, the attention will be centred chiefly upon that which differentiates human life from other forms of life existing within our knowledge; it is from a consideration of this that we shall most readily see the whole in its proper light.

I. Man as a Being of Nature

No one doubts that human life forms the highest point of development that comes within our experience; that it is in some way more than mere animal life. But what it is that is characteristic in human life as distinct from animal life, and how it is to be interpreted, is a matter of dispute. From the earliest times there has been a great diversity of opinion and conviction concerning this matter, and absolutely contradictory views have been maintained. Some thinkers have believed it possible to regard human life, in spite of its uniqueness, as essentially the same as that of the animal, and to trace back all difference to a difference in the quantity of the fundamental nature which they all possess; these thinkers did not concern themselves with presenting the higher as developed from the lower by a gradual growth. Others, on the contrary, regarded human life as something essentially new and in its very nature distinct—the beginning of another kind of world—and denied to the uttermost a derivation from lower forms; these held it to be impossible to avoid the recognition of a break between animal and human life. According to which of these positions was accepted, life obtained a fundamentally different prospect and a fundamentally different task; activity necessarily had different aims and sought different paths; the conflict around this problem affected the whole sphere of existence.

As a result of the movements and experiences of the nineteenth century, this conflict has entered upon a new stage. In earlier times the decision had generally been made as a result of the immediate impression of the civilised man who was conscious of his superiority; it did not seem possible for him to lift himself far enough above his environment; the life of his soul, through its distinctive spiritual character, seemed to be as distinct from every impulse which nature exhibited as the sky is distant from the earth. Science and art, morality and religion were accepted as an original possession of man and as the power which had dominated his life from the beginning. He appeared to be a higher being; and to direct all thought and endeavour towards the strengthening of the distinctively human was regarded as the chief requirement of life.

The movements which have arisen in the Modern Age have led to a radical change in our treatment of this question: this change is chiefly due to science. Modern science breaks down the authority of the immediate impression, and, in contrast with it, projects a new representation of the world. Man is no longer looked upon as occupying a position of lonely elevation, but is seen to be in the closest concatenation with nature around him, and is regarded, finally, as a mere part of its machinery. Many movements of thought tend toward this conclusion and support one another. The physical relationship which exists between man and the animals could not have been so clearly perceived, and traced with such exactitude of detail by modern science had not the fixed boundaries, which in our representation had hitherto divided the life of the human soul from that of the animals, been abolished. The new view was further supported by the results of a keener investigation into the nature of psychical life, since in this investigation the traditional conception was analysed into its individual constituents, and it was sought to explain from their combinations even the highest spiritual achievements. The result of this modification of ideas was that the inner life of man was assimilated much more closely to nature than before; the juxtaposition and the succession of occurrences gained in significance; it was recognised that relations did not hold from the beginning but are developed gradually. The forces and impulses which were operative in this development seemed to have arisen from an actual process of nature, without any co-operation of human caprice. Our psychical life appeared to be nothing more than a continuation of nature. The great divergence between the heights attained in experience, and the theories that were formulated to account for them, caused no misgivings because the idea of a gradual evolution during an indefinite period of time was sufficient to bridge the widest gulf. At the same time the conception of society allied itself with that of history and lent its support to the general tendency. Every higher aspect of life that was accepted formerly as a proof of a supernatural order now became a witness to historico-social relationship and, with its new interpretation, lost its old mysteriousness. All this was, of course, only on the assumption that human life brings nothing essentially new with it. Not the least doubt as to the validity of this assumption came to those who entered upon this train of thought.

Thought was able to follow this course with the greater confidence because it went hand in hand with a change in practical life. By reason of the development of modern life, man’s relations to the environment have become increasingly significant to man. Modern industry and physical science have led him from a preponderatingly contemplative relation to his environment to an active one; infinite prospects have been disclosed; the forces of nature have been pressed more and more into the service of mankind. But even in the service which they render man these forces have won a power over him, since with a determining power they keep his activity and his thought bent upon themselves. The material side of life has escaped from the mean estimation in which it had previously been held, if not in the conduct of individuals, yet at the height of spiritual culture: to the present age it has become the indispensable basis of all development. The social movement, with its summoning of the masses to complete participation in happiness and culture, supports the tendency to estimate material goods more highly. With the cessation of oppression and necessity, and with the increase of material well-being, a general advance and an inner development of life seem assured. The whole tendency which we have considered exhibits man as solely and entirely a part of nature, even though nature may be conceived of more broadly than it was formerly; and the life of the society and of the individual as being determined by natural forces and subject to natural laws. How, along with this tendency, the traditional conception of the world has been completely transformed; how biology, in the sense of natural science, has been taken as the leading point of view for the explanation of life, it is unnecessary to follow further, since our consideration of the naturalistic system of life has already given us an insight into this matter.

2. The Growth of Man beyond Nature

But even after we had seen an older type of life disappear and a new one with the power of youth rise up, gain mastery over souls, and transform conditions, despite all its triumphs the new movement manifested limitations—limitations which did not arouse the criticism of the thinker, but with the compulsion of an actual power the opposition of the developing life of mankind. That which we became aware of in this connection will become even more clear to us, and impel us to seek for new aims, if we now concentrate our attention upon the process of life and follow it throughout its experiences.

There cannot be the least doubt that we belong to nature: no one can fail to recognise that it penetrates deep into the life of the soul, and to a marked extent impresses its own form upon that life: the boundary therefore is not between man and nature, but within the soul of man itself. But whether nature is able to claim the whole life of the soul, or whether at some point there does not arise an insuperable opposition to such a claim, is another question. Even the most zealous champion of the claims of nature cannot deny that man achieves something distinctive: we not only belong to nature, we also have knowledge of the fact; and this knowledge is in itself sufficient to show that we are more than nature. For in knowledge, be it in the first place however meanly conceived, however much concerned with the simple representation of external occurrences, there is a kind of life other than that which is shown in the simultaneity and succession of events at the level of nature. For it is a characteristic of knowledge that in it we hold the single points present together and connect them into a chain; but how could we do that without in some way rising above the mere succession and surveying it from a transcendent point? In this survey we pass from earlier to later, from later to earlier; and at the same time we are able to hold the multiplicity together: there must be a unity of some kind ruling within us; but the mechanism of nature can never produce such a unity. A transcendence of nature therefore is already accomplished in the process of thought, even when it only represents nature, only displays it to our consciousness. Intellectual achievement, however, is by no means exhausted in the representation of nature. The development of a new scientific conception of nature sufficiently demonstrates, as we saw reason to believe, that thought has far more independence than such representation implies; that in arranging and transforming phenomena it opposes itself to the environment. For the scientific conception of nature is not offered to us immediately as something complete; it has to be won from the naÏve view with toil and difficulty. In order to arrive at this scientific conception, thought must have a position antecedent to the impressions, must become conscious of itself, realise its own strength, and in its activity lead from universal to universal. The work of thought is not simply transitional: without its continuance that which has been gained would be quickly lost. Mere existence gives to nature no present reality for our thought and life. To follow the pathway to reality involves the overthrow of manifold delusions; and this necessitates such a longing for truth, and a power to gain truth, as only a thought, which transcends the sense impression, can produce. Not only is transcendence of nature demonstrated through the fact of the existence of thought with such independence, thought also carries within its being unique demands, measures the life of nature by their standard, and in that life recognises limitations not simply on this side and that, but also in the inner being of the whole. Thought cannot possibly be satisfied with the state of things as they are presented; it desires to illuminate, penetrate, and comprehend it; it asks “Whence?” and “Why?”—it insists that events must have a meaning and be rational. And from this point of view it feels the mere actuality of nature—which excites no opposition within its own sphere—to be a painful limitation and constraint, something dark and meaningless. To thought, a life which is swayed by blind natural impulse must be inadequate, indeed intolerable. Similar conflicts arise in other directions. Thought embraces a whole and demands a whole; it cannot refrain from passing a judgment upon the whole. If this treatment is applied by thought to nature, the predominant concentration of life in the single individuals and their juxtaposition will appear to be a serious defect; all the passionate strivings of the individual beings cannot deceive us concerning the inner emptiness of the whole. For in nature there is nothing that experiences the whole of this movement as a whole; makes the experience self-conscious and something of value in itself. In the movement of nature everything individual is sacrificed; and there seems to be nothing to which this sacrifice brings results which are experienced as a good. The same holds good of a culture that resolves human social relationship into a simple co-existence of individuals, regards them as battling together in the struggle for existence, and believes all progress of the whole to be dependent upon their ceaseless and pitiless conflict. Even if such a conflict leads to further external results, there is no spiritual product: the results are experienced by no one as an inner gain. The indescribable meanness of this whole culture, swayed as it is solely by the spirit of egoism; the slavish dependence to which this culture condemns man; the rigour of the individualism that rules in it, cannot possibly escape from the criticism of thought. Thought, in transforming this condition of things into an experience—that is, in making us conscious of it—at the same time makes it impossible for man to accept it as final. Since it makes us more conscious of the limitations of this state of life, thought demonstrates—and that through this very consciousness of its limitations itself—that our whole existence is not exhausted by that individualisation and detachment, but that there is a tendency of some sort within us which strives towards the unity of the whole.

Problems no less complex arise in relation to time. Looked at from the point of view of nature, no inconsistency is felt in the fact that only a short span of time is granted to the life of individuals; that they come and go in most rapid succession. For here the individuals do not rise to the consideration of anything beyond their own time; their presentation and desire are exhausted in the present; they feel no longing for a continuation of life. The position is radically changed with the entrance of thought. Thought does not drift along with time: as certainly as it strives to attain truth, it must rise above time and its treatment must be timeless: a timeless validity appertains to truth, a comprehension of things “under the form of eternity” (sub specie aeternitatis). To a being who, in his thought, rises to comprehension of experience from the point of view of the eternal, all temporal limitation, and especially the short duration of human life, is a source of surprise and a contradiction. The rapid sequence of generations, the perpetual decay of all that impels us so forcibly to desire life and holds us so firmly to it, seem to deprive our endeavour of all its value, and give to the whole of existence a shadowy, phantom-like character. Feelings of this kind have been aroused anew in our own time. The restlessness of the activities of our civilisation and the lack of real meaning in this civilisation, which to the present age seems to constitute the whole of life, need only to be clearly and forcibly comprehended by thought, and all its bustle and all its passion cannot prevent the emergence of an acute feeling of its dream-like nature.

The feeling of the lack of reality and depth in the life of nature will become the keener in proportion to the degree of independence thought evolves. For the more thought finds its own basis in itself, the more will it treat nature as an appearance, the more clearly will it recognise that sense, with all its obviousness and palpability, does not guarantee the possession of truth; for truth comes to us only through thought. In thought, therefore, the world of nature loses its immediacy and becomes a realm of appearances and phantoms.

A consideration of all the facts leads us to the result that a life consisting solely of nature and intelligence involves an intolerable inconsistency: form and content are sharply separated from each other; thought is strong enough to disturb the sense of satisfaction with nature, but is too weak to construct a new world in opposition to it. Life is in a state of painful uncertainty, and man is a “Prometheus bound” in that he must needs experience all the constraint and meaninglessness of the life of nature, and must suffer therefrom an increasing pain without being able to change this state in any way.

The experience of our time confirms this conclusion in no indefinite manner. Since, with regard to the material and the technical, we have attained heights never before reached, the bonds between us and our environment have increased a thousandfold, and our work has united us more closely with the world, we seem now for the first time to attain a sure hold of reality. At the same time, however, the activity of thought, and with it unrestrained reflection, have also increased immeasurably in modern life. This reflection forbids all naÏve submission to the immediacy of nature; destroys all feeling of security; and comes between us and our own soul, our own volition. We are thrown back once more on to the world of sense, that we may seek in it a support and a scope for our life and effort; and from the point of view of this world the work of thought appears to be a formation of clouds. But this formation persists; draws us back again to itself and, with all its insubstantiality, proves strong enough to make us regard the physical as appearance. Our life is divided into two parts which cannot and will not coalesce. The emergence of a new life, which can do nothing but comprehend the other in thought, and which, while it is indeed capable of depreciating the other, cannot itself advance further, is seen to involve a monstrous inconsistency.

If the union of nature and intelligence produces so much confusion, we are inevitably led to ask whether man does not possess in himself more than thought; whether thought is not rooted in a deeper and a more comprehensive life, from which it derives its power. It is not necessary that such a life should be manifest to us in all its completeness; we shall also be compelled to acknowledge it as a fact even if in the first place it has to struggle up in face of opposition; however, in its development it must show distinctive contents and powers which could not be the work of a subjective reflection. If there is a life and a development of this kind, it will be necessary for us to comprehend it in its various aspects and tendencies, and only when we have accomplished this may we endeavour to obtain a representation of the whole.

Now, developments of life which defy limitation by the mechanism of nature and set a new kind of being in opposition to it do, in truth, appear. We recognise such developments in the processes by which life liberates itself from bondage to an individualism and its subjectivity, and afterwards attains a self-conscious inwardness. We may consider both these developments somewhat more in detail. So far as man belongs to nature, his conduct is determined solely by the impulse to self-preservation; every movement must either directly or indirectly tend to the welfare of the individual; everything may be traced back to what happens to the individuals. This by no means indicates a distinct separation of man from his environment. For even the mechanism of nature closely unites that which happens to the individual with that which happens around him; the individual can progress only in so far as he is united with others: he cannot advance his own well-being without advancing that of others. Even in a “state of nature” man takes his family, his nation, and the whole of humanity indeed, up into his interests; and as this tendency is not bounded from without, but may be immeasurably refined and extended in an indefinite number of directions, it easily comes to appear that this involves an inner deliverance from self, and that another is of value to us for his own sake. But it is no more than an appearance; for with all the external agreement the inward separation is far greater, and amounts to opposition. Within the limits of nature we can certainly concern ourselves with something which is only indirectly useful to us; but we can never be concerned with anything which is devoid of all use to ourselves; we cannot take such a direct interest in the welfare of others as will tend to our own disadvantage. If experience gives evidence of such an activity and such an interest, in so doing it demonstrates a transcendence of nature. Now, experience does give such evidence, and indeed with irresistible clearness. A witness to this is seen in the zeal with which man habitually attempts to give to his struggles for mere self-preservation a better appearance, a semblance of conduct performed out of genuine regard for the interests of others. To what purpose all this trouble to acquire such an appearance; for what reason this hypocrisy which permeates the whole of human life; and whence this appearance itself if we belong solely and entirely to nature? Further, whatever elements of semblance there may be in the general state of human life, the development of that life is by no means nothing but semblance. The social life of man is not explicable as a simple collection of individuals related to one another in different ways; but in the family, in the state, in humanity as a whole there is evolved an inner unity, a sphere of life with distinctive values and contents. And as it is of the nature of these to transcend the ends and aims of the individuals, to arouse other feelings and stimulate to other efforts, so their demands may be directly opposed to those of individual self-preservation. Man sees himself compelled to decide whether he will pursue his own welfare or that of the whole: from the necessity of a decision it is impossible to escape. However much in the majority of cases self-interest may preponderate, we cannot dispute the possibility of his acting in direct and conscious opposition to his own interest; of his subordinating and sacrificing himself; and of his doing this “not grudgingly nor of necessity,” but willingly and gladly; of his feeling this subordination to be not a negation and a limitation, but an affirmation and an expansion of his life. All who strive for some essential renewal and elevation of human life base their hope and trust upon such a disposition. A renewal and an elevation of life involve far too much toil, conflict, and danger; they demand a renunciation and a sacrifice far too great for them to be commended to us by consideration of our own welfare, or for them to dispense with the necessity of counting upon an unselfish submission, a sincere sympathy, a genuine love. That which was produced with glowing passion in heroic beginnings must with a quieter warmth pervade all progress also. An inner community of minds is indispensable if the whole of culture is not to become a soulless mechanism and inwardly alien to us. It is true that the external way of regarding the facts of life often fuses together as one, lower and higher, a continuation of nature and the beginning of a new life. Language also supports this tendency, since it indicates fundamentally different psychical states with the same terms. Yet the love in which the union with others is sought only in order to advance one’s own interests, and the love which finds in this union a release from the limitations of the natural ego, and gains a new life, remain distinct. The sympathy which feels the sufferings of others to be unpleasant because one’s own complacency is disturbed by them, and which in consequence fades away and disappears as soon as the sight of the suffering comes to an end, is absolutely separated from a sympathy which extends to the soul of the other, and possessing which, in order to contribute to the relieving of the other’s need, one willingly sacrifices one’s own complacency: a sympathy, therefore, which extends its interest and help without limit beyond all that simply has to do with the relation to the environment. How much real love and genuine sympathy the experience of humanity shows is a question in itself. Even as possibilities of our being, as matters of thought which occupy our attention, and as tasks and problems, they give evidence of a development of our life beyond the limits of nature.

This forgetfulness of self is a kind of deliverance of life from the limitations and the interests of the individual: a new relation of man to man, of person to person, thus arises and brings about an essential change, indeed a complete transformation of aims and feelings. The deliverance is effected in another direction with the emergence of a new relation to things, to the object. In the realm of nature everything that is external has a value for man only as a means and an instrument to the advancement of his own welfare; from the point of view of nature, it is impossible to understand how a thing could attract us on account of a content and a value of its own. As a matter of fact, the object does attract us and acquire a power over us in this manner, and this not merely here and there but over a wide area in movements which affect and transform the whole of life. Nothing else differentiates work—viewed spiritually—from other activity, and nothing else elevates work above other activity than this: that in work the object is inwardly present; and that man may make its moulding and extension a motive, and find this a source of joy. This seems to be something self-evident, only because it happens daily to us and around us; and we do not recognise a new type of life in it, simply because in human life it is usual to find that work only gradually attains complete independence. For it is the pressing necessity of life, the impulse to self-preservation, that first arouses us from our natural inactivity and compels us to occupy ourselves with things; and in this change from inactivity to activity it is our own advantage that we first seek. But that which to us, to commence with, was simply a means; that which was perhaps most unwillingly done, begins to attract and hold us more and more for its own sake; becomes an end in itself, and is able so to charm us that it forces the idea of utility completely into the background. It is possible for work to become so attractive, and of such a value in our estimation, that to ensure its success we can make sacrifices, and can pursue it in direct opposition to our own welfare. Only when the object is regarded and treated in this manner can it win an inner proximity to us; reveal to us its relations; develop characteristic laws; make demands upon us and call forth our power to meet them. In this way it constrains us, but the constraint is not exerted upon us from without, but proceeds from our own decision and activity. We do not feel the relation to be an oppression, but rather as a witness to our freedom; in the subordination to the object we feel that we are caught up into a life more comprehensive, clearer and richer than any we can develop from the subjective. We reach a stability and a calm in ourselves, and have within our own being a support against all vacillation and error. Work, therefore, produces relations which on the one hand unify the endeavour of the individual and fashion his life as a definite whole; and on the other, bind humanity into a creative community. In the former case we have vocation, with its demands and its limitations, it is true, but with them also its strengthening and its elevation of life; in the latter complexes of work develop in whole departments of life, in which the individuals find themselves side by side and are ultimately united into the community of an all-inclusive whole of culture. From this something is evolved which is independent not only of the choice but also of the interests of mere man: a kingdom of truth, a world of thought transcending all human subjectivity is formed. Thus we see something grow up within the human sphere which leads man beyond himself, and which is valid not simply for him but even in opposition to him. The whole matter bristles with problems: from the point of view of the life of nature this new life must appear to be an insoluble riddle; and yet it has far too much value and certitude to be banished as imaginary.

Along with this detachment of life from the mere individual and the mere subjectivity of man, there is a liberation from external ties, and the development of a self-conscious spirituality. As at the level of nature life is spent in the development of relations with the environment, in action and reaction, so the form of life in man remains bound, since the life of the soul cannot dissociate itself from the experience of sense. The apparent inwardness that is evolved at this level is simply an after-effect of sensuous feelings and desires. So far as the life of nature extends, the forces and laws of the life of the soul will only refine what the external world exhibits in coarser features. The mechanism of nature also extends into human life; natural impulses of conduct, as well as association of ideas, reveal the fact that the life of the soul is in complete dependence upon natural conditions. From this point of view it seems impossible that inwardness should ever become independent. The actual experience of human life, however, shows that what is thus regarded as impossible is indisputably real. The detachment from the mere subjectivity of the ego and the development of universal values, which exist over against us, can be effected only if the basis of life lies deeper than the contact with the environment. It was a work of thought which brought about the transition and gave birth to the new life; only with the help of thought did it ever become possible to form relations of a new kind and to rouse man’s interest in them. The realities which arose were not of sense but conceptual, ideal. The more this movement increased in extent, the more human existence was transformed into realities of thought. Is not such a transformation evident when in ourselves we see before all else, not the sensuous being of nature, but a personality or an individuality; when in relationship with one another we form the idea of the state, and feel that we are ourselves members of the state; when we regard and value the cognate beings around us from the conception of humanity? As a matter of fact, a strong tendency in this direction runs through the whole history of humanity: sense does not disappear, but is taken up more and more into something conceptual; the world of thought gives us increasingly the point of view from which we fashion our lives. We find a progressive spiritualisation of religion, of morality, of law, of the whole life of culture. In everything life seeks a deeper basis; an inwardness wins an independence of the environment, and exercises on the environment a transforming power. The relations and the order of the realities of thought manifest a law different from that of sense presentations with their mere juxtaposition. For in the former case an inner unity, an objective relation is evolved, and the significance of the individual member is estimated according to its position in the whole. The distinctive attributes in a conception form no mere collection, and the statement of a syllogism no mere sequence; rather, in both, a comprehending act of thought grasps the manifold and arranges the separate elements according to their relationship within the whole. The course of presentation with its mere succession is by no means simply suppressed through this development of thought; it persists and governs consciousness on the surface. But the surface is not the totality of the intellectual life; through it and transcending it an activity of thought manifests itself, forms new connections, and maintains itself against all opposition.

Accordingly, the power that thought exercises is fundamentally different from the physical power of association, or even of custom. In the case of thought there is an insistence upon a consistent and related whole which, even though externally insignificant, produces most powerful effects. If contradictions exist in our world of thought and condition of life, they may become intolerable, and the desire to remove them lead to the emergence of impetuous movements. If, on the other hand, we recognise that certain things which formerly seemed to be unrelated, even though they existed side by side, are really inwardly related; or if, again, an assertion involves a consequence that has not hitherto been deduced, then the demand, that these things shall be unified and this consequence developed, is capable of breaking down even the strongest opposition. In this matter an invisible is capable of more than a visible power. Of course, thought in isolation has not such a power; it acquires it only through its relation to a wider life and in championing the cause of that life. For thought is wont to defend the life of the individual, of a people, a historical situation of humanity, on the one hand from an abundance of inconsistencies, and on the other from dissolution and incompleteness, without any conflict growing out of it. Life as we experience it immediately is anything but a regular logic of the schools. In itself simple perception of the fact that an inconsistency exists, or that ideas which have been regarded as valid require further development, need not arouse the feeling of man and lead him to assert his activity; he can acquiesce, and leave the condition of things unaltered; he can voluntarily resign himself to the inconsistencies and incompleteness. But, nevertheless, there is a point at which this condition of inconsistency can be endured no longer, at which to transcend it becomes the dominant task of life. This point is reached when the confusion is no longer something external to us which we contemplate, but enters into the substance of our life, so that the inconsistency becomes a division, and an attitude of inconsequence towards it a limitation of our own being. The solving of the problem then becomes an essential part of our spiritual preservation. And in that it commands the whole energy and passion of such preservation it can do that of which thought, with its necessity, is not in itself capable, it can rouse our whole life to activity and break down even the strongest opposition. It is from the inner presence of a determining and moulding process of life that thought itself first obtains a characteristic form, and is able to impress it upon things, and so subject them to itself. A spiritual self-preservation of this kind is fundamentally different from all physical self-preservation: for the former, it is not a matter of the self asserting its place in the co-existence of things, but of becoming an independent inward nature, and of establishing a distinctive whole of life. The exact significance of spiritual self-preservation is for the present obscure enough; but whatever it may be, it derives its power from within and not from contact with the environment.

How deeply these inner movements are rooted in human life the so-called historical ideas show with particular clearness. Certain thought complexes, or rather certain tendencies of life, arise, and win an overwhelming power in opposition to all narrowly human concerns. They force the activity of mankind into particular channels; they follow out their consequences with pitiless rigour; they speak to us in a tone of command, and require absolute obedience. Neither the interests of individuals nor those of whole classes prevail against them; every consideration of utility vanishes before their inner necessity. The history of religions, for example, has often shown such an astonishing consistency in the following of characteristic tendencies that their adherents could see in it the working of a divine spirit. Similarly, the Enlightenment, in its time with overpowering might seized minds and penetrated deeply into every department of life; to-day we have a similar experience in the case of the social movement. On all sides something is acknowledged as an imperative requirement, as indispensable for the spiritual persistence of man—something which cannot be brought in from outside, and which may indeed be entirely inconsistent with external conditions. Has not the conflict of inner necessities with the external circumstances that were opposed to them been a leading motive power in history, and is not all genuine progress achieved through such an opposition?

Again, the great force that has been exerted in the movement of history in the detection and the elimination of contradictions can be explained only in this context. Logic, as we saw, played an unassuming rÔle in this matter, and the indolence of man always inclined to easy accommodation and compromise. It was the increased vital energy, the adoption of a particular issue as the main issue, that made movements, which had long existed in a state of harmony and peace, irreconcilable enemies, and drove them to a life-and-death struggle. With a lower level of spiritual activity the Middle Ages unsuspiciously united a religion of ecclesiastical organisation with a religion of personal feeling and disposition; and it did not feel that there was an inconsistency in their union so much as that one was the completion of the other. As soon and so far, however, as in the Modern Age spirituality won more independence and more self-consciousness, and felt itself to be the centre of the whole, it was inevitable that a dependence upon an external order should be experienced only as an intolerable oppression; and the division of life between the one and the other became an impossibility. It was necessary only that a powerful and passionate personality, like that of Luther, should take up the problem, and make it the sole object of his effort, and the hour of revolution had come. How meanly they think of the controlling forces of history who would trace back such changes to the selfishness or the vanity of individuals! Looked at from our point of view, the inner changes within the life of universal history often appear to be simplifications—cases of energetic concentration on the essential, and of fundamental separation of the subsidiary. The truly great carry on a ceaseless conflict against the chaotic confusion which the life of the majority is wont to produce ever anew—a condition in which matters of the first importance are confused with those that are subsidiary; all inner gradation is lacking; and the great is treated as something insignificant, and the insignificant as something great. There is a struggle to secure a clear differentiation and gradation; to establish a centre, and to transform life into a genuinely self-conscious life. Have not all the principal revivals of religion, of morality, of education, been simplifications?

These movements show life in a particular form; something emerges in it which, unconcerned with the weal and the woe of man, follows its own course and makes absolute demands; and, more than anything else, disturbs and destroys his calmness and complacency. How heavily Germany has had to pay for the movement of the Reformation by being thrown back politically, nationally, and economically! It is inevitable that all movements of an ideal kind, the social movement of the present included, should appear from the point of view of natural well-being, troublesome and pernicious disturbances. They can be regarded as something higher only when we acknowledge that life does not consist entirely in external relations, or in the endeavour to attain harmony with the environment, but that an inner task grows out of life itself, and first gives to human existence a value and a dignity.

In the development of a self-consciousness and of a movement of life itself, we rise above the motive of utility, by which nature is swayed. It is a moral element in the widest sense; it is the consciousness of something objectively necessary, unconditionally transcending the ends of the narrowly human, that first gives to convictions axiomatic certainty and to conduct the right energy. This moral element attains to a more independent display in the moral self-judgment of man that is called “conscience.” True, this conception has been the subject of much error and has been much over-estimated. Not only has the moral judgment less power over man than is frequently assumed, but that which is called conscience is often—generally, in fact—nothing more than a by-product of custom and of accommodation in human social life. In this case the inner life has still attained no independence, but remains dependent upon the environment; and the disposition thus produced is nothing more than a feeling of aversion to the results of conduct, nothing more nor less than concealed fear of punishment—a state of the soul which the most prominent thinkers have, with good reason, stigmatised as a manifestation of weakness and cowardice. But, however much that is foreign to it and of an inferior order may have been associated with conscience, nevertheless, judging conduct, as it does, according to the inward disposition and not according to consequences, conscience is a unique, original phenomenon. To whatever extent conscience, as we know it, may have had its source in something external, and in however great a degree it may depend upon changing circumstances, it is nevertheless impossible to explain the fundamental fact by reference to the environment. For, if our life depended solely and entirely upon the environment and no movement arose from within, all influence from without could do nothing but subdue us by sheer force; there could never be an independent recognition and acceptance of the command addressed to us; never the feeling of an inner responsibility for conduct; never an independent extension of the original precept; and yet all these phenomena are in fact found in human experience. True, we are affected very greatly by external forces; but that they may achieve what they do a movement from within must meet them, take them up, and carry them further. The enormous amount of pretence which flourishes amongst us with regard to matters of morality, and which so easily obscures our vision for the chief matter, would be unintelligible if the spiritual did not manifest some kind of independence in the moral judgment. Unless there is such a development towards independence, the moral judgment must also, as far as its content is concerned, be determined by the condition of the social environment: it could never follow a course of its own; never give rise to anything new; never enter into inner conflict with the environment. Yet, as a matter of fact, we find these tendencies in abundance. The individual is able, in the light of his own moral conviction, to approve and value something which all around him reject; and conversely, to condemn and reject something which all around him esteem and respect; and this he is able to do under the compulsion of inner necessity, and not simply out of a love of vain paradox. This opposition of individuals to the condition of things in the social environment has been the main source of all inner progress in matters of morality. For it is in matters of morality, in particular, that that which hitherto had given no offence has become intolerable to individuals; and that new and imperative demands such as had never been made before have emerged with constraining power. Or did the idea of humanity, the abolition of slavery, and the commandment to love one’s enemies, for example, arise in some other way? If in respect of such matters as these that which on its first appearance was paradoxical quickly came to be regarded as self-evident, what else was operative in bringing about this result than an inner necessity, from which, when once we become conscious of it, we can never again escape? Suitable conditions in the social environment were, of course, also necessary for the fulfilment and the extension of those moral requirements; but they could never have originated from the environment, or have derived from it their unconditional nature, their certainty of victory, and their indifference to all external consequences: qualities without which they could not have effected what they have.

In the life of the individual the moral judgment manifests its power in affirmation as well as in negation. If it approves one’s disposition and conduct, it gives to life a greater stability and joyfulness; if it condemns, then existence is paralysed by division. In this experience it is implicitly assumed that the distinction of good and evil has its source neither in the preferences of the human individual nor in those of the human society; but that in this antithesis a new order that is present only to the inner nature is revealed.

We see, therefore, that in contrast with its attachment to the external, life attains an independent inwardness which we are compelled to acknowledge, however mysterious the inward may at present be to us, and however little we may be able to define its nature more closely. Earlier in our investigation we were led to recognise a movement of life from the narrowness of the individual to the comprehensiveness of the whole. It is obvious that our two results are closely connected with each other and refer to each other. For we attain a unity, as contrasted with the juxtaposition of the elements of the visible world, only through a powerful activity from within; but this activity cannot emerge unless life forms a whole in contrast with its dissipation into disconnected points.

These two developments are obviously sides of the same life—a life which bears a totally different character from that of the psychical life which forms a mere continuation of nature. Within the soul itself there is a distinction between two levels, of which that other than nature may in agreement with established usage be called “spiritual,” however little may be implied by this expression; however mysterious, indeed, the conception may for the present be. In contrast with the old, this new level is unmistakably at a disadvantage. The old seems to include the whole range of human existence; the new, on the other hand, must toilsomely struggle for a place of some kind. Nevertheless, in spite of its external insignificance, the spiritual gives birth to a movement of no mean character; in face of all opposition it seeks to form a centre of life of its own, and to make this the chief basis of effort; it is to be found thus in the life of mankind as revealed in history, and also in that of the individual. Within the conception of culture we comprehend all achievements distinctive of man. But what is culture if it does not assure to man a position independent of nature; if it does not set up ideals which can arise only out of a new life? Ultimately the chief motive-power of culture is the longing of mankind for a new kind of being in contrast to that of nature. Culture necessarily becomes superficial and empty when it directs human striving to external objects and does not lead through all occupation with externals to its own development and to the advance of its own being. The work of culture is genuine and powerful only when man seeks in it his own true and ultimate self.

How every development of the spiritual advances towards the attainment of a new unity of life may be more clearly seen in the case of the individual, in relation to whom we meet with the conceptions of personality and of spiritual individuality. However much confusion there may be in the ordinary use of these conceptions, the conception of personality merits the estimation in which it is held only if it is regarded as the bearer of a new life in contrast to that of nature, and not simply as something added to nature. The development is more evident with the conception of spiritual individuality. For such an individuality is by no means something given to a man in the natural characteristics which he brings with him into life. Within this particular nature, as a rule, many things, significant and insignificant—things which are original in himself and things which are due to external influence—are chaotically confused; and, as it lacks an inner unity and an adjustment of the different aspects, one aspect may directly contradict another. If the individual is no more than these natural characteristics, he can become active as a whole only through a summation of the multiplicity, and not through a dominating and organising unity. With the transition to the new kind of life a desire for such a unity awakens and gives rise to a definitely characteristic movement. A unity must be found within us in some manner; it must be included in the range of possibilities open to us. But in order to obtain supremacy it must be grasped, be appropriated and strengthened by our self-activity. We ourselves therefore become a task in the treatment of which it is possible to fall into serious error. Looked at from this point of view our spiritual nature is seen to be the product of our own activity. We cannot fail to recognise a peculiar interweaving of freedom and fate in our existence.

The inner history of all creative minds shows how great may be the inspiration and the tension which arise in this striving to realise a spiritual nature; an inspiration and a tension which are evident even when the main direction for the realisation of this nature has been easily found and only the more detailed form has to be sought: they are still more apparent when the main direction itself is in question. How toilsome it has often been for a man to come to that in which his strength lay, and with the aid of reflection to attain a state of secure creative activity; to unite all forces to a common achievement; and to make a distinct advance beyond the traditional position of the spiritual life! Life was by no means a completed gift and something to be easily enjoyed, even in the case of natures lavishly equipped by destiny—as, for example, Goethe: it was in a struggle for itself that it won a complete independence and a proud superiority over everything external. This struggle was being fought in all his cares, in all thought for natural and social well-being, all utilitarian considerations in regard to the externals of life. It gave to the man amid all his doubts and agitations the certainty of being something unique, something indispensable; at the same time it lifted him into an invisible world, and enabled him to understand his own life as an end complete in itself. How different this is from the struggle for existence, for the preservation of physical life; and how clearly a new life, another kind of reality, arises in these movements! The new life does not by any means appear only at the heights of spiritual creation; rather it would be true to say that the life which is present in the whole of human existence becomes most easily discernible at these heights. The movement towards a spiritual individuality may be begun in the most simple conditions; and it is not to be estimated according to the degree of its achievement. For, where world stands against world, everything depends upon the decision with regard to the fundamental principle, and this may be made at any point. The mere possibility of making such a decision testifies here irrefutably to a reality: the reality of a new order of things.

3. The Inner Contradiction of the New Life

The conclusion we are led to is that a new life distinct from that of nature arises in our soul. With a great diversity of manifestations, it surrounds us with an indisputable actuality; no one can fail to recognise that something of importance, something distinctive comes to pass in us. But as soon as we try to comprehend these manifestations as a whole, and to ascertain the meaning of the whole, a difficult problem arises. It is comparatively easy, however, to come to an understanding as to the negative aspect of the matter. It is obvious that the new life is not an embellishment or a continuation of nature; it would bring with it something essentially new. Again, it is obvious that it is not a product of a single psychical function, such as thought or feeling; it would form a whole transcending the psychical functions, and from this whole determine the form of each function distinctively. But what is this new reality and this whole to which the course of the movement trends? The more we reflect over the question the more strongly we feel that it is a direction rather than a conclusion that is offered to us in this matter; something higher, something inward and so on is to evolve, but what is embedded in the inward and in what this supremacy is based is at present not apparent. Further, every attempt at a more definite orientation at once reveals to us a wide gulf, indeed a harsh contradiction, between the content of that which is sought and the form of existence from which it is sought. The chief impulse of the spiritual life is that it wills to liberate us from the merely human; to give us a share in the life of the whole; to remove us from a happening between things to their fundamental happening. Seen from within, the history of humanity is primarily an increasing deliverance of life from bondage to the narrowly human, an emergence of something more than human, and an attempt to shape our life from the point of view of this: it is an increasing conflict of man with himself. At the same time, however, it is a taking up of the whole into himself; since man in all his planning and striving is related to the whole, it seems to him that his own nature must remain alien to himself if the whole does not disclose itself to him and allow him to participate in a life which has its source in ultimate depths; if in the life of the whole he does not find a purer and a more genuine self. The idea of truth impels us beyond all the limitations to which a particular being is subject, beyond all communication of things from without. There must be nothing between us and reality; the inner life of reality must become ours, and thus our life will emerge for the first time from a shadowy existence to full reality, from the narrowness of the mere individual to the comprehensiveness of infinity. The idea of the good makes similar demands. To the spiritual movement, the advancement of merely human well-being is far too mean an aim. This movement makes us clearly conscious of the triviality of mere happiness; of the oppressive and destructive effect of a continual reference to our own subjectivity; and of the unworthiness of treating love and justice as only means to our welfare. It becomes at the same time an urgent duty to break through the narrow limitations of the natural ego, and to conduct our life from the point of view of objective truth and comprehensiveness, and so for the first time to become capable of genuine love and justice.

It is true that these aims are lofty, and, we feel we have the right to say, aims that may not be rejected. But it is not at all evident how they are to be reached from the position of man; it is not at all clear how man shall press forward from mere existence to the creative basis, from the part to the whole: for his particularity and his mere existence hold him fixed. But in his existence nature preponderates by far: individual tendencies of a new order do appear; but how could they in their state of isolation and weakness bring about a revolution and place life on a new foundation? As a matter of fact, we usually find these impulses to a new life drawn into the service of natural and social self-preservation, and, over against the passionate struggle for existence, condemned to complete impotence and shadowiness.

The whole life of culture makes us clearly conscious of this perplexity. The essence of that life consists in this, and by this alone can it be held as true—that it wills to build up a new, spiritual reality within the sphere of humanity. But to what extent is such a reality recognisable on the basis of experience? In and with all civilisation man continues obstinately bent upon the attainment of his own ends: the struggle for material goods exerts an immense influence upon and controls men; an indescribable amount of pretence and hypocrisy accompanies and surrounds the spiritual movement. Between that which man really strives for, and that which he asserts that he is striving for, and which perhaps it is his intention to strive for, there is great divergence. Falsehood like this is not limited to individuals; our whole culture is one monstrous deception in so far as it promises to develop humanity to something new and higher, while in reality the new is occupied mostly with polishing up the old, the life of nature, to give it a glittering appearance. It is on this account that in times of criticism and introspection so much opposition has been offered to culture; that such passionate scorn has been aroused against the hypocrisy and pretence which pervades its whole life. But although we are fully aware of its deplorable state, we do not break its power over us. It is perhaps the most bitter of all our experiences that we are held fast under the spell of a condition of things concerning the vanity and futility of which no one with any insight has the slightest doubt.

However, in moralising over this state of things we ought to guard ourselves from becoming too passionate. For it is a question whether it could be otherwise; whether the fault is in any way in our will, and is not solely and entirely in the nature of our being itself. For it is certainly a contradiction throughout that man, who is an individual being existing by the side of others, and whose life belongs to the domain of experience, should set himself in a universal life transcending all particularity and live from the bases of reality. How can that which is primarily a part of a given world build up a new world? Ideas like those of the true and the good are, from this point of view, simply delusions, manifest impossibilities; man may trouble and weary himself with them, but all his endeavour only leads him into a state of greater confusion. These ideas are to him for ever an “other” world; he may expand himself and develop, but he does not come a step nearer by doing so.

It is true that in striving for truth, man advances beyond sense presentation to the activity of thought; but the thoughts always remain his—thoughts of mere man. However much he may widen his own sphere as a consequence of his reflection upon them, he does not go beyond it. In history also the striving for a scientific comprehension of truth appears to be a vain struggle; the passing through different phases has not brought it nearer its aim so much as, with ever-increasing clearness, it has manifested the impossibility of attaining what is sought.

The ancient conception of truth, with its belief in a relationship of the being of man with the whole; with it assumption of an easy transference of life from one to the other; with its view of truth as an agreement of thought with an external reality, has through the course of life become untenable; it has been rejected through the influence of the tendency of our being to become more inward. For this tendency necessarily led to a detachment from the environment of the world, and to a separation of the two sides of our experience. We became clearly conscious of this separation at the beginning of the Modern Age. We saw that, if we were not to give up all claim to truth, only one course remained possible: to make a division within the human domain, a division between a merely human and something else which might be regarded as the presence of universal and genuine life in man. And so Spinoza distinguished an objective thought from the springs of the emotions; Kant distinguished practical reason from the theoretical which is bound up with the limitations of human nature; and Hegel elevated the thought-process, which manifests itself in the work of universal history, far above the opinions and the wishes of individuals. Each of these championed a distinctive conception of truth and a characteristic form of the spiritual life; but with regard to all attempts we come to doubt whether even that proclaimed as more than human is not still within the domain of man; whether in every case we do not wrongly declare the last point which we reach to be the deepest basis of reality.

The position is somewhat similar with regard to the idea of the good. In the attempts to which we have referred, it passed current as a deliverance from all selfish happiness, which was felt to be intolerably narrow. A new, purer, and more comprehensive life is to proceed from the winning of a new position. Now, there are many different conceptions of happiness, and higher levels are distinguished plainly from lower. But the highest level does not transcend human desire; man must bring all into relation with his own well-being. He cannot in opposition to his own well-being adopt something alien as an end in itself; his activity can be aroused for nothing which has not some value for himself. In this case also, therefore, the bounds of his life hold him fast, and, unless these bounds are transcended, the good cannot be distinguished from the useful. Of this a clear confirmation is furnished by the experiences of religions. In their origin they wished to free man from himself and to set him in a new life—whether they promised tranquillity in a surrender to the infinite whole or won a positive content by the revelation of a kingdom of divine love. How soon the succession of events has led back to a quest of happiness! How soon has it become evident that the religions have far less revealed a new world to the majority of mankind than chained them more firmly to the old; and that they easily arouse to greater power the raw instinct of life, which they desired to overcome!

We seem to be shut in on all sides: it seems a monstrous inconsistency to wish to build up from man a world transcending man; to remove him into a world other than that of a man. A world of this kind is, however, essential to the spiritual life; with its abandonment that life is only a delusion; and the less intelligent people who reject as a meaningless folly all striving for the true and the good seem to be right.

Why do we refuse to adopt this view, and to discontinue an endeavour the aims of which appear to be unattainable? In the first place, because the movement cannot be given up so easily as those critics imagine who adopt this view; for it does not consist simply of explanations and theories that might be completely refuted by rigorous argument, but a certain reality has been evolved, desires aroused, forces called into life, and movements inaugurated. Even if they halt in their course they were something; they do not disappear therefore before the attacks of Scepticism; further, however mean their results may be, they prove to be strong enough to indicate the limitations in the life of nature, and to make it inadequate for us. The matter is the more mysterious in that the striving is anything but a product of the natural desire for happiness. For the movement disturbs all our complacency; it leads man to be discontented with that which hitherto had fully satisfied him; it surrounds him with fixed organisations; desires from him much labour and sacrifice, and makes existence, not easier, but more difficult for him. Delusions are wont to deceive us by pleasing pictures; to attract us with the promise of pleasure and enjoyment. How does a delusion, that imposes so much toil and trouble upon us, win so much power over us? There is another matter to be considered in this connection. A complete renunciation can appear possible only because it is not clearly perceived how much which we cannot give up and which ultimately we have no desire to give up is involved in it. Only a want of clearness of thought, and still more a weakness of character, could wish to retain in the particular case what was given up as a whole; could affirm as effect what it denied as cause. As soon as this course is recognised to be impossible, it becomes evident that with the rejection of the spiritual life everything is abandoned which gives to our life dignity, greatness, and inner unity, and joins us to others with an inward bond. Realities such as love and honour, truth and right, must be regarded as empty forms; and even science must come to an end, because there is no longer any inner unity of work, no objective necessity.

Such considerations again show us that a complete negation is impossible; and it seems that we must remain for ever in painful suspense between an unattainable affirmation and an impossible negation. We might be able to endure this condition of affairs if it concerned a problem which arose in reference to something of little importance to our life, something that we could relegate to the background, and simply permit to lie there, without compromising our life. But our problem lies at the centre of life; is, in fact, itself the centre. To be left in suspense here means to condemn life as a whole to a state of paralysis, to surrender it to complete dissolution. Against this everyone who has any vital energy in him will contend; with his whole might he will seek to escape from a condition so intolerable; he will not hold back from making a bold venture, mindful of the words of Goethe, “Necessity is the best counsellor.”

In seeking a way out of the contradiction, it is essentially necessary not to forget the source of the contradiction. We saw that source to be in the fact that the spiritual life would set up a new world, and at the same time remains bound up with the merely human and presents itself as an endeavour of mere man. To the spiritual life a universal character is indispensable; of this claim nothing can be abated. There must therefore be a change as regards man; it must be that more comes to pass in him than the first impression makes evident. It must be that the spiritual within him, which seems at first to be his own product, is a participation in wider connections; the spiritual must be operative in man, but not originate out of the merely human. It is true that this makes a reversal of the traditional position necessary, and not merely of its representations; and such a reversal provokes serious doubt. Modern science, however, has taught us sufficiently often that the first appearance of anything need not be the ultimate one; that there may be cogent reasons for regarding something that at first seems based in itself as the proof of something existing beyond. Thus, modern natural science has transformed the world of sense into a world present only to the eyes of research. Certainly, science accomplishes these changes within the bounds of experience: on the contrary, in regard to our problem, in which the fundamental form of reality is in question, it is indispensable that we should transcend these bounds; without a change in respect of the whole, and hence without a resort to metaphysics, it is not possible to accomplish our purpose. It is quite clear that the tendency of our time is opposed to appeals to metaphysics: yet it is a question how far this attitude is justified. So far as metaphysics assumes the same form as in the past—that of conceptual speculation of a thought hovering unrestrained over the existing world—then it is rightly opposed. But the attitude is unjustifiable which assumes that with the overthrow of the older metaphysics all metaphysics may be ignored. For a metaphysic can proceed also from the whole life, and need not be a product of mere thought. The implication therefore is this, that the centre of life itself must be changed, and thus a revolution of the previous condition accomplished; that an actuality already operative in life is to be given its rightful place and brought to its full effect. The business of metaphysics, therefore, is not to add something in thought to a reality which lies before us, or to weave such a reality into a texture of conceptions; but to seek to grasp reality in itself, and to rouse it to life in its entire depth for ourselves. Every change of thought then rests on a change of life. Such a metaphysic may appeal to the saying of Hebbel, “Only fools will banish metaphysic from the drama; it makes a great difference, however, whether life evolves out of metaphysic or metaphysic out of life.”

Even if our age rejects a metaphysic of this kind also, if it surrenders itself without resistance to the inconsistencies of the world of sense, this would be the last thing which could deter us from an appeal to metaphysic. For the inner cleavages and the superficiality of the life of our time—and we saw reason to believe that these are facts—stand in the closest relation to the rejection of metaphysics: this rejection has made the age inwardly insignificant. If an indirect proof of the necessity of a revolutionary transformation of life, and at the same time of a metaphysic may be offered, our age furnishes one quite sufficient in its own experiences; its opposition can be only a recommendation of an appeal to metaphysic.

The one main thesis which it is essentially necessary to establish is analysed in sufficient detail throughout the whole course of our investigation; it simply sums up that which has already been advanced point by point. The intolerable contradiction arises, as we saw, from this, that the spiritual life with its new world should be a product of mere man, and that that life should remain within man and at the same time lead in its essence beyond him. This contradiction cannot be overcome otherwise than by our recognising and acknowledging in the spiritual life a universal life, which transcends man, is shared by him, and raises him to itself. That this transition brings with it a change in the appearance of life and of the world as a whole, and that as a result our striving is brought under entirely different conditions, needs more detailed presentation.

(b) THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAIN THESIS

1. The Main Thesis and the Possibility of a New System of Life

(a) The Development of the Spiritual Life to Independence

Our investigation reached its highest point in the demand that the spiritual life should become independent of man. Man cannot produce a spiritual life of his own capacity: a spiritual world must impart itself to him and raise him to itself. It must be shown that this does not by any means signify only a change of name, a new labelling of an old possession, but implies far-reaching changes, and indeed involves a complete reversal of the first condition. At the same time the course of the investigation must establish that this transition to the spiritual life is not something subsequently inferred or offered simply for the explanation of an otherwise unintelligible fact, but that it would overcome a false appearance, and help a misunderstood truth to its right. The fact that is affirmed should become an immediate experience of one’s own and should advance life rather than knowledge. Only the whole investigation and not an introductory consideration can furnish a proof of our contention.

There are within our own soul distinctive movements tending in directions different from those of nature. We recognised that there is a life which proceeds from some kind of comprehensive whole; a life which transcends the opposition of subject and object, and evolves a self-consciousness in contrast with the relation to externals. All these features present a quite different appearance, form a more coherent whole, and will occupy a more definite position in the representation of reality, if in them an independent life superior to mere man is recognised and acknowledged. The principal reason for this is that it is only by means of that deliverance from the simply human that the new life is able to express its own nature clearly and to realise as part of its own nature what otherwise seemed to have its source in something external. The individual traits that we become aware of are the revelation of a universal life, if they are no longer regarded as limited by the idiosyncrasies of the human. With this acknowledgment they can gain ascendancy over man and prove their power upon him.

We saw that it is characteristic of the spiritual life that it is lived from the whole; the elements are fashioned by a comprehensive unity; the different complexes and tendencies which arise in this life strive ultimately towards a single aim. We saw also that it was absolutely impossible that the tendency to universality should be originated by man, whose chief movement is towards differentiation and division; and, further, that it should be realised by him in face of the opposition of nature, which extends to the immeasurable in matters great and small. The unity that is necessary for this cannot arise out of the many as an ultimate result; it must be original and be operative from the beginning. We may postulate such a unity only if the spiritual life is itself a universal life transcending that of the isolated individuals; if it bears in itself a unity which takes the multiplicity up into itself. And so the whole from an abstract conception is for the first time raised to a living reality; and only on thus becoming a reality can it exercise a distinctive power upon individuals and in contrast to individuals; and inwardly unite and essentially raise them. Only in this way is it conceivable that another kind of activity having its source within the soul may exert itself in opposition to the mechanism of nature and transcend it; and that selfishness and spiritual weakness may in some way be overcome. Man, so far as he shares in the spiritual life, is more than a mere individual; a universal life becomes his own and works within him as a power of his life.

Further, the taking up of the object into the life-process, the transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, is characteristic of the spiritual life. But this remained an inner contradiction, a complete impossibility so long as the spiritual life was regarded as an occurrence in a being who, with a closed nature, stands over against things as though they were alien; and who can take up nothing into himself without accommodating it to his own particular nature. The contradiction is removed only when the spiritual becomes independent; for then both sides of the antithesis come to belong to each other and are related to each other in a single life; and a life transcending the division may develop, a life that produces the antithesis from within, lives in the different sides and seeks in them its own perfection. The life-process is now seen to be a movement that is neither from object to subject, nor from subject to object; neither the subject’s attainment of content from the object, nor the object’s becoming controlled by the subject, but an advance of a self-conscious life in and through the antithesis. Life, by this movement, ceases to be a single, thin thread; it wins breadth; it expands to an inner universality. At the same time a depth is manifested in that a persistent and comprehensive activity emerges which lives in the antithesis. In this manner life first becomes a life in a spiritual sense, a self-conscious and self-determining life, a self-consciousness.

That this change is possible and brings with it a new type of life is shown with complete clearness by experience in the separate departments of the spiritual life. Thus, artistic creation at its highest is neither the production of the truest possible copy of an external object, the artist painfully abstaining from all subjective addition; nor a presentation of subjective situations and moods, the artist endeavouring to the utmost to avoid everything objective; but a transcendence of the opposition of soulless objectivity and empty subjectivity by an art that is sovereign, autonomous, and with a character of its own; the creative activity belonging to which gives life from the soul to the object, and moulds the soul by means of the object. This kind of artistic creation is directed primarily towards an inner truth, not towards a truth that is produced by the object, but one that arises only in the contact of the object with the soul. It is manifest that creation is effected here not as an interaction between subject and object, but above and through this antithesis; it is only by transcending the antithesis that the artist can give himself in his work, lend to it a soul, place an infinity within it. In this respect conduct manifests a character similar to that of creation. Conduct would never attain an inner stability and enter upon an independent course, if it could not raise itself above the opposition of a submission to orders that are forced upon it from without, and a mere play of subjective inclination; if it were not able to become the self-assertion and self-development of a life transcending that opposition. At this point also the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life teaches us to comprehend as a whole that which, in a many-sided development, the different departments of life show to be real.

The obscurity in which the conception of inwardness was hitherto involved begins to disappear when the spiritual life is no longer regarded as supplementary but as an independent life. It cannot be denied that, within humanity, there is an endeavour to develop the life of the soul to a state of self-determining activity and, at the same time, to free that life from the bondage to sense in which it remains at the level of nature. Yet, definite affirmation that shall correspond to the negation of sense has been lacking; it has not been clear how inwardness might find content and characteristic forms; there has been no advance from the subjective to the substantial. But since a universal activity is operative within the multiplicity and through the division, and since it sets itself in the division and from this returns to itself, a self-conscious inwardness becomes conceivable which has a life of its own with new experiences. Since within this life “to receive” presupposes the comprehending power and the self-determining activity of a vital whole, something other than sense is able to evolve and through all the persistence of sense to become the chief matter. The spiritual life is not directed to a reality adjacent to it, but evolves a reality out of itself; or rather, it evolves as a reality, a kingdom, a world; and so it advances from vague outline to more complete development; it struggles for itself, for its own perfection, not for anything external.

It is directly implied in the above conception that the spiritual life is something different from single psychical functions, such as cognition, volition, and the like; and that man, so far as he shares in it, is more than one such function or a sum of such functions. For these functions come under the antithesis of subject and object, while the spiritual life transcends it. It is also clear that the spiritual life does not change this or that in a life which already exists, or add this or that to it, but that it introduces a new kind of life—a life by which man is distinguished clearly from everything inferior to him.

If the spiritual life is an evolution of a reality in the life-process, then the question arises as to how this reality is related to the world that immediate experience shows us to be surrounded by. As surely as man in his subjective reflection is able to free himself from the world and to place himself in opposition to it, so there can be no doubt that the spiritual life belongs to the permanent reality of the world and, as we see it, grows up out of its movement. The transition to an independent inwardness is not something which happens externally to the world but within it: no special sphere, separate from all the rest, is originated; but reality itself evolves an inner life: it is the world itself that reveals a spiritual depth, or, as we might say, a soul. We are not justified in doubting and attacking this view simply because the spiritual life meets us only in man, and thus, in contrast with the infinity of nature, is in its external manifestation so insignificant. For something essentially new appears in it, something that involves another order of things: the fact that little falls within our range of vision is in this connection not at all relevant. If anyone is disturbed and driven to denial by the external insignificance of the manifestations of the spiritual life, he shows only that he misunderstands what is distinctive and revolutionising in that life. The spiritual life is not to be thought of merely in reference to the experiences of the individual, but also to the work of humanity, to history, to the advance of culture. All these show us a development of life that presents the world from a new side; and this must be an important factor in the estimation of the world, especially if the spiritual is recognised as having a life independent of man.

The inward must necessarily present itself as the fundamental and the comprehensive; as that which in its invisibility sustains, dominates, and unifies the visible world. Nature, which there was a tendency to regard as the whole, is now of the essence of a wider reality and a stage in its development; and it is impossible for the conception formed from it to be regulative of the whole. Ultimately, therefore, reality cannot be regarded as something dead, detached, and given: it signifies to us something living, something experienced in itself, something sustained by incessant activity. At the same time, the lateness of the appearance of the spiritual life within our realm and the many ways in which this appearance is conditioned force us to acknowledge that the life of the world as a whole has a history. The conception of history that we have become familiar with in its application to nature and to the spiritual life throughout is now extended to the relation between the two. However many mysteries it yet involves, definite progress in our conception of the world must be admitted.

Most of all it is man with his life and endeavour that appears in a new light. Two worlds meet together in him, and, indeed, not merely in such a manner that he provides the place in which they meet and enter into conflict, but so that he acquires an independent participation in the new world, and through his own decision co-operates in its development. For spiritual life, with its self-determining activity, can never become itself as a mere effect; to become this it must be apprehended and roused to activity as cause. But it is cause and animating power only in its being as a whole; so, as a whole it must be present to man and become his own life. Thus, in contrast to the particularity of his natural existence, a life having its source in the infinite grows up within him: in the former a mere part of a world; in the latter he becomes a world in himself: in the one, bound up with the particular nature of man; in the other, he is elevated above all particularity to something more than human, to something cosmic.

To such changes in the content of life there must be corresponding changes in its form. Empirical consciousness with its discreteness and succession of presentations and states cannot possibly comprehend the new life; to do that the soul must acquire a greater depth. It must be capable of an activity which, with single phases, extends into this consciousness, but which as a whole and in its creative work must transcend it. With the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in man two questions giving rise to different methods of treatment necessarily become distinguished: the one as to the nature and extent of the spiritual that is revealed in him; and the other, how, under the specific conditions of his nature, it emerges and establishes itself. It will become evident how important it is to distinguish these sufficiently, and yet on the other hand to associate them closely.

(b) The Demands of a New System of Life

If the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality thus alters the view of reality as a whole, and in particular of man, we are faced with the question whether we may not attain a new synthesis through this spirituality, and whether it does not begin a characteristic formation of our world. Our treatment of the philosophies of life of the present day makes it possible for us to approach this question with definite demands. We saw life branch off in different movements, each of which took up into itself a wealth of fact; but we found none of them strong enough to absorb the others into itself, or even able to estimate them. If life is not finally to fall into dissolution, it needs, in contrast to these movements, one more universal in character, and this can be more than a weak compromise only when there is a still more fundamental relation of life than that which the developments that we have considered proffered. In that case the more original basal relation ought to be able to manifest itself as a presupposition of those developments; it should make intelligible how divisions can originate in the condition of man; in particular it should illuminate the opposition between the idealistic and the naturalistic systems of life—an opposition which, like a deep gulf, divides the life of the present. In short, it should depend upon whether the change that results with the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life makes it possible for us permanently to transcend those oppositions and to work towards their reconciliation. But we ought then to see that, with its universality, the system of life striven for does not fall into a state vague and lacking in character. Through its whole being, in affirmation and in negation, the system of life must definitely express itself; it must synthesise and differentiate, elevate and exclude. But it will be able to do this only if it produces a new kind of life-process and a new web of life: only thus can essentially new evaluations and tasks, new experiences and genuine developments, originate; only thus can life as a whole be definitely raised. Of course, this new cannot signify something that has just been discovered and that has arisen suddenly. How could it be a truth which gives to us security, and how could it dominate our life, if it is not rooted in our being, and if it had not exerted an influence at all times? But it makes a great difference whether the new has been concealed, obscure and against the tendency of our own activity; or whether it is taken up fully in our own self-determining activity and thereby essentially advanced. If, on the one hand, the new must be something old, on the other hand the old must become something new if it is to liberate, strengthen, and elevate our life where its needs are so urgent.

(c) The Spiritual Basis of the System of Life

There can be no doubt that the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life involves the recognition of a new fundamental relation of our life. This relation is no other than that of man to the spiritual world, which is immanent in him and at the same time transcends him. It is more original than the relations implied in the systems of the present day; for these, even though contrary to their own knowledge and intention, all presuppose this fundamental relation to the spiritual life. Religion could not be so violently attacked and so zealously denied by so many, if the relation of life to God were the absolute relation and were present before all others. The value of religion depends essentially upon the content of the spiritual life which it serves. With the mere relation of life to a supernatural power, the nature of which is not more closely defined—with mere blind devotion—nothing of value is attained. An honest religious attitude of a formal kind can go together, on the one hand, with spiritual poverty and blindness, and, on the other, with hatred and passion. How sad the condition of things in general has often been even when religion has shown a strong development of power! How often the help of divine power has been invoked even in the commission of crime! If, however, the value of religion and its effect on the substance of life are measured according to its spiritual content, then this content necessarily becomes the chief object of attention and conduct. We can assure ourselves of the relation to a supernatural power only from the experiences of the spiritual life, and not previously to this life and independently of it. The relation of life to the spiritual life must therefore necessarily precede its relation to God; life must be certain of a universal spiritual character before it can assume a truly religious one.

We find the case to be no different as regards the system of Immanent Idealism. It is open to considerable doubt whether the world as it lies before us can be looked upon as a pure unfolding of the spiritual life, as this Idealism asserts. In any case, for the spiritual life to comprehend the world within itself it must itself be established as a universal power, and clearly distinguished from mere man. Otherwise the way of Immanent Idealism leads to an anthropomorphism of a more refined kind; and there is a danger that the whole world which this system champions may be criticised hostilely and rejected as simply human. Immanent Idealism, therefore, also points to the problem of substantial spiritual life.

The naturalistic systems do the same thing in a different way, and this, indeed, in contradiction to their main contention. For, when they attempted to produce a system from themselves, they could achieve their object only in that they were implicitly based upon the spiritual life, and introduced again indirectly that which they had previously rejected. They are developments of the spiritual life in particular directions and under particular circumstances: they think that they are able to accomplish out of their own resources something which they accomplish only with the help of a fundamental spiritual life; and so the more consistent they are in their denial of an independent spirituality the more inevitably they lose all internal coherence.

Thus from whatever point we start we come to the question of an independent spirituality; an answer to this question is involved in every system of life. But as its implications are not distinctly recognised, it does not receive its proper due. If we consider the question adequately, it will be found that a universal life must precede all differentiation and division; and that from this life each movement must receive a new elucidation. A multiplicity within the whole is quite intelligible, because it is a development of the spiritual life, not absolutely, that is in question, but in relation to the position of man and under the conditions to which he is subject. The desire to give greater stability to our life in opposition to the never-ceasing flow of appearances that constitutes our immediate existence, also compels us strongly to emphasise the importance of the relation to the spiritual life, which is acknowledged as independent. Without an elevation above this constant change all spiritual work must inevitably become disintegrated, and no truth of any kind would be possible to us. In the Modern Age especially there is a keen desire for a firm basis, as a secure support of life as a whole. But it is useless to seek this basis in life as we immediately experience it, whether in thought, in activity, or in anything else; for in the whole life of immediate experience there is nothing that is free from change. To seek this basis in a particular point is also to no purpose, even if one could be raised to a position above change; for it could not operate beyond itself in such a way as to support the rest of life. If, therefore, we would not submit to a dissolution of life, we must seek a basis for it beyond its immediate state and in a whole of life. Such a whole of life is offered only by the spiritual life, which, transcending man, is also immanent in him. Of course this cannot be taken possession of immediately at the beginning of the journey of life; but it is held up to us as an aim, and we can only gradually approach it. But how could it operate within us thus, if our life had not some kind of participation in it from the beginning; if our life were not in some way based in the spiritual life, and in progressive activity only developed the spiritual that is in it? For unless we are based in the spiritual life we should drift helplessly to and fro in uncertainty, and our endeavour would never be intelligible. From this point of view also, our relation to the spiritual life is seen to be the fundamental problem that must precede all others.

If there can be no doubt that the problem of life is comprehended most universally when we view it in relation to the spiritual life, there may be all the more uncertainty whether all characteristic form and, with it, all deep-reaching effect are not lost by reason of this universality. If the conception of the spiritual life involved its usual vagueness, this would in reality be the case, for recourse to it would not effect any fundamental transformation of the immediate condition of life; and we should not rise above the mere combination of its various movements. The case is quite otherwise if the spiritual life is distinguished clearly from the human and is acknowledged to be an independent world. So understood, it must show a particular content, a new structure of life, and must give a distinct form to everything that it takes up into itself. It is necessary to consider, also, its relation to the world of sense, and we may expect to be faced in this matter with complications and problems that will agitate our life in its whole extent, and set it in a new light.

In the spiritual life we recognised a new world, a realm of inwardness, which has become independent. Within this realm life cannot be directed to something alien, but can be occupied only with itself, with its own development. Its experiences cannot be related to externals; they must lie in itself. Now, have we any knowledge of a movement that reaches back in this manner to the elements of life? We perceive a movement of this kind clearly enough. In the first place, all development of the spiritual life shows, even within the individual, the attribute that a universal mode of thought, conviction, disposition, sets itself in the single function and continues present within it. The tendencies and manifestations of the spiritual are not all at the same level of development, but since a universal activity, a comprehensive and persistent deed, is present in the particular manifestation, the process acquires a depth, and a single act is able to give expression to a tendency of the whole as well as to react upon it.

But this movement extends beyond the immediate state of the soul of the individual to spiritual work, and gives it a particular form. Life as a whole, as reality’s consciousness of itself, may be regarded as throughout capable of a multiplicity, as containing within itself different sides and possibilities. Since its evolution produces this multiplicity, life as a whole can express itself in the individual aspects and tendencies; expand them till they become different departments; experience itself in particular ways in these departments, and in so doing achieve a development of its own; it is able also to bring these departments and their developments into their relation to one another. Since thus, within the world as a whole, life concentrates in different ways, and the particular tendencies which thus arise meet and enter into conflict with one another, and since their conflict is in particular a contest to determine the form of the whole, there is revealed the prospect of a wealth of experiences which come not from without but out of the movement of life itself, and spring from its occupation with itself. The conflict between the different movements of life must bring the whole into a state of tension and lead it to further development. In the progressive formation of itself, in the development of a reality conscious of itself, life through its movement finds itself and develops a content. This movement will summon all the psychical powers of man to activity; it cannot possibly proceed from them. If we are to take part in the building up of that inner world, a spiritual creative activity from the basis of our being must be operative through these psychical functions, uniting them, and applying them as means and instruments.

If, for us men, life becomes conscious of its content only through movement and conflict, nevertheless this content may not be regarded as ultimately proceeding from them. If, as a whole, life did not transcend movement and conflict, if the latter were not included within a self-conscious and self-determining life, then they could yield no inner result, and could not lead to the further development of the whole. The attempts to derive this self-conscious and self-determining life from ontological conceptions such as “being,” “whole,” “movement,” and so on, as the older metaphysics often undertook to do; or the tendency to treat it only as a supplement to them, are to be dismissed most decisively. The fundamental qualities that the spiritual life evolves always presuppose a self-conscious life and become intelligible only in relation to it. Without it, the conceptions of the true and the good remain in complete obscurity, as will be shown later in more detail.

If our human reflection often advances from the indefinite to the definite, from the abstract to the concrete, this does not involve that the latter is originated from the former: the advance could not be achieved unless that which comes at the end was operative from the beginning as its basis and presupposition.

If a self-conscious life unfolds itself with an increasing content through all departments and activities of life, then these departments will have their meaning and their value primarily in that which they accomplish for the further development of that life, and in the particular tendencies that they add to it: this yields a treatment and a standard of value different from those which we are led to if we make the psychical states of the individual our starting-point. The treatment of religion, for example, as a mere occurrence of an unrestrained psychical life may understand by religion a particular agitation of this or that psychical function; but with this we do not obtain a spiritual content. Again, it is not evident how a world of thought formed from such an individual psychical life could acquire an independence of man, and lift him above the position in which it finds him. The problem of religion attains quite a different basis if the spiritual movements and contents which emerge with it are emphasised; with this it develops and discloses the reality of the spiritual life more deeply. Then through it we may discover and win something that alters the condition of life, transcends the immediate life of the soul, and is able to exert an elevating influence upon man. The value and the truth of a particular religion will be judged in the first place by the nature of the spiritual substance that it offers, and the degree in which, in its advance, it is able to join itself to the movement of life as a whole and to guide it further. A great divergence is possible between this spiritual substance and the movement and passion that call forth a religion on the basis of humanity: the real is, in human relations, by no means without further consideration to be regarded as rational.

The case of the other departments of life is the same as that of religion: the character and the value of all achievement depend entirely upon the range and the kind of substantial spirituality that they evolve. The same is valid of whole epochs and cultures, of peoples and individuals. The exertion of the greatest energy upon externals and the most revolutionary transformation of human conditions cannot protect us from becoming inwardly destitute, or lead us beyond mere appearance to genuine reality. On the contrary, the experience of history shows often enough that spiritual revivals have been accompanied in their origin and growth by manifestations externally insignificant; and that something which struggles against the broad stream of human life fundamentally changes the standards and values of our existence.

Our whole spiritual life, therefore, constitutes a problem; it is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be raised. We have to find experiences in life itself, to reveal something new, to develop life, to increase its range and its depth. The endeavour to advance in spirituality, to win itself through struggle, is the soul of the life of the individual and of the work of universal history: where there is no endeavour of this kind, there is no true life and no genuine history; our activity in relation to the world as a whole assumes a different form, and the world is represented differently and presents to us different problems according to that which is attained here in the basal structure of life. Life’s struggle for itself, for its own content, its own truth, is the greatest and most intense of all struggles.

The passion which animates all the endeavour after a revelation of life and to win life itself is no other than the desire for a genuine reality: for a being within the activity, for a full as opposed to an empty life. If the formation of reality from within once begins, and the desire for a substantial inwardness gains the day over the merely subjective, then the intolerable inadequacy of all that is usually called life is bound to be strongly felt. The growth of intelligence has led man beyond the life of nature and its blind actuality. In intelligence, the inner life already proves far too independent to be satisfied with being a mere appearance accompanying nature. With this evolution the psychical powers win a greater freedom, and man is able to face his environment more boldly: indeed, in his thought he can grasp an infinity; and in arousing and using all his powers he may hope from his own position, in the interaction of subject and environment, to give to life a content, and thus to make it a genuine life. But here the limitation of man and the contradictory character of life as it is immediately experienced soon come to be felt. All the rousing of forces, all the passing backwards and forwards between subject and object that we experience in the immediate condition of life, does not lead beyond interaction, and yields no content: it does not raise life to a self-conscious and self-determining life; so that, in spite of all its activity, our life in this condition remains inwardly alien. There is thus an enormous disparity between the means that are offered and the aims that are reached; an inward unrest; an incessant conflict, without any prospect of victory, against the ever-recurring tendency to become spiritually destitute; a state of dissatisfaction in the midst of all results of an external kind. Only the revelation of a self-conscious life, a life which itself evolves as a reality, can be the source of progress, and lead from appearances and shadows to a genuine life.

It is apparent that with such an aim a task is presented that dominates and comprehends the whole extent of our existence. We have to take up everything into that self-conscious and self-determining life and to transform the condition of life as it lies immediately before us. A demand of this kind is not limited to a change of this or that; it implies a complete transformation and renewal. It not only involves the whole multiplicity of life, but it must also itself tend to bring about an increase in the multiplicity; indeed, this task first gives the multiplicity a firm foundation and an inner value. For the development and the formation of self-conscious life, it is essential, as we saw, that life concentrate in particular tendencies and departments; that the whole place itself in them, and return to itself from them; and that by this they develop a life of their own and give rise to their own experiences. To act thus, to advance the whole in its own development, the individual concentrations of life must possess an inner spiritual unity which comprehends and dominates all multiplicity. This is seen in the case of individuals, peoples, epochs, and whole civilisations: only by overcoming the state of confusion and division in which they at first find themselves do they come to wrestle with the spiritual life as a whole and win a spiritual character. These unities of life, however, will enter into the most diverse relations with the whole and with one another; and since in so doing they further self-conscious and self-determining life, they develop reality without limit. From all the facts we have considered we see that, with the attainment of independence by the spiritual life, there emerges a distinctive kind of being which everywhere exerts its activity, holds up a new aim, and desires a transformation: life is for the first time placed on a firm foundation, and taken possession of in the deepest source of its movement.

(d) Human Existence

For the construction of a new system of life, this independent nature of the spiritual life is primary and most essential. Such construction is dependent in the second place upon the relation in which the development of the self-conscious and self-determining life of reality stands to the position and to the activity of man; in particular whether it wins this position and activity for itself with ease or meets with definite opposition. Now, there cannot be any doubt that the recognition of the fact of the development of the spiritual life to independence of man, as we traced it, must make us feel that the state of things at the usual level of human life is most unsatisfactory. It is not that one or another aspect is inadequate, but that as a whole it is definitely opposed to the requirements of an independent spiritual life. For the spirituality that is evolved here is treated for the most part as a mere means in the pursuit of human welfare. Civilisation, at the level at which we are most accustomed to it, lifts man above mere nature, but at the same time it forces him into rivalry and conflict with his equals, and leads him to expect happiness from victory. This is the case not only among individuals but also among nations. Since the desire and the conflict for more generate an indescribable amount of excitement and passion, life seems to be full, whereas in reality it is entirely lacking in content, and behind the tumult is felt to be empty. But man has no intention of giving up all claim to a share in genuine spirituality: and so he gives a better outward appearance to his endeavour and his conduct, and practises deceit upon himself as well as upon others. Genuine spiritual life cannot possibly proceed from circumstances so contradictory and so confused. Neither can such circumstances produce the concentration of life that is necessary for the strengthening and advancement of the spiritual life. It is not the abuse of some one thing that provokes attack: it is not a particular failing, but the ordinary daily course which, unresistingly, man is accustomed to accept as his world, that shows in its successes no less than in its failures the greatest divergence from genuine spirituality. It is just at the point where man becomes proud of his own doings and makes much ostentatious display that he can least of all conceal the spiritual poverty and the foolishness of his way of thinking.

Attempts to attribute the responsibility of all limitation to man and his will, to find the root of all evil in the moral failings of humanity, have not been wanting. Universal religions have given these attempts an embodiment. It has seemed as though the harmony of reality is only disturbed by man, and as though his moral restoration were the only thing necessary to lead to all good. To be sure, such a way of thinking manifests a disposition of great seriousness, and it may appeal to the fact that the perplexity of our existence is nowhere more real than in reference to the ethical problem. Still, there is no possibility of doubt for the man of the Modern Age that this conception is too narrow; that it not only contradicts indisputable impressions and experiences, but also takes the question much too subjectively and too anthropomorphically, and thus falls into the danger of doing harm to the cause that it wishes to serve. It is not simply our disposition, it is our being as a whole and the circumstances that we are in, which obstinately oppose the emergence and the development of an independent spiritual world. It is the most elementary forms of life themselves that prevent the elevation of our existence to the level of a genuine spiritual life. We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that the greater part of our life is bound up with a form of existence in which it is not able to embrace the spiritual life. Any kind of appropriation of the spiritual—if it is at all possible—can be effected therefore only in opposition to that form of existence. In genuine spiritual life all movement should proceed from the whole and should be sustained by the whole, even when it is concentrated in the individual departments and tendencies. Human existence presents the spectacle of individuals ranged side by side; and if a movement to overcome the original inertia is to begin at all, their impulses, their desire for happiness, and their conflicts are necessary. The spiritual life knows no limits; it works and creates from the infinite whole: the individual is narrowly limited, and with all his activity and work constitutes but a tiny point in the infinite whole. The spiritual life presents its content as transcending time; even if for us it is only gradually revealed, time is in this a mere means to the presentation of an eternal and immutable truth: man, however, drifts with time; is dependent upon the momentary situation, and experiences himself in an incessant change: how can he comprehend the eternal? Spiritual creation is effected in the transcending of the antithesis of subject and object: human endeavour is conditioned by this antithesis. The former with its self-determining activity overcomes from within the attachment to sense: man even in the highest flight of his endeavour cannot withdraw himself from it. From the altitudes occupied by the spiritual life submission to the impulses and the goods of sense seems to be something mean and base: and yet without these man cannot possibly preserve his life; he has not conferred sensuous needs and desires upon himself by an act of will, but finds himself endowed with them from the beginning. Spiritual life with its formation from within banishes from itself all mechanism; all compulsion of blind actuality: without a mechanism in thought and in conduct, without habits and methods determined by custom, human life cannot attain to an enduring stability either in the case of the individual or in that of society. Thus, through the ever-present necessity of self-preservation and self-renewal, human life is compulsorily related to something, bound to something, that not only is not adequate to fulfil the tasks of an independent spiritual life, but is directly opposed to them. There is something in our life which we cannot dispense with, yet which, from the spiritual point of view, it is an imperative duty to shake off.

We see clearly enough that it is not merely our will that is in play, but that two worlds conflict within us, and that the world to which we primarily belong, according to the testimony of experience, holds us fixed with superior power, and draws back to itself all movement which strives upward. If, in particular, the dimness and the weakness of the spiritual life in man; its severance from its source; its disintegration into isolated powers; and, finally, the moral perversity which human existence exhibits, and the debasement of spiritual power to a mere means for natural or social self-preservation, become clear to us, then it is evident that a compromise between such a pitiable and shallow confusion and a genuine spiritual life is absolutely impossible. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world tends only to increase the contradiction and make us more clearly conscious of it.

A clear consciousness of the inadequacy of the human is especially important and necessary in contrast to the utter confusion which reigns with regard to the spiritual life and vitiates the whole of the endeavour of the present. The increasing transference of life to the world of sense has led the present age to abandon all inner bonds of mankind. The endeavour of Antiquity to lift our life above the insignificantly human by giving it a share in the greatness and magnificence of the whole, and the attempt of Christianity to give a new nature to life from the relation to God, appear to the present age to be Utopian. Since the faith of modern Idealism in the immanent universal reason has become more and more dim, man is thrown back more and more exclusively upon himself, upon man as he is, upon empirical society. There has grown up a strong belief that this empirical existence is quite sufficient in itself, and is able to satisfy our spiritual needs from itself. The ennobling of man, the improvement of his condition within this existence, becomes the aim of aims. Now, this presupposes that within the province of man, the good, even if it does not entirely preponderate, is still confident of a triumphant advance. It presupposes, further, that the establishment of a certain state of life will bring complete happiness with it. At the same time, all that is disagreeable in human experience—the power of selfishness and pride; the weakness of love; the feebleness of all spiritual impulse; the incessant increase of the struggle for existence, with the consequent degeneration of the inwardness of the whole—appears with dazzling clearness to the more refined perception of the modern man. After even a little consideration he cannot doubt that, if, in spite of all limitations, an unclouded state of human well-being could be established; if all pain could be banished from our life, life would fall into the power of the other and worse enemy—emptiness and monotony. As a refuge from such perplexities there is a tendency to flee to society and history. From the point of view of humanity as a whole and with the thought of a better future, all defects and losses of individuals seem to vanish; the hope of an unceasing progressive development rises above the feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of the condition of the moment. But what are these relations of empirical humanity other than those of a mere collection of individuals who never become an inner community, and what is empirical history other than a mere succession which never produces an inner unity of movement? In the appeal to the former, as in that to the latter, it is only surreptitiously that something essential can appear to be acquired. In reality, conceptions are here made use of which in other relations have a meaning, but which here signify nothing more than empty abstractions, simply subjective constructions of thought. However, notwithstanding all the glossing over, the real state of things must ultimately assert itself: pessimism must then be the last word, and the belief in a rationality in human existence must finally be given up. The faith in the greatness of the empirical man is, indeed, of all faiths the boldest. For, if the other faiths proclaim a new reality in contrast with the world of sense, they have the possibility of one in an invisible world. In the case that we are considering, however, experience itself must offer more than mere experience; we must not only be certain of a thing that we do not see, but that which we do not see must coincide with that which exists immediately before us. Such a position is no longer a faith, but a gross contradiction, a complete absurdity.

(e) Results and Prospects

The immediate experience of man may by no means be rejected as a whole on this account; if it were, spiritual work itself would degenerate and lack content. However, we only need to take up into a whole the impressions and experiences which each in his sphere acknowledges to be indisputable, and it will be clear that a movement toward spiritual independence can never proceed from such a pitiable state of confusion as that which is thereby seen to exist. It is essential that the movement toward spiritual independence have an independent starting point, and proceed on its own course. Only then is it able to select and appropriate the spirituality that exists in those confused experiences, and at the same time purify and strengthen it. We may most decisively reject all presumption to sovereignty on the part of the human realm; nevertheless, for the construction of a spiritual world that realm cannot be dispensed with. For this construction is not peacefully and securely accomplished through the self-development of a spiritual power placed in us, as was supposed by those who attempted to represent reality as a whole as a cosmic process of thought. If through the joyfulness of its faith and the definiteness of its undertaking this attempt captivated the minds of men for a time, at last it was frustrated by the fact that we men do not find ourselves immediately in the atmosphere of reason, but have first through toil to raise ourselves into it; that we have to do not with absolute spiritual life, but with spiritual life under the conditions and limitations of human existence. Thus, in the first place an independent spiritual life, a universal self-consciousness, must work in us and be changed in our activity; and this can be accomplished only by a revolutionary transformation of life as we immediately experience it; only by the attainment of a new point of view. But if at this point of view certain fundamentals of a new world become evident, they are as yet only fundamentals, and, without the help of a world of immediate existence, without recourse to the movements and experiences of human life, they cannot be completely developed and embodied. The complete development of a self-conscious reality is by no means made possible by combining an original spiritual movement with the world of sense brought to meet it. For the spiritual life can be furthered by coming into contact with that world only so far as the spiritual life takes it up and transforms it; the situation is rather that the spiritual movement wrests a content from sense experience and at the same time is raised in itself; it is a realisation of self through the other. The further the movement advances the more one may win one’s own in what is apparently alien; the more that which is really alien may be separated and opposed. Thus we have a characteristic picture of the spiritual life in man; only the more detailed treatment can confirm it.

The matter of greatest importance to the whole, and the one upon which all hope of success rests, is that the movement towards an independent spirituality, to the building up of a new world, should, in spite of the opposition of immediate circumstances, become manifest also in the human sphere in characteristic operation, and that it should establish stable bases in this sphere and rise upon them to the highest by means of work. We have now to investigate more closely, to demonstrate more exactly, and as far as possible to show that at all the chief points of life such movements begin; that one such movement advances another; and that all are associated in a community of striving, and that from here the spiritual movement that we see in history is lit up, strengthened, and for the first time rendered practicable.

2. The Transformation and the Elevation of Human Life

(a) Aims and Ways

The question before us is whether any kind of transcendence of the gulf between the spiritual world and man is effected; whether that world, in spite of its antithesis to the world of sense, manifests itself also with a characteristic effect in our sphere, and thereby inaugurates a movement which takes possession of our whole life and advances it. Only on the result of such an inquiry can we judge whether man is able again to establish his position, which has been so shaken in the course of modern culture; and to save the courage and faith of life from violent changes and convulsions. At the same time we must ascertain whether the representation of the spiritual life that we have sketched is true in reference to things as they are found in the human sphere.

To be sure, proof or verification through experience is, in the case of this problem, in the highest degree peculiar. No definite reality spreads itself before us by which we must test the validity of our representations of thought. Representation and object cannot be simply brought into coincidence, but as life, which we wish to comprehend, is found in movement, and as, further, in immediate experience genuine fact and the form assumed by it in the idea of man are confused, so the revelation of the spiritual life does not come to us immediately, but has first to be extricated and wrested from the most diverse errors and half-truths. Every attempt to obtain proof from experience rests on the conviction that a movement of the kind, the recognition of which is being fought for by us, is already in some way in process everywhere where human life goes beyond mere nature; and that only the clear comprehension of the aim and the taking it up with complete self-conscious and self-determining activity are lacking. If now the aim which is presented is the right one, that is, that which is implied in the spiritual movement of life itself, then its acknowledgment and appropriation must tend to the elucidation, the unification, and the strengthening of all endeavour tending in the direction of this movement; it must lead to a development and an elevation of life above the condition in which it is immediately experienced. In the first place, it must be shown that the connections, preparations, directions in life in its general condition, tend towards the new according to its chief demands; and, further, it must be shown that the existing condition is raised essentially through becoming comprehended by the revealed universal movement, and is led to its own perfection. Again, it has to be shown that thus life wins a more precise content and a greater power in its every aspect: that which is present in all human endeavour as a necessary requirement must now become more intelligible, and at the same time from something impossible of fulfilment to something possible, and reveal new aspects and new tasks. Further, those elements which at first sight exist unconnected side by side and tend to limit one another must unite, and must strengthen one another. On the other hand, divisions must arise: it is as necessary energetically to reject that which follows wrong aims as to come to a peaceful settlement with that which errs only in the means. The antitheses which the work of humanity contains must also become intelligible, and at the same time a way must be prepared by which these antitheses may be overcome, not one by which merely a compromise between them may be arrived at. The breaking forth of the new must tend always toward the self-elevation of life; with arousing and strengthening power, it must take up the whole of life into its movement: it must demonstrate a transcendence of all the reflection and subjectivity of man, and this can be accomplished only through the disclosure of new forms and contents of life. Accordingly attention must in the first place be centred upon the pointing out of such new forms and contents.

The union of the spiritual life with man, its being firmly rooted in him, is seen to be at the same time something old and something new—something old in so far as it must have been existent and in some way effective from the beginning, something new in so far as its distinct emergence and its transition to a state of self-determining activity must alter the condition of things essentially; in fact, must turn life as a whole into a problem. Where the reality of man is reduced, as by Hegel, solely to an unfolding of thought and cognition, the present may find its most important task in the complete clarification and appropriation of the past; life comes to complete satisfaction in the drawing of historical achievement to itself. Where it is a question of the building up of a reality based on self-conscious and self-determining activity, when we ourselves share in such activity, we must find ourselves in an essentially different relation to things; and with all the connection with the past, life will press forward, changing and elevating in contrast with the whole past.

A contact, indeed a union, must therefore be established between the independent spiritual world—which in some way must be operative in us—and the activity of our own which struggles upward; and, through the gain of such a contact, that world must be led to more complete organisation, and that which strives upward made secure, unified, and advanced. In this it is essential that the movements and the demands which the fundamental idea of the spiritual life contains be present to our minds. The spiritual life appears, so we saw reason to believe, in the first place, to be something essentially new in contrast to the life of nature. The spiritual life is not the product of a gradual development from the life of nature, but has an independent origin, and evolves new powers and standards: new beginnings must, therefore, be recognisable in us if the spiritual life is to become our life. The new, however, manifested a development of the inner life to independence in opposition to its state of subjection at the level of nature, and so thus in man also the inner life must in some way come to itself and attain to freedom. We saw, further, that this development to independence cannot be brought about through new achievements in a given world, but that it needs the building up of a new world—a new basis for life: it extends even to the final basal forms; not any kind of activity could suffice, but a being within the activity, or, rather, a division of activity into something sustaining and comprehending on the one hand, and something demonstrating and producing on the other, is necessary. It is only thus that life becomes turned toward itself and elevated to a self-conscious life; activity to self-determining activity; experience to self-conscious experience. Man could not participate in such a self-conscious and self-determining life, if in him also a new life, a spiritual self, had not begun to be in some way. It is impossible for this self to be merely individual in nature: it can change the form of things and convey a new world only if it encompasses the multiplicity and experiences it as its own. An infinite self-conscious and self-determining life must not only include man within itself; it must become his own life, his true self.

To realise this life, this self, in more detail and to pass from mere impulse to fruitful work, such as the building up of a new reality necessitates, man must in some way transcend in his own sphere the mere juxtaposition of individual powers. Connections must be formed within the realm of man that somehow deal with that task and advance towards its accomplishment in a way that is beyond the capacity of individuals. A transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, that dominates the greater part of life, is also essential to the new life; an energetic revolution must raise life to a state of resting upon itself, to autonomy: and so in man also movements must appear in opposition to this antithesis—condensations and concentrations, in which life from being a movement hither and thither becomes a forming of reality from within. In these connections only out of a self-development of life has a reality arisen at all; and its content was not there complete at the outset, but was yielded only through the continuance of that self-development: it must be shown, therefore, that in man also life begins to turn toward itself, and that this makes it possible to attempt tasks which to our capacity are otherwise inaccessible.

It is necessary to acknowledge that in all the spiritual movement which appears in the domain of man, there is a revelation of the spiritual world: as merely human power cannot lead the whole to new heights, in all development of the spiritual life the communication of the new world must precede the activity of man. At the same time, where we are concerned with a life that is independent, and of which the activity is conscious and self-determined, the change cannot possibly simply happen to man: it must be taken up by his own activity; it needs his own decision and acceptance.

We shall consider the question of the possibility of this almost immediately: so much, however, is certain—that this necessity of a decision by man himself makes the matter far more complex and of far greater risk. The establishment of an independent spiritual life in man finds its chief enemy not in nature, but in the limitation and perversion of spiritual impulse through man’s subordinating it to his own ends. The chief conflict is not between spirit and nature, but between real and false spirituality. Thus thought emerges in man, seeks a representation of the world and would in this attain to truth; but when this striving first appears, man is wont to treat himself as the central point of the whole, to measure the whole of infinity according to what it achieves in relation to him, and to see reflections of himself throughout its whole extent. And so we have the anthropomorphic way of thinking, the nature of which we have become aware of only through toil during the progress of the work of culture; a way of thinking from which it has needed even more toil to protect ourselves, and which, in forms often hardly noticeable, is ever ready to appear again and to draw the spiritual movement into its paths. With the emergence of the spiritual life, man becomes more free in relation to his environment; more free also in relation to the necessities of mere nature: his activity can exert itself more independently, concern itself with lofty aims, strive towards the infinite. But all this capacity becomes drawn into the service of the human; the wishes and the desires of the individual grow to an enormous extent. Since out of the struggle for existence, with its natural limitation, an interminable struggle for more existence arises, naÏve self-preservation becomes transformed into an unrestricted egoism. That the more-than-human which appears in the domain of man should be employed to the advancement of the merely human is a danger that is present even at the highest stages of development: at one time man would prove his own power in the more-than-human; at another, and this more especially, he treats it as a means to attain his material welfare. Religion, for example, would reveal to man a new depth of reality, and so create a new life for him; and yet, how often even this new reality is degraded to a means for the preservation of his insignificant personality, and regarded as something which on his behalf guides the whole world aright!

The development of the spiritual life in the human sphere can thus be seen to be anything but a sure and steady progress; every step forward brings new dangers; unutterable confusion arises through the use and the perversion of the new in the interests of man. But, if the development of the spiritual life within man is thus an unceasing conflict against human error, this conflict, despite its exhibition of the littleness of man, is at the same time a witness to his greatness. For it shows not only that the spiritual movement needs the active co-operation of man, but also that there is a conflict within humanity itself against the perversion of the spiritual; that there must be more within man and operative in him than the narrowly human. Indeed, in nothing does man seem greater than in this development of a more-than-human within the domain of man, in this severe and untiring conflict with himself. How could this conflict arise and become the soul of universal history if man did not possess a life and being transcending his particularity, and if he did not realise more in himself than we at the first glance see in him? The error of Positivism is that, although it shows most clearly how this spiritual movement dissolves the forms of life as it is immediately experienced, it does not perceive and value the fact that, at the same time, a new life, an inner life emerges; that, indeed, the negation itself is possible only through a more comprehensive spiritual revelation. To consider the negative and the positive in their relation to each other, and to weigh them one against the other, is the indispensable condition for the adequate understanding of human life.

(b) The Nature of Freedom

The arousing of a new world to life within man is a problem and a task: it cannot be effected unless the spontaneity and self-determining activity that are distinctive of this world also manifest themselves within him. Further, it cannot be effected unless within man, who with the greater part of his being belongs primarily to nature, a deliverance from nature is accomplished and the centre of life is removed to its spiritual side; and this cannot happen without the co-operation of man. We need freedom, therefore, in two senses: as the presence of an independent inner life, and as man’s capacity to change—and we cannot fail to recognise that these are closely related.

Now, the impressions and experiences of modern life are opposed to freedom in both of these senses; indeed, with apparently insuperable force they oppose freedom in every sense. Modern science most clearly shows that man belongs to a great world-whole and world-movement; his life and work seem to be completely determined through his relations in this whole; his whole life is subject to an irresistible destiny, and in all his undertakings and conduct he can only follow the course directed by it. This destiny assumes for us the most diverse forms; and through this diversity surrounds us on all sides. Through the power of heredity we enter life with a definite nature: in the family, the state, and the society a particular kind of environment surrounds us and gives to our nature its more detailed colouring: the age meets us with particular tendencies, takes us up into itself with a supreme power, and just as decidedly directs us towards certain ends as it diverts us from others.

Even in earlier times all this was not ignored, so far as the individual aspects are concerned; but the Modern Age was the first to conceive the problem as a whole, and with this it has pursued the idea of determination even into the inner structure of the life of the soul, with the demonstration that here also nothing is spontaneous, nothing unmeditated, but that even down to the most primary impulse everything depends upon something else, and proceeds from definite relations. From this point of view the idea of freedom, and in particular that of a freedom of choice, appears to be only a remnant of an unscientific way of thinking. The fact that man feels—as an immediate impression—free in cases of hesitation between different possibilities has lost its power to convince the individual of the Modern Age. For the new mode of thought has evolved point for point along with an increasing divergence from the naÏve manner of representation, and it has won its greatest victories in opposition to this manner of representation. The revolution that Copernicus accomplished in the representation of the world has become typical of the whole of modern work; and as regards our problem also, dissent from ordinary opinion is less a cause for doubt than a recommendation.

However, our attitude in regard to this problem has, indeed, been essentially changed by modern thought. There can be no further talk of a vague freedom of the will, of a capacity to act in one manner or another unaffected by anything that preceded and by the whole environment; the fact of the subjection of man to a destiny, both external and internal, is forced upon us with overwhelming power. Whether the idea of freedom in every sense is shown to be invalid is another question; perhaps the problem is not so much solved as put on one side. In any case, if a fundamental problem—one that has been discussed from the earliest times—is suddenly declared to be finally solved, the suspicion must soon arise that the solution appears to be self-evident only because certain presuppositions which are in no way self-evident are implicitly assumed in it.

The surrender of every kind of freedom meets in the first place with the suspicion that thereby far more is lost than we think or intend; that much is lost to which it is impossible to surrender all claim. Great trouble is taken to prove that the denial of freedom by no means does away with the possibility of an ethical moulding of life. Yet it might be shown without difficulty that, in attempts of this kind, either the freedom, rejected in its ordinary sense, finds entrance again altered and deepened—as, for example, in the philosophy of Spinoza—or the ethic that remains after freedom has been denied retains only the name, and in itself signifies something merely mechanical. But why do we insist upon the ethical; why does so much depend upon its continuance? For this reason: that upon it depends whether life merely happens to us or also from us; whether we are simply parts of a rigid world-mechanism or self-determining co-operators in the building up of reality. If the former hypothesis is true, we are no more than the platform upon which events become connected; and we can possess no other unity than a summation of the multiplicity. A unity of this kind could not possibly attain to independence and transcendence; could not make an inner judgment upon events; could not take up a conflict in opposition to the condition of life as it is immediately experienced. The conception of conduct would inevitably be degraded to that of mere occurrence. We should cease to have inner unity and be comprehensive selves; we should not be able to speak of disposition and conviction: for it is of the essence of all these things that they cannot be imparted, but must arise newly and spontaneously just in the individual, and for this a concentration of life, an elevation to self-conscious and self-determining activity, is necessary.

Where inner unity and such an activity are lacking, a true present does not exist. For if, through the all-dominant relation of cause and effect, that which comes later proceeds in certain sequence from that which came earlier, our whole existence is only a stream of occurrences, and that which is called present is nothing more than the point of transition from the past to the future. Now, a real present can be reached from such an apparent present only if an independent task originates at this point, and a decision has to be made: the more our whole life and being here become a problem again, the more securely might we trust to the possibility of advancing beyond all previous achievement, and of a spontaneous breaking forth of new powers, the more will our life be transformed into a genuine present. A genuine present does not exist within the sequence, but above it; it cannot come to us opportunely, but must be attained through our own activity: it is our own work. It is, therefore, not a common and equal possession, but is differently constituted according to the individual. The present is the more real and comprehensive for us the more spiritual power we evolve and the more spiritual content we give to life. Thus the present is not a mere point in the succession of times, a mere ripple in the stream of appearances, but involves a counteraction to this flow; its formation is to be accomplished only by the placing of life in the region of the spontaneous, the independent, the time-transcendent.

All the losses in individual matters are, however, only appearances and parts of a universal loss that the surrender of freedom involves. This loss is no other than that of an independent nature-transcending spiritual life in general. Spontaneity is no subsidiary quality, the disappearance of which might only involve a modification; with it, the spiritual life as a whole stands or falls. The experience of history also shows clearly enough that that which has in any way reached a spiritual height never persists by simply existing, but that, if it is not to degenerate rapidly, it must proceed ever anew from spontaneous creative activity. The law of nature, that everything remains in its existent state of rest or motion until it is acted upon from without, is not true of the spiritual: of it nothing abides that is not continually brought forth anew.

The surrender of freedom, therefore, means no less than the inner destruction of the spiritual life. And before we submit to this we shall feel compelled to make a more careful inquiry, to see whether the arguments against freedom are really so cogent as they are represented. They do exert a compelling force, but only so long as their presuppositions are admitted and held to be unassailable. That they are not unassailable will become evident as soon as we clearly recognise their nature and implications.

If the world forms a closed and “given” system, in which every particular is determined completely by its position in the whole, there is no place for spontaneity. The question of freedom has no meaning for man if he belongs solely and entirely to such a world, and within it has only to weigh aims one against another. But in accordance with the results of our investigation we contest these two presuppositions most decidedly. To an investigation that begins with the life-process as the basis of its treatment, it is certain that a “given” world never can be primary, but only secondary. That it may attain to an inner present it needs a life that is not itself “given,” but with its activity encompasses a multiplicity, unifies, and makes it definite; for anything to be experienced as “given” a self-conscious and self-determining activity is necessary. If this self-determining activity can struggle upwards to complete power and consciousness only slowly, still it is the first and the sustaining world; and at the same time it can never be asserted that the forms of its life are only ideas and appearances. Life is not formed from existing individual points, and does not pass between such points, but all multiplicity is sustained by an active whole, and from this whole animated ever anew. This active whole may not be conceived as dependent upon another, and it is quite capable of advance. We have endeavoured to show that the matter is not one of subtleties of thought, but of different natures of the world and of activity; and that with the attainment of independence a new world emerges. We have also shown that in us the new world must first wrestle with another, to which we primarily belong; that inner changes must take place in us; and that, if all our toil is not to be in vain, the relation of the two worlds must be changed.

Man, therefore, has a special significance in that the two worlds meet together within him, and in that there can be no change in their relation to each other at this point without his co-operation. The problem of his life concerns more than his conduct, it extends to his being; the question is, how far the different worlds may become his own world, his life. The matter is one of shifting the centre of life from the position in which it is in immediate experience. Thus, the tension and the conflict involve the ultimate elements: each of the worlds has its own tasks and evaluations; things do not affect man with a given and fixed value, but they receive their value first from their relation to the main course upon which his life enters; and so all conflict concerning particular matters implies a decision concerning the whole. Of course, such a decision is not being made from moment to moment; and more especially, it is not made simply by reflection, but it is involved in the whole of life. Only that which in him, in endeavour and work, participates in such decision is true life; individual acts of external conduct only bring to expression that which has happened and still continues to happen inwardly and in the whole.

In all this the possibility of an inner elevation is presupposed. Everyone who strives for an inner development of man; everyone who, with clear insight into the meanness of the general condition of human affairs, unswervingly continues to strive for the advancement of humanity, relies on this possibility: without it there is no hope of a development and a growth of one’s own life, of an elevation of it above the condition in which it is first experienced. And so without this possibility endeavour loses all its true tension, and all that we are able to accomplish in ourselves and in others is no more than a dexterous use of existent forces. But is this condition of the matter, spiritually discerned, more than a mere discipline?

It is true that the possibility of an elevation has its fixed conditions; it necessitates particular convictions with regard to the world and to man. We must view the world as being still in a state of flux and regard man as not being simply a closed and limited individual. The infinite spiritual life must be present as a whole to him, and arouse a new world to life in him; his conduct must be rooted in the power and content of the infinite life: only thus can we understand that in man also a movement begins and a change is brought about. And so it remains ever an inderivable, original phenomenon, which we must acknowledge as a fact, that a spontaneous life breaks forth in man, a new and relatively independent life-centre originates. We always come back in the long run to original phenomena; the origin of living being in general is also an original phenomenon. May we deny the fact of such original phenomena, because they make our representation of the world less uniform and simple? To do so would be nothing else than to make our previously formed conceptions the measure of reality; it would be a new, specifically modern anthropomorphism.

This freedom, with its requirement of a world of inner life that introduces new contents, and also that we belong in some way to this world, is by no means a capacity to make a decision capriciously at any moment; it is not a denial of the power of necessity. Of course, it implies that there may be some kind of counteraction to this necessity; and that if this counteraction can attain success only as a result of the activity of life as a whole, even the individual moment need not be a matter of indifference. For, as the spiritual life has always to win its own height anew, so the present in its relations is not a mere consequence of the past: times of temptation can come repeatedly when all that which has been achieved becomes doubtful again; but times of elevation also come when an advance is made beyond that previously achieved. It is not possible for us simply to reject the present existence and all the conditions which constrain us, and to choose for ourselves a new kind of existence, instead of the one we have; from that it is impossible to free ourselves: in all further endeavour we have to take it into account, to make our peace with it. Nevertheless, life can attain to a transcendent point of view, from which the world of sense becomes the object of judgment and of adaptation; from which, to be regarded as completely ours, it needs acknowledgment and appropriation by us; and from which it is seen not to constitute our whole life, as that which is ultimate. Indeed, the tendencies within us which are concerned with nature, first reach their highest through such acknowledgment and appropriation by us: placed on a spiritual basis they lose their rigid exclusiveness and become unified; our particular nature no longer constitutes our whole being, but becomes the central point of a more comprehensive life, which extends further and further to infinity.

Our life, therefore, is a conflict between fate and freedom, between being “given” and spontaneity; and this conflict may be followed through all life’s divisions. The conflict appears primarily in the individual in the development towards personality and spiritual individuality. For, as personality, unless life has a spontaneous source, is an empty word, so also spiritual individuality does not come to anyone, but has first to be won by the work of life essentially elevating that which destiny brings: so far, it is our own work; but it is not entirely our own work, because that which comes to us from nature, and the condition of life gives us fixed points of support and points out a certain course. Similarly, peoples have in their nature, environment, and history definite conditions of their being, from which they cannot withdraw. But spiritual creation and inward greatness do not grow simply out of these conditions, however favourable they may be, but out of a spontaneous activity which takes up that which has been presented to it, gives it a central point, and from this develops it. The deciding question is always whether and how far individuals and peoples attain to and preserve such a self-determining activity. This activity alone makes it possible for life to be unified inwardly; for its elements to be distinguished and separated, and for some to be brought into prominence and others relegated to the background; for life to be made secure and elevated, and as the result of all for a spiritual individuality to be formed. The same thing holds good of the condition of a particular time, and man’s relation to it. At first man appears to be a child of his age, a slave of his age. But by the spiritual life he is able to win an independence of the age, and to make himself its lord. Again, he cannot free himself from the problems of the age; he cannot alter them just as he likes, cannot divert into an opposite direction the power which they exert upon him. But there is always an “either—or,” either submission to the succession of experience, or the beginning of an opposition from spiritual self-determining activity: in this, also, the possibility of calling new powers to life presents itself. From this spiritual point of view activity centred upon the concerns of the particular age is no longer regarded as the whole life; the particular age with its work is comprehended in an infinite life. As through all its different stages and constituents, so ultimately humanity as a whole also carries on a struggle for a spiritual being, an advance to a new level. Humanity may not be regarded as something finished; it must evolve to a nature other than its present one, bring about a transformation of its life, and win a spiritual individuality: the life of humanity is in a state of motion and it must become self-determined.

The idea of freedom thus reveals far-reaching prospects and the greatest tasks; it manifests its truth and power in taking possession of common experiences and illuminating them, and in the arousing and re-organisation of our life. With the acknowledgment and the adequate appreciation of freedom, with the revelation of its universal relations, man is elevated in the most essential manner, for it manifests the new world as active in the midst of his life and capable of appropriation by him: it calls him to independent co-operation in the conflict of the worlds; it gives to the simply human and the apparently commonplace an incomparable greatness. However powerful destiny may be, it does not determine man entirely; for, even in beginning opposition to it there is a liberation from it. However mean man’s activity, it carries in it a decision between worlds; however vanishing the moment, it is not entirely lost. True, the idea of freedom involves definite presuppositions: it involves, indeed, a profession of faith concerning life and reality as a whole, a profession of faith that contradicts every form of Naturalism and Intellectualism, and, in opposition to their representations of the world, champions another. But this profession of faith does not concern this problem only; it is involved in our work as a whole, and so the whole may support and confirm it.

(c) The Beginnings of the Independent Spiritual Life

As the problem of freedom gains in clearness and depth in the relations which have been discussed, so also the beginnings of independent spiritual life which are manifested in the domain of man become much clearer in them. Without such beginnings, which represent a new order in contrast to nature, and which oppose the degeneration of life to the narrowly human, a movement towards independent spirituality could never emerge in us. They are really intelligible and acquire power only when they are unified and acknowledged as the activity of a new life and being.

These beginnings appear in an elevation of life accessible to every individual, an elevation above the forms as well as the content of mere nature. We perceive this in the norms with which the research of the present is busily occupied. Our life does not consist entirely of simple matters of fact, but in certain directions qualities and forms are presented to it which are able to contradict the immediate state of things and to exercise a certain power over it. Thus the norms of thought, the norms of conduct and of artistic creation are evolved, each making particular demands, and being different in the manner of its operation. However, we are concerned here not with the aspects of difference, but with that which is common to all; and this consists in the working of an actuality in us that is something other than natural occurrence, an actuality that needs our acknowledgment, and through this acknowledgment first wins power over us. The demands which these norms make upon us are in no way convenient to us; they limit our caprice; they often cost hard toil and heavy sacrifice; our desire for natural happiness does not commend them to us. How is it then that we do not simply reject them? what is it that gives to them a constraining power over us? If they remained isolated and impenetrable experiences, if they adhered to us as something alien in nature, were foreign elements in our being, their power would be unintelligible. It is to be explained only upon the hypothesis that they are unfoldings of our own life, which by these unfoldings is proved to be something other than a life of nature. Unless they are rooted in our own life, these norms are like misty forms in the air. They obtain complete reality and motive power first as movements of our self, which then is no mere point by the side of other points, but an independent manifestation of life of the spiritual world.

This is in particular clearly the case in the idea of duty, the elucidation of the inner meaning of which is Kant’s greatest and most enduring service. A duty is always a command; it presents itself as independent of all caprice. At the same time, however, it can never be forced upon us by an external power; it needs our own assent and acknowledgment. Our own volition and being must operate in it, and, in this, being must present itself otherwise than it appears to be at the first glance. We must bear and maintain within us a new world; in submission to its orders we must assert and develop ourselves. In this manner alone can we explain the joyfulness which accompanies all genuine performance of duty, and without which duty is no more than a task forced upon us. How much power duty, and the norms in general, may acquire in the greater part of human life is a question in itself; but they could not exist for us even as ideas and possibilities if they were not in some way based in our own being. However, as they show this being in a new light, it follows that they must themselves gain in clearness and in power and become more closely unified if they are understood and treated as developments and modes of self-preservation of our own life.

It is with regard to content as well as to form that beginnings of a new life appear. At the level of nature only that which serves the self-preservation and the advancement of the life of the individual being is estimated as a good; all that is involved in this may be comprehended under the conception of utility. But notwithstanding its great power over man the consideration of utility does not form the only motive of his life. For a detailed treatment of this matter we may refer to what was said in the discussion of “The Growth of Man beyond Nature.” At present we are concerned especially with the view that the new that appears in us should be acknowledged to be the manifestation of a new world and the expression of our real being. In the growing of man beyond nature negation usually preponderates; he must limit the impulses of his natural ego, acknowledge and respect the rights of others, be ready to subordinate and sacrifice himself. It is for the most part not evident what can commend such a negation to him and give it power over him; and an impulse aroused to clear consciousness and strong desire may, therefore, feel this entire connection with a new world to be an unwarrantable limitation, and reject it as a violent intimidation and a degradation of life. The matter is seen in its right light only when negation is regarded as the reverse side of affirmation, and even then only if the winning of a new life and being is acknowledged in this affirmation. The positive impulse of self-preservation is indispensable to complete vital-energy, but mere self-assertion on the part of an individual in opposition to others does not constitute a genuine self; a genuine self is constituted only by the coming to life of the infinite spiritual world in an independent concentration in the individual. Only thus does life, which otherwise were empty, acquire a content. Then the individual is no longer compelled to develop his powers in conflict with other individuals, but in directing his life towards this infinite spiritual world, in its complete appropriation and organisation. Hence, only that which raises the spiritual content of life can be regarded as good, and goods will be compared in value in accordance with this standard. The more they lead beyond mere results to the development of a new being and self, the more essential they are to spiritual self-preservation; everything else becomes a means or a preliminary condition. Negation, also, has greater significance and importance from this point of view. The new affirmation can acquire no complete truth and no real power in man without a fundamental deliverance of life from mere nature and its particularity. Without earnestness of renunciation the new life sinks back to the old or both are combined in an undifferentiated unity, with the consequence that the new life loses its power to stimulate to new endeavour. As human beings are, this negation must always be a sharp one.

In this connection, it may be said that life needs the stage of law which restricts natural impulse, and constrains to the acknowledgment of superior organisations of life; but from the stage of law there must be progress to the stage of love, which for the first time reveals an inner relation to reality and reacts upon the stage of law, giving it a soul. On the other hand, a love that would be genuine comes not to destroy the law, but to fulfil, to take it up into itself. As love and law are indisputable powers in the life of humanity, so they also proclaim the emergence of a new world and the development of a new being within the domain of humanity.

(d) The Transcending of Division

A particularly severe conflict with regard to the problem of the unity of life arises between the natural condition of man and the requirements of an independent spiritual life. The spiritual life demands an enduring whole which includes all multiplicity within itself and of which the movement originates within: human existence is primarily a juxtaposition of individuals and a succession of moments; no union seems to be more than that which is constituted by a mere collection of the individuals. If the division were not in some way transcended no spiritual life could grow up within humanity, and man have no share in the building up of a spiritual world. The nineteenth century gave a confident answer to the problem: it contended that history and society of their own capacity bind the elements of life into stable forms which take up all multiplicity into themselves and raise our existence to spirituality. We most emphatically deny the validity of this contention, and hope to show that history and society themselves involve difficult problems; further, that only when we conceive them in a particular way are they able to help in the unification of life and then only in a limited manner; and lastly, that they do not so much produce a spiritual life as presuppose it, as essential to their own existence. Naturalism and Intellectualism have also confused the outlook; if we free it from this confusion, history and society will take a secondary place in our estimation; they will themselves be seen to be deeper and more comprehensive and to involve movements which extend further than appears in immediate experience; and they will become witnesses to the living presence of the spiritual life within humanity.

(i.) The Spiritual Conception of History

The nineteenth century transmitted to us a conception of history that is far more peculiar in nature and far more open to attack than is usually recognised: history is represented as a great stream which takes up all individual achievements into itself, unites them, and, regardless of all human error and caprice, leads surely to its end. No genuine achievement is lost, and all gain seems to be permanent; beyond all the trouble and uncertainty of the moment appeal is made to the power which, directing and elevating, permeates the movement, clarifies and refines it. In this conception the necessity of a process that has the power of determining its own activity and making its own decision is primary. The fact that the matter is not so simple as this conception of history represents is shown by the experience of the age itself, which directly contradicts it. For according to this conception the whole past should discharge itself into the present and so impart its whole result immediately to us, and the direction that our activity ought to take should be pointed out to us with complete certainty by history. But we are distinctly aware of the extent to which this direction is a matter of question and doubt, and of the uncertainty into which we have fallen with regard to the relation of the present to the past: in the process of our investigation we saw this in particular in the division and conflict between the different systems of life. History is seen to be a difficult problem far more than a secure fact; and we are compelled to take up a new consideration of the question.

In this consideration a distinct delimitation of the achievements characteristic of man is primarily necessary. Modern science already recognises a history of nature, and much that was formerly regarded as complete is now seen to be in a state of flux and movement. Since every event leaves effects behind, in the course of ages the results accumulate, develop, and act upon one another, that which comes later is conditioned by the influence of the earlier and is intelligible only in relation to it, a distinctive historical method gains currency. Geology presents to us with particular clearness a history of this type. In so far as man belongs to nature and the spiritual life has not yet developed to any degree of independence in him, he is also the subject of such a history. That which happens within him leaves behind effects that become the conditions of later occurrence. This conception of history, as determined solely by mechanical causes, is still maintained in some quarters in spite of further developments of thought. But it is not apparent from this point of view how, even with the greatest accumulation of effects, history could yield anything of gain to an inner unity, to a life from the whole: for that, man must bring with him something essentially new; and as a matter of fact this is what he does.

Not only do events happen to us and change our condition, but with our own activity we are able to hold fast to these events, to give to them an inner permanence, to bring them ever anew from the dim distance into the living present. We do not drift onward with the stream of time, but withstand it; seek to wrest something fixed from “becoming” and change, and salvation in the eternal. We cannot do this without altering the whole view of things and manifesting a new spiritual capacity.

The retention in mind of individual events by means of annals, monuments and similar methods is the beginning of a history of a higher kind: even so much shows a greater activity, since it involves a judgment of the significance of events, and on the basis of this judgment begins to wage war against the destroying power of “cormorant devouring time.” The achievement is incomparably higher, if certain spiritual unities and tendencies are adhered to and are given permanent currency: thus religion in particular gave a stability to life and delivered men from the tyranny of the mere moment. The matter remains simple so long as the movement is within a single people or a definite sphere of culture. But in its progress it goes far beyond these limits. New peoples arise; the state of culture undergoes great changes, indeed revolutions; life is taken up from new starting points, from which everything of importance to earlier ages loses its value. But it is lost only for a time; a desire to return to it and to bring it into complete harmony with the new is soon felt. The circle of vision is thus increasingly widened, and all multiplicity is finally united into a whole. This retention of the past is primarily a matter of knowledge and of intellectual appropriation. But it is not limited to this; it would operate not only in the extension of knowledge but beyond this in the development of life. Whatever has been won by human power is to be preserved, unified, and used to advance the present. Thus, there arises a historical culture; an education on a historical basis; religion and philosophy, art and law derive power and content from the work of universal history, and life as a whole seems to win a greater comprehensiveness and stability. And so it has come to appear as though the past imparts its whole result to the present without any effort on the part of man and without incurring him in any risk.

In reality the case is entirely different. The stream of the ages becomes spiritually significant to us only in so far as we develop an independence of it. The stream does not itself, automatically and independently of us, select the elements of value which it contains or unite the ages to a harmonious result: we ourselves must achieve this. Spiritually regarded, we do not from the beginning stand upon a sure foundation, on which we might peacefully build; we must first acquire such a foundation through endeavour, and in this matter we see doubt and violent change continually make that uncertain which is apparently most secure, and make it necessary to seek greater depths.

For this treatment of history, involving, as it does, self-determining activity, an elevation above time is essential. Without in some way transcending time we could not survey individual events and unite them in one representation. But we would do far more than that; we would select and take up into our own life that which is valuable in the earlier, in order thereby to enrich and strengthen our life, and to lead it as far as possible from the present of the mere moment to a present encompassing the ages. How could this come to pass unless we were able to secure an independent vantage ground transcending the stream of the ages; a vantage ground from which we may survey and judge the ages, appropriate some elements from them and reject others? Experience shows clearly enough that the tendency and the content of life with which we meet the past, decide what shall be its spiritual representation, and how we shall stand in relation to it. For experience shows that each main tendency of life has its own view of history and its own treatment of history; it shows further that every change in life which is in any way far-reaching involves an alteration in our relation to the past; gives prominence to the new, and relegates the old to the background. There arises therefore a history of history; a history, for example, of that which in the life of Antiquity has seemed essential and valuable to the different later ages. For us, therefore, history, in regard to its spiritual nature, is involved in constant change. The past does not decide concerning the present so much as the present concerning the past; the past is not something dead and fixed behind us; ever anew it becomes the object of passionate conflict.

But does not this dependence of the past upon the present deprive history of all independence and of all value? Does it not surrender life completely to the contingency of the changing moments? Does it not destroy all inner unity of the ages? This would, in fact, be the case if the matter remained on a simply human basis; if a spiritual life transcending time were not manifested through all the changes of the ages; if a spiritual history could not be distinguished from a narrowly human one. Spiritual history is concerned with that which through all human activity and endeavour reveals a self-conscious inner life and which, as such a revelation, is valid not only for a particular age but through all ages and independently of all ages. Spiritual history would be impossible unless there is active within us from the beginning an independent spiritual life which first realises its content through the historical process.

Such a transcendent nature is most evident at those highest points of human development which we call “classical,” not because they should dominate and bind all ages, but because in them the spiritual life attained to a complete independence over against man, lifted him above himself into the fire and flood of creative activity, and made it possible for him to produce characteristic contents. These classical achievements are especially important for the development of life if they not only bring something new in individual departments and in particular directions, but also shape and present the whole to us in a distinctive manner, and seek to appropriate to themselves, and in the appropriation to elevate, the spiritual impulse that exists in man; if a new being, in contrast to nature and society, emerges and would become lord of the whole. Life as a whole is thus transformed into a problem and a conflict. The question is whether this movement is able to take up everything into itself and to lead life to its highest level, or whether it meets with an insuperable resistance. In this matter life tests itself by itself, by its own development—a thing which is possible only if its experiences arise out of its being as a whole. If in a particular case it proves that essential requirements remain unsatisfied, that the movement is not able to include the spiritual life within itself, a severe convulsion is inevitable, the spiritual life as a whole comes to a standstill, and there can be no advance until life concentrates anew and the new concentration gains ground. It is to be expected that a new concentration will bring forward and develop that, in particular, which formerly did not find complete satisfaction. In the first place, therefore, there is an abrupt break and the emergence of an apparently irreconcilable opposition: the old is relegated to the background; tested by the new, the old soon comes to be regarded as a complete mistake. In reality it is not so. For, as certainly as spontaneous creative activity was operative in the old and produced characteristic contents, it involves something which, superior to all the change of time, will survive convulsion and doubt, and assert itself in some way in a more comprehensive life. But the old will not survive and re-assert itself unless the timeless reality within it separates itself from all human and temporary addition; unless it manifests what lies behind the historical form.

The same thing happens in the case of the new movement that arises. With all its greatness of achievement, limitations become manifest in it; then, more comprehensive forms arise; and so in the historical movement as a whole the spiritual life is revealed in forms continually increasing in content. In opposition to the tendency for one age to be separated from another, however, a desire for unity, for a life which in some way embraces the multiplicity of movements and concentrations of life, and binds them into a whole, makes itself felt. A unity can hardly be achieved by simply regarding the different concentrations and tendencies as on the same level and making a compromise between them; rather it is necessary that the different concentrations and different movements contend with one another; it is just their conflict which may elevate and deepen life. The movement to secure this unity and to retain elements from the past is not an accumulation of elements and tendencies in time, but an increasing deliverance from time, the establishment of a timeless truth independent of the change of things. Experiences, of which the external manifestations no longer exist, are again called to life, and preserved for all time by spiritual power; indeed, that which is lost in immediacy by the absence of the external manifestation is more than compensated for by an advance to the source of the power: things which in their temporal form are a mere co-existence are transformed into an organised whole. Movements, which in history have often been engaged in passionate conflict, may enter into a relation of interaction, and may be regarded as a sequence of stages, in which the earlier prepares for the later, and the later presupposes the earlier; in which all give life to and further one another. A universal life thus progressively arises within the domain of man; the individual achievements unite more and more to the building up of a new, enduring world; the whole realises itself in the individual occurrence, and through the development of a time-inclusive present transcends the mere moment.

This movement of life in history involves more unrest, conflict and doubt, than the nineteenth-century doctrine of evolution implied. For this doctrine saw in the historical movement the unfolding of a spiritual life, sure as regards its foundation and its main direction; the antitheses within that movement seemed to be involved in a single process, which determined the limits of each tendency in relation to the others; a transcendent necessity was regarded as leading to the development of all in their relation to one another. As a fact, the conflict is also concerning the substance and the main direction of the whole; the spiritual life must first realise itself within the region of mankind, and it is realised through the toil and work of man himself. It is just the fact that the problem is an ultimate one, that even the fundamental forms of life develop only in conflict and experience, and that we are concerned not with winning simply this or that in life, but genuine life itself, that makes history significant. At the same time, this brings man into a more inward relation to the spiritual life, and this life is made more his own life and being than if he were surrounded by the power of physical or intellectual processes. Nothing makes humanity as a whole more significant than that in its province and through its work the new world begins to develop.

With such a conception of history, the philosophical treatment of it must direct its attention chiefly to the independent spirituality which in the course of the centuries, and especially in great changes, is evolved in contrast with the narrowly human; and to the main direction which is given to life by this spirituality. The philosophical treatment of history ought first of all to trace the liberation of life from the simply human; the inner elevation of our being to a more-than-human. Antiquity at the height of its spiritual development began to desire a universal truth independent of man; a moulding of life in accordance with an inner right; and an order of things beyond the power of human caprice, as was shown by the giving symmetry and harmony precedence in art, and justice in conduct. Christianity brought about a liberation of the innermost disposition, the root of endeavour and of love, from purely natural impulse, however ennobled; and in this way brought men into new relationships and set them before new tasks. The Modern Age on the part of science began a relentless conflict against the anthropomorphism of the mode of life as immediately experienced; thus it has made the spiritual life even in its form independent of man, in that it has created spiritual complexes and has recognised in them movements and inner necessities of their own. Through the whole of this movement of universal history life frees itself more and more from its dependence upon mere man, and from the bondage to “given” presuppositions and “given” natural impulses, and from a “given” world in general. Life is based more and more upon its own independent nature, and from its position of independence develops a new kind of being. It is this gain of a new world through struggle that alone gives to history a meaning and an inner unity.

If history thus accomplishes the formation of great spiritual complexes, and if there is an endeavour to fit these with all their antitheses into an all-comprehensive whole, if it unites all ages and all powers with the bond of a universal task, it is a clear witness to the living presence of the spiritual life within the human sphere. Apart from this presence all these achievements would be impossible, and the whole movement must vanish into thin air. The estimate of history here given is valid only when a spiritual history is clearly distinguished from merely human history. Only when history as a whole gains a soul and a support from this spiritual history are the non-spiritual factors able to attain to any rational significance; only then can history have a meaning and transcend the relativity from which otherwise it cannot escape. On the one hand, history demands for its own existence the presence of a spiritual world within humanity; on the other, it testifies to this presence by that which is characteristic in its own content; by that which can be understood only as a progressive disclosure of such a world.

(ii.) The Spiritual Conception of Society

The problem of society is closely akin to that of history. In the life around us a certain union is attained in that men dwell together, but this immediate union does not simply of itself produce a spiritual unity, a spiritual whole: if society manifests such a unity, then in it, also, a distinctive revelation of the spiritual must be acknowledged.

Modern science shows clearly and distinctly that the individual is not an isolated atom, but exists in relation with a social environment; and that, even to the innermost recesses of his being, he is determined by the constitution of this environment. But science falls into serious error if it goes beyond the truth of this contention and attempts to represent spiritual creation as the result of the mere inter-relation and accumulation of individual powers. For between spiritual creation and this inter-relation and accumulation of individual powers, in spite of all their external proximity, there is the widest divergence. Spiritual creation requires to be treated as an end complete in itself, and must follow the laws of its own being; it claims an inalienable supremacy above all trivial human interests, which yet for a time dominate the common life. Further, it cannot succeed without the development of an inner unity which maintains and characteristically forms a whole of life. The existence of men side by side gives rise to a variety of opinions, strivings, dispositions, which mingle confusedly together; the usual condition of things that arises from this confusion has anything but a definite character. The condition of our own time must convince everyone who is unprejudiced, how little this pitiable confusion can of itself produce anything spiritual and associate men together in an inner unity. For in the epoch of railways, telegraphs and newspapers, of large towns and of factories, movements of the masses are certainly not lacking; they surround the individual and influence him more strongly than ever before. But where, out of all the fluctuation of public opinion, out of the confusion and bustle of life, does creative spiritual activity arise, give to life an inner content, and unite humanity in an inner community? Rather, we see humanity continually split up into opposing factions; we see the strife tend more and more to affect the foundation of our existence.

However, in spite of the spiritual impotency of the movements of the masses, creative spiritual activity has emerged in humanity, has overcome the separation of the individuals and inwardly unified the forces of life. It must not only be possible to effect, but we must actually effect a unity which transcends the individuals, a union which has its source in the spiritual life itself.

In reality the experience of humanity shows such a union. Of primary importance in this connection is the fact of the power of so-called “ideas” in history—the fact that certain aims transcending natural welfare win power over the whole domain of culture, bind men together and lift them above their selfish interests. To be sure, in the movements which arise to carry out these ideas much that is insignificantly human is introduced; and the interests of individuals and of classes often largely preponderate, but the origin and the progress of these movements cannot be accounted for by the merely human; they are only to be explained as due to man feeling directly within himself the necessity of spiritual tasks. If he feels this necessity only under particular conditions, and if it is only for a short time that it asserts itself at its highest, still it extends its influence over life as a whole, and is everywhere a unique phenomenon, even when limited and confused by much that is alien to it.

Further, the fact that whole peoples have developed distinctive national characters is of importance in this connection. Such a character is distinguished essentially from all mere participation of common conditions, not only physical but also psychical, that social life brings with it. For the development of such a character life must rise to energetic activity and become unified; there must be an advance towards a common goal; an active relation must be taken up not only towards the environment but also towards itself. A national character is not “given,” but is attained through the work of history; it develops only through common experiences, sufferings, and triumphs: in its origin and its continuance it involves an elevation above the aims of physical and social preservation, a development of pure inwardness.

Finally, no inner relation of humanity proceeds from the physical association of men, from their meeting in a common world. If a vital whole, a common truth, did not exist within us, all our relations would be external: we could not follow common aims in life and endeavour or have common experiences; we could not think and live for one another, or develop spiritual contents in different departments, such as those of law and religion, science and art, and give to them a cognate spiritual character. It is always the presence of a self-conscious reality that binds humanity together inwardly. We can be as certain in our acknowledgment of this presence as we can that our experience shows such an inner unity in important achievements and in the formation of whole departments of work and other complexes.

With its acknowledgment we avoid the severe contradiction that is shown in the contemporary estimate and conception of humanity. To our more dispassionate consideration of things the disagreeable aspect of the social machinery, the growing sharpness of the conflict, the passionate eagerness of the desire for more, the inconsistency between the enormous amount of subjective excitement and the spiritual poverty, are clear. Logically, this confused and self-contradictory state of affairs ought to lead to a rejection of the whole, and to a pronounced pessimism. Yet humanity is regarded as noble and worthy of respect; it is made the value of all values; the object of our faith and our hope; all our efforts are directed towards its well-being. And this is done without it being perceived that thus the basis of experience is forsaken and that the impression of humanity obtained from experience is bluntly contradicted: the introduction of an abstract conception seems to alter everything and to lead to its being regarded as good. In the shattering of beliefs at least this one has remained: belief in the power of abstractions. He who would abandon this belief and at the same time hold fast to the high estimate of humanity must admit that a spiritual world is active in man, and in so doing acknowledge that man is more than he appears in immediate experience. Such a one will feel increasingly the necessity of actively comprehending and definitely distinguishing from the medley of trivial social concerns every manifestation of a spiritual world in man. It is not out of society but in conflict with it that everything great has grown. And yet that which is great is rooted in a whole of life. Spiritual work must have its basis in this invisible whole, not in mere society; and from this position it must protest against the presumptuous claim of society to evolve the spiritual life of its own power. The community that proceeds from a spiritual union will be primarily an invisible one; but whether this invisible unity could not realise itself better and be effective also in the visible world is a serious and difficult question that continually becomes more urgent.

If the conviction that we have here given an account of definitely contradicts the historico-social view of life which was so potent in the nineteenth century, and which deeply degraded the spiritual life and its self-conscious and self-determining activity, it by no means fails to recognise the significance of history and society; and has no intention of taking up again the mode of thought common in the period of the Enlightenment. History and society are indispensable means for the development of the spiritual life in humanity: from mere individuals and from individual moments it could attain neither content nor power. But to declare for this reason that history and society are the generating basis of the spiritual life was a definite error; though in the historical movement of the problem it certainly finds an explanation and an excuse. The higher estimate of history and society has grown up on the basis of Idealism; to Idealism the spiritual life seemed to live and first to attain to its complete truth in history and society. Later on, attention and activity were diverted from a world of thought chiefly to the world of sense; and with this change history and society lost their spiritual foundation and their animating soul. Nevertheless, their claim to produce the spiritual life remained; they were expected to achieve of their own power more than was possible even with the greatest exertion. In truth they can bring forth spiritual contents, and serve the development of the spiritual life within man, only under the presupposition of the presence of a transcendent spiritual life. At the same time their achievement in the combination of forces and in the production of spiritual results is a witness to the reality of the spiritual life.

(e) The Elevation of Life above Division

We saw that the spiritual life attains an independence only if it does not simply bring about an effect upon a world independent of it, but produces a reality from itself; concentrates so as to become a reality itself. At the first glance man seems by no means to satisfy this demand. For his life, after, in its progress, rising above its initial stages, in which it was undifferentiated from the environment, is subject to the antithesis of man and world, of subject and object, and the divergence seems to increase continually in the course of his development. The more power the life of the soul wins, the more it produces a characteristic content, the freer and more active reflection becomes, the more does the world recede before man, the more definitely is immediate contact with the world prevented. The gulf is not bridged by the epistemological consideration that that over against which we place ourselves must also, fundamentally, belong to our own life, be in some way included within it: this treatment signifies a removal of the antithesis to another region rather than an inner transcendence of it. A genuine transcendence cannot be effected without an expansion and development of life, evolving new connections which transcend the division, and lifting us into a sphere above mere subjectivity.

Connections such as these are, as a fact, brought about by an expansion and development of life; but these connections which in their individual appearances are evident to all are seldom adequately estimated as a whole, and in respect of the problems to which they give rise. These connections are effected in work, in work as a spiritual occurrence. We have already seen how in work the object loses its alien nature and is taken up into our own life; we must now follow more closely the process by which work is extended and deepened; produces a characteristic sphere of life and establishes a spiritual reality in the domain of man.

At first we are occupied in work with an abundance of individual tasks that have no inner relation to one another. But the more work advances from an external contact with objects to an inner change of them, the more necessary is it that these tasks should be unified so as to form a whole; and that each task should have its position in this whole, and represent in itself a particular aspect of the whole. The proof of greatness in a “work” is just that the nature of the individual aspects is determined fundamentally by their relation within the whole; that what is characteristic in the work as a whole is manifested even in its simplest elements; thus, for example, every independent thinker has particular views with regard to the nature of the fundamental forms of logical thought such as the concept and the judgment; in the same way every independent artist creates his own language of forms. Work not only leads to a unity of life in the case of individuals; but, further, without a union of individual forces for a common end, without an organisation of all human work, we should stand defenceless in face of the infinity of the world, and we could never advance to a state of culture. In such community of work man creates a new sphere of existence for himself; he forms his world of work and sets it in contrast to everything which does not come within it. This world of work transcends the individual; and yet it is our world; it is sustained by human power and, directing and forming, reacts upon man. For, the more unity this world of work acquires and the more control it wins over the object, the more definite departments and relations it evolves in itself, the more does it manifest characteristic laws and methods which, with superior power, prescribe to human activity its nature and direction, but which can originate nowhere else than in the domain of man. And so within the domain of man we rise above all caprice and subjectivity: since the law of the object determines man’s work, his life is raised above the antithesis between soul and object. Work is not something that man, essentially perfect, undertakes incidentally and as something supplementary, but it is that through which he first develops a spiritual life; through which he acquires a spiritual existence; and the character of the work determines at the same time the nature of this existence. As the individual departments of work evolve characteristic modes of thought and conviction, so out of work as a whole a particular spiritual nature arises which does not exist in relation to a world external to it, but contains within itself a world formed by its own activity. All this, in conformity with our fundamental conviction, involves the implication that man is not a spiritual being from the beginning, but only has the potency to become one.

Such a raising of the aim which is set to work involves an increase in the amount of toil that it necessitates, and the dangers which are incurred: the object and the encompassing life are subject to these dangers. For the complete success of work and the formation of a genuine self, it is as necessary that the object be taken up entirely into the process of work as that there should not be another vital unity more ultimate than the self which grows up in the work, but that the self should form the final conclusion: whatever is not taken up into the process of work lessens its content, weakens its power, endangers its truth, and prevents just that from being achieved which is here in question. If, however, we consider the opposition that arises at different points, genuine work is seen to be a high ideal, an infinite task which even in favourable cases is only approximately fulfilled. At the same time it is a witness to the sway of elevating and modifying powers within the domain of man.

The object is concealed from man chiefly by his own inclination to treat himself as the centre of reality; to transform the environment into a reflection of his own being; and to measure the infinite by the standard of his own well-being. Along with this humanising of the environment, man develops the most diverse forms of occupation with it, but however far such occupation may be extended, it does not lead man beyond his own domain; it does not aid him in his spiritual progress. It is possible for occupation upon the environment to aid spiritual progress only when things attain an independence, and from this firmly resist the tendency of man to represent them in accordance with his subjective wishes. Only such independence of the objective makes it possible for it to arouse new powers in man and for his life to be based on something deeper than immediate feeling and desire, and to begin an inner transformation. But this movement has various levels which differ distinctly from one another; and from the position of a higher level it is difficult to regard the achievement at a lower one as genuine and complete work. The Modern Age with its exact research often cannot regard the work of early natural science as work of high value. A similar gradation is evident in the striving for happiness; for the raising of human well-being. So long as endeavour is directed to attaining and preserving mere subjective states of feeling, and so long as a movement beyond this subjectivity is not acknowledged to exist within man himself, and the requirements of this movement are not satisfied—as is the case with Epicureanism and Utilitarianism—endeavour, earnest as it may be, does not acquire the character of spiritual work; it does not essentially advance life, and therefore in the long run does not satisfy human needs. Epicureanism and Utilitarianism with all their results inevitably become insipid and empty to him.

If there are powerful hindrances to this endeavour for something more than the subjective, there is at the same time a wealth of movement which bids defiance to them, and the course of history shows continuous expansion and development of this movement; it shows that man is able to take up a conflict against the trivially human, and, in the building up of a new world, to raise himself essentially above his original condition. Exact science breaks away from the object of perception, removes it to a distance, analyses it there, ascertains its laws, and then restores it in changed form to men: in this it also advances human life in itself, in that thought rises more freely above perception, and a system of pure thought sustains the whole world of sense. A further divergence between the struggle for physical existence and the building up of a new world appears in history in the endeavour for happiness and a significant content of life. In the experience of humanity, morality and religion, looked at inwardly, assume two fundamentally different forms. On the one hand they are looked upon as a mere means to support man in a given world; to bring him into congenial relation with the world; and so to organise this world that it may achieve as much as possible for human well-being. This form governs human experience at its general level, and easily comes to be regarded as the only form. At higher levels of creative activity, however, a totally different form made its appearance: there was a break with the whole world of sense and well-being as though with something intolerably narrow, and in a self-conscious life a new world arose and brought forth characteristic contents; the appropriation of this world raised life above all mere particularity and subjectivity; at the same time this appropriation became an infinite task and work for man and for humanity as a whole. If this form of religion and morality has been manifested with complete clearness only at high levels of life in history, from these heights this form has also exerted an influence upon the rest of life, animating and raising it; indeed, it is only this genuine conception of religion and morality which first gives to them an independence and a value in themselves. Thus, notwithstanding the inadequacy of human achievement we cannot but recognise that life transcends mere subjectivity and the separation that it involves.

In another direction complexities arise in that something objective is evolved and established which, however, is not brought sufficiently into relation with life as a whole and united with it. Then, work may progress within its own province constantly and vigorously, but it loses touch with our soul; we do not realise or develop ourselves in it. With all the feverish tension of individual powers work is then inwardly alien to us, and its power over us may become a heavy oppression. Through such a detachment from life as a whole work loses soul and is nothing more than mechanical; in short, we have all those results of division between work and soul which we may feel with particular acuteness in the contemporary state of culture. Experiences rising from this division lead us to demand that work shall be so organised as to be capable of taking up life as a whole into itself, and with this of becoming our true self. Again, life as a whole cannot enter upon work as complete, for then it would force something alien upon work, and by this pervert it; life as a whole can be evolved only from the unification and elevation of work itself. We do not begin and carry on work as a fixed individuality, but we form individuality first through work by the continual overcoming of the opposition of subjective disposition and object. Spiritual contents are not produced by a communication of something that is in itself complete to something else that is in itself complete, an interaction of disposition and object; rather must we say that genuine work sets both sides in motion and with elevating power unites them in a single life. So understood, every movement which tends to the development of spirituality in individuals, peoples, ages, and finally of humanity as a whole, is a witness to the possibility of a transcendence of this opposition, of the emergence of a reality within the life-process.

We cannot give work a spiritual nature in this way, and make it the instrument of a new reality, without being compelled to acknowledge that there is much less genuine work among men than we are accustomed to assume. On the other hand, we must also recognise that the little that there is signifies much more, and indicates much greater advances of life than it is usual to admit. Nothing differentiates individuals and ages more from one another than the extent to which they take part in genuine work; the degree to which they transform their life in such work. Mere reflection and good will can accomplish very little in this matter; without an energetic nature, a strong inner disposition with a definite tendency, as well as the favour of destiny, not much can be achieved. What is usually called “life” is only a will to live, a straining after life; it yields but an outward appearance and a shadow of life: genuine life is first brought forth by that transformation.

But the less human existence in general immediately includes genuine work, the more indispensable is it that there should be firmly rooted tendencies to such work in the basis of our being, and that these tendencies should be developed to greater clearness of form and to greater effect in the work of universal history. So that our work may not be split up and destroyed, we need definite syntheses that establish a structure of life. On the one hand we must accomplish an analysis into individual tendencies and departments of life which, operating independently, generate life; and on the other hand we must find a unity of endeavour among these tendencies and departments; a movement from one to another; a common activity directed towards the building up of a new world. These syntheses must be an immediate experience at each point; they must be involved in all division of work; everywhere set distinctive tasks; produce characteristic achievements; and in energetic organisation of existence elevate it to the level of a characteristic system of life, full of power, which presses forward to further development. Only thus could a movement originate which might expand to a real whole and be capable of establishing this whole against the world as it is for immediate experience; only thus could humanity defend itself against the power of the environment and of destiny.

Experience alone can decide whether our life contains such syntheses, and whether by means of them it forms a whole: the movement of universal history shows that there are such syntheses. The natures of these syntheses give to the chief epochs of culture their distinctive characters, by which the natures of their elements and of the relations between them are determined; and man acquires a definite relation to the world and can make a judgment upon it. Such a synthesis, with its life-penetrating and life-forming power, certainly contains some truth; it is not a product of narrowly human reflection and imagination. The course of time and the changes of history, therefore, cannot simply break it down completely; rather with the truth that it contains such a synthesis elevates life above time into the eternal. But it has not been demonstrated that life is capable of only one synthesis, or that it may not produce a variety of such: life does not necessarily realise its unity in simply establishing a single synthesis; it can seek unity in the supremacy of a chief synthesis above others. That experience in our own sphere of culture shows the latter to be the case we intend to indicate in a few lines.

A characteristic synthesis first made its appearance at the height of classical Antiquity. It was art, chiefly plastic art, that determined the nature of this synthesis. Form as a unifying and systematising power is at the centre of life, takes possession of matter and organises it, transforms chaos into a cosmos; and in this exercise of power it realises itself, even though its fundamental nature is regarded as transcending all change and variation. Spiritual work is formative and selective; it is the triumphant realisation of form; it is necessary that life in all its stages of development should be permeated by this formative spiritual activity. There are numerous independent centres of life, but the tendencies from each are towards the realisation of the whole, and find their perfection in it alone.

Thought, independent of the world, must extract from the medley of first impressions permanent forms, and unite these into a consistent representation of the whole; it finds the acme of its achievement in bringing this representation clearly to consciousness in a form that is complete and free from subjective addition. In conduct, an organisation and a unifying of the elements so as to produce a harmonious effect is the chief thing. From the chaotic mass of individuals, the state by constitution and law forms a living work of art, a differentiated organism. For the individual the chief matter in conduct is to bring the diverse forces in the soul into the right relation of order and gradation, to reach the highest of all harmonies, the harmonious life.

All this involves particular estimates of value, a characteristic solution of the problems and a harmonising of the oppositions of our existence. It is a matter of general knowledge how this synthesis has elevated and ennobled life, and is still increasingly felt as an influence tending to further development and harmony. But it is equally well known how the progress of life has rebuffed the claim of this system of life to be the only valid one. We have become aware of contradictions which do not find sufficient acknowledgment in this system: a gulf deeper than it is able to transcend has made its appearance between man and his environment: in particular, the supremacy of form, which constitutes the basis of the system, has been shaken. Antiquity, at its highest development, had, without much consideration, given to form a living soul; its later course dissolved this union, the soul degenerated more and more into an inwardness of feeling, and gave up all claim, if not to the world, yet to its organisation and formation: form, deprived of soul, threatened to become superficial, and to change life into play and enjoyment. It was at this point that Christianity intervened with a powerful effect, but it has not, in the sense with which we are here concerned, produced an organised system of life.

Such a system was first produced in the Modern Age, and more particularly in the period of the Enlightenment. This system makes force the centre of life; to increase force without limit is the task of tasks. The elements of reality are centres of force; but these elements are not isolated, because force is called forth only by force, and the amount of life depends on the degree to which relations are developed. Since in this way one tends towards another, they become interweaved and joined, and the many are united. For this system the world does not appear as a work of art which rests in itself, but as a process that ceaselessly increases in volume: the main achievement of spiritual work is, with complete consciousness and self-determining activity, to take possession of this process, which actually surrounds us; to change its infinite life as much as possible into our own life, and to co-operate to the best of our capacity for its advancement. Since here spiritual work never tolerates a state of inactive peace, never accepts the world as a rigid destiny, but is concerned to develop the world, to analyse the world as it first appears into its elements in order to reach the forces that move it, life acquires a more active relation to the environment than it does in the earlier, more contemplative system, and feels itself to be more in the workshop of reality.

The relation of knowledge and life is changed from its traditional character. Research cannot transform the world from the apparent calm and completeness of the immediate impression into movement and development, without analysing the representation offered into its ultimate elements; ascertaining their laws, and finally, with the help of the idea of unlimited time, reconstructing from the beginning the world, which it had first of all destroyed. With such destruction and reconstruction modern research brings the world much nearer to us, and gives us more power over it than does the earlier type. Corresponding to the understanding of reality from its evolution, man finds his own life in a progressive movement. Human society is regarded less as a well-arranged work of art than as a complex of forces, which come to full development and make sure progress only in their relation. The chief demand is for the greatest amount of freedom of movement; the greatest number of relations between individuals, and a ceaseless increase of the stream of life, that should take up into itself all that bear human features. The individual also must realise his existence as one of “becoming” and motion; he is not bound by a closed standard of nature. Through the power of his spiritual nature he is able to assimilate ever new capacity, and to grow without limit: nothing gives more proud courage and joyous force to his life than this consciousness of an inner infinitude. A characteristic ideal of culture and education is formed: all individual departments of spiritual work are now regarded primarily as means to the increase of human power, and must assume a form corresponding to this. And so life everywhere becomes more active and more powerful: it finds its aim within itself, in its own elevation, and has therefore no need to seek it in something external; the whole existence of man becomes more his own work. As work comes more deeply into touch with the nature of things the development of power becomes at the same time a controlling of the world. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, when the modern man, with the development of this system of life, believed that for the first time he had left a childlike condition of constraint and limitation, and entered a state of freedom and maturity.

But the further development of life shows clearly enough that this system, which makes force and movement its leading principles, is not the final stage of human endeavour: the leading idea of our whole investigation is that human endeavour is more than this. We have seen that a system of mere force and movement gives no soul to work and does not lead life to self-consciousness and self-determination. A rushing stream seizes us and carries us along with it, but we reach no position independent of it; and so we cannot unify the multiplicity, nor gain a content from its immeasurable achievement; indeed, the increasing extension of life divides us more and more into single forces, and deprives us of a self that transcends the movement. At first this was not fully perceived, since the soul was implicitly assumed to be force and the extension of movement was regarded as a pure gain to the life of the soul. But the further development and the keener emphasis on the new state attained could not but clearly indicate the contradiction here involved; could not but lead to a separation between soul and work, and force them into conflict. Hence there is a danger of work becoming mechanical, and of the life of the soul, which, with this separation, is thrown back entirely upon the subjective, being lost in indefiniteness.

These experiences of mechanical work and indefinite subjectivity give birth to a new situation, in which the problem of the soul, a problem which in the earlier systems remained in the background, is forced into prominence. The task of life is seen to be a more fundamental one; it is a matter not so much of altering a given reality in one way or another as of first discovering a genuine reality, of advancing beyond all mere activity to a being which exists within the activity.

It has become evident to us in many ways that from the recognition of this a characteristic form of life proceeds. The only question is whether the change is capable of bringing about a thorough organisation of life, whether it can produce independent centres of life and unite them into a community of life, and thus lead to the development of a system of life. We ourselves most resolutely maintain the view that this is really possible; that life is in process of forming itself into a new whole, and that with the clearer establishment of this, problems which have existed from early times receive full explanation, and a definite advance is made in their solution.

We saw that, in its highest stages of development, life concentrates at particular points, and that a characteristic sphere of life is in this way brought forth, as, for example, in spiritual individualities, national character, and so on. As soon as these developments are acknowledged to be spiritual and are sufficiently distinguished from simply natural existence, as soon as the manifestation of a new world is recognised in them, they become a great problem. Then they cannot be regarded as a mere product of a particular part of nature, but must be accepted as primarily a creation from the spiritual life as a whole, a creation which at the same time must maintain itself and transform in its own activity that which it receives. The relation to the spiritual world as a whole is the fundamental relation of life, and yet the further development of life does not follow immediately from the relation to the whole, but from the relation to the innumerable other centres of life; the infinitude that the individual being acquires from the relation to the whole receives that which is particular in its organisation and its content only from the experience of the relation to others. The relation to others, however, is not produced by nature, but as spiritual, only from the spiritual world as a whole and must be continually sustained by the whole. The relations of individual to individual will therefore be included within the whole, and through the presence of the whole will be essentially advanced beyond the capacity of mere nature. The love that arises here is fundamentally different from all the love which arises from natural impulse; and, understood in this manner, notwithstanding all that may be doubtful in respect of its fulfilment in individual matters, there is much point in the demand of Augustine, that, in the relation of man to man, not man but God should be set in the first place, and that man is to be loved only through God.

However, it is not an increase of activity alone that is sought in the multiplicity of relations, but a growth of being—a being not beyond all activity, but existent within it. It is necessary not only that the life-process achieve more, but also that it grow in itself, change that which is alien to it into its own, and display more reality within itself; life must experience every single activity as the manifestation of the activity of the whole, and thus, along with unlimited extension, preserve self-consciousness.

The demand for a self-conscious life, the demand for an elevation of activity to the organisation and development of being, by no means excludes other forms of activity, if only for the reason that this demand presents a high ideal to which man can only very slowly approximate. But this ideal constitutes an aim and a standard for all other activity; the giving of form and the increasing of force must aid in the development towards this aim if they are not to become devoid of real worth. The more necessary it is to insist upon an animation of reality through the development of self-conscious life, the more must we guard against the danger of anthropomorphism, which, when we are hasty and impatient, inevitably finds an entrance to and corrupts the whole of our thought and life. Only with much toil and with continual self-criticism can life be brought to the point where the transition to self-consciousness is possible; and even then the whole cannot, under human circumstances, be attained at one stroke; but at first life must endeavour to concentrate, to form a nucleus so that in this way it may acquire a firm basis, and from this take up a struggle for its further spiritualisation.

The same thing is to be seen in the differentiation and the gradation of life: everywhere a movement towards self-consciousness begins, but the emergence of this movement forces an antithesis into prominence, and life is completely transformed into work and conflict. Thought cannot be satisfied with representing the world as a work of art or as a process; thought must seek self-consciousness in the world. This it finds in the emergence of an independent spiritual life and in reality’s coming-to-itself; at the same time the difference between spirit and nature becomes more pronounced, and all the divergences in life increase. Men can find their highest unity neither in joining together so as to form a whole as a work of art, nor in a system of progressive increase of force. Neither alone could prevent society from becoming spiritually destitute, nor could both together. Society also needs a self-consciousness and acquires it only through the development of a spiritual content and spiritual character; but this must be won by continual struggle from the medley which constitutes the general condition of social life. Again, the individual does not attain a content for his life through an immediate combination of his powers so as to form a harmonious whole, or through increasing them without limit; the individual also must by activity concentrate his life and so gain the basis of a new world: never is he in his life, as a whole, personality and spiritual individuality. True, there lies within him the potentiality to become such a spiritual individuality, and this potentiality may be transformed in his own activity; and the existence thus acquired can affect the rest of life, arousing and elevating it.

Thus the ideal is set completely in the distance; it is seen that we do not live our life from a given basis, but that, on the contrary, we have first to acquire the basis and to preserve it by continuous work; it is not a particular direction of life, but a genuine life itself and with this a spiritual being that is in question. We appear, therefore, more imperfect than ever before. But in this connection the imperfection itself is a witness that important tasks are set before us, and that superior forces rule in us. In the midst of all that is obscure it cannot fail to be recognised that there is a movement towards the development of a new self-conscious reality above the capacity and the interests of mere man. This movement has been manifested in great historical achievements, in the formation of fruitful systems of life which at the same time were developments of the life of the individual. It has brought forth ever new creations; now it sets before us the task of developing a new system of life which does complete justice to self-consciousness, and in accordance with its main idea must also transform all individual aspects and departments. Where we recognise so much to do, we are certainly far removed from opinion and pretence.

II. THE MORE DETAILED FORM OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE

(a) THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND REALITY

Whatever there is peculiar in our conception of the spiritual life must be manifested and proved in reference to the problem of truth and reality. In the first place our conception decidedly rejects the widely held view of truth as a correspondence of our thought with an external reality. For the attainment of independence by the inner life makes it impossible for something externally existing to be taken up into life without undergoing an essential change. It is also inconceivable from this point of view how something beyond us could in any way attract and arouse us. The problem of truth can do this only if it originates within our own life: it can become a compelling power only if the attainment of truth aids us to transcend a division within ourselves which has become intolerable. The representation of life, that we have given, makes it quite evident that such a division does spring up within us. Within our own life a certain activity begins, which becomes wider and wider, and which would signify our whole being. But this activity finds limits and contradiction within ourselves: much takes place in our experience independent of this activity and apparently without our co-operation; a certain condition of things exists, and asserts a rigid actuality; and, so far as this condition extends, we are bound; we bear something impenetrable within us. So long as these two sides of our being remain separated life is not complete and genuine: activity lacks a foundation, a content, and a direction that is sure of its aim; and all the bustle of free movements, all effort of reflection cannot conceal the state of spiritual poverty. On the other hand, the fact that we bear so much within us that only half belongs to us and that presses upon us like a fate must cramp and oppress us. And so life does not experience itself as a unity; it lacks an inner truth, since activity presents itself as a whole and yet is not one. Life itself is therefore a problem. The problem must be felt to be the more serious the stronger the desire for a self-consciousness becomes. However, self-consciousness cannot possibly be reached without a transcendence of the division between activity and the given condition of things. Life has first to seek itself, its unity, its perfection; and it is just this that is the problem of truth: and in this problem life is turned not towards externals, but towards itself. We understand now how the desire for truth can exert such an enormous power, for, in this struggle for truth, we fight not for something alien, but for our own being.

This conception of truth determines also the nature of the effort to attain truth. The task cannot be to subordinate one side of life to the other, and to derive one side as far as possible from the other; that is, to transform the given condition of life as far as possible into free activity, or to adapt activity to the given condition in such a way that activity is merged into it; but the task is one of pressing forward to a transcendent active whole which unites the two sides, and develops them both; and in mutual relation gives to activity a content and to the given condition a soul. We have seen how a movement to attain such a unity runs through history and extends into the soul of the individual. That life is in general able to unify and raise itself is the presupposition of all striving after truth: the proof of this, however, is to be found in the actual furtherance of life, in the new contents which are thus obtained.

Such a way of regarding truth, that is, as an upward endeavour of life to its own unity, a unity not forced upon it but immanent, exhibits its unique nature especially in its opposition to the intellectualistic conception of truth, which, notwithstanding that it has been rejected and attacked so often, still continues to assert a mighty power. According to the intellectualist, cognition should treat the problem and solve it of its own capacity; it seems that the synthesis that is sought must be found in the first place in the realm of thought, and thence imparted to the rest of life. As a fact, however, knowledge itself is affected with particular severity by the division of free activity and fixed given condition; and from its own capacity thought cannot attain to a state of full creative activity which alone is able to overcome the division, but for the attainment of this is referred to an advance of life as a whole which alone can reach an essentially new position. To be sure, cognition has particular fundamental logical principles which regulate all its work. But to regulate and to produce are two different things. The most scrupulous adherence to these principles does not lead beyond reflection to an inner relation to the object, to an inner transcendence, a penetration, and an appropriation of the object; it leaves us still in the position of simply attempting to know, in a state of mere reflection and search. All real knowledge involves a spiritual creation, an advance, and a self-formation of life as a whole. The chief epochs of culture have therefore given a distinctly unique character to the inner nature and the fundamental texture of knowledge; the character given to it by one epoch being entirely different from that given to it by another. Modern knowledge does not differ from earlier knowledge only in a quantitative way: as soon as its connection with the chief synthesis characteristic of modern life is revealed, it can no longer be regarded as absolute knowledge, but only as a particular kind of knowledge beyond which there are possibilities of further developments.

From life as a whole the conflict will extend into all its individual departments, and give to the activity in them a greater intensity. Religion, art, and human society all have first to overcome the opposition of subjective power and alien given condition, and thereby to win a truth. In no case does truth mean a taking up of things which are presented to the activity of life—it means rather an advance of life to its own perfection.

In accordance with this conception of truth, that which claims to be true will not be able to prove its right otherwise than through its power, that is, through its capacity to embrace life as a whole and to raise it above opposition into the state of complete activity. Every such attempt must prove its power and its right in opposition to rivals by being able to wrest from them the truth contained by them, and in new relationships to lead beyond the state they reach, and to change life more into a self-consciousness than they are able.

Hence the endeavour after truth here shows more movement, more freedom, more multiplicity: different starting points and different ways may be chosen, and the correctness of the one need not involve the incorrectness of the other. The only indispensable thing is that the movement pass beyond the state of division and reflection to one of complete activity; only in that way can the content of life gain through the movement of life. And so we see the great significance of progress in work, in spiritual work; according as it succeeds, genuine life is distinguished from the mere will to live. To be sure, each piece of work that is here undertaken is a venture; it is far easier and far more secure to continue in the state of mere reflection and reasoning. But the latter does not lead us to an experience and a decision in a matter concerning the development of life, and therefore does not bring us a step further in this chief matter. Work with its failures is better than all subtle contemplation which leads to no activity; for failure can lead us beyond itself to truth, while feebleness and inactivity keep us in the old position.

In our conception of it truth is anything but a system of universal propositions out of which, by deduction, all detail might be derived. Rather the organisation of life into an inner unity, upon which in this view of truth everything depends, will exclude all that is only general and turn towards the differentiation of the whole. The more life progresses in this direction the less is it a mere application of general principles; the less does it find its consummation after the manner of a conclusion from given premises; the more does it become a progressive activity, a new formation and an elevation.

In this conception, there is also room for a truth peculiar to the single individuals. As the comprehensive life-synthesis can permeate every individual detail of existence, so it is necessary for every individual life-centre to realise its own particular synthesis, and that every individual should fight for his inner unity and thus, also, for a truth of his own; he must, however, realise this unity and truth in every particular activity. A truth which is not my truth is, for me, not a complete truth. Only it is necessary that such individualisation be effected within the whole, not independent of it; it must result from the inner necessity of creative activity, not out of a vain wish to excel. In any case, it follows here that, as the immanent and universal form of truth requires more activity and power, it is also able to grant more free movement and multiplicity. Truth and freedom have been thought opposed to one another in the course of history; if the former seemed to require unconditional submission, the latter had a strong tendency to shake off every tie as an oppressive yoke. If we see that truth of life can be reached only through freedom, and also that freedom acquires a content and a spiritual character only through its relation to truth, the opposition by no means entirely disappears, but a basis is won upon which we may strive to attain an agreement and a fruitful interaction between the two.

So understood, the problem of truth has the closest connection with that of reality: with regard to the one as to the other we are concerned in a conflict against the external conception common to a naÏve state of life, which, though far surpassed by the inner movement of the work of history, obstinately asserts itself through the evidence of the senses in single individuals and hardly ceases to impress men with its apparent self-evidence. The naÏve way of thinking understands reality as a space which encompasses men and things; reality seems to be presented, “given,” to man through the senses; only that which is exhibited to man in these sense-relations passes current as real. In this Ptolemaic form of life, dominated by sense impression, everything other than sense fades to a mere illusion, and this includes the spiritual life itself, although in it alone is reality known. Now, however, as science has with no mean power led beyond this Ptolemaic representation of nature, so the development of life has led beyond the Ptolemaic reality. Life could not emancipate itself from its attachment to the environment and develop an inwardness without effecting a revolution in this problem. The inward becomes the first and surest experience, with which all that is to pass current as real must show itself to be in consistent relation: everything external loses its proximity and becomes a problem; it can be established as real only through that which it achieves for the inner nature and in accordance with the standards of that nature. The power to convince possessed by sense impression is now based, not on its obviousness, but on the spiritual activity that it arouses. Here also, only the experiences of the spiritual life itself can lead to the experience of something less than spiritual.

As such a revolution brings clearly to consciousness the spiritual achievement in the formation of reality, so at the same time it gives the object more movement and transforms it in spiritual endeavour. Two things are necessary to the conception of reality: an independence of man, and a realisation of the many as a unity. Now, since that which lies wholly beyond experience must for that reason be inaccessible to us, this assertion of independence can have no other meaning than that, within life itself, something becomes detached from the stream of consciousness and fixes and asserts itself as independent of it. The power thus to transcend the time-process is a characteristic mark of all spiritual activity; this activity evolves within us something in opposition to us, and in so doing accomplishes a marvellous expansion. This is most clearly seen within the sphere of thought. For all the functions peculiar to thought receive their differentiating characteristic only through such a detachment from the flow of sense-presentation and by establishing themselves as independent of it: the concept presents its content as something fixed in contrast to the stream of presentations; the judgment proclaims its connection of concepts to be something that does not pass away with the act of connecting them but persists in face of all the changes of the psychical life. Life accomplishes a gradation within itself and lifts itself above the mere stream of change. Only because life establishes within itself a fixed nucleus, and in this manner wins an independence of its own momentary condition, can it oppose a world to itself, and set itself the task of appropriating this world—that, further, that independent nucleus should remain no mere collection, but should be inwardly unified is again a requirement and an achievement of the spiritual life. How far that requirement will be fulfilled depends upon the nature and the degree of the development of the spiritual life.

Reality, therefore, is to be found chiefly in the self-consciousness of the spiritual life; from this self-consciousness we build up our reality. Since spiritual requirement is from this point of view the measure of human undertaking, our activity is judged by the degree to which the state of the world is changed in it and has thus become our reality. How far our capacity reaches in this matter cannot be decided by preliminary consideration, but only by the progress of life itself: in particular it is not permissible to assume things-in-themselves independent of us and thus to reduce our world to a realm of mere appearances. For, so far as that independence reached, things could never enter our life, and never be inwardly appropriated; at most they could concern us only in their effects. As far as the conception of nature as a mechanism is concerned, which regards all occurrence as a texture of related individual points which exist, inaccessible, behind it, there is much to be said for the view that things are only known in their effects; but this view is an intolerable limitation—dogmatic in the highest degree—if it is meant to represent our fundamental relation to reality and to ourselves. For then we should be related to ourselves as to something alien; all the self-consciousness of life would be destroyed; there could be no development of being in contrast to single acts, but we must be completely resolved in the stream of appearances; there would be no advance in the striving after reality. As a matter of fact, we are concerned primarily with the content that life is able to give to itself; how far it presses forward to reality. Our world is to be measured more especially by the degree in which life becomes deepened. But from the beginning man, so far as he shares in the spiritual life, is not a being adjacent to reality, but within it. He would never be able to attain to a reality if he did not bear it within himself and needed only to develop it. Thus ultimately he does not look inwards from outside, but outwards from within; and his limitation is not the chief thing, but the secondary.

The inner structure of our life corresponds with this conviction. It is characteristic of all spiritual life that it does not pass hither and thither between individual points, but includes and develops a multiplicity within a transcendent unity; by this the spiritual life grows within itself, and more and more acquires a self-consciousness. And it is just in this way that it evolves to a reality. Reality, therefore, here is not a fixed and completed magnitude, but is of different degrees. In the first place there is a difference in the energy which maintains a union of the manifold and a transcendence of the division: according to the nature of this energy the self appears, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; its power of changing, at one time greater, at another smaller. Again, the force of the resistance that the given condition to be appropriated offers, differs according to the amount of its positive power; and the clash of the given condition and free activity will be harder or more gentle according to this power. One man finds intolerable contradictions where to another all is plain and smooth; one believes that things are transformed in their own being where another holds that only their surface is affected: and so, that which one regards as reality may seem to another only a realm of shadows.

Mere energy, however, is too subjective to be able to obtain a genuine reality from life: for that, a transformation of life in work, an elevation to full activity, is necessary; but the preceding paragraph has shown that this transformation and elevation is of different kinds and of different degrees. The system of the formation of being promises to give to life the most fundamental organisation and the most forceful reality. For into the single elements embraced by the movement of life it is able to breathe a life of their own, to confer upon them an incomparably greater independence than in those systems in which they are regarded as lifeless objects which are acted upon, and which only set isolated forces in motion. When within a comprehensive life different centres of life meet, and in their interaction the activity of the whole wins an ever richer content and a more stable nature, genuine reality must increasingly unfold itself.

Looked at from this position, reality is not a fact but a problem and an ideal; it does not lie at the beginning but at the end of the course: it is different with different individuals, peoples, and times; each in its particular nature and work has its own reality. Thus we cannot comprehend the problem of reality from experience without conceiving reality as existing in flux: the assertion of an independent spiritual life, transcendent over all human undertaking, is a sufficient safeguard against a destructive relativism. It is one of the most troublesome appearances in the conflicts of minds that they fail to recognise the many-sidedness and fluidity of our conceptions of reality; that each takes his conception as the self-evident one and urges it upon the others. In this way originate the many unfruitful disputes concerning this world and the next, immanence and transcendence, in which the most external and superficial conception is usually presented as self-evident; while yet, according to the fundamental relation and the chief basis of life, very different conceptions arise, and as a fact, systems of thought nowhere come into more severe conflict than with regard to their conceptions of reality. Only to a mode of thought which, without further consideration, accepts the world of sense as the genuine and only reality, can philosophy and religion, for example, appear to be occupied with things implying an “other” world, and which, therefore, are incomprehensible. On the contrary, Augustine thought to attain to genuine reality and at the same time a true life only by elevation to a realm above sense, so that to him the world of sense was secondary and derivative.

To-day we are again deeply concerned with the problem of reality. Notwithstanding all the passionate agitation of forces in the incalculable extension of and the breathless haste in work, a genuine reality fails us; our life lacks the proper character of being real; and so, in the midst of all the external results of our work, our life, spiritually discerned, threatens to become destitute and unreal. An eager desire for reality exists in our time; it is often thought possible to satisfy it by the closest possible connection with sense impression and impulse, and by expelling as far as possible all elements of thought. But thought is there, and cannot be expelled; with its power to analyse, it steps continually between us and things, takes away from them the proximity they have for us, and dissolves them into mere pictures and shadows. As a fact, the problem of reality lies primarily within the spiritual life; and it cannot be solved otherwise than in that the spiritual life advances within itself from division to unity, from the movement of forces to self-determining activity, from all mere activity to a formation of being. If thus our life becomes transformed into a self-preservation, if in it we unfold and assert a spiritual being, we become certain of a reality and feel a satisfaction. Never, however, can reality come to us from without.

(b) MAN AND THE WORLD

Through our whole investigation we have expressed the conviction that man acquires a secure relation to the world only through his belonging to a spiritual life acknowledged as independent; otherwise, all entrance to the world is shut off. The growing independence of the inner life has broken down the immediate connection which dominates the naÏve way of thinking: if, however, man once finds himself set in a position of independence of the world, he can hardly draw it back to himself simply of his own capacity. All appeal to subtlety and reflection seems only to widen the gulf still more. Only the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life offers a way out of such a desperate situation: if in the spiritual life the world attains to a self-consciousness, and if, on the other hand, the spiritual life is present and active within man, there is a possibility that man and the world are united; and that, at the same time, human life also becomes cosmic. But it is a question how far the possibility comes to be realised; how far the union that exists in the innermost basis can be developed and transformed within us in the work of life. Only the actual experience of life can answer this question. We must ascertain whether there are any particular developments of life which are not productions of the human, but which manifest the operation of a transcendent world; and, further, whether these developments are able to find a more detailed formation in their contact with the world around us, and to adapt themselves to the multiplicity of this world. Such a turning to the individual thing would be impossible if a complete life-form ruled within us and impressed itself on things only from the outside. For in this case this form must inevitably be uniformly effective in its whole extent; in appropriating the multiplicity it could not itself advance to greater concreteness. If such an advance is effected, there is a contact within life between the one and the other; and so the world acquires an inner connection with our activity, and the spiritual movement can take possession of the breadth of our life and with its differentiation gain a greater intuitiveness.

An immediate union of man and world is indeed opposed to the fact that the spiritual life which should unite them always exists, for us, in its particular form in human existence and that this form cannot be projected beyond man into the whole. The form of human existence constitutes an insuperable boundary; if it governed our life as a whole, then man could never overstep his narrow, particular sphere. But it is a conviction that is fundamental to our investigation that our whole life does not come under this form, but that there are tendencies in life which are operative beyond this form of existence, and attain to an independence of it. So far as these life-tendencies may be detached and developed, man may confidently take up the problem of the world, and feel related to the world around him; he can try to transform its life into his own. The particularity of his manner of presentation and perception then simply sets the limitation, that that which may be admitted to be certain and true in its fundamental content can be presented only through the medium of human peculiarity; the more detailed amplification of the representation is always only of a symbolic character. We see from this fact that there is a contradiction ever present within our life that prevents it from ever gaining an ultimate conclusion; however, it does not take from us the possibility of an inner union and a community with the whole. Indeed, the contradiction itself, and the powerful movement that it calls forth, are to the train of thought here indicated a witness to a fundamental expansion of our life.

An attempt to unite our life with the whole appears in the first place in thought, in its work of obtaining knowledge. This emergence of thought involves a transformation of life that could never be occasioned by mere man, but can be understood only as the revelation of a new stage of universal life. In thought, the intellect, otherwise bound to the mechanism of the sequence of presentations, attains an independence. It places itself in a position independent of the world, and seeks to comprehend it as a whole, to appropriate it as a whole. The primary connection with things is dissolved, to become established anew upon a higher level and with an important transformation of its nature; through the deviation a real appropriation is achieved. All this is incomparably more than a merely becoming conscious of a given world, which is an experience that could arise in some way at isolated points; thought contains a development of the world which ultimately can proceed only from the power of the world itself. How can the individual matter be elucidated if the whole remain obscure? How can the desire for enlightenment obtain such a power over man, and assert itself in him in opposition to the interests of his physical self-preservation, if a universal movement were not operative in him? Man does not elucidate the world, but the world elucidates itself within him. What is thus reached is valid not for him alone, but universally; the development of this universal movement of thought enables him to win a closer relation to the world, a life embracing the world.

Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science without producing and employing a definite logical structure with fixed principles: these principles are immanent in the work of thought; they are above all the caprice and all the differences of the individuals. This logical structure cannot be carried over and applied to the world around us, as all scientific research carries it over and applies it, without implicitly presupposing an objective logic of things, a conceivability of experience: in this, man does not simply project externally and apply mechanically forms already existing in a complete and final state within him. For the multiplicity of things not only gives to those principles a particular form, in the production of which they must themselves participate, but through the relation to the world the fundamental forms are also further developed in their nature as a whole; it is only with the co-operation of both sides that the thought-structure achieves what is ultimately reached. The chief thing is that thought actually transcends the state of contemplative reflection, and advances to fully active work; that out of the movement of our thought proceed further developments, which extend to the object also; that, moreover, we come under the compulsion of inner necessities, and, possessing the highest freedom, are raised securely above all caprice. This creative thought in us, which is at the same time our own thought, constitutes a witness to a meeting of our thought with a thought that has its basis in things and in the whole. Inability to imagine such a thought should never lead to the denial of an absolute logic, with which all scientific research stands or falls. The disclosure of this relation, however, gives to our thought, in the midst of all doubt, a firm foundation, a joyful certainty, an infinite task.

Artistic creation and appreciation brings another characteristic unfolding of life; and this also demonstrates an inner relation of man to the world, and can be developed only when this relation is acknowledged. In the first place, for this creation and appreciation a deliverance of life from the turmoil of ends and interests, which at first sway our existence, is essential; artistic creation and appreciation involves a resting and a tarrying in itself. If the world were no more than this turmoil, if it did not in some way attain to self-consciousness, how could such a deliverance be brought about? If a self-conscious life were not present in man, how could a longing for an artistic moulding of life arise in him? But an arousing of an inner life in things, the revelation of a soul, is accomplished not through imparting something from without, but through a meeting together of things and human endeavour. On the other hand, the spiritual expresses itself in a visible form and in doing so moulds itself. The chief thing in this connection is not mere beauty, a preparation for idle enjoyment, but a truth, a revelation of contents, a further development of life through and above the antithesis. How could something invisible and something visible, to express the matter briefly, find a common ground and combine together in a common action if nature were not more than the mere web of relations into which the mechanistic conception of it transforms it; if spiritual life were not more than the subjective form of life that it is supposed to be, according to general opinion; if from that form of life an inner life did not arise, and beyond all subjectivity attain to a full activity, and thus to the building up of a reality within its own province? That we do not simply become aware of a movement within ourselves, and then read it into nature, but only take up and lead to its own truth that which strives upward in nature, is again testified by the inner advance of this striving through its contact with the world, and by the infinite abundance of particular contents which are revealed to us in the world and which continually aid in our development. Again, our life experiences the most important elevation in that it takes up and carries further a movement of the whole, and is liberated from the narrowness of the particular sphere, without merging into a vague infinity. To realise clearly that we belong to the world, and energetically to amplify this relation, is of the greatest significance for artistic creation and appreciation. For it is only by becoming firmly established in these relations that artistic endeavour is able to resist the tendency to degenerate into play and pleasure—a tendency which threatens it with inner destruction; as in a similar manner the work of thought must guard itself from degenerating into mere reflection. In the realms of thought and art there remains much that is alien, ever surmise and symbol; but even symbol is not to be disdained, if it serves an important truth.

A universal character is shown most clearly by the movements that co-operate towards the ethical moulding of life. Without freedom there is no such moulding; but we saw above that freedom requires a world of spontaneous life and its presence within man. However, when freedom is thought of in these relations, it is elevated above the usual conception of it and also above the usual criticism. All moral life is pretence and delusion without the arousing and fundamental idea of duty. But where is the truth more clearly expressed than in duty, that what man does by no means concerns himself alone; and that nothing can constrain him but what he acknowledges as his own will, his own being? As duty is concerned ultimately not with something isolated but with a whole, not with a performance within the old order but with the creation of a new order, so in the moral life a whole new world appears to be taken up into man’s own will and being. Duty exhibits the new world particularly in relation and in opposition to the old; the new world appears in itself to be pre-eminently a kingdom of love. Love is primarily not a subjective emotion, but an expansion and a deepening of life, through life setting itself in the other, taking the other up into itself; and in this movement life itself becomes greater, more comprehensive and noble. Love is not a mere relation of given individuals, but a development and a growing in communion, an elevation and an animation of the original condition. And this movement of love has no limits; it has all infinity for its development; it extends beyond the relation to persons to the relation to things; for things also reveal their innermost being only to a disposition of love. Again, the striving after truth in science and art cannot succeed without love and an animation that proceeds from it, without inwardly becoming one with the object. How could this unity and activity in the whole be possible, how could it even become an object of desire, if the whole itself did not strive? And how could such a wealth of cultures proceed out of this movement if that which was striven towards at one time was not taken up and carried further by other times; how could the single movements tend together without the unifying and elevating power of a universal life? As a phenomenon to the individual, the movement involves a definite contradiction: wherever it has been further and more freely developed it has been directed to a kingdom of love; and this has necessarily been thought of as the soul of reality, and a severe conflict has been taken up against the world of self-assertion. Thus in the realm of morality also we find ourselves in world-movements, we create out of the whole, work towards the whole, and are borne on the flood of infinite life.

Accordingly, life-developments of various and related kinds arise: with their manifold experiences they strive to attain to a harmony and a union with one another. They can seek these only on the basis of a self-consciousness of reality; find them only through their unification in a universal life, to which each individual tendency leads. Representations of the whole are attempted at the highest points of creative activity by philosophy, religion, and art; these representations accompany, indeed govern, the work in these spheres of life through history. But the limitations of our capacity, through which we are unable to give a suitable form to necessary contents, and through which we attribute and must attribute human traits to that which should lead us beyond the human, are of particular force in this matter of forming a representation of the whole; and, indeed, this is the more so the further we remove ourselves from that which may be immediately transformed in work. These representations of the whole are, therefore, inadequate; their content of truth is clothed in a wrapping of myth, and humanity lies under the danger of taking the myth for the chief thing and thus of obscuring the truth, and this must produce an incalculable amount of error and strife. Still, it is impossible to give up all claim to these representations of the whole; for they alone make the fact of our belonging to the whole and of the presence of the whole in our life quite clear and enable it to exert a far-reaching influence. Only with their help can the degeneration of life to the intolerable insignificance of the narrowly human be resisted; only with their help can a movement from whole to whole begin.

Thus it is a matter not so much of abandoning these representations of the whole as of referring them continually to their essence; to those unfoldings of life which are experienced by us; to test them by these and to renew them from these. It was the error of the earlier position—much too indulgent to Intellectualism-that it did not sufficiently maintain the relation with these living sources, and so fell into the danger of having no definite tendency, or even of failing to recognise the relativity of the myth. If a more energetic direction of life upon its own content and experiences teaches us to preserve these connections better and to develop them more forcefully, a new type of representation of the whole is yielded in contrast to the old, and far more different from it than may appear at the first glance. We may hope that with its development the truth will be seen more clearly through the myth, and that the striving, which we cannot give up, to win a universal life may not lead us astray into a world of dreams.

(c) THE MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN MAN

The question as to in which direction the spiritual life moves in man is implied through our whole investigation, and in it receives an answer. Nevertheless, it requires to be definitely stated and treated by itself, so that the distinctive character of the movement and its influence in the moulding of life may be fully acknowledged. It has become clearly evident to us that an independent and, therefore, genuine spiritual life cannot arise out of life in its usual condition, but only in opposition to this condition. For, however little this condition of life may lack spiritual elements, they are mixed and bound up with other elements far too much to be able to bind themselves immediately into a whole, and to display an independent power. That the spiritual life must and can gain a basis independent of this condition of life is the indispensable, fundamental idea of Idealism. But such attainment of independence of the usual condition would help little if the spiritual life which is based upon itself had not a particular nature of its own, and if from this it did not oppose everything alien and partly alien to itself. The doctrines of innate ideas, of an a priori, and so on, which have occupied humanity for thousands of years did not intend anything different from this. The details of the conception of these were indeed often open to criticism: it was sought to exhibit individual conceptions and propositions as existing complete at the beginning, where rather movements or tendencies are in question, which can find their realisation only within the work of life. Again, the a priori was limited to the intellectual sphere, whereas it is indispensable to all spiritual activity; for example, how can morality, rising above merely natural preservation and rejecting all mere utility, as it does, be conceived without such an a priori? To deny to spiritual life an original nature and power—an a priori in this more comprehensive sense—means nothing else than to eliminate that life as an independent factor, and to reduce it to the position of a secondary product. For without an original nature the spiritual life would be like soft wax that may be shaped in one form or another to suit our own pleasure: then the spiritual life could not possibly follow its own aims, could not possibly attain to an independence in the inner life, in which we recognised the characteristic nature of the inner life. As certain as it is that there is a spiritual life at all, so certainly does it bring certain fundamental tendencies and movements with it; as surely as it develops in particular directions—and that it does this we have seen—so surely is this a priori also differentiated. To trace this fundamental state of spiritual activity in all its relations and multiplicity is an especially important task of philosophic research.

The revelation of such an original fundamental activity of the spirit must induce us to undertake to form our whole world from this activity, and to produce from it or to transform into it that which exists over against activity as an independent realm of experience. This has been attempted for thousands of years with the summoning of an enormous amount of spiritual power and the arousing of a proud self-consciousness. But failure was inevitable because it was not recognised that the development of the spiritual life in man is conditioned. However certain it may be that original spiritual movements must be active within us, they are not so with organised content and overwhelming power from the beginning, but they acquire content and power only through the process of life itself, only in grappling with the oppositions of experience and in the appropriation of the tasks and stimuli which experience brings to them. The incompleteness and the mutability of what was accepted earlier as a fixed and unchangeable racial possession of the spiritual life is to-day quite clearly perceived. What great changes morality, for example, has undergone in the course of the ages; how toilsomely has much been won which later ages have considered self-evident! To be sure, morality remains, even through all such changes, an original spiritual phenomenon, which can never be derived from an external source, but which could emerge and establish itself only as an inner necessity of the spiritual life in opposition to the realm of mere utility. But the actuality of this original phenomenon gives rise to a difficult problem, for the solution of which a closer contact with the environment, a fundamental arrangement with experience, is necessary. And so the problem is traced to a more ultimate source, and, though this makes the matter less simple, it gives a higher significance to our work and to the movement of history.

Even the fundamental forms of thought which are often accepted as of everything the most fixed share in this gradual amplification. Man, so far as he participates in spiritual impulse, thinks, of course, in conceptions; he gives to appearances fixed points of support by the establishing of things, and relates events causally. But all this is full of problems and is comprehended only in its upward endeavour; it raises more problems than it solves; and around the solution of these the whole work of science moves. What different things the “idea” meant to Plato and to Kant, and to ancient and to modern thought generally: how every thinker of moment has given a particular conception of substance and of causality; how whole epochs have exhibited their particular nature in the treatment of these problems!

For the sake of its own perfection, therefore, the spiritual life must continually turn back to the realm of experience, from which, at first, it tore itself free. Attempts to evolve the whole life from that a priori have always given as a result something of a bloodless nature, abstract in the highest degree, a mere web of formulÆ, in so far as experience, which had been relegated to the background, has not indirectly asserted its right again, and infused the formulÆ with life. Accordingly, our life does not spend itself in one direction, but bears within it the counter-tendencies of a tearing oneself free from the world of sense and a returning back to it, of a detachment from it and an appropriation of it to oneself. But, in this, independent life and bound life do not become combined; how could that be the case without the loss of all inner unity? A basis is necessary; and it is furnished only by self-determining activity. Experience acquires a spiritual content and value only so far as it is based upon this activity, and is taken up into a spiritual movement. Experience does not share something with the spiritual life, but, through stimulation and opposition, it forces that life to further development within itself. The state in which the world of sense is first found undergoes an inner elevation in that appropriation: sense presentation, for example, is to scientific work something quite different from what it is to naÏve perception; even if it obstinately withstands a complete resolution into magnitudes of pure thought, it takes up more and more thought elements; it enters into conceptual relations; it answers questions which the work of thought sets. To the whole sphere of sense science gives the background of a world of thought, and transforms mere sense into a spatially bound spirituality.

The same thing is valid with regard to the things of value in life; in these, also, sense and spirit are not simply combined; but something of sense becomes a spiritual good only so far as it serves the spiritual life in some way; it cannot do this, however, without itself undergoing a transformation. This is to be seen nowhere more clearly than in economics. Money and estate had at all times a value for self-preservation and enjoyment, but in the doctrine of economics and political economy they could obtain acknowledgment only after a power to advance the spiritual life had been recognised in them. As culture in the ancient world had not yet reached this point of view, it branded all endeavour after material wealth as inferior, and as far as possible checked such endeavour. Only since the Modern Age has recognised in money and estate an indispensable means of gaining control over the surrounding world and of increasing human power have they secured a place within the spiritual life, and as a result of this have become more highly estimated. At the same time, however, they have been changed inwardly in the process, since that which they achieve, not towards ostentatious display and enjoyment, but towards the increase of human power over things has become the chief matter.

As in this way the content and the value of that which is offered by the world of sense shows its dependence upon the condition of the spiritual life, so in science also a similar relation between experience and the spiritual life is found. Science appeals to experience with particular zeal, more especially after it has first accomplished far-reaching changes in its own thought constructions; only then does experience give anything new to knowledge and exhibit a greater depth. Experience can answer only in the measure in which it is questioned; the question, however, varies according to the stage of development of the spiritual life.

Such a view fully appreciates the significance of life-work, and must strive energetically to gain its acknowledgment. This work is not a carrying out of a complete scheme in a given condition of things, an application of firmly rooted principles to particular cases, but a self-realisation and self-perfecting of the spiritual life which builds up a self-conscious reality. In this our life is not divided between two different realms, but, in a comprehensive spiritual world, different stages of reality meet together, which must be brought into relation and developed. To be sure, the world of sense retains a certain independence; it resists a complete transformation into spiritual magnitudes, and our life, therefore, retains a certain restriction and impenetrability. But the self-consciousness of the spirit becomes more and more the chief basis and sphere of life: this self-consciousness continually takes up more into itself; it makes the world that was to us at first primary, indeed the only world, more and more secondary and subordinate.

This increasing spiritualisation of human life never becomes a sure possession that calls for no toil; ever anew it demands our attention and activity; it has continually to be won anew as a whole. As soon as the tension slackens, the world of experience with its appeal to sense preponderates, and it soon appears to be man’s sole world, one which cannot tolerate anything beyond itself. For the spiritualisation of human life, a longing rooted in the whole being is primarily necessary; for with the keen feeling of the vanity of the world of sense experience, this leads to the removal of the centre of life into the invisible world of self-determining activity. Further, a clear presentation of this invisible world is needed; and in this the help of the visible is not to be dispensed with. For its own establishment the realm of the invisible must borrow means of expression from the visible, which now governs human presentation; must transform and refine them for its aims; prepare out of them an impressive presentation of the whole. Along with the energy of turning to the spiritual life a creative imagination is required, through which the invisible may become equal to holding its own against the visible.

The help of such imagination is indispensable for religion, in order that the supernatural world advocated by it may gain an effective presence in the province of humanity. And so with bold upward flights of imagination the heroes of religion have projected a new condition of reality as a whole, a kingdom of justice or of love, and have judged human existence by the standard of this new condition. Similarly, philosophy did not become an independent world of thought without the help of imagination; and of how indispensable it is to art we need not speak at all. Again, work in political, social, educational matters, at least as far as radical renewals are concerned, has really been taken up and carried on, and has won a triumphant power, only where the state striven for has been presented as something visible and clearly present; this alone has united the multiplicity, and has led with compelling force beyond the extant situation as though that were something intolerable. Humanity as a whole must be present in an ideal condition to our minds for us to be aroused sufficiently from our indolence.

Our life, therefore, contains movements which tend in opposite directions: there are a pressing forward and a turning backward, a detachment from experience and a taking up again of experience; and so we may well speak of an action and reaction within its movement. But the antitheses that arise aid in advancement only so long as they are encompassed by a whole of activity. In that the course of history increases far more than it diminishes the antitheses, the dangers grow more and more, the possibilities and the tasks of human existence, however, also grow.

(d) THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW TYPE OF LIFE

The conception of the spiritual life here developed gives rise to a particular type of life which can bring about a transformation and elevation of man from two main positions: the union of man with the spiritual life is much closer, and the spiritual life in itself is incomparably more, than is represented by the customary conception of that life. For in our conception man does not merely enter into some kind of relation with the spiritual life, but finds his own being in it, and becomes so completely united with it that it is able to determine him immediately as his own self. The spiritual life is not a particular function among others, not a part or an aspect of a more comprehensive world, but is itself a world, and, indeed, a world in which life first attains to self-consciousness and becomes a complete reality. If this world becomes the immediate possession of man himself, his life must experience a deep-reaching change, indeed a revolution of its usual condition: to trace the main tendencies of this revolution is our immediate task.

(1) Life’s Attainment of Greatness

The placing of man in the spiritual life, becoming aware of its own independence, must make the forms of this life his own, and in this way bring about a reversal of the commonplace of every day. Life is transposed from the narrowness of its merely particular nature to infinity; what was hitherto alien and hostile to man is changed into his own possession, and is able to arouse an animating and elevating love. At the same time a deliverance from subjectivity and its web of interests and ideas is effected, to the advantage of a life-process that takes up the object into itself, and thus advances to independence and sovereign creation; a life is attained that is not spent in movement to and fro between antitheses, but unfolds a content through them. As this life attains to complete independence only because it produces a universal activity in contrast to individual activities, so participation in this life must lead man beyond division to a comprehensive unity. It is this that is sought in the idea of personality—an idea which is often quite obscure and superficial, but which can in this context be elucidated, manifest its complete significance, and prove its power of development.

As the spiritual life is a self-consciousness, so man also wins from it a life that is not exhausted by activity directed upon anything external to this life, and that does not expect its content from outside like an empty vessel, but would be itself and realise the possibilities lying within itself. So far as such a life extends man does not stand on the border of things but in the centre, in the formation and creation of the whole; he experiences the world not as something external but from within. The question of the limits of this life is no longer primary but secondary, and the answer to this question is to be expected from the experience of life, not from preliminary reflections. Since, in this, life has a content in itself and develops this content through its movement, it distinctly grows above all the play of forces with which it is often confused; if such a play of forces suffices for a lower stage it cannot suffice for further development. For the feeling of joyous excitement which accompanies the exertion of power is not sufficient in opposition to the serious perplexities that accompany all spiritual work; indeed, not even against the cares and needs that are involved in the mere preservation of existence in an advancing culture. Life then easily comes to be regarded as full of trouble and of work, and becomes a burden from which one wishes to be delivered. Life is not from the beginning a good, but it must prove itself to be such by its more detailed development. In the spiritual life this comes to pass, since it produces a reality out of itself; it does not become valuable first in its relation to the external world, but it carries a value in itself, as is clearly shown by the joy that permeates all experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful. This joy must be further increased if all the multiplicity of this experience is regarded as the unfolding of a comprehensive and persistent fundamental life.

A life of this kind is no indefinite impulse; it cannot become an independent reality without penetrating into every aspect and making the ordinary state of things everywhere inadequate, indeed intolerable. Since the independent spirituality and spiritual character that is acquired, and that which the particular thing and activity signifies in the spiritual life as a whole, everywhere constitutes the most important question, the problem of truth will be raised at each point; and in this way a sharp division will be made between the genuine and the spurious; everything that strives within us in the direction of the spirit will unite and acquire a more stable basis; everything that would satisfy man in other ways will be seen to be empty and vain. Life now acquires a deeper reality, but this must first be reached and brought to complete effect. New forms, in contrast to the ordinary representations, must also make their appearance if life is to be equal to the task of developing content and character.

Life in the individual must have roots deeper than the immediate psychical life; for psychical life cannot itself produce and make clear that which occurs in it, for this reason at least, that it involves the antithesis of individual and environment, of subject and object, beyond which spiritual creation results. The spiritual impulse that the immediate life of the soul manifests can be based only upon deeper realities and more comprehensive relations. And so a noÖlogical treatment is to be distinguished from the psychological, not in order to displace or limit the latter, but rather to complete it; and it is a problem to show the point of transition in the immediate life of the soul. The significance of the individual life, as far as content is concerned, will depend upon whether an independent spirituality arises within it, and constitutes it a distinctive life-centre. According to the new standards a free spiritual activity does not suffice, however extended it may be, and however sustained by subjective emotion. For all such activity may be without spiritual substance, and in spite of all external results the life that is nothing but this activity may remain spiritually destitute: how shallow many individuals are whose achievements deserve and obtain the highest appreciation! The inwardness that the spiritual life requires is not simply a reflex of work in the soul—from that little is gained—but the forming of a characteristic spiritual self-consciousness that lifts us above all mere achievement, and also by giving to activity a soul first makes it complete.

We have often seen how the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life forces us to make a sharper distinction between human history and human society and all merely natural history and merely natural co-existence of men. At the same time, in that which is called history and society, a distinction between an esoteric and an exoteric kind is also required. The value of individual epochs and of history as a whole depends upon the spiritual substance that grows up in them; everything else, to whatever extent it may, with commotion and external result, assume the air of being the chief thing, is only environment or supplement. Similarly, in the case of society, the spiritual content, if it has one at all, and human fortune and conduct must become more distinctly separated. There is far less genuine history and society than is usually assumed; but this little signifies incomparably more than both would imply without the spiritual life.

Similarly, with the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in us, a new light is shed upon the individual departments of life, and new tasks are set them. They have now, primarily, not to further human well-being, to be of service in the attainment of narrowly human aims, but they are characteristic unfoldings of the spiritual life. The particular nature of these departments has its basis in that life, and they must prove their capacity by advancing it. They are concerned with man only so far as he participates in the spiritual life; and so they will not so much strengthen him in his human nature as elevate him spiritually, and remould him more and more to the form of the spiritual life. A deliverance from the confusion of that which is narrowly human with the spiritual is also necessary, and, along with this, life as a whole must be more energetically based upon the spiritual life, and the spiritual life itself must be given a more distinct form. From the position of this life, that which has been handed down to us must be evaluated and new paths must be opened up for the future. Religion could obtain no content, and all change in it would be only an advance from a more crude to a more refined anthropomorphism, if it were based solely upon human needs and aided man to attain a supposed happiness. Religion rises above such a condition of doubt only if it exhibits its roots in an independent spiritual life and is able to show its actuality and its power by aiding the development of the spiritual life. At its highest religion has always been concerned with winning a new world and a new humanity, not with the achievement of something within the old world and for the old humanity. And as we need a religion of the spiritual life, we also need a morality, an art, and, finally, an all-comprehensive spiritual culture, through which something really new may be produced and man be elevated in this being, and not simply circle round and round continually in the old paths. Everywhere the matter is one of advance and revelation; from this point of view the complexes of every day must also be seen in a new light, and in what is apparently simple and self-evident great achievements and tasks become manifest. We now, for the first time and in another sense, win again that which we thought we already possessed; indeed, by the revolution to the spiritual life, life as a whole is transformed into a task. Every individual has such a life-embracing task in the cultivation of a genuine personality and a spiritual individuality. Humanity as a whole has such a task in the building up of a kingdom of reason within its domain, in the furtherance of the movement which comes to it from the whole and summons it to co-operation.

Human life by participation in the spiritual life finds its basis in the inward and spontaneous, in the infinite and eternal. The development and the experiences of the spiritual life and its conflict with a world, which is only being won, are here the chief content of human life and unite individuals inwardly; the destinies of individuals receive their particular nature from such a common life. As this life of independent spirituality is possible only by detachment from the chaotic condition of life as we find it at its general level, the development of the spiritual life must make us clearly conscious of the spiritual destitution of the majority; and especially must it oppose the attempt on the part of such a life as that of the majority to present itself as the whole, and to make itself the standard of human endeavour. In such an attempt the trivially human inevitably preponderates, and this now, at its highest points, invests itself with ostentatious pomp and a feeling of power; now, almost as a whole, relies on the reason of the masses, which loudly and noisily proclaims that those things which according to human opinion are valuable are of all things the highest; confidently makes its judgment and its task the standard of truth; and, with arrogant presumption, demands a reverence towards itself that is due solely to the spiritual world. From of old there have been many indictments of this, but as long as a new life, based in the spiritual world in contrast with merely human life, was not attained to, these indictments did not lead to a deliverance. Under the guidance of religion humanity has evolved such a life and for thousands of years has found support in it. However, humanity has lost this life and this support, in its old form, and the loss was inevitable. If humanity will strive after a new form and at the same time transcend mere appearance, it can attain to this only on the basis of the spiritual life, that is acknowledged to be independent. Only on this basis can it enter into the conflict on the side of gods against idols, for truth against appearance and emptiness.

The new life cannot develop without elevating the individual in his spiritual nature above all environment. For, as surely as the construction of a spiritual reality within humanity needs a union of all powers, there is a spontaneous springing up of the independent spiritual life only within the soul of the individual. All social and all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society; of a church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination he must assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the whole external world. But as the individual does not derive this superiority from himself, not from a natural particularity and peculiarity in distinction from others, but only from the presence of a spiritual world, so he is securely guarded from all vain self-assurance and the arrogance of the idea of the Superman, which grotesquely distorts the great fact of the revelation of a universal life at individual points.

The desire for the presence of the infinite at the individual point may be characterised as an approximation to mysticism. Indeed, we need both a metaphysic and a mysticism; but we want both in a new form, not in the old. It seems to us preposterous to declare that necessary demands of the spiritual life are finally disposed of, because the older solution has become inadequate. If man does not in some way succeed in appropriating the spiritual life, if it is not actively present as a whole within him and animating him, then his relation to the spiritual life remains for ever an external one; and this life cannot acquire a complete spontaneity in him, can never become a genuine life of his own. But the older mysticism was the offspring of a worn-out age, which primarily reflected upon quietness and peace, and was under the influence of a philosophy that sought the truth in striving towards the most comprehensive universal, and saw in all particularity a defect (omnis determinatio negatio). And so, to be completely merged in the formless infinite could be regarded as the culmination of life. As the spiritual life is to us, on the contrary, an increasing activity and creation, a world of self-determining activity, so its being called to life at individual points is a rousing of life to its highest energy; in this also, a continual appropriation is necessary. Further, the movement of the spiritual life does not appear to us as an advance from particular to universal, but as one from differentiation to the living whole; from the indefiniteness of the beginnings to complete organisation and distinctive form. The inwardness that we advocate is not a feeble echo and a yearning for dissolution, but is of an active and masculine nature, and rests on ceaseless self-determining activity. One may or may not call this mysticism; in any case mysticism of such a kind cannot be charged with that which now appears to us to be defect or error in the older form.

(2) The Increase of Movement

As certainly as a universal life must surround us and, with efficient power, in some way be implanted within us, yet only our own activity can appropriate and amplify that life for us. As the transition to the independent spiritual life changes the problem so that no achievement in a given world will satisfy it, but only the winning of a new world, our existence must become much more active; our life must be made not only much more comprehensive but also inwardly transformed and deepened.

NaÏve opinion is accustomed to presuppose a fixed sphere for our activity; it is possible for it to do this only because it confuses the spiritual and that which is less than the spiritual and leaves them undifferentiated. Since the attainment of independence by the spiritual life makes this confusion impossible, it may at the same time be recognised that the fixed relations in which we seem to be are also in reality due to our own activity. From this fact a method of treatment is justified, the introduction of which constitutes one of the greatest services of Kant. This method in his own terminology is the transcendental method. Unlike ordinary opinion, it does not regard the relation of the departments of life and all its activities as being self-evident, but it enquires into the inner possibility of this relation, that is, it indicates the conditions without which the union of the manifold could not be accomplished; it reveals the spiritual activity that exists in the whole. It reveals a far finer texture of life; it shows syntheses from the whole to the elements; it indicates clearer limits and makes us more definitely recognise what differentiates the individual departments. This is what Kant did in the case of scientific knowledge, of morality, and of the realm of the beautiful. The transcendental method itself is first indisputably justified and given a secure foundation with the acknowledgment that a world of independent spirituality emerges in man, and this through his own activity, not by a mere favour and gift of destiny. For, when this independent spiritual world is acknowledged it first becomes a matter beyond doubt that the basis, and the bonds which unite the whole, could not be given, but must proceed from our own activity. The transcendental method must therefore be applied not only to the individual branches but also to the whole, and the possibility of a spiritual life in man in general made a problem. Then from the whole the method must also be extended to the departments that are not brought into prominence by Kant; it must discuss, for example, the possibility of history in a characteristically human sense. Since our reality is thus dependent in the first place upon our own activity, life and movement acquire a wider scope and a greater value.

The movement of life also tends to be increased by the fact that in our conviction the more detailed form of the spiritual life itself must first be won by our activity, and that this detail can be acquired only little by little through attempts, experiences, convulsions; that for man the spiritual life with its actuality forms a difficult problem. What more particularly separates us from the Enlightenment is that while for it the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appeared to be immediately present and to need only an energetic working out, we extend the historical treatment not only to the representation, but also to the nature, of the spiritual life; and so the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appears to be a high ideal, to which man can only gradually approximate. The fact that endeavour is centred not upon externals but primarily upon our own being must make our activity far more significant and more intense; and this leads to a higher estimate of history as well as of a historical treatment. As hence epochs are no longer distinguished simply by their achievements, but by the nature of their spiritual life, so the life of the present must also be given its place in the moving stream, and so our innermost nature also depends on spiritual work.

If with such an increase of movement much is mutable that otherwise seemed to be as firm as a rock; and if, in particular, the foundations of life themselves also suffer change, life seems to lose all support and to fall into an unlimited relativism. Indeed, life must thus lose all stability if in the spiritual sphere movement does not involve something in opposition to change: and this as a fact it does involve. As the spiritual life cannot develop a content without presenting it as timeless, there is no great achievement in history that does not include some kind of timeless truth, and the movement of the spiritual life is not merely a flowing onward with time but also an elevation above time. In spiritual work, therefore, the achievements of the ages can be surveyed and examined; indeed, in distinguishing between past and not past the sequence of times can be transformed into a timeless present. Of course this is valid only with the presupposition of an absolute spiritual life, which is present in all the uncertainty and change of human undertaking, and does not allow it to become fixed in error. Unless an immanence of the absolute spiritual life is acknowledged, an essential characteristic of the spiritual work of the Modern Age remains absolutely unintelligible, namely, its critical character. Modern work is not completely objective, and occupation with the object does not completely exhaust that work; but activity realises its independence of the object, investigates its relation to the object, surveys that which has been achieved, and tests it by transcendent standards. Such a critique belongs especially to the fundamental nature of the Enlightenment, to the proud self-confidence of which a conscientious self-examination forms a necessary antithesis. The critical method reached its highest point in Kant, and we can never go back again upon the transformation of life that has been effected by it. But how could the critique be justified and exercise such far-reaching influence as it has done, if it were not more than a product of a subjective reflection that accompanies the object, and that has to do with the object externally? The critique could effect an inner transformation and elevation of work only because it set new forces in motion. And it did this in that it measured all human achievement by the demands of a transcendent spiritual life and out of it developed inner necessities, to which all achievement had to correspond. So the movement was not lost through the lack of an aim; and life did not flow onward with the stream of presentations, but found a support in itself; it was able to exert a powerful counteraction; it did not need to acknowledge anything that had not proved its validity before the judgment-seat of immanent reason. This emergence of the question of validity in contrast to that of actuality must inwardly raise and ennoble the movement of life; it reveals to man an active relation not only to the environment but primarily to himself; it leads to a ceaseless differentiation and examination of the quality of life.

It is true that the Enlightenment, which acknowledged that alone to be true which was clearly and distinctly cognised, exercised this critique in a too narrow manner; yet notwithstanding all that may be problematical in its application to details, the right and the necessity of the fundamental idea are not thereby overthrown: the question remains; it can be fully justified only in the relations that we have indicated; but at the same time it must be transferred from the merely intellectual to the spiritual as a whole, and form in relation to the whole that which in the state of culture contains and develops an independent spirituality and a self-conscious life; but by this it gains a content of truth. This self-consciousness alone can be regarded as essence and genuine reality, while everything else is reduced to mere environment and becomes matter of secondary importance, if not of mere appearance. Task after task is revealed, more especially for the present; we see how, with the attainment of independence by the spiritual life, the movement is not only extended, but also grows inwardly and tends towards the elevation of life.

(3) The Gain of Stability

The movement of the spiritual life as not only directed towards the outside but also turned inwards towards itself gained for us a greater independence. But even that which emerges from within exists only in the process of formation, and in this that which satisfies us to-day may to-morrow be uncertain; and so we cannot dismiss the question whether the spiritual life lacks the necessary stability; whether, in the midst of all becoming and change, caprice and subjectivity are not without the necessary opposition. In any case, the question of fixation must have a different appearance within a system of life based upon activity from that it would have within a system which proceeded from a given world: in the former, that which is fixed cannot be introduced from outside, but must exist within the movement itself; it can manifest itself only through a movement of a kind and form which transcend the utmost capacity of the mere subject.

Our investigation as a whole contends that the fixity is of this kind; and at this point only a short revision and a summing up are required. All spiritual activity is, as we saw, a transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object; it is progressive and formative universal activity. But this activity cannot be produced and formed according to desire or fancy; we must be elevated into it; and, as a result of this, we feel that we are under the compulsion of an inner necessity, which distinctly counteracts the caprice of the mere subject. We saw, further, that within the life-process spiritual contents are raised out of the stream of events, and that they unite so as to form a world in contrast with that stream, a world greater and more comprehensive, which nevertheless continues within our life. This applies to all the branches of our work; everywhere the deciding step to joyful advance is when activity proceeds from mere search and contemplation under the necessity of the object. No resolution, however, or even the most sincere volition, can of itself force us to this decisive step. Man must be taken possession of by a spiritual activity and power, and elevated above the state of groping and doubt. This is shown in all scientific work and artistic creation; everywhere success does not appear to be the work of the human, but a gift and a grace from higher forces; everywhere those who have created have felt guided and sustained by such forces. Beyond individuals humanity as a whole develops complexes in science, in law, and so on, which evolve inner necessities and require their recognition and fulfilment by man, and follow courses of their own regardless of the weal or the woe of individuals; so far as life follows these tendencies, it is elevated above doubt to a state of stability and joyfulness.

Such movements appear at first as a multiplicity, and are most directly effective through that which is distinctive in the particular departments of life. But through all multiplicity and above it, there is a striving towards a comprehensive unity; every advance towards this unity is an immediate gain in stability and certainty. Nothing helps the individual to become inwardly firm more than the unification of his life in a whole of activity, more than becoming certain of an inward all-comprehensive task in the development of a spiritual individuality. The development of a spiritual individuality is a task that comes to him from within, and which, while it is more than anything else his own, is yet above all caprice. This task may tend little to promote that which is usually called happiness; the striving to fulfil it may transform the whole of existence into a state of toil and trouble, of conflict and care; and yet it alone gives to life a meaning and a value, a sure direction and a secure self-consciousness, and by assuring man of a spiritual existence of his own makes him certain of the spiritual life as a whole. Such a unification of the manifold activities so as to form a life-work, an incomparable kind of spiritual being, is something entirely axiomatic, which is in no way derived from outside. Again, this unification does not depend upon particular representations of the world; only the fanaticism of party can bind it to definite doctrines of the human and the divine. It itself, however, is a secure starting-point for the development of convictions; its acknowledgment involves the acknowledgment of a spiritual world independent of and operative within us, and summoning us to co-operation, even though this implication is often concealed from consciousness. Where our own life lacks such a fountain-head the conviction of a spiritual life never attains to axiomatic certainty, but depends on the thin threads of reasons and proofs, and therefore is most easy to overthrow. And so, for the overcoming of doubt and faintheartedness everything depends upon attaining to a unity of activity and creation which inwardly embraces life as a whole, and with this, upon being something, not simply doing something.

What is valid of individuals is valid also of peoples and epochs, of humanity as a whole. Whether a people feels certain of a spiritual life, and is thereby elevated to a state of inward joyfulness, depends primarily upon whether it recognises and acknowledges in itself a common spiritual task: if this is not the case, the acutest apologetic cannot prevent the increase of doubt and faintness of heart. Similarly, the disposition and life-feeling of epochs is decided primarily by whether their endeavour unites them inwardly or whether it is divided, and at the same time becomes inconsistent. The endeavour of our own time does suffer from such division and inconsistency; it is this in particular that gives the negative tendency so much power over us and in the midst of all greatness of achievement in external matters makes us inwardly despondent. Humanity as a whole can attain to a stable spiritual life which is more than that of the particular times and peoples only by the revelation and appropriation of an all-comprehensive task which governs it with inner necessities. Such a task alone makes life a preservation of spiritual character; and gives conviction an unshakable firmness, and a joyous confidence of victory. And so everywhere only the formation of life itself is able to guarantee to it inner stability; the movement itself by its elevation above all caprice and its inner unity is alone able to overcome the dangers which the transformation of life into activity brings with it.

(e) ACTIVISM: A PROFESSION OF FAITH

The system of life here developed receives its distinctive colour and tone chiefly because it brings into prominence the fact that we do not belong to a world of reason, which from the beginning had only to be perceived and enjoyed, but that we have first to advance to such a world; and for this we require a revolution of the first condition of things. The basis of true life must continually be won anew; and even the individual achievement always contains a decision between one and another type of life. Only through ceaseless activity can life remain at the height to which it has attained; that which life experiences and receives is judged according to the more precise form of activity. Since it gives this precedence to activity, to such activity, this system may be called “Activism.” Activism, however, demonstrates its unique character and develops its capacity only if it is definitely distinguished from all other apparently related tendencies. Neither a sudden resolution nor even a mere incitement of power brings us at once into the condition of activity. For at first we are surrounded and embraced by a world of inflexible nature and of feeble spirituality, which is at the same time mixed with human pretence: this world binds us so strongly, and suppresses all independence with such force, that the mere individual remains entirely powerless in opposition to it, and could soar to no higher wisdom than that of an involuntary submission to it. Activity without release from the given world is an absurdity; but such release is attainable only through the living presence of a world of self-determining activity; the power of such a world alone is able to arouse the individual to self-determining activity. But how could man appropriate this world to himself without changing its life into his own; without acknowledging its content as valid for himself also; without making its laws norms of his conduct?

Activity in this way acquires an ethical character; it is this which draws the boundary line between spiritual activity and merely natural impulse, and distinguishes genuine from imaginary self-determining activity. Ethical relation does not mean a submission to alien and unsympathetic regulations, but a taking up of the infinite spiritual world into our own volition and being: this relation brings things close to us and reveals them, so that they are able to impart their life to us, and we are able to grow with their growth. So understood, ethical relation is primarily not regulative but productive; it is not merely being prepared to fulfil certain demands, when they are made upon us, to live in accordance with strict regulations, but it involves the motive of aiding in the development of the world, of advancing everything good and true: it requires an untiring forward endeavour and advance to the building up of a kingdom of reason and love. If in this way conduct is lifted above the pursuit of that which pleases and interests the mere subject, this is not on behalf of something alien, but for the elevation of our own being, for the sake of this genuine being, for the sake of our spiritual self.

It is this inner elevation and this demand for a new world that distinguishes Activism from all mere Voluntarism and Pragmatism, to which it appears to approximate, and with which, in its negative aspect, it is, indeed, associated. For it shares with them the rejection of an intellectualistic view of life, in which cognition is regarded as finding truth of its own power and as conveying it to the rest of life. Further, Activism desires, as do Voluntarism and Pragmatism also, the basing of truth upon a more spontaneous and essential activity. But the flight to the will is more a reaction against Intellectualism than an overcoming of the difficulty. As such the will does not yield a new world and a transcendent power; it may, therefore, be that mere volition is implicitly transformed into a self-determining activity encompassing the whole extent of life. Pragmatism, also, which has recently made so much headway among English-speaking peoples and beyond them, is more inclined to shape the world and life in accordance with human condition and needs than to invest spiritual activity with an independence in relation to these, and apply its standards to the testing and sifting of the whole content of human life. But after the experiences of history the claim to this latter can scarcely be given up. After man has been seen to be particular and limited in nature, as things first present themselves, he no longer suffices for the starting-point of the endeavour for truth, but to attain to this starting-point an elevation above the human into a universal spiritual life is necessary. And that is the intention of Activism.

The unique character of Activism becomes clearer especially in comparison with organisations of life, of which one indeed makes activity the chief thing, but gives to it the character of a mere process; while another thinks of the fundamental relation of man to reality in general not under the ideas of conduct and progress but under those of contemplation and enjoyment. The idea that life constitutes a process transcending all human endeavour and decision has shown a strong power of attraction in the Modern Age; and, in the system of Hegel especially, has found an imposing embodiment. This idea is asserted most definitely in the evolutionary conception of history, since it regards the motive power of history as striving to its aim, certain of accomplishing it, and unaffected by human opinion and preference. By this deliverance from the insignificance of human motives and the variations of human conditions the object seemed to gain incomparably in greatness; but it was considered that this deliverance from man involved an elevation above the ethical conception, which then appeared to be something subjectively human. But not only does this conception of a process that ceaselessly advances with compelling necessity contradict the actual state of things as they are found in history, which shows so much stagnation and retrogression, and so many different spheres of culture existing side by side indifferent to one another, but the transformation of life into a mere process, if consistently carried out, must also destroy or seriously debase its spiritual character. If life were a mere process it would be nothing other than a soulless mechanism; only in the case of such a mechanism can one phase proceed immediately from the others without at the same time a whole of life becoming active and exercising an animating power within the whole process. As a fact, the process is usually supplemented in thought by a universal life unifying, sustaining, and controlling the individual phases; however, so far as such a life does not simply come to us, but needs our own activity, the deed comes before the process; and a new world reveals itself to us. The disregard of the ethical element by the systems which make mere process their fundamental idea is explained by the fact that they understand the ethical only as a decision and turning of man, accompanying the spiritual life, not as the motive and progressive power of the spiritual life itself. They know only a human ethic, not an ethic of the spiritual life—as a self-assertion and a self-elevation, through which it first attains its complete freedom and independence. Still, to trace this further is the less necessary since this mode of thought lives rather from earlier achievements than works from fresh impulse springing up in the present.

The relation of Activism to the Æsthetic mode of thought requires closer consideration; we indicated at the beginning of our investigation that Æstheticism forms one of the chief streams of the life of the present day; at this point, only its relation to Activism need be examined. This Æstheticism has its definite conditions. Where the contemplation and enjoyment of the world and its beauty are to constitute the essence of life, we must be assured that the world is a kingdom of reason and beauty, so that the condition in which it is incites us to no far-reaching change. Further, there must be no perplexities in our soul, and no deep conflicts within our being, so that this contemplation may occupy us completely, and be a source of happiness. Lastly, we must be closely and surely united with the world so that a change of life may be accomplished easily and smoothly. If one of these requirements is not satisfied; if, instead of this harmony, the world manifests severe conflicts and harsh contradictions; if such exist also within our soul; if, lastly, there appears to be a deep gulf between us and the whole, then the Æsthetic solution of the problem of life is an impossibility. If in spite of these contradictions we attempt to entertain this solution, our life will become insincere, and will lose all spiritual productivity, and, as a whole, our life will be spent in subjective mood, empty enjoyment, and become feeble. Now, however, the Modern Age develops in a direction which is directly opposed to the requirements of the Æsthetic form of life. The great world appears to us to be a meaningless machine; and in the struggle for existence the earlier harmony is forgotten. We perceive in man far too much that is insignificant and far too much selfishness, emptiness, and mere show for us to be able to regard him as being inwardly complete. Lastly, the modern strengthening of the subject and the ceaseless growth of reflection have so fundamentally overthrown the immediate relation of man to the world that only a far-reaching transformation of life can prepare for a reunion. If our life is so full of problems and tasks; if we do not find ourselves in a completed world of reason; but if we must, with all our powers, work toward such a world, we shall turn to Activism as the only help possible. But we shall resolutely reject Æstheticism as a veiling of the real condition of things and a too facile solution of the great problems of life.

Activism does not imply that immediately and at one stroke our life may be transformed into spiritual activity and may quickly establish a positive relation to reality: that would be to fail to recognise the conditions under which man exists, and the necessity of undergoing experiences and changes. Such an attitude might easily lead to the formation of syntheses of life that would be much too hasty and far too narrow; and the necessary breaking up of these would arouse a keen distrust of the whole undertaking. The power which the Romantic movement from time to time wins over minds is based on the fact that it warns us against an over-estimation of our activity; that it demands that the soul should be open to the influences of the world; that its impressions should be appropriated without restriction and permitted to fade away completely; that in opposition to all the limitation and organisation of life, it still longs for the infinite; and that it also to some extent satisfies by turning to unrestrained feeling. At the same time, the Romantic movement makes us clearly conscious of the power of destiny, the transcendence of external and internal necessities above all human intention and utilitarian conduct. In this way life acquires a much greater comprehensiveness and freshness; it seems to return to its source, to retain far more immediacy. But it is one thing to acknowledge the importance of this, another to make it the essence of life. When such precedence is given to this Romantic tendency life threatens to become delicate, feeble, effeminate; it knows no energetic opposition to the flow of presentations; instead of a definite union it offers aphoristic thoughts and stimuli; through the lack of logical acuteness it falls into the direst contradictions; it sacrifices all distinct form and organisation to a revelling in vague moods. As in such a state of weakness the spiritual life does not succeed in gaining complete independence in face of the natural conditions of our existence, so it does not attain the necessary ascendancy over sense. Sense, in its own province entirely incontestable, raises doubts in us in that it flows together with the spiritual, is undifferentiated from it, brings it under itself, and turns it from its course. And, in this, sense does not possess the naÏve freshness and the natural limitation of its original state, but it is over-refined and too full of excitement.

To recognise all this clearly is at the same time to acknowledge the superiority of Activism over all mere Romanticism. However much may still be lacking in Activism, through the fact that man often regards the difficult and complicated task as easy and simple, and thus sets too low an estimate upon the distance between himself and the spiritual world, there is still the objective necessity of the requirement to transform our life as far as possible into a state of independence, to achieve independence in opposition to a world confused and only half rational. Such a self-determining activity is by no means simply a matter of subjective disposition; it requires a particular form of life. In opposition to the desultoriness and change of the life of sense it needs a powerful unification and organisation. It advances to methods and laws of the object in contrast to playful caprice; to a logic of the object in opposition to a persistence in contradiction; to a further construction of the first impression in contrast to comfortable complacency; to a courageous continuation and building up of life in opposition to a complacent acceptance of destiny. It gives to life a dramatic character in contrast to a lyrical, sentimental one, and along with this it can acknowledge fully that a genuine drama usually contains much that is lyrical.

It is detrimental to Activism itself if it takes the problem of life lightly. It is vital that it should not forget or underestimate the fact that the effort to solve the problems of life meets with great difficulties, that the solution costs incalculable trouble and work, and that even when the best is achieved it is only approximate. When Activism recognises this fact it may acknowledge a certain validity in the positions of its opponents and may learn from them. But there is a harsh contradiction that extends to the innermost basis of life, an implacable “either—or,” whether man simply receives the world and accompanies it with his own mood, or whether he finds courage and power to take up a conflict against confusion and irrationality, to co-operate in the building up of a kingdom of reason. For the latter, the affirmation of reason in the innermost basis of reality as a whole and of his own being is necessary. Whether men and times find a way to such an inner establishment, to such transcendence of all external and internal limitation, is that which decides the main tendency of their life.