Front matter (continued 7)

In the first place, the spiritual life does not introduce a definite and fixed content into our experience, and it does not follow paths independent of human striving and error; but arises through hard toil and only slowly finds any unity: in its further endeavour it by no means follows the same tendency, but effects great changes, indeed revolutions, into states the exact opposite of its previous states. When it is so uncertain as to its own aim the spiritual life becomes seriously involved in the seeking and vacillation, in the needs and passions, of man: instead of giving to man an immovable support and pointing out a definite aim for his activity, it seems itself unable to pass beyond a state of uncertain groping and error.

Corresponding to this uncertainty as to its content, there is a want of power on the part of the spiritual life within man. Instead of controlling the conduct of man directly, the spiritual life generally determines it through that which it contributes towards the attainment of his aims. If this is so in the case of the individual, it is even more so in the case of social life, for in it spiritual activity is regarded chiefly as a means to obtain advantages over others, and to advance socially. And so that of which it is the nature to be an end complete in itself is treated as a means to other ends; it is not itself active, and its own power is not a motive force; but even for its own maintenance it needs the help and support of things alien to itself: the artificial mechanism of social organisation must bring forth toilsomely that which, unless it flows immediately from its source, cannot be fresh or genuine. Such a state of human affairs remains far below the aims of the spiritual life; it produces insincerity, a luxuriant growth of hypocrisy and pretence. For all striving for the true and the good involves the assertion that the object is desired for its own sake: if the object really serves the aims of mere man, there inevitably originates a wide divergence between what is willed and what is alleged to be willed. In respect of this, one cannot, with the moralists, lay the blame simply on the will. For, in man, spiritual impulse in general is insignificant; without the compulsion of the social environment it would hardly prevail at all against nature. This social compulsion, therefore, notwithstanding its defects, cannot be dispensed with; however clearly we may see its inadequacy, we cannot renounce it altogether. Society cannot exert such coercive power without presenting itself as the champion of pure reason; without desiring an infallibility for its decisions. This attitude naturally arouses the opposition of individuals and a keen struggle ensues, but as one side may be right the condition of the spiritual life is not much improved by the struggle.

The state of life, uncertain of its aims and inadequate in its means, is rather a paltry substitute for a realm of reason than such a realm itself. A noisy and self-conscious agitation, much unrest and excitement, but little substance and soul; a ceaseless anxiety concerning the means of life and hurried pursuit of them, and in the occupation with the means forgetfulness and neglect of life itself; much self-glorification and ostentation, and little reverence for the spiritual life—such is social life in general. Where the vanity, emptiness, and falsehood of the social machinery have come to be clearly perceived, man has become absolutely wearied and satiated, and has often fled from society to nature, to seek therein simple truth and enduring peace. But he could believe it possible to find such in nature only because he read this truth and peace into it from himself; as, nevertheless, he must ultimately return to those of the same nature as himself: thus he remains in a state of vacillation between nature, which is indifferent to the spiritual life, and humanity, which corrupts the spiritual life by drawing it down to the level of the narrowly human. If the spiritual life nowhere attains to pure unfolding and certain effect within our experience, how can the spiritual life be accepted by us in this experience as the essence of reality? In the midst of such doubt, the original suspicions, which may have receded before the hope of the emergence of a new world, also become felt again—the insignificance of the external manifestation of the spiritual life in contrast with the immeasurableness of nature; the late appearance of the spiritual life in the world-process, and its probable disappearance as a result of the expected changes in the conditions of nature. Does not everything tend to give us the impression that the spiritual life signifies no more than an episode in the world-process; an episode which passes fleetingly, and does not affect the fundamental nature of reality at all? The necessity of such a conclusion remains concealed so long as man, in an undeveloped state of life, is able to fill the world with forms similar to himself, and to understand the control of nature on an analogy with human conduct. But the progress of culture and especially the growth of scientific knowledge have, with irresistible power, taken us beyond that state; have led us from dream and illusion to a state of complete alertness. Has not all independence of the spiritual life become doubtful with this progress of culture and scientific knowledge, and must we not give up all claim to subject our existence to its sovereignty, and to determine our life and effort spiritually? For there cannot be any doubt that, with the spiritual life, the characteristic organisation of our existence also falls. It may be that we have thought superficially and confusedly enough to declare something to be in itself falsehood and deceit, and at the same time to give to it the guidance of our life.

(b) CONSIDERATION AND DEMAND

The previous train of thought may appear to be a plain and straightforward negation, a complete renunciation of the spiritual life as the most adequate solution of our problem. But that train of thought is itself the result of a superficial treatment; every deeper consideration inevitably contradicts such a summary procedure. A contradiction of that train of thought is found especially in the fact which governs the whole course of our investigation, that with the transition to the spiritual life there appear essentially new magnitudes and values, new forms and contents of life, which advance beyond not only the nature but also the capacity of mere man. Whence all these, if spiritual life is only delusion? The new in us may be never so powerless; still, the fact that it emerges in our world of thought and hovers before us as a possibility proves that it has a certain reality also within us.

Further, is the spiritual life, ultimately, in every sense so powerless as it at first appears? That it does not pass by as a phantom among our presentations is shown by the fact that we do not simply receive the existing condition of things, and its degrading oppression of the spiritual life, but we feel it to be a cause of harm and of pain to us. Could we experience this if we belonged entirely to that condition of things; and is not Hegel right when he says that he who feels a limitation is already in some way above it? We feel the insufficiency, the feebleness, the threadbareness of all human morality; could we feel this if we did not experience a longing for a more genuine morality? And whence arises this longing in opposition to an entirely different world, if not from a spirituality implanted within our own being? We perceive the limitations in our knowledge; a growing insight into all its conditions and oppositions may lead us in this matter almost to complete scepticism: but whence came the desire for an inner elucidation of reality; and how did even the idea of it originate, if we belong entirely to the darkness of a nature that is less than spiritual, and if there is no fight at all within us? We feel that the rapid flow of time, its change and course, its sudden revolutions sometimes even into the complete opposite of the previous state, is a defect, a source of serious danger to truth: could we feel this to be so if our whole being were centred in the passing moment; if we did not survey and compare the different times; if our being did not participate in something super-temporal? And lastly, if the feeling that culture is inadequate and indeed nothing but a pretence is so strong and so painful, then here again we set ourselves in a position independent of the condition of things, and judge that condition by a transcendent standard which only our own being can supply. If all these aims were only invented by man and applied to life in an external manner, failure to realise them could not agitate us as it does.

Besides, the matter is not by any means at an end with the feeling of the inadequacy of our position; a movement in opposition to this condition is also not lacking. For, as has been seen throughout our whole treatment, spiritual operation, creative activity is to be found within human experience. It meets us with especial clearness at the heights of the work of history; but these also belong to humanity as a whole, and the light kindled there is not entirely lost in the mist of the commonplace circumstances of every day. In relation with these heights of endeavour there is, in humanity as a whole, a movement in opposition to the tendency of mediocre culture to fill life entirely; a longing for a more spontaneous, a purer, and a more genuine life. Our own power of creation may be dormant; only the advent of a strong suggestion, or a serious convulsion, is necessary and it breaks forth forcefully, and shows distinctly that there is more spirituality in man than the circumstances of every day allow us to perceive. The spiritual movement manifests itself also in private life and in the relation of individual to individual. He who does not measure spiritual greatness by physical standards will often find more genuine greatness in the simplicity of these relations than in the famous deeds of history; and at the same time he will find that through these relations an effective presence of the spiritual life within human experience is strengthened.

If in its opposition to human perversion of it genuine spiritual life does not always reach a definite positive result, the operation of that life as the law and the judge of human things is all the more distinct. Man may try to withdraw himself from the spiritual life; he may reject and mock at that which the age presents to him as an aim; he may seek to fill his life completely with human interests and inclinations: but he cannot do this without degenerating into a state of destitution, which even he himself soon finds to be intolerable, and without being forced, with the compulsion of necessity, to surrender much which it is impossible for him to surrender. The catastrophes of history in which that which has been found insignificant sinks, and that which carries a spiritual necessity within it rises, careless, as it seems, of the weal or the woe of man, show in letters of brass that the spiritual life may not be modified by man at his pleasure, in this way or that, in accordance with his circumstances and his mood.

When we consider all the facts together, we do not get the impression that the spiritual life is simply a fleeting illusion that may easily be banished; but rather, that there are serious complications, out of which we cannot find our way; and that something occurs within us, something is begun within us, that is unaffected by mood and caprice, and that shows us to be in relations much more comprehensive, though obscure in the highest degree. In particular, for a treatment that starts out from the life-process, and sees the spiritual movement chiefly in strivings, collisions, and even in failures, there can be no doubt concerning the actuality of this movement, the emergence of a new life, and thus of a new stage of reality in man.

When we recognise the actuality of the spiritual movement the relation of the spiritual life to nature and to the world is also to be regarded differently from the manner in which the negative mode of thought represents it. It is now impossible, as it often happens, more particularly among philosophising natural scientists, to consider the representation of nature as a complete representation of reality, and to leave the spiritual life out of attention as something supplementary and subsidiary. The spiritual life is now itself acknowledged to be a reality, and must help to determine the representation of reality as a whole. Nature must be more than a soulless machine if its evolution is to lead, as it does, to the point where a self-conscious life emerges. Within our own experience points of transition are not lacking where nature produces something that becomes elevated to the spiritual, and furthers the spiritual life. The difference of the sexes, for example, is primarily a matter of natural organisation, and what a rich source of spiritual animation it is! Nothing manifests the union between nature and the spiritual life more convincingly than the beautiful, when, in accordance with the result of our investigation, it is regarded as a characteristic unfolding of the spiritual life, and not as something which merely fascinates man and is a source of pleasure to him. For how could the external receive a characteristic soul by being taken up into the inner life; how could the inward need an external form for its perfection if the two realms were not united, if a comprehensive reality did not transcend the antithesis?

Lastly, it should not be forgotten that it is modern science, especially in its latest phases, with its destruction of the supposed self-evidence of the sense impression of nature, that has placed the relation of nature to the spiritual life in a more favourable light than it was placed by the dogmatic mechanistic theory, which in earlier times seemed to be the ultimate solution of the problem of their relation. Nature has again become far more of a problem to us, and we recognise that our conception of it is a work of the spirit. The old facts of the connection and interaction of phenomena, of the conformity to law on the part of occurrences, of the developments of form, and of a progress to even more artistic complexes and ever finer organisation, once more make us feel, and far more keenly than before, that they involve difficult problems. It is more clearly evident to us than it was formerly that every attempt to make these facts intelligible is made by the spiritual life and by analogy with the spiritual life. If in such analogy we do not go beyond symbols, yet the symbols themselves betray a depth and a secret of reality. At the present time when scientific work is at its highest stage of development, the shallowness and the rashness of a radical negation are distinctly recognised.

It is true that for the particular life-problem that we are considering we have not yet gained much from this recognition; to perceive the impossibility of an absolute negation does not in itself imply the victory of a joyful affirmation. For all the perplexities that previously occupied us still remain, as do the limitation and the curtailment of the spiritual life which proceeded from these perplexities; the whole movement also remains in its state of stagnation. As certainly as on the one hand there is too much of the spiritual life presented to us to allow of negation, so on the other it is by no means sufficient for the removal of all doubt.

Mere research can tolerate a state of hesitation between affirmation and negation; it must often refrain from a decision in the case of special problems. Life, however, cannot endure any such intermediary position; for life, such hesitation in arriving at a decision must result in complete stagnation, and this would help the negation to victory. If life is faced with an “either—or” the affirmation has a prospect of victory only if the situation previously described may be in some way transformed in its favour. This cannot come to pass unless the spiritual movement can transcend the limitations which appear in human life, and unless a further development can proceed out of the limitations themselves. Only such an advance can help the endangered affirmation to victory. But whether the spiritual movement does transcend these limitations, not a logical consideration of concepts but only the experience of life will decide; let us enquire therefore whether life offers what we seek.

(c) THE VICTORY

The questions that are given rise to in the consideration of human life as it is are answered in the affirmative with joyful certainty by the religions. The religions do this in that they announce to man the help of a transcendent order; an appearance of divine power and goodness in the domain of man. But after the far-reaching changes of life and of conviction that we have experienced, can this confidence still be justified? And have we a place for this assertion of help from a transcendent order when we acknowledge the reality of the independent spiritual life?

Everything of a religious character and even that which is related to it meets, at least upon the surface, in the present the keenest opposition. This opposition is aroused in the first place by anthropomorphism—the indulgence in merely human representations and desires—which is often found associated with religion. If the essence of religion were inseparable from such anthropomorphism, the dissolution and submergence of religion could hardly be prevented. But according to the witness of history, an energetic conflict against all such mere anthropomorphism has been carried on within religion itself and, in its highest stages of development, religion has demanded a complete surrender of everything narrowly human: anthropomorphism and religion are, therefore, not absolutely identical. Our investigation, emphasising as it does the radical distinction between the substance of the spiritual life and its appropriation by man, counselled us to be cautious in reference to this matter, and warned us against a hasty rejection of religion.

The essence of religion is still less affected by the charge that modern natural science in conceiving of the spatial world as infinite leaves no room for a visible heaven. For, to take such a criticism seriously, we must not only think of religion as at a primitive stage which, in the development of its spiritual content, it has overstepped, but we must also completely ignore the fundamental revolution that modern philosophy and the whole tendency of modern thought have accomplished in the representation of the visible world. Modern thought has destroyed the self-evidence that the naïve man attributed to that representation, by the experience and the proof that the visible world around us does not come to us completely as we represent it, but that we form the representation from our point of view, and under the conditions of our spiritual nature. Our own activity is embodied in the representation; and it will depend upon the value of this activity how far the representation may be accepted as reality as a whole and the ultimate and absolute world. Now, as in the visible world the spiritual life is always bound up with something alien and which cannot be completely transformed by the activity of that life, so every assertion of an independent spiritual life is a protest against the view that the world of sense is the only world. But in that, unless the spiritual life is independent, there is neither science nor culture, the priority of a world other than that of sense cannot be in any way a matter of doubt to philosophy.

But a world other than the world of sense is by no means the transcendent world of religion; such a world as the latter could be reached only by a continuation of the life-process beyond the position yet attained; the course of our investigation, however, has left no uncertainty concerning the direction in which such a world is to be sought. We saw that the spiritual life could not acquire an independence without becoming a universal life: only the immediate presence of this universal life at the individual point arouses and preserves a spiritual life in it. In spite of this immediate presence of the whole, the life of man receives its more detailed organisation and development from his relation to the environment and in the building up of a world; the unity that exists in the whole reveals itself at first only in relation to the multiplicity. There is, therefore, still the possibility that a new and characteristic life should evolve out of an exclusive relation to the whole; such a life, in contrast to that building up of a world, would bear a world-transcendent character. This possibility constitutes the only way of advancing beyond the position hitherto reached.

Now, however much work in the world forms the main part of our life and asserts itself to be such, yet, as a fact, our life is not taken up entirely by such work. In the striving of humanity and in the soul of the individual there is a movement towards a world-transcendent life, a life that first attains to a complete inwardness when it becomes world-transcendent. Only such an inwardness offers a firm support, a spirituality unperverted by the perplexities of the world; but this is not possible otherwise than by man’s gaining participation in a world-transcendent spiritual life which is purely and absolutely self-conscious: this life must become man’s own life, and spirituality in this way self-consciously advance towards divinity. This makes it for the first time intelligible how life, even when it suffers complete failure in its work in the world, even when the activity exerted upon the world is completely frustrated, by no means degenerates into a state of destitution and ruin. For a new task is now revealed to man in his own attitude to the spiritual life as a whole, a relation which may in different cases be very different in character, and he may find in the solution of the task incalculable difficulties. Here activity also changes its character, since without any external manifestation it can become complete and purely inward: character can free itself of everything passive and become fully active; from being a mere accompaniment it can become an active whole. All this, however, is possible only if life is directed toward a world-transcendent spirituality and only by the power of such a spirituality.

As this new kind of life does not make its appearance suddenly, but is prepared by the whole evolution of spiritual life, which we have previously considered, so its main individual tendencies are also related to this evolution. Essential qualities of the spiritual life are manifested in work in the world, but in this they do not come to pure formation and victorious establishment: only the elevation to the world-transcendent self-consciousness makes possible that with which the spiritual life as a whole cannot well dispense, indeed in which it has its essential nature. The striving itself, and its arousing and motive power, could not be explained if the end were not operative within our life: “Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not already found me” (Pascal).

The spiritual life in man could have no hope of acquiring truth if it were not rooted in a life which transcends all error and which in some way imparts to us this transcendence. If the spiritual life in man did not know of certain truth sustained at one innermost point, a truth that exerts a directing power on all human undertaking, and prevents it from becoming fixed in error, man would lose all confidence in truth in face of the obscurities and errors of life as they are shown by the work of culture. Further, for the maintenance of the spiritual life, the preservation of spontaneity, a possibility of overcoming all restriction by nature and of defying destiny is absolutely necessary. But in work in the world this spontaneity is subject to the most severe limitations; the power of fate surrounds man on all sides: in the natural course of things even his own work becomes a rigid destiny to him, and chains him with inexorable necessity. As in the case of the individual, so also in that of humanity as a whole, life is a gradual narrowing, an ever further exclusion of original possibilities; and this tendency is continually felt as an increasing oppression in its opposition to the freedom of the will and an independent present. How may the spiritual life be prevented from growing feeble and senile, if new pure beginnings cannot be produced from a fundamental relation transcending the relation with the world, if from this fundamental relation a spontaneous life cannot spring up ever anew? The fact that humanity is able not only to transform the nature of culture in its particular aspects, but also to fall into error concerning culture as a whole, without surrendering itself, is an indication that the life of humanity is not exhausted in work in the world. The spiritual life must unite in an inner community all who participate in it; and this is impossible unless the spiritual life leads man to a point where all walls of partition and all differences fall away. But spiritual work increases rather than diminishes these differences; with culture the differentiation of men also grows. We must sink ever deeper in such differentiation; lose more and more the possibility of a mutual understanding, of a life and feeling with one another and for one another, if this movement toward differentiation does not come into contact with a transcendent power that counteracts it, if some power does not unite us inwardly. What other power could this be than the spiritual life itself, and how could it effect this result otherwise than in the revelation of a world-transcendent self-conscious life which thus presents itself as an Absolute? For, then a removal of differences in negative and in positive matters becomes possible: in negative matters so far as all achievements in the human sphere, however distant they may be from one another, appear equally inadequate when they are judged by the standard of an absolute life: in positive matters so far as the absolute life produces something at each point transcending all complexity, by which the movement is freed from its restrictions and resumes its flow, and by the imparting of which to man in the innermost depth of his being, reveals a new life in which all may in like manner participate. The possibility of a finally valid affirmation of life is first attained when this world-transcendent self-conscious life is acknowledged. Without turning to the absolute life, life could not withdraw from its perplexities; suffering and guilt would crush man. With this turning, however, he acquires, not in his merely human nature, but so far as he is taken up into the absolute life, part in the perfection, infinity, and eternity of that life: in the midst of all change and becoming something immovable is disclosed to him; in the midst of all dependence upon the world, a sure world-transcendence; in the midst of all darkness and suffering, a state of incalculable bliss. From the ultimate depths the Yes triumphs over the No, which, at the first glance, seems so easily its superior.

This transition derives a power to convince primarily from the union of the individual tendencies so as to form a vital whole of world-transcendent inwardness. Such a whole, thoroughly characteristic in its nature, is never a work of mere man, a product of critical reflection; it can proceed only from the spiritual life itself. Looked at from the point of view of that life this whole cannot be regarded as something later and as something supplementary; but it will be seen that that which for us first attains complete clearness through suffering and convulsion must be effective from the beginning, and already exist in the work upon the world. If, however, it becomes our possession only when it takes precedence, then the whole prospect of reality must be altered and deepened, and for us life will be divided into the stages of the establishing, struggling, triumphing of spirituality.

It is this fact of transcendent spirituality that the religions take up and develop, and seek to bring near to humanity. The doctrines they contain are ultimately only the framework or the outward manifestation of that world-transcendent inwardness; they desire to realise its power of deliverance and elevation completely. They themselves have their support and justification in this transcendent spiritual life, and the precedence of one to the others will be judged by the degree to which in affirmation and negation they develop this spiritual life in its world-transcending sovereignty and in its world-penetrating power. From the point of view of that life, religion as a whole must maintain its truth and its indispensable nature: where that life is lacking, religion is simply a delusion, a folly the absurdity of which is hardly conceivable; but where it is developed religion must pass current as that which, of all things, is the most certain, as the fundamental axiom of the whole spiritual life. Between this “either—or” there is no middle course; historical experience shows that religion has been to men and ages either the most certain of all things or the one about which there has been most dispute.

We can now return to the question that led us to this discussion, to the question of the rationality of our reality. To be sure, even after the further revelation of the spiritual life, the answer is not so easy as the adherents of religion often think. For they often believe that with the acknowledgment of a world-transcendent spirituality, its triumphant manifestation within our world is immediately assured; and with this conviction they attempt to present this world as a kingdom of justice, even if not of love. But all endeavour, however energetic, and all recourse to subtlety of thought, yield no satisfactory conclusion: at most, the possibility is reached that that which seems irrational may acquire some rationality in more comprehensive relations; but even if that is so, we are not free from irrationality; and those mere possibilities are far from being equal to counteracting the strong impression of the reality of evil. Even religion, which would bring about a transition to the better, is itself deeply involved in this irrationality; a painful martyrdom has often been imposed upon its heroes, and its form has continually degenerated in the course of history through the influence of human error and passion. Since in the latter the restriction is presented as an opposition to the divine, the view of the world as it immediately appears is darkened rather than illuminated.

Nevertheless, through the revelation that the world has a deeper basis, the perplexity concerning life and reality is essentially changed. Evil is not removed; the external view of things is not altered; the good is perhaps strengthened, and, indeed, life in its innermost depth withdrawn from all power of perplexity and led to a new stage. So far, the irrationality may appear in another light from this point of view, as hence the conflicts and the convulsions may themselves be factors which help life to realise its own ideal and to establish it in the new world. In history, suffering has been regarded as absolutely irrational, and has been unconditionally rejected only where man has been regarded as essentially complete. But if an immense problem is recognised in suffering, then suffering also, by rousing us to activity and by making us less inflexible, may acquire a positive value and be of service in the development of being. This, however, does not give us a theodicy; it justifies neither philosophy nor religion in trying to act as advocate for the Deity. To us evil is an insoluble riddle: no formula can make it intelligible why a powerful and clear reason is implanted in our world and that at the same time the lower most obstinately asserts itself in opposition, treats it as a matter of indifference, offers an insurmountable resistance to it.

Thus we can hardly reach a decision in regard to our last conviction by way of intellectual consideration; rather, in the decision concerning the “either—or” which is the question here, our whole being is involved. On the one side there is the external impression of the world, the weakness of the good, its perversion into evil, the apparent indifference of the world-process towards the aims of the spirit, the apparent futility of all that would advance beyond nature. Can anything that is aroused within our inner being, and with so much toil finds any form, arise in opposition to this immeasurable world? This will be possible only when a movement of the world itself, and not a mere product of man, is recognised in that which is aroused within man: for only then will its extension be a matter of complete indifference, and, however mean an extension it shows in the human sphere, a turning of the whole would be proved, a revolution of the whole accomplished. Then that which for us emerges on the edge of our life must nevertheless be regarded as the sustaining basis and the controlling power of reality as a whole. Our whole investigation has championed the view that the turning to the spiritual life implies a movement of the world: wherever the independence of the spiritual life is acknowledged the supremacy of reason cannot be doubted.

But it is one thing to acknowledge such a thesis to be necessary, another to give it the power to convince and impress, without which it does not leave the realm of phantoms, and does not become a living power. This is possible only where the spiritual life is taken up as our own life, and developed as our own life; where, therefore, its vindication attains to the overwhelming power and the axiomatic certainty of self-preservation. The centre of reality will be changed for us only if we change the centre of our own life, and find true immediacy no longer in sense impression, but in self-determining activity.

The acknowledgment of a self-conscious inwardness, of a world-transcendent spirituality, together with the recognition of another kind of world, full of oppositions, must give a characteristic form to our conception of our reality. Here, a rational solution of the world-problem is for ever excluded, and the world present to man must be accepted as a particular kind of reality, which cannot be regarded as the only and ultimate one. From this point of view the whole life of humanity must appear to be a mere link in a great chain; an act of a drama, the course of which we are unable to survey; the fundamental idea of which, however, glimmers through sufficiently clearly to point out a direction to our life.

Through the emergence of a world-transcendent inwardness there appear characteristic tasks and complications, also for the more detailed development of our life. Unqualified esteem for that inwardness has often led religions to demand that life should be placed solely and entirely in that transcendent sphere, in the realm of faith and of disposition, and to free life as far as possible from the work of the world; the former life seemed to excel the latter as the divine the human. But this comparison does not hold good; for the divine is to us not only a world-transcendent sovereignty but also a world-pervading power: to honour the former preponderatingly may be the only salvation for times and individuals in a state of prostration and collapse, and in this way life would be given a preponderatingly religious character; but this form of life can never be accepted as the normal one and the one alone worth striving for. For one thing, that transcendent world, as far as its contents and tasks are concerned, is presented to us only in outline; all its more detailed nature must result from the world of our activity, and must retain a symbolic character. If the connection of the spiritual world with the empirical world is broken it falls into the danger of becoming destitute; so that religion may come to be simply a revelling in feeling; or a devotion, indifferent to all content and which, therefore, judged by spiritual standards, is worthless. It is by hard work alone, in relation to men and things, that our life acquires a spiritual character. Religion does, indeed, elevate life above work, and give to life its full depth. Still, movement and differentiation must be included within a vital whole; and the relation to activity which is the chief factor in life cannot be given up even at its greatest depth. The high estimate of spirituality may not rightly lead to a mean estimate of nature, to a conflict with nature such as has been the case in the realm of religion in the tendency to asceticism. For as certainly as our acknowledgment of an independent spirituality involves a subordination of nature, this subordination does not imply a mean estimate, still less a rejection. Asceticism which appears to be the attainment of a high level of spiritual life soon leads to an inward degeneration. For in asceticism the chief task is not the powerful development and courageous advance of spirituality, but simply a negation and suppression of sense. Reflection and thought will thus be centred upon just those things beyond which the spiritual movement wishes to lead. Particular temporary circumstances may make the tendency to asceticism comprehensible; such times were over-refined and diseased, and the diseased may not rightly give to life its rule.

But if, in this way, we oppose a specifically religious or ascetic form of life we are not prevented from acknowledging the strong and fruitful influence of a world of transcendent inwardness upon life as a whole. For its perfect health and breadth, our life needs two tendencies which, though they directly contradict each other, must, nevertheless, within us be complementary to each other: it needs an energetic conflict against all that is irrational, and at the same time to be elevated into a sphere in which everything is rational, into a realm of peace and perfection. Within the spiritual life itself, tasks are given their form and are estimated on the one hand from the human point of view, and on the other from an ultimate, one might say an absolute, view of things. The significance of this distinction is to be seen most clearly in history, and, perhaps, in the contrast between the Greek and the Christian character. The former places man in the midst of the world, and requires him energetically to take up the struggle for the cause of rationality and decisively to reject the irrational. Suffering and pain were to be avoided; man was never to submit to them. Courage appeared to be the chief quality of this form of life, and in relation to others justice was its determining idea. But if this idea demands that each should receive according to his achievement, then the higher and the lower, the noble and the common, must be distinctly separated and never allowed to be confused. That the noble form a small minority, and that history hardly promises any change in this matter, is a fact that has not escaped perception; and the permanence of the antithesis of an esoteric and an exoteric form, therefore, appears to be inevitable. The difference that exists is regarded as due primarily to nature, not to free decision. To make nature completely active, and to unify that which it offers in a scattered and an unsystematic manner, appears to be our whole life-work.

The result, therefore, is a powerful, active, self-conscious life, which not only affects us by its results but to which we must assign a permanent significance. But as the only and exclusive form of life, it involves great restrictions and rigour; its limitations may remain hidden in days of joyful creative activity and in the highest circles of society, but they must be keenly felt if life falls into a condition of stagnation, and man, as man, asks questions with regard to the happiness of life. This destiny may then become an intolerable compulsion; mere courage, an over-exertion of human power; mere justice, severity and unmercifulness; the sharp distinction between men, an actual separation, which tends on the one side to proud haughtiness and on the other to doubt and depression. A keen perception of such limitations and dangers must necessarily force life into new paths.

The counter movement has won the victory in Christianity, which makes not work in the world but the relation to a world-transcendent spiritual life the chief thing. Man does not in the first place trust a nature that safely leads him but at the same time limits him; but his nature seems full of problems, and to need a complete transformation, which only a miracle of grace can accomplish. Men are not regarded as being separated by fixed differences, but in comparison with the divine perfection all differences vanish, and from the relation to God the feeling of equality and brotherhood is evolved. Thought of in relation to the requirement of a pure inwardness of the whole being, differences in achievement are totally insignificant: justice gives place to an infinite love that dispels all harshness, makes all differences consistent and harmonious, and tolerates no feeling of hostility.

The antithesis of a nature which is operative within the world and which elevates above the world must permeate life as a whole and must give rise to opposite tendencies in every part of life. On the one hand, there is a distinct formation in finite relations, an insistence upon plastic organisation and complete consciousness of life; on the other, an aspiration towards the infinite, a more submissive faith, a more unrestrained disposition, a higher estimate of the naïve and the childlike. In the former, man, full of confidence in his own power, himself produces a rationality of reality, and disdains all aids alien to himself; in the latter, life is sustained by a trust in an infinite good and power which, in a way transcending the capacity of man, guides to the attainment of the best; in short, as a whole and in its individual aspects each is a fundamentally different type of life from the other.

The type of life advocated by Christianity has resulted in a great deepening of life; it cannot possibly be given up again in favour of an earlier type. But this Christian type also does not suffice for the moulding of life as a whole. Most severe complications would ensue if the position of Christianity were taken up as an ultimate conclusion and an absolute evaluation in the conditions which at present exist, and its principles without further consideration were applied to our life as a whole. The annulling of all differences, even of spiritual capacity; the displacement of justice through pity; the cessation of the conflict against evil; the low estimate of man’s own power, would all endanger most severely the rational character of life; an adoption of this type of life in its entirety would lead to the discontinuance of the work of culture; in particular, it is inconsistent with any kind of political organisation. Finite conditions are not to be judged by infinite standards; and we men are, after all, in the finite and remain so.

And so, from the earliest times since Christianity, from being merely one of opposing systems, became the dominant power, compromises have been sought. The system of the development of power and of justice has nevertheless asserted its influence, and though Christianity has had an external supremacy, this system has forced characteristically Christian life to be regarded as a matter of mere subjective disposition and of private life. But as such compromises do not fully and truly express spiritual necessity, they easily lead to falsity. To rise above this tendency to make such compromises, the acknowledgment of the right and of the limits of each type, the acknowledgment of the necessity of both within a comprehensive whole, is necessary. Such a whole and along with it a common ground, upon which the movements meet together, and can strive to understand one another, is given to us by the spiritual life, acknowledged in its independence. It is not for us to force our life into a finished scheme, but to develop fully and to acknowledge the movements and oppositions which exist in our life. True, life will ever remain unfinished, but can we wish to make it more complete than it can be, and can the incompleteness cause us anxiety, when we are sure of its main direction?

III

APPLICATION TO THE PRESENT

CONSEQUENCES AND REQUIREMENTS

Introductory Considerations

With a consideration of the present we set out: to the present we now return. The convictions at which we have arrived, and which have led us to a characteristic philosophy of life, must now be considered in relation to the needs of the present; we must see whether this philosophy proves to be true in this connection, and this by its own development, as well as by the simplification of the condition of a time, which, as it is immediately experienced, is confused in the highest degree.

But, at the outset of our treatment of this problem, we perceive how difficult it is for the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality to determine our relation to the temporal environment; we see how this acknowledgment transforms that relation into a problem. The conception of the “present” is by no means simple and certain, even as far as its external boundary is concerned. The mere to-day is obviously too short a period to constitute the present; but how much is to be added and where must it cease in order that we may have a genuine present? True, the present must involve a characteristic content that associates the moments and unites them so as to produce a common effect; but does our time give us such a content? The first glance at the state of life in our time reveals a chaotic confusion, which includes the most diverse endeavours, now in passionate union, now in complete indifference to one another, and yet again in harsh hostility; further, there is a constant displacement of the individual elements by a process of elevation and of degradation. Even if something common and permanent is operative in the present, its close amalgamation with this change and movement prevents it from being purely developed: the truth contained in the present state of life is inseparably mixed with human error and passion.

And yet this is not an experience simply of the present, but one common to all ages. For fundamental spiritual creation has always been effected in the direst contradiction to the social environment. What harsh judgments, and judgments that set its value at nil, have been passed upon society with regard to its capacity not only in religion but also in philosophy and art! How severe a conflict has been carried on in all departments of life against the presumption of society! The present, especially, is troubled by these problems, because, as has become evident to us from the beginning of our investigation, it carries within it movements of a diverse and contradictory nature, so that it can hardly produce a consistent impression of the whole, still less attain to a definite character. Human interests and parties seek with all their energy to impress upon the time their own character; they call that modern which is useful to and in harmony with themselves. The most diverse tendencies cross one another; experiences in particular departments of life determine the conception of the whole; the different classes of society follow different courses in accordance with their different interests; much that is accidental is regarded as vital and is allowed to influence us: the extreme has the advantage of being able to make an impression upon us; and the superficial and the negative creep into favour through the easiness of the conclusion presented by them: in short, in this state of the time, that which arises in human opinion is incapable of offering to spiritual endeavour a secure support and an orientation concerning its aims.

This uncertainty cannot be removed by turning our attention to history, by taking an interest in past ages. For, with whatever clearness a highly developed science of history may present the whole course of the ages to us, to believe that our own life is enriched and made more stable by this, we must confuse knowledge and life, the mere present representation of earlier times and the appropriation of them by our own activity—a danger into which the purely academic mode of thought easily falls. The power and the tendency of life in the present determine the nature of our appropriation of the past and of its transformation in self-determining activity. If this life stagnates, then we are helpless in face of the stream of earlier systems of thought. Even if these systems attract us to themselves, and carry us with them for a time, finally they will manifest their antitheses and throw us back again upon ourselves: we cannot escape from ourselves; we can never find a substitute from outside for want of conviction and power of our own. It is a fundamental error, not, indeed, of historical research but of a feeble historical relativism, to expect us to form a conviction of our own by concerning ourselves with the past; and to think that the later stage in history proceeds from the earlier as a self-evident final result. By taking such an attitude to the past we should only fall into the half-will and half-life common to an age of decadence. If the present is thus uncertain in the heart of its spiritual nature, and it is not possible to escape from this uncertainty by resorting to the past, it may appear to be essential that we should be completely delivered from the tyranny of time, and that we should take up an attitude of entire unconcern of its affirmation and its negation of spiritual endeavour.

But a rejection of the immediate relation to time by no means settles the matter. If spiritual work were completely dissociated from the temporal environment and the historical movement, it would be dependent solely upon the capacity of the mere individual and upon the passing moment; all relation, all community of work, would thus be given up, and the performance of others could not be anything to us, nor our achievement anything to others; there would be no inner building up of life, and no hope of reaching greater depths. Not only is it impossible to abandon such aims, but our experience of spiritual work itself contradicts the disintegration of life into nothing but isolated points. If all spiritual creation is effected in contradiction to time, what is denied in this contradiction is rather that which lies upon the surface of time than that which is deeper; rather human accommodation to than the spiritual content of time. All who believe that distinctive human history is sustained by the activity of a spiritual life will attribute to time such a spiritual content.

Every age, therefore, in virtue of the presence of this spiritual life, will contain characteristic spiritual motives, movements, and demands, and will be especially qualified to convey certain contents to man, to open up certain experiences to him, and to point out certain directions. All these must be appropriated by anyone who wishes to transcend the original state of emptiness, and to advance to spiritual creation and to a spiritual fashioning of life. In consequence of this a more friendly attitude may be taken up towards time; and we shall be far more grateful to it—though perhaps not with explicit consciousness, perhaps even in contradiction to definite purpose—than we could ever be with regard to the experiences on the surface of time. However low, for example, the estimate Plato may have formed of “the many” around him; and though with the whole passion of his soul he may have insisted upon a transformation of the immediate condition of life, what he offered of his own and the new that he required, with all its originality and uniqueness, contradicts neither the natural spirit of the Greek nor the contemporary Greek culture: Plato can be regarded only as a Greek of a particular time. His conflict with the time is not the conflict of an incomparable individuality with his environment, but a selection and a unification of the possibilities existing in time; it is an arousing to life of the deeper realities of time against its superficialities, of spiritual necessities in opposition to the conduct and interests of men. In this manner the great man also is a child of his age, and is unintelligible out of relation to it. Could one think of Goethe as living in the Middle Ages, or of Augustine as living in the age of the Enlightenment? Indeed, we may carry our contention further, and say that the great has been just that which has had the closest relation with the time; and that it has reached a permanent significance, just because it expressed the unique nature and the inner longing of the time, that which was incomparable and inderivable in it. That which has been able to work permanently beyond the time in which it made its appearance was born not from a timeless consideration of things, but from the deepest feeling of the needs of the time; only thus can we escape from the feeling of unreality which otherwise accompanies the striving after spirituality. This consideration must commend to spiritual work the closest possible relation with the time, and the spiritual life may hope for an essential advance of its own striving as a result of this relation.

Still, the matter is not so simple as it is often thought to be. The spiritual content of the ages is not a complete fact that permeates life with a sure and definite effect, so that it could be taken up by activity. Rather, that which is great and characteristic in the ages is found only in creative spiritual activity, abstracted from which it is no more than a possibility; a suggestion that is inevitably lost, if an advancing spiritual activity is lacking. Spiritual creation is not a mere copy, an employment of an existent time-character. Rather, time first attains a spiritual character through spiritual activity, and by spiritual creation possibility first becomes complete reality. This spiritual creation is not simply a summation but a potentialisation, an essential elevation of that which exists in time. Without this activity the spiritual elements in time remain merely coexistent, and have no living unity; they realise no life of the whole, no being within the activity, nothing that means to us development of being. Temporal life then remains only a half-life, a life of pretence; it lacks complete self-consciousness and true stability and joy, and at the same time it lacks a genuine present. To attain such a present thus appears to be a difficult task, the performance of which is not so much presupposed by the different branches of spiritual life as is an object of their work. Art, for example, is rightly required to express the feeling of the life of the time; yet it does not find such a feeling of life already existent, but it must first wrest it from the chaos of the general condition of life. Art is great in giving to the time that which it did not already possess, but which is, nevertheless, necessary to the complete reality of its life. Spiritual work, therefore, is not something just added in time, but that which first gives to time a genuine life and a genuine present. This task may be achieved with quite different degrees of success; it is not all times that reach this elevation and attain to a genuine present; those that do so we call great and “classical” times. The general state of our life—which, however, does not imply time as a whole—appears from this point of view to be especially afflicted with the defect and fault of insincerity; our age does not so much live a life of its own as a strange life; and yet this life is represented as being a life of our own. And it is especially so in our own time, when along with a state of division in our own purposes we are inundated by systems of thought alien to us. We are thus in danger of becoming half-hearted and living a life of pretence: in religion we assert the profession of faith and the feelings of times long gone by to be our own conviction and feelings; we build our cathedrals in styles that correspond to another spiritual condition and another tendency of life; in philosophy we hang upon systems and problems of other times; in everything we lack sincerity. But why is this so, and why do we renounce all claim to a life in accordance with our own nature? Certainly not because our time lacks problems and tasks of its own, or because it is deficient in spiritual possibilities and necessities; for, of these there is an abundance; in this matter our time is not behind any other. But there predominates a wrong relation between these tasks and the central power of the spiritual life, which is equal to cope with them and out of the possibilities create a reality.

In any case spiritual work has a great deal to do with the time; and in regard to this it finds itself in no simple situation. Spiritual work must acknowledge a given condition, which it cannot alter to suit its own preferences; but it can make something else out of this condition and also see something else in it than immediately meets the eye. The possibilities of a time are revealed only in spiritual work, and through it alone are they separated from the human additions that usually overgrow them. These possibilities cannot become clearly evident, unless a close relation to history is won: they are not suggestions simply of the moment, for they have been prepared by the whole work of history. History acquires quite a different—a far more positive—meaning when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be independent, and when it is admitted that spiritual life is not just the embellishment of a reality other than spiritual, but the formation of the only genuine and substantial reality, the transition to a self-consciousness of life. For, as such a formation of reality, this creative activity extends beyond the particular time in which it originates, and becomes part of a time-transcending present. True, this activity always appears in a garment that seems simply temporary; but this garment does not constitute its being: the imperishable in it, its fundamental life, remains inwardly near and present even after great changes of temporal condition; and within the sphere of spiritual work is always capable of new effect.

Christianity, for example, in spite of the attacks that are and have been made upon it, still asserts itself as a living power. Yet there cannot be the slightest doubt that in everything that lies on the surface of our life we are as far as possible removed from the centuries of its formation; that not only the view of the world but also the tasks of life and the nature of feeling and disposition have become radically different. But life is not exhausted in these activities on the surface, which must be regarded as external manifestations that proceed from an inner unity. That which these centuries have performed for the essence of life: the realisation of a freedom of spiritual inwardness, the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world with great aims and tasks, may, indeed, become obscured for the consciousness of individuals and of whole periods; it remains, however, an essential part, a presupposition of all further spiritual life.

As in this manner in the case of Christianity, spiritual reality has also been evolved otherwise in some creative epochs; and in the movement of history they have all together produced a certain condition of spiritual evolution which constitutes the invisible basis of our own activity, and from which it is first possible to elucidate the spiritual nature of a particular time. This universal, historical state of spiritual evolution indicates a level, to which must correspond all work, which desires not simply to attain the aim of the moment but also to serve in the building up of a spiritual reality within the domain of humanity. This historical condition of the spiritual life is not conferred upon us by history; rather history only mediates an incentive that must first be transformed by our own activity and conviction. Only a mode of thought which transcends the movement of history can recognise a spiritual content in history and in our own time, and use this content for our own striving.

Spiritual work, therefore, and philosophy as part of it, has a twofold relation to time, a negative and a positive: it must possess an independence of time, and it must seek an intimate relation with it. The “modern,” according to the sense in which it is taken, will arouse us at one time to energetic opposition, at another to the closest intimacy; the former when it desires to subject us to the contemporary conditions with all their contingency, the latter when it champions the spiritual possibilities of the time and the state of spiritual evolution in contrast with the human. We are concerned in a conflict for genuine against false time; we are to distinguish clearly between the merely human and the spiritual present; the spiritual life must first give a genuine reality to time, and in doing this must advance in itself.

Every particular philosophic conviction must justify itself in its treatment of this problem; it must be in a position to wrest the truth from the error in time; to understand and to estimate the endeavour of the time without yielding to it; to comprehend as a whole the manifold elements of truth in the life of the present, and to elucidate them from a transcendent unity. Without doubt great problems and fruitful possibilities exist in the time, but we often feel the most painful contrast between their demands and the achievements of man. To diminish this divergence; for the time to attain more to its own perfection and become a genuine present, is an urgent task in the performance of which philosophy also must co-operate; and by this endeavour philosophy can also gain much for itself.

I. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE FORM OF LIFE AS A WHOLE

(a) THE CHARACTER OF CULTURE

The term “culture” received its present meaning in the latter half of the eighteenth century; culture itself reaches back to the beginning of the Modern Age. The whole evolution of the Modern Age is a striving beyond the religious form of life which prevailed in the Middle Ages, and which began to be felt to be narrow and one-sided. In opposition to this type of life a new type arose, increased in strength, and finally we became fully conscious of it in the idea of culture. The new type has been felt to be far superior to the old in many ways; it is not limited to one side of human nature, but desires to take it, and to develop it as a whole; it does not refer man to any kind of external aid, but makes his life depend as much as possible upon his own power, and finds an aim fully sufficient in the limitless extension of this power; it directs man’s perception and endeavour not so much beyond the world as to it, and hopes by this means to give a stability to his striving, and a close relation with the abundance of things. The movement has brought about a far-reaching transformation of life: that which was lying dormant has been aroused; the rigid made plastic; the manifold woven into a whole of life; the whole range of life has acquired more spontaneous freshness and inner movement. The result of the work of history now becomes for the first time a complete possession, since above everything contingent and accidental it elevates an essential, and above everything tending to separation and hostility, a common humanity.

The animating and ennobling influence of modern culture is nowhere more manifest than in the life-work of Goethe. For we recognise the greatness of his nature primarily in that, with the acutest vision and the greatest freedom, he entered into the multiplicity of experience and events; with placid yet powerful dominance stripped off all that was mere semblance and pretence, all that was simply conventional and partial, and fully realised the genuine, the freshness of life, and the purely human. (V. “The Problem of Human Life.”) His treatment of Biblical narratives is a good example of this: that a king reigned in Egypt who knew not Joseph suggests to him how quickly even the most magnificent human achievements are forgotten; that Saul went forth to find his father’s she-asses, and found a kingdom, symbolises to him the truth that we men often reach something totally different from, and also much better than, that for which we strove and hoped; the miracle of the walking on the water is to him a parable of unflinching faith—the holding fast to apparent impossibilities—without which there can be no great creation.

If, with this achievement, modern culture may have the feeling of being the fulfilment of the strivings of the ages, yet its own course has produced oppositions, and engendered perplexities that culminate in a dangerous crisis. Culture, as it was represented at the height of German spiritual life, was directed chiefly towards the inner development of man; it was called with especial satisfaction “spiritual culture.” Its adherents were concerned not so much with finding a better relation to the environment as with growing in the realm of their own soul, and with employing whatever the experience of life brought in the development of a self-conscious personality, of pure inwardness. Only in this way did they seem to advance from the previous state of limitation to the complete breadth of existence, and the exercise of all their powers. A joy in life, a firm confidence in the rationality of reality gave this inner culture a soul; and a bold flight bore it far above the narrowness and heaviness of daily life; æsthetic literary creation became the chief sphere of its work, and the chief means for the development and self-perfecting of personality.

Inner culture has by no means vanished from our life; effects of many kinds are felt from it in the present. But it has been forced to resign its supremacy in favour of a realistic culture, which makes the relation to the environment the chief matter, and removes the centre of life to the intellectual and practical control of this environment. In realistic culture the inner development of work, of work in the direction of natural science and technical art, as well as in politics and social endeavour, is less occupied with the acquiring of a powerful individuality than with the establishment of an agreeable condition of society as a whole. Since activity is related more and more closely with things, and receives laws and directions from them, culture is freed from dependence upon man and his subjectivity. Culture is an impersonal power in contrast with man; it does not lead ultimately to a good to him so much as make him simply a means and an instrument of its progressive movement. An immeasurable structure of life, a ceaseless self-assertion and self-advancement, an arousing and an exertion of all powers that can bring man into relation with the environment, are manifest in this culture: but at the same time there is an increasing transformation of our life into a mere life of relation and mediation, a deprivation and a vanishing of self-consciousness. In the midst of the magnificent triumphs in external matters there is an increasingly perceptible contrast between an astonishing development of the technical, and a pitiful neglect of the personal side of life: in regard to the former we surpass all other times, as much as we fall below most in regard to the latter. Along with a ceaseless increase of technical capacity, there is a rapid degeneration of personal life, a pauperising of the soul. Where the matter is one of a technical nature there is a magnificent condition, definite progress in all departments, work conscious of its aim; but there is a painful groping and helpless hesitation, a stagnation of production, an emptiness that is only just hidden by a veneer of academic education, where powerful personalities and impressive individualities are required.

For a time we were carried away entirely by the tendency to place our attention solely upon the environment, and we seemed to be satisfied absolutely by it. But the inner life that has been evolved within human experience by the work of thousands of years, and through severe convulsions, prevents this condition being accepted as a conclusion; that which has once become an independent centre cannot possibly permit itself to be degraded to the position of a mere means and an instrument. It is impossible to give up all claim to self-conscious and self-determining life and a satisfaction of this life. Our spiritual nature compels us to ask questions and to make claims; if they are not satisfied, then, notwithstanding all the wealth of experiences, the feeling of poverty spreads and we seek for aids, and, first, we turn back to that inner culture from which we had turned away. But we find the ways shut off; a direct return is impossible. This culture had characteristic principles and presuppositions; and the course of modern life itself has, if not overthrown them, involved them in serious doubt. We have become clearly conscious of the limitations which this inner culture had without itself feeling them; movements which it united have now separated, and have become hostile. Inner culture rested on a firm faith in the power of reason in reality, and this faith begot a joyful confidence. For it the world was sustained and determined by inner forces: we feel the rigid actuality of occurrences, the indifference of the machinery of the world towards the aims of the spirit, and the contradictions of existence. In the former case the greatness of man was the predominant faith; and this greatness was sought in his freedom: we, however, feel much more our bondage to obscure powers and at the same time our insignificance. In the former again, it aroused no opposition to call only a chosen part of humanity, the creative, to full and complete life, and to assign a most meagre portion to the majority: we cannot possibly renounce the concern for all mankind and for the welfare of every individual. In the former, morality and art were harmoniously united in the ideal of life; in our time they have separated and are at deadly enmity with one another. Everywhere life has given rise to more problems, more inconsistencies, more obscurities; thus, with all its external proximity, the joyfully secure ideal of life of our classical writers is inwardly removed far from us; without insincerity we cannot proclaim it to be our profession of faith. In particular the resort to Goethe, as to one with a secure standard of life, is in general no more than an expression of perplexity, no more than a flight from a clear decision of our own: the universality and the flexibility of his spirit permit a point of contact with him to be found by those whose views directly contradict those of one another, and allows each to abstract, and make a profession of faith of that which is preferable and pleasing to himself.

Thus to-day we are in a state of uncertainty and indefiniteness in reference to the problem of culture. Since the new does not suffice, and the old cannot be taken up again, we are in doubt with regard to the whole conception of culture; we know neither what we have of it nor what it demands from us. We cannot give up our claim to being something more than nature, without sinking again to the level of the mere animal; but in what this “more” consists and how it is at all possible to surpass nature is to us completely obscure. A developed historical consciousness and the free unfolding of the powers of the present permit many things to rush in upon us; and we are involved in much inconsistency. We have seen diverse systems of life arise and attract man to themselves; their conflict relegates to the background all that is common to them, produces the greatest uncertainty, and gives rise to the inclination, in order to avoid all perplexities, to regard life as being made up entirely of that which occurs within sense experience; and to acquire aims from this experience, as well as to derive powers from it. But in this we fall into the danger of idealising sense experience falsely, and of expecting achievements from movements within it which are possible only if these movements flow from deeper sources. We flee to morality to become free from all religion and metaphysics; as though morality, elevating man, as it does, above simply physical preservation and the compulsion of mere instinct, is not itself a metaphysic, and as though it does not of necessity require the existence of an order superior to nature. Then we flee to the subject with its unrestrained inwardness and contrast this inwardness with all the restricting relations of life; as though the subject had any content and any value without an independent inner world, the recognition of which involves a complete revolution of the representation of reality; as then according to the witness of history also humanity has reached such an inner world only through wearisome toil and forceful resolutions. The whole course of Antiquity had been leading up to this inner world, but the collision of Antiquity at the time of its decay, with Christianity which was then arising, first developed it clearly. Such an inner world must ever be justified anew; and for this our own activity and conviction are necessary. If we surrender its basis, it becomes dead capital which, little by little, is inevitably spent, and then the appeal to the subject that has lost its spiritual content is but a mere semblance of help, which deceives us concerning the seriousness of the situation with sweet-sounding words like “personality,” “individuality,” and so forth. If the spiritual life is not strengthened and does not energetically counteract this tendency, then, notwithstanding all external progress, we must inwardly sink lower and lower.

It is obvious that there is already such a counteraction in existence; otherwise, how could spiritual destitution and the insignificance of the merely human be so keenly felt in the present; how could so ardent a desire for an inner elevation spread amongst men as we experience it around us? There is no lack of attempts and endeavours after new aims and new ways. But much is still lacking for these attempts to be equal to satisfy the requirements of the matter. We place far too much hope in external reforms, instead of primarily strengthening the inner basis of life; we fix our attention far too much upon individual tasks instead of seizing the whole; we have far too much faith that we can rise to a new life out of this chaotic condition, instead of insisting upon an attainment of independence in relation to this condition.

How could independence be attained except by an energetic reflection of man upon himself, upon his fundamental relation to reality, upon the life dwelling in him, in short, except by self-consciousness? It is not the first time that, in the course of the ages, to satisfy such a demand has become the most urgent of all tasks. The work of history has not unshakable foundations from the beginning; but the spiritual nature of epochs always involves the activity and the decisions of man; it involves, therefore, presuppositions that for a long period may be accepted as established truths, and which, yet, finally become problematic. At the beginning of the Modern Age, especially in the transition to the Enlightenment, apparently established truths became problematic in this way: the present is in a similar situation. The threads that we have hitherto followed break; all external help is rejected, as is also the authority of history; nothing else remains to us than our own capacity, and the hope to find in it a new support and the basis for a new construction. Only by our own power, and after a break with the immediate present, shall we be able to strive after a new idea of culture which corresponds to the historical position of spiritual evolution, and which can take up into itself the experiences of humanity. Such times of error, of vacillation, of searching, of necessary renewal, are disagreeable and severe, but it depends only on the summoning of spiritual power whether they become great and fruitful. For, with regard to these central questions the times do not make men, but men make the times, not, of course, in accordance with their own preferences, but by seizing and realising the necessities that exist in the spiritual condition of the time.

Now, as scarcely anything else in life is more called upon to co-operate in the renewing of culture than philosophy, so the system here concisely presented is placed in the service of this task; it attempts a construction chiefly by the union of three demands and points of attack: it requires a more energetic development and a complete unification of the life-process; it requires the acknowledgment and development of a spiritual life of independent nature present to us; and lastly, it requires that this life shall be understood and treated as the world’s consciousness of itself and thus as the only reality. All these demands must tend towards an essential alteration of the existent state of culture; they make much inadequate that previously sufficed; but they also reveal an abundance of new prospects and the possibility of a thorough inner elevation.

It is a leading idea of our whole investigation that only from the life-process itself are we able to orientate ourselves in relation to ourselves and the world; and this idea is in agreement with the present mode of thought in science. But to apply to our own time that which is already acknowledged in general ideas is by no means simple. To give the life-process such a position in our thought and to estimate it so highly is possible only when life is distinctly distinguished from the states of the mere subject, from the mere reflex of the environment in the individual. This detachment cannot be accomplished unless we comprehend as a whole that which exists in individual manifestations of life; distinguish different levels in life, indicate relations and movements within them, and thus advance to new experiences of life; reveal a union of fact, a distinctive synthesis in life, which from a transcendent unity shapes the multiplicity that it contains. But if in general it is difficult to free ourselves so much from the condition of life in which we find ourselves, to be able to illuminate this condition in this way, and to throw its inner framework into relief; for us there is also to be added the immeasurable expansion that directs the interests and the vision to the outside, and is accustomed to treat, as a mere supplement, a mere means and instrument, the life that in reality sustains all infinity. A culture that has made the attainment of results the chief thing has been detrimental to the spiritual, which no longer trusts itself to encompass these achievements and to change them in a development of life, to take up the conflict for dominion over reality. It willingly flees to the passivity of the subject, where sooner or later it expires in complete destitution.

If inwardness is so feeble and external relations so overwhelm us, life necessarily receives its content from outside, and seems to be determined essentially by that which happens around us. It is this that lends so much power to-day to a superficial enlightenment that centres in natural science, and expects life to be advanced without limit, and man to be revived and ennobled, simply by reaching a more valid representation of the environment. We do not ask here how far the representations proposed overcome the difficulties of the older representations, or whether new and more difficult problems do not arise from the solutions offered; but we do ask whether life can obtain its aim and content from outside, and whether it can be treated simply as an addition to nature without degenerating inwardly, and losing all inner motive. We ask what the theories based chiefly on externals make of man, and what they achieve for his soul. We summon him to an examination, to see whether the picture that is held up to him by these theories agrees with what he longs for, and, by a compelling necessity of his being, must long for.

To-day it will also be evident that the final decision does not rest with the intellect, but with life as a whole. For, little as intellectual achievement is absent from truth, the masses—and to the masses belong those at the average level of all classes, higher as well as lower—will always hold fast to the external impression. The advance beyond this impression and the appreciation of the inner conditions of knowledge will always remain a concern of the minority. There is, however, a point where the problem becomes real to each individual, and where each can offer his opinion: this is in reference to the question of the happiness and the content of life. The more this question is felt, the greater will be the thirst for a substantial truth in contrast with the shadows of the Enlightenment; the more will the question concerning the nature of life as a whole receive its due consideration, and the perception of things externally will give place to a comprehension of their inner reality. Only with such a revolution can our life and we ourselves be transformed from a state of spiritual destitution to one of independent energy; only thus can we discover the wealth that is within us; only thus can culture, from being an occupation with things, become a preservation and an unfolding of our own selves; only thus can we strive for more simplicity in contrast to the complexity that would otherwise be our condition; and only thus can we wrest from what would otherwise be chaos, fundamentals and tendencies. Our demand, therefore, that the starting-point should be the life-process itself is in harmony with the innermost longing of the time—even if this longing is often indefinite—after a deepening of life and an attainment of its independence.

If the turning to the life-process puts the question, the assertion of an independent spiritual life gives the answer to it: however strange this assertion may seem in relation to superficial temporal experience, it meets a deep longing. For we are completely satiated with narrowly human culture; the movements and experiences of the Modern Age, and in particular of the present, make us so clearly conscious of all that is trivial, simply apparent, disagreeable, feeble, shallow, empty, and futile in human conduct, that all hope of finding satisfaction in this conduct, and of advancing life essentially by its means and powers, must be abandoned. We have, therefore, to face the following alternative: either absolute doubt and the cessation of all effort, or the acknowledgment of a “more” in man; there is no third possibility. But in the context of our investigation no discussion is required to show that this “more” cannot consist in an individual’s elevation of himself above others; that it cannot consist in a so-called Superman—a view that only involves us more in the narrowly human. Either the “more” sought for is only imaginary, a covering of tinsel with which we conceal our nakedness, or a world transcending the merely human, a new stage of reality, reveals itself to man, which can become his own life. As it is this transcendent world alone that engenders a universal life within us and opposes the insignificantly human; so also from this alone, and as its manifestation, can culture become independent in relation to man. Only when it is understood in this way can culture include aims and tasks that do not strengthen man in his narrowness, but free him from it, and make him spiritually greater.

Not only the conception but the whole nature of that which is called culture is an unstable hybrid. It should elevate man above nature, and give to his life a characteristic spiritual content; but at the same time we have a dread of a detachment from the experience of sense and of the construction of an independent world, because these must lead to that which, of all things, is the cause of most alarm, to a change of a metaphysical character, to a transformation of existence. In truth, in the work of humanity two tendencies are usually undistinguished, which, if life is to continue to advance, need to be distinctly separated: a spiritual culture and a merely human culture. The former reveals new contents and aims; with it a new world emerges within man, and transforms his life from its basis: the latter uses that which a higher organisation has given us, solely as a means for the advancement of our natural and social existence. Merely human culture turns the spiritual into a mere means to increase narrowly human happiness, whereas the spiritual by its very nature makes us feel the whole of this happiness to be too insignificant, indeed intolerable. The difference of a merely human and a spiritual culture extends from the fundamental disposition to all the separate departments of life. Religion, for example, is to the former a means by which the individual may make himself as comfortable and as secure as possible in an existent world, and conduct his own insignificant ego through all dangers; to the latter, it signifies a radical break with that world and the gain of a new life, in which care for that ego, or even the state of society, is relegated completely into the background. To the one, morality is simply a means in the organisation of human social life, in the accommodation of the individual to his environment; to the other, it discloses a new fundamental relation to reality, and in the transformation of existence in self-determining activity allows life to win an inner union with the infinite and its self-consciousness. On the one hand, art, science, the life of the state, education, and so forth are the idols of utility, of expediency, the adornments of a given existence; on the other, they are the gods of truth, of inner independence, of world-renewing spontaneity. That there should be an end to the confusion of the worship of idols and of gods; that spiritual culture should be distinguished from merely human culture; that the spiritual content of the individual departments of life should be energetically developed, and the spiritual poverty of merely human culture made clear—all this is the urgent demand of the present, without the fulfilment of which its state of confusion cannot be overcome. Yet spiritual culture can never become independent unless the spiritual world is independent. Only the presence of this spiritual world makes it possible for culture, at the level at which it is generally found, to be tested by a transcendent standard to see how much spiritual substance, how much content and value, it contains. This test will prove that we possess far less spirituality than we think; and that the most of what is called culture is no more than the semblance of culture, no more than imagination and presumption. But at the same time we recognise and gain in the little spirituality that remains to us incomparably more; we win the presence of a new world, and by this, depth of life and the possibility of an inner renewal. Our life would be indescribably shallow if it were to pass on one level and were to be exhausted in the experiences at that level. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life saves us from this shallowness, in that it shows an inner gradation within our own province and sets life as a whole a task.

If the acknowledgment of a spiritual world, inwardly present to us, gives to culture a distinctive character, this character receives a further modification from the particular manner in which the spiritual life makes its appearance and becomes established within our existence; at the same time, from this position there is also the possibility of different sides and tasks within an all-comprehensive work of culture. Of special significance in reference to this modification is the circumstance that the spiritual life does not possess man as a natural fact, does not operate within him with complete power and sure direction from the beginning, but is present to him at first only as a possibility, and as a transcendence of the general condition of things. In accordance with this, although the spiritual belongs to our nature, it is not so much “given” to us as set as a task; for its realisation it needs our own attention and appropriation; all development of the spiritual life within us, therefore, involves our own activity and so receives an ethical character. The spiritual life also has such an ethical character because, transcending our original condition, it must be conveyed to us, and must be maintained by an imparting and an activity. In the spiritual life we find ourselves in a sphere of activity and of freedom in contrast with that of nature; in this way our life becomes our work, our own life in a much more real sense. We see this in the case of the fundamental form of the spiritual life that is called “personality.” We men are by no means personalities from the beginning; but we bear within us simply the potentiality of becoming a personality. Whether we shall realise our personality is decided by our own work; it depends primarily upon the extent to which we succeed in striving beyond the given existence to a state of self-determining activity. The fact that we thus take part in the formation of our own being proves that we are citizens of a new world—a world other than nature—and shows that we are incomparably more than we could become simply as parts of nature. Neither philosophy nor religion will convince one who, at this point, does not recognise an elevation to a higher power, indeed a transformation of existence. But one who recognises this will desire such a transformation and such an elevation of culture also; he will not come to an easy compromise with the given condition of things and draw the greatest possible amount of pleasure from this condition; but he will set culture an objective ideal; arouse it from the prevailing state of indolence; fully acknowledge the antitheses of experience, and will be provoked rather to make further exertions than disposed to abandon himself to these antitheses. Life finds its main problem in itself, solely in the development of an ethical character, and attains to complete independence and a transcendence of nature only when the spiritual takes precedence. Every culture that does not treat the ethical task, in the widest sense, as the most important of tasks and the one that decides all, sinks inevitably to a semblance of culture, a half-culture, indeed a comedy. The æsthetic system, with its transformation of life into play and pleasure, with its beautiful language and its spiritual poverty, is such a life. To-day, therefore, we can revive and strengthen culture only by establishing such an ethical conviction. Only a culture of an ethical character can develop an independent and positive spirituality; only such a culture can free the impulse of life from being directed simply to natural self-preservation, and in doing this not make the impulse weaker, but stronger. In nothing have minds been more divided and in nothing will they become more divided than with regard to the question whether, after the perception of the inadequacy of mere nature and society, a new world reveals itself to them, or whether this negation is the ultimate conclusion; the former will be possible only through that which we call ethical.

The conception that we have here presented of the spiritual life and of its relation to man also makes it for the first time possible to understand and acknowledge the manifold and opposing elements in our time without falling into a shallow eclecticism. Realism advances in power, and Idealism seems to be endangered in respect not only of its form but also of its innermost nature. Idealism is indeed in danger so long as the spiritual life has not attained to independence in relation to man; for, so long as the spiritual life is regarded as a production of man the knowledge of man’s relation to nature and his animal origin must lead to a serious prostration, to a complete dissolution of Idealism. If, on the other hand, it is established that with the spiritual life a new order transcending the power of man makes its appearance within him, then the recognition of human incapacity becomes a direct witness to the independence of the spiritual life. We must, therefore, cease to treat spiritual developments, such as religion, art, morality, as the natural attributes of all called men. Man’s natural character simply offers tendencies and relations which can find a spiritual character only by the revelation of a spiritual world. The decisive point of transition is not between man and animal, but between nature and spirit. But even where culture is supposed to be at its highest, human existence is for the most part at the level of nature—and is only embellished in some degree.

In Idealism a religious shaping of life is to be distinguished from an immanent shaping of life by spiritual creation, especially in art and science. The demand for a universal spiritual system involves the rejection of the specific religious system as being in many ways too narrow and open to hostile criticism; this universal system, however, as it is presented when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be independent, is closely related to religion. Not only is all spirituality within us dependent upon a universal spiritual life, but this spiritual life within us always presents itself as something transcendent and is not coincident with our life. This religious character must be the more clearly emphasised the greater the toil with which the spiritual life must defend itself from a world apparently alien and hostile. Immanent Idealism, filling life as it does through art and science, cannot possibly be the whole and conclusive—for this reason at least, that it has too little with which to counteract the perplexities of spiritual and of material life, and because it concentrates life too little within itself. But a scientific character is indispensable to a universal spiritual culture, in order that life may not pass in subjective feeling and presentation, and that life may have an objective character, and be led to the clearness of a universal consciousness. An æsthetic form and creative activity pertain also to this life; for, otherwise, no representation of reality as a whole could be obtained from the confused impressions of immediate experience; the spiritual could attain to no clear present, and could not permeate reality with ennobling power, and change all that is deformed and indifferent to it in the original condition of things.