Part 14

(i.) The Spiritual Conception of History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(ii.) The Spiritual Conception of Society

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(e) The Elevation of Life above Division

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

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

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

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

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