Part 20

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.

From the point of view of spiritual culture the movements in the direction of Realism also may be regarded as of value, if only they do not desire to dominate life and to impress their form directly upon it. The tendency to place a low estimate upon the natural and material conditions of life and of human social relationship has everywhere revenged itself upon the spiritual life, since it has allowed that life to fall into a state of weakness and effeminacy, and prevented it from realising its full power and strength.

The acknowledgment of the multiplicity of tasks that are involved in all the departments must be a source of great danger to life, if every department of human experience does not serve the development of an independent spiritual life. The more power the spiritual life acquires, the more securely will it tend to prevent division. Nevertheless, everything is in a state of movement; man must first win a coherent character for his life. But it is already a great gain that we are not defenceless in face of the antitheses within the human sphere, that the presence of an independent spiritual life elevates us inwardly above them and only allows an inner unity to take up a conflict.

We may also briefly consider how the conception of the spiritual life as a coming of reality to itself, as a formation and development of being, must tend to deepen and strengthen the work of culture. How much more this work must become to us, how much more indispensable must it be, if it is not simply a matter of giving an existent material a new form, of arousing dormant powers, but if in it we first advance from a life that is only a half-life and a life of pretence to a real and genuine life; if we struggle not for one thing or another within existence, but for our being as a whole! If once life is awakened to reflect upon itself, and if at the same time it makes a claim to self-consciousness and a content, it cannot doubt the poverty of the life of mere nature and just as little that of the life of mere society; in the former, as in the latter, there are only suggestions of a genuine life, only possibilities, most of which do not come to be realised. Not suffering, but spiritual destitution is man's worst enemy. From this position the outlook of the life of the majority can be only a cloudy one, its value only mean. If we abstract from the experience of man that which is due to the necessity of self-preservation and to social training, how much inner movement, how much life of his own, how much that is spiritual remains in him! How many dead souls there are in all classes of society; how many who, allowing their powers to lie dormant, drift about aimlessly! Nevertheless other possibilities exist in man, and even if they are not positively developed, still they prevent him from feeling satisfied in that state of spiritual poverty, and always keep him in an insecure state of suspension.

The less we think of the immediate welfare and capacity of man, the more will the spiritual life transcend us and the more urgent will the task of the spiritual life become--to preserve to human existence in the midst of all externality and pretence some kind of substance and some kind of soul. However, we have already occupied ourselves with the question of the nature and significance of truth and reality in the spiritual life.