Part 22

Religion in the present, therefore, has great and difficult tasks. For one thing, religion must energetically maintain the supremacy, in opposition to modern culture, of the type of life that it advocates. The fact that there are points of direct antagonism between the religious type of life and modern culture ought neither to be denied nor in any way obscured. On the one hand, we have an ideal of a life of the pure inwardness of ethical disposition; on the other, the ideal of spiritual power: in the former the tendency is to personal, in the latter to impersonal life: in the one case there is a positive development only by a complete transformation; in the other the immediate impulse of life is the ruling motive power of the whole. It shows only superficiality and confusion to seek an agreeable compromise between these antitheses; for, in truth, either the one or the other must assume the guidance of the whole. The whole course of our investigation permits of no doubt as to our own attitude in this matter.

But it is impossible to defend the supremacy of the type of life advocated by Christianity without recognising the necessity that this type of life must be in a form which appropriates to itself the long experience of humanity and corresponds to the present stage of spiritual evolution. The changes necessitated by this evolution are far too great for the traditional form of Christianity to be able to express them; in order to develop their own power, and to establish themselves triumphantly in opposition to a hostile world, they must acquire an independent form for themselves.

There are three kinds of changes that are especially necessary to the form of Christianity in the present. (1) The representation of the world found in the older form of Christianity has become absolutely untenable: in this matter we must not seek weak compromises between the old and the new, but without fear we must fully acknowledge the elements of fact that exist in the new. We cannot do this unless we make deep changes in the way we regard religion; we must find the courage and the power for such a renewal. (2) The whole movement of modern life has made us feel that the realities with which traditional religion has to do are far too insignificant and too narrow; a rigid insistence upon them threatens to involve us in a degeneration to the narrowly human and subjective. The conceptions of "inwardness," "personality," and "morality," in particular, need to be interpreted more comprehensively and deeply; the soul's "being for self" must be based upon a self-consciousness of the spiritual life. Religion must take up the conflict with the world spiritually, and through this grow in greatness in its whole effect and government. (3) The older form of Christianity was the product of an exhausted and faint-spirited age; hence its fundamental attitude is predominantly passive and negative. It shows a strong tendency to depreciate human nature, and to leave the salvation of man entirely to God's mercy: in emphasising man's redemption from evil it is apt to forget the elevation of his nature toward the good. The joyousness of the Christian life is insufficiently dwelt upon; and the raising of men from their prostration and perplexities falls short of a restoration to a free and self-determining activity. What is needed is a thorough-going reconstruction which shall emphasise the importance of action and joyousness in Christian morality, without in any way weakening the opposition to all systems of natural morality based on the rights of force.

In a word, with all respect to Christianity, we demand its expression in a new form. We require that Christianity shall identify itself more definitely with a religion of the spiritual life as opposed to a religion which merely ministers to human frailty, and that it shall show greater decision in casting off the antiquated accessories that hamper its movement. We ask that it shall make prominent those simple and fundamental features of its system which have value for all time, and in this way restore sincerity and settled confidence to life. We can hardly expect that the reunion of man on a religious basis will take place all at once, but it would be a great gain if we could only clearly realise what the oppositions are which still keep us apart. Such insight would help to check that insincerity in religious matters which must first be got rid of, if there is to be any source of spiritual health in us.

2. MORALITY.

From the perplexities of religion many flee to morality as to something secure and untouched by dissension. The position of morality is, indeed, different from that of religion. Of atheists there are many; but there are few, if any, who deny the validity of all moral values: that fidelity is better than deceit, love better than hate, concerning this there is no dispute. But it is a question how far this agreement extends and how much we may gain from it. Within the same sphere of culture at least it is with very little difficulty that we come to agreement in respect of individual matters of morality; if ethical societies limited themselves to practical morality, and did not at the same time wish to settle questions of principle, they would find scarcely any opposition. But, as soon as we comprehend the individual matters as a whole and ask for a foundation for the whole, problem after problem makes its appearance, and it soon becomes clear that we can neither establish nor distinctively form morality without a conviction concerning life as a whole and our fundamental relation to reality. If, therefore, there is so much uncertainty in the present concerning life as a whole and our fundamental relation to reality, we must inevitably become doubtful and unclear with regard to morality. In fact, the position may be described in this way: we lack a morality which has a secure basis and a definite character; in morality, also, after-effects of the past mingle with the impulses of the present; and we are accustomed to conceal the poverty of our own possessions by historical knowledge and mere learning--so much is this the case that we are able even in a state of disgraceful poverty to think ourselves rich. There are no less than five types of morality which seek our adherence and the guidance of our soul: we may suppose that in each of these there is some truth, but no single one is able to win our acceptance entirely; each leads to a certain point, and then we recognise a limit. We have a religious morality, in which our volition is related to and our destiny is determined by a divine power; but this endangers the spiritual independence of man, and has a strong tendency to make his life too passive; besides, in this case, the prostration of religion also weakens the power of morality and its power to direct life. We have a morality of culture, which directs all power towards increasing the progress of humanity, and subordinates all subjective preference to the requirements of an objective operation and creation; but the ceaselessly increasing differentiation of work makes this form of morality a danger to the soul as a whole; man is in danger of being made a mere means and instrument of a soulless process of culture. We have a social morality, which makes the welfare of society the chief thing, and which, by strengthening the feeling of solidarity, produces humane efforts in abundance, but is unable to include life as a whole; in this form of morality there is a great danger of overestimating external conditions of life, and of levelling and weakening life. Certain great thinkers have advocated a morality of pure reason, which elevates man above the sphere of the useful and the pleasant; and gives to him an inner independence; but with all its greatness this morality is too formal and too abstract for us; and, besides, we lack to-day the certainty of an invisible world, which alone can give a secure foundation to this type of morality. Lastly, we have an individualistic morality, a morality of beautiful souls, which regards the complete development of one's own particular nature, the harmonious cultivation of the whole range of one's powers, as the aim of conduct, but which not only necessitates individuals who are far greater and far more characteristic in nature than we find in experience in general, but also has little power to arouse us to effort, and, if accepted exclusively, soon tends to degenerate into a refined self-enjoyment and vain self-reflection.

The presence of all these tendencies and motives in morality subjects us to-day to an abundance of ethical stimuli; but it does not give us an ethic. At the most it conceals the fact that the multiplicity of activities do not form for us a universal task, which could counteract the separation into individuals, parties, particular departments, and give us the consciousness of serving in our work aims that transcend the well-being and preference of mere man. We are in need of a morality that proceeds from our own life; and in this we need much more than we are conscious of needing. For we have no universal aim that we might take up in our disposition, and by which we might test all individual activities; and so life must become disunified and inwardly alien; we lose all spiritual relation to the world. The world surrounds us in the first place as a dark and immovable fate; we do not make ourselves masters of this fate, just because we give ourselves too much to do with things. Rather, to accomplish this, we must transform reality from its very foundation by our own activity and decision; we must wage war against obscurity and irrationality, and this conflict must tend to divide our whole existence into friend and enemy, good and evil, but along with this first give to life complete activity, and lead it to world-embracing greatness. Only in this way does man, from being simply a spectator, become a co-operator in the building up of the world; only thus does that which occurs within him become in the fullest sense his own. Everything which obscures the ethical character of human life involves, therefore, a loss in greatness and dignity; a degeneration to a state of servitude, to being a mere part of an alien whole. Particular parties may be in agreement with and find satisfaction in this condition; humanity as a whole will not rest content with it. As certainly as humanity confidently maintains that its life has meaning and value, so certainly will it take up the problem of morality ever anew against all attempted intimidation.

If to-day we are again to take up this problem, then in the first place the conditions and the requirements of the problem must be quite clear. We can never acquire a morality from the troubled confusion of social life; on the contrary, morality involves a transcendence of this; it necessitates distinctive convictions concerning the world as a whole and our position in it. There is no independent morality, no morality in itself; morality involves a fundamental whole of life, which is appropriated in it and by this appropriation first attains to perfection. In contrast to the existing condition of things a new condition must first be raised in ideas that precede conduct. The new condition acquires a moral character only through requiring on the one hand moral freedom as opposed to the mechanism of natural impulse, on the other a transcendent ideal in opposition to mere self-preservation. These two together reveal a new order of things distinct from nature; they must seem impossible from the point of view of the world of sense, not only freedom with its apparent annulling of all connections, but also the freeing of conduct from bondage to mere nature. For how would one conceive an activity that did not tend ultimately to the good of the agent, and so aid in his self-preservation? Does it not involve a contradiction for him to exert his power for something alien to himself?

If in the present we feel such problems in the fullness of their force, and if we must fight for morality as a whole, we must go back to the foundations of our existence, and seek primarily for a secure position in contrast with the instability of temporal experiences. In accordance with the whole course of our investigation, we can find such a position, and by further development a distinctive morality also, only in an independent spiritual life, which first conducts the world to self-consciousness and so to genuine reality. The two requirements discussed above cause no difficulty from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. We convinced ourselves in a previous section of the reality of freedom in the spiritual life; in morality also conduct can free itself from the natural ego without degenerating into a state of emptiness, because the spiritual life reveals a new and the alone genuine self. Thus here activity is not spent upon something alien to us, something presented to it from outside, but is within our own being, which here, indeed, includes the whole infinity within it. Activity in the spiritual life serves true self-preservation, which has only the name in common with natural self-preservation.

Wherever it is acknowledged that the spiritual life involves a turning of reality to complete independence and spontaneity, morality must take a significant, indeed the central, position. For it is clear that only the taking up in our own activity and conviction, only complete appropriation, can bring life to the highest degree of perfection. Morality does not find in existence a life-content which it must convey to the individual subject, but is itself within the life-process; a complete self-consciousness of the spiritual life is attained first in morality, and morality must develop the content of that life. It is not that man in morality turns toward the spiritual life, but that the spiritual life elevates itself in the whole of its nature; all human morality must have its basis in a morality of the spiritual life.

With such a basis in the innermost nature, morality must concern the whole multiplicity of life; it can include and estimate the most diverse relations and experiences of our existence. But whatever is thus brought under the sway of the morality of the spiritual life must undergo an essential change, and must be elevated above the nature of that which is not taken up in this manner. By an ethical formation and development of art and science we do not mean that the individual should be loyal and straightforward in their pursuit, and should follow honest aims; this conception would be much too narrow. But it is that we should take possession of and treat as our own life and being that which otherwise remains outside as something half alien to us; that the work should acquire the power and fervour of self-preservation; and that in this unification the necessity of the object becomes a definite demand of our life, and the gain of the object an advance of our life. Only such a life which transcends the antithesis of subject and object gives to the object a soul, and freedom a content.

The experience of history also makes it clearly evident to us that the spiritual life first acquires a secure position and an indisputable supremacy over nature by its acknowledgment and appropriation in self-determining activity. For history shows that wherever morality is not central, the spiritual life, even in the midst of the most magnificent results in external matters, languishes inwardly and loses its hold. With individuals also the final decision concerning the problems of the world and of life always depends upon whether they do or do not recognise that man has an inner moral task in his nature as a whole. If this is acknowledged, then--and this just in oppositions and conflicts--a realm of inwardness is assured us which all apparently contrary experiences of the external world cannot expel from its central position; but if there is no such acknowledgment, the triumph of these experiences and the collapse of the spiritual life cannot be avoided.

The morality of the spiritual life, as we advocate it, will have distinctive features in comparison with other conceptions of morality; of these we can mention but a few here. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life makes life as a whole a task, since it requires that as a whole it should be changed into a state of self-determining activity; that everything must be aroused and set in motion. Thus the morality of the spiritual life is constructive and progressive, and not simply regulative in character; it is not its purpose simply to place life under regulations and to let activity wait until there is an opportunity to fulfil them; but, calling forth all our powers, morality must work and create, arouse and prepare the opportunities, so that in everything the realm of the spirit may be increased within the province of humanity. Like the spiritual life itself, the morality proceeding from it must be of a transcendent nature. To-day or to-morrow may not be considered beyond good and evil; morality may not sink to being a mere means of realising the wishes of the time. If, however, morality transcends time, and is able to separate the transitory and the eternal in time, then, within its task, it may very well acknowledge distinctive situations and problems, and present different sides; indeed, only by a close relation with the time and by penetrating deeply into the experiences of the time will morality acquire the necessary proximity and impressiveness. To this extent, therefore, we also insist upon a modern morality, however decidedly we reject that which to-day is called "modern" morality, and which for the most part is no more than a surrender of morality to the wishes and moods of the individual.

If in these features the morality of the spiritual life already manifests a distinctive character, this distinctiveness is further increased by the particular nature of the actual relation of man to the moral task, as it appears here. The highering of the ideal will necessarily increase its divergence from man, as he is. It will become quite evident that morality is not a continuation of nature, a natural attribute of man, or a product of social relationship, but the most pronounced expression of a great change in the direction of life, the institution of a new order of things. If at the same time life is to be fashioned morally, a conflict is inevitable; and the general outlook of life and of conduct will depend upon where we find the centre of opposition and what is the main direction of the conflict. In the first place, morality must take up a definite attitude towards the sense-nature of man; that nature must be subordinated to the aims of the spirit. But we have already seen that there is a danger that the ethical task will lose its depth, and that life as a whole will be perverted, if the rights of nature are misunderstood and there arises the desire to suppress it completely, and if, in a tendency to asceticism, this suppression is made the chief concern. The chief moral task is the development and establishment of a genuine and real spiritual life, as opposed to a false and merely apparent one, which is found in human conditions, not only in the state of society but also in the soul of the individual: thus a mere transition from society to the individual can never give any aid. The condition in which life is generally found evolves no independent spiritual life; but it uses the spiritual impulse that is present within it simply as a means to other ends, and thus the result is an inner perversion; at the same time man is generally zealously occupied with giving himself the appearance of intending to follow the spiritual for its own sake, and of sacrificing everything to it. In opposition to such radical insincerity, to acquire a sincere and genuine life is the chief task and the chief desire of morality; for the establishment of sincerity and truth in face of an opposing world the soul needs before all else loyalty and courage.

And so morality involves life in a great division: it cannot possibly take up a friendly attitude towards everything and readily admit everything: its chief task must be to arouse life from its confusion and apathy. But this does not prevent a morality of the spiritual life striving for universality in its inner nature. The morality of the spiritual life must, therefore, establish a definite relationship on the basis of the present with the prevailing types of morality which were previously mentioned. If the morality of the spiritual life is certain of its own nature, it is quite possible for it to recognise a certain validity in every other kind of morality without degenerating into a feeble eclecticism. The relation that we recognised between the spiritual life and religion also makes religion valuable to morality: the moral significance of culture may be especially acknowledged where a universal character is desired for the spiritual life; the relation of man to man may also become inwardly important where it is necessary to the inner construction of the life of society. Again the morality of the spiritual life fully agrees with the demand for an independence of morality and for an elevation above narrowly human aims, in the manner that the morality of reason advocates; finally, individuality also can obtain its due in the spiritual life. All this, however, is valid only with the presupposition that we acquire a position above the antitheses of experience and not between them, and an inner independence in relation to the chaos of time. Only from this position and this independence can we advance in any way, even within time.

3. EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION

Education and instruction are especially affected by the difficulties that are engendered by the lack of a main tendency in life and of a transcendence of the superficiality of time. For the lively interest which its questions provoke, the incalculable amount of work and activity that is called forth in this department, do not produce their full result, because we do not possess enough life of our own of a definite character to be able to test and sort, to clarify and deepen, that which is presented to us. And so in conflict with one another we use up much power without making much progress in the most important matter.

Educational reform is the catchword, but we have no philosophy of education that is based upon a securely established conviction concerning life as a whole, and we trouble ourselves very little to obtain one. We wish to improve education, and yet we have not come to an understanding with regard to its ideals, its possibility, and its conditions. Education must be fundamentally different in character, according as man is regarded as a particular and exclusively individual being, or as a being in whom a new and universal life seems to emerge; according as he is only an elevated being of nature or in the highest degree possible a spiritual being; according as the higher proceeds from the lower gradually and surely after the manner of organic growth, or we must find a new starting-point and accomplish a revolution. Further, an individualistic training, as it dominated the classical systems of pedagogy, is no longer sufficient; the relation to society must also be fully appreciated, and be effective. But attention to this requirement involves us in the danger of treating the problem of education too externally, and of bringing all more or less to the same level; and this danger must be overcome. Yet how can it be overcome, unless we possess securely a depth, unless we acknowledge the presence of the infinite within the human being, as it is comprehended in our conviction of the spiritual life?

The form of instruction suffers from the ceaseless onflow of new material, the constant increase in the number of claims. In itself each single demand may be quite justifiable; but whether it is better than the others can be decided only from an idea which governs the whole. If no such idea exists, a gain in the individual departments may be a loss to the whole; and an enrichment in one department may lead to a decline of the whole. In face of that which has been handed down from the past and that which arises in the present, it is difficult to come to a balanced judgment; the parties may be right in their attacks one upon another, but this does not imply that they are right in their own assertions. The immediate impression tends to give the balance in favour of the requirements of the present; from the point of view of the immediate impression, all occupation with the past may appear to be a flight from the living to the dead. The advocate of the claims of history may reply to this that man as a spiritual being is not a child of the mere moment, and that we concern ourselves with the past not on account of what is transitory in it, but for its eternal content. But he who thinks thus must throw the eternal content into relief and separate it sharply from that which is simply temporal; he must establish a relation between this content and his own life, and make that which is externally alien his inward possession. This does indeed come to pass in a few cases; but can we say that it comes to pass generally or predominantly? We Germans in particular have far too strong a tendency to substitute scholarly occupation for inner animation, and instead of spiritual substance to offer academically correct knowledge. It is therefore not without good reason if Classical Antiquity does not so much inspire as weary our youth; yet the blame for this does not rest upon Antiquity, but on ourselves, and upon the manner in which we treat it with calm scholarship, without transforming it into our own possession. For how could that influence the whole man which does not come from the whole man? Everything points again and again to the same thing--we lack spiritual independence, inner transcendence of history and environment, we lack a characteristic life as a whole. The contact with the incalculable abundance of impressions that we experience must therefore remain an external one; and with all our increasing wealth of knowledge we threaten to become spiritually poorer.

(b) SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Science, with its innumerable branches and its powerful penetration of life, is indisputably a strong feature of the age. Its effect is not exhausted in the abundance of particular achievements; by the objectivity of its work it has brought the world much nearer to us, has led our life to greater clearness, has made us more alert, and given us a secure dominion over things. Science, therefore, must also be a factor in the determination of a philosophy of life, and must raise the whole position of man. Of course, as soon as we survey and estimate its work from the life-process we find that there is no lack of difficult problems in science. Since the magnificent results of the natural sciences often give rise to the tendency to force their particular bent and methods on the human sciences, to which our conception of the spiritual life gives a characteristic sphere of their own, there is a danger that the balanced development of the individual sciences and the complete organisation of what is distinctive in them will be prevented. However, we do not lack energetic resistance of this danger; and ultimately it is less science itself than the movement to popularise it that falls into this danger. Further, the results of science with regard to the object easily tend to obscure the subjective element, the spiritual activity, the characteristic synthesis, which forms an organised collection of pieces of knowledge into the unity of a science. It is apt to appear as though science needs only to construct further on a given basis and in a given direction; while both of these are open to much dispute: different possibilities, prospects, types may be revealed; the work of history has run through different stages, and has certainly not already exhausted its possibilities. Nevertheless, the subjective element with its freedom, mobility, and many-sidedness is becoming more adequately appreciated, and there is no reason to fear that science will become dogmatically pursued in paths that have become fixed. Finally, the problem of the relation of thought to life is the source of much perplexity: we Germans, for example, have a strong tendency to take mere knowledge for inner appropriation of the object, and instead of spiritual substance to offer an abundance of scholarship. This, however, is not a defect in science itself, but an error on the part of man, who has no life of his own with which to meet the onflow of impressions from the environment; and so our estimate of science and our acknowledgment of its magnificent achievement cannot be affected by this charge.

Philosophy is in quite a different position: its present state cannot satisfy anyone who seeks rather for a universal science than for an academic discipline. For our philosophical efforts lack a common aim and close relation with the innermost need of the time; they do not even show any definite and energetic attempt to overcome the confusion from which our world of thought suffers. A great stream of philosophic effort came to an end with the speculative philosophy of the first decade of the nineteenth century. After a temporary ebb of this philosophic effort, we now wish to take up the work again with fresh power, but we have not yet acquired inner independence; and therefore, in sifting and collecting, we are unable to direct the age to definite aims, or radically expel the inconsistencies into which an indefinite relation to the past has led the present.

There are three main streams of thought which come to us from the past, and we can neither completely take them up nor withdraw ourselves from them: the Enlightenment, with its philosophic summit in Descartes; the critical philosophy of Kant; and speculative philosophy, with its consummation in Hegel. It has been thought that the Enlightenment, with its starting out from the subject, its unadorned intellectualism, its formal ratiocination, its rejection of everything that is not comprehended in clear and distinct ideas, was transcended at the height of German classical literature, because at that time a life rich in content was set in contrast with it. But, as a fact, no adequate settlement with the Enlightenment has been arrived at; the supposed transcendence is not final, because the elements of truth in the Enlightenment, especially its turning from history to the immediacy and independence of spiritual life, were not properly acknowledged. But to-day it is less the elements of truth of the Enlightenment that are a force than that which is trivial and narrowly human in it--the ratiocination of the subject which, the more empty it is, the more it feels itself to be the measure of all things, and, rejoicing in negation, applies the results of the natural sciences in an attempt to bring about the greatest possible suppression of all spiritual relations. In this form the Enlightenment gains acceptance by the masses, which formerly had seemed inaccessible to it; and thus it becomes an instrument by which life is dissipated and made shallow. From its position of research, philosophy looks down upon this tendency with contempt; but it produces no movement that is able to take up the struggle with this tendency to shallowness, and pass through the struggle victoriously. Kant is often lauded as the spiritual guide of our time; and it is overlooked how much that was certain for him has become doubtful; how many new facts, new problems, new prospects, which cannot be lost to the world of thought we have received from the nineteenth century with its historico-social culture and its overwhelming widening of the horizon. Kant's critique of the reason is based on a conception of science; on a faith in the possibility of a knowledge of truth; on a conviction of a spiritual organisation of man, which are rather in contradiction than in harmony with the main tendencies of the present. His absolute ethic, the pillar of his constructive thought, is incompatible with the empirical and social treatment of morality to which the present does homage. But at the same time we cannot free ourselves from the influence of Kant. For we cannot refute his critique of the reason, breaking up, as it does, the old representation and conception of truth; and, without his ethic, our ethic would lose the appearance of truth and greatness. In the judgment of the present, Hegel experiences a treatment that is just the opposite of that which Kant receives: if in reference to the latter we do not notice what divides us, so in reference to the former we fail to recognise what joins us. For if Hegel's exaggeration of the power of the human spirit and his identification of spirit and thought appear alien to us, yet his idea of evolution, which embraces all multiplicity, and represents all realities and conceptions as in a state of flux; his elevation of spiritual factors to the form of independent powers which develop and establish their own necessities undeterred by the preference of man; his emphasis on the fact of the power of contradiction and opposition in history--all this, often in spite of our own conceptions, exerts an enormous influence over us; and we cannot shake it off without surrendering a considerable portion of our spiritual possession.

These tendencies all whirl confusedly together and draw us now in one direction, now in another; we can get beyond the state of decadence only when we have succeeded in giving to the world of thought an independent character, which corresponds with the spiritual condition of the present, and which can do justice to the old as well as the new experiences. After the whole course of our investigation, only a brief account is necessary to indicate the directions the system of life here advocated points out to reach this; a fuller treatment would make a particular theory of knowledge necessary. We must bring into prominence three of the chief points.

(1) Only the life-process can be the starting-point of philosophy, not some kind of being more ultimate than this process, whether we conceive of such being as an external world or as a subject existing independent of the world: the ideas of "world" and "subject," as also that of "being," can be evolved and made clear only within the life-process; at the same time, they remain in a state of flux, and never are so directly opposed to one another as modern thought has represented them as being. Philosophy, with this starting-point, would, however, attain an independence in relation to the special sciences only if it were possible within the life-process to form a unity and a distinctive synthesis, which should deepen our view of reality and set it as a whole in a new light. (2) Such a synthesis must transcend the state of change of all the relations and caprice of men; this is possible only by the revelation and appropriation of an independent spiritual life withdrawn from the life of sense. Without such a spiritual life there is no release from the chaos of subjective experiences and opinions; only from the position of the spiritual life is it possible for a spiritual occurrence to be revealed in the province of man, so that we do not need to infer from man to the world, but that within him a universal life can be immediately experienced. (3) As, on the one hand, the spiritual life is an indispensable presupposition, so on the other it is an infinite task; the former as far as the fundamental fact is concerned, the latter in reference to its detailed content. This content can be acquired only through the movement of history as a whole; thus a constructive philosophy--and not merely a critical one--could arise only where the spiritual life as a whole had acquired a characteristic form. In this case, philosophy was not simply an offspring of life, not merely something for life to occupy itself with. By its demand for a thorough clarification of our ideas and life, and by its raising the question of absolute truth, philosophy has exercised no little influence upon the progress of life. But that which it achieved of a fruitful nature, it achieved not in detachment from, but only in relation to, life, and by interaction with it, however much this relation may be concealed at the first glance.

Such a connection of philosophy with life as a whole is by no means new; it has existed in all times. Never has the world of thought acquired a distinctive character except in close relation with life as a whole: it is only from life as a whole that thought has received its problems, the nature of its procedure, and the demarcation of its work. A survey of the history of philosophy makes it evident that the leading thinkers differ mostly, and differ from the beginning, in that which they regard as the essence of life. In what they regard as the essence of life they have found the firm point of support for their work; from that the direction of their research has been determined; and from that the questions arose to which they required an answer from the universe. And we all know that in these matters the question often implies more than the answer, that it often carries the answer within itself.

If, therefore, this connection of philosophy with the life-process signifies an old and indisputable truth, this truth is not sufficiently acknowledged. Its adequate acknowledgment gives rise to a new situation; indeed, it tends to the development of a new type of philosophy. With the critical tendency of the Modern Age, this type shares the desire not to surrender thought to a state of defencelessness in face of the stream of appearances, but would primarily concentrate it in itself, and in an inner independence find a standard for all further undertaking. But this attainment of independence in thought is not accomplished by turning to the mere subject, but to a central occurrence, transcending the antithesis of subject and object. If thought cannot begin from such an occurrence, and understand the movement of life as an unfolding and perfecting of this comprehensive occurrence, then there is no truth for man. Truth, as a relation of two series absolutely alien to each other, is an absolutely nonsensical conception: truth must be immanent, in the sense that one life embraces both subject and object, and that in the movement of life there is as much a coming together of subject and object as a coming together of activity from the centre and from the circumference.

That in this we have to do with a peculiar formation of knowledge and not with a merely formal modification is shown by the following considerations. If thought, in the manner previously supposed, takes its starting-point in a world existing independently of the subject, then in order to subordinate reality spiritually thought will comprehend it in the most general conceptions. Ultimately, the being of things will be sought in formal ontological magnitudes, as, for example, in "pure being." If the whole abundance of reality appears to be derived simply from these general conceptions, it is in danger of being transformed into nothing but schemes and shadows, and of losing all genuine life. If, as opposed to this, the subject alone is taken as the starting-point, then more life and more movement is indeed assured, and a more varied prospect will be acquired, but there is no possibility of distinguishing between that which is only contingent to the individual and that which forms a common inner world; there is no possibility of a rejection of the narrowly human, or even of extricating a realm of ideas from the abundance of impressions: if in the former case knowledge lost all content, in the present case it threatens to be completely dissolved. If, further, on the one hand abstract universal conceptions, and on the other the subjective states of individuals, form the stem of knowledge, then neither in one nor in the other does the fullness of spiritual reality attain its due--the reality that exists in the building up of a genuine spiritual culture. But in the type of philosophy advocated by us this is the chief thing; since in contrast to the psychological and the cosmological treatment this philosophy develops a noölogical treatment, and sees the central domain of philosophical research in the elucidation and unification of facts which, in the construction of a spiritual world in the province of man, appear in the whole and in every branch. In this connection the conception of fact is something more ultimate and universal in its relations; but it is just that which makes it more valuable for the conviction as a whole.