II. THE FORM OF THE INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS
Preliminary Considerations
Beforewe proceed to discuss the individual departments of life we may briefly consider the common task that is imposed upon them all by the distinctive condition of the time: they must become independent in relation to the earlier as well as to the more modern conceptions of them, and, if necessary, take up a conflict against both. The course of our investigation can have left no doubt with regard to the state of prostration of the older forms of life: the uncertainty affects the whole and the fundamental principles much more than it has ever done before. Formerly the struggle was concerned rather with individual departments or individual tendencies of life; it was carried on more in reference to the conception and meaning of fundamental truths than with regard to the validity of those truths themselves. The passionate struggles of the period of the Reformation left the fundamentals of Christianity untouched; in a similar manner the later attacks upon ecclesiastical religion usually had a basis of firm faith in morality, and derived their power more especially from it. To-day the authority of morality is just as seriously shaken as that of religion; and the conception of truth is itself in the same condition of uncertainty.
In this condition of things an appeal to history cannot be employed as proof of any position; a patchwork of our own and of something alien gives us still less a position above perplexity: there is no other way than to take up the problem with the means of the present itself. For this the acknowledgment of the independence of the spirituallife forms a fit foundation. The spiritual life is not dependent upon and fixed to particular temporal conditions; ever anew it can break forth spontaneously, and from the particularity of the time advance to eternal truths. It is to us a source of joy that a time has come again when we need not follow other paths, but must go our own; when nothing can bind us but that which has been approved by our own being and our own conviction. It is not necessary for a time such as this to take up an attitude of hostility towards the whole past; rather—and especially when it thinks worthily of itself—it will seek a friendly relationship with history. But this is possible only when the present has attained complete independence, and only from this independent position; only when an eternal content is revealed in that which history conveys to us. In opposition to submission to authority such a time makes a demand for unlimited freedom and complete spontaneity; such freedom and spontaneity are essential if life is again to find the truthfulness and the inner power that we so painfully miss.
Such a requirement of life and thought arising out of the immediate present may easily lead us to separate from those to whom the crisis does not seem so serious, and who believe that it is possible to transform the old in a quiet and inhostile manner into the new. The conflict will be far more acute with those who, with us, make the demand for an independent present; but who, by the conceptions of an independent present, freedom and spontaneity, understand something totally different from that which we ourselves understand by them from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. In all times of spiritual revival the freedom and immediacy which the spiritual life needs for itself have been usurped by mere man as though they were a right pertaining to him: and then it appears that only the complete emancipation of individuals, a severance of all connections, unconditional submission to the passing moment, are necessary in order to lead life to truth and greatness, and man to a gloriousstate of happiness. Such a movement cannot spread without making the antitheses of life appear less acute, concealing its problems and its depths, and falsely idealising man with all the contingency of his experience: with all the bustle of its preparation and all its agitation the movement must terminate in a state of spiritual destitution; it threatens life with inner destruction. With a modernity of this kind we have nothing in common.
We must, therefore, with all our power, wage war against the narrowly human and imaginary freedom on behalf of one that is genuine and spiritual: this conflict is exceptionally complicated and difficult, because real life does not make such a clear distinction between the genuine and the false as the conceptions do, but rather allows them to be confused. For this reason the conflict will be carried on not only on the right hand and on the left, but also against the confusion that obscures the great “either—or,” without the distinct presence of which a spontaneous life does not acquire power and consciousness. A way must be found by which, notwithstanding manifold dangers and complications, we may advance to a life that combines depth with freedom, stability with movement: this is an inner necessity of the age, and once it is recognised and taken up as such, it will in some way be realised.
(a) RELIGION, MORALITY, EDUCATION
1.Religion
In no sphere of life is there more inner division and uncertainty at the present time than in that of religion. To one, the rejection of all religion seems to be indispensable to the sincerity of life and to the attainment of healthy conditions, because, as a pernicious legacy from past ages, it oppresses our life, confuses our thought, paralyses our power of activity, and provokes men to the greatest hatred of one another. To another, on the contrary, religion seemsto be the only firm support in face of the needs and confusions of the age—the only thing that inwardly unites men and elevates each individual above himself, the only thing that reveals a depth in life and allows life to share in the infinite and the eternal. The adherents to each of these views show the greatest earnestness and zeal; we cannot treat the negation lightly and dispose of it with the convenient catchword “unbelief,” if only for the reason that on the part of many this negative attitude is due to a sincere anxiety for the truthfulness of life. To rise above this conflict in regard to religion we must, in the first place, estimate the points at issue impartially; and nothing else is more called upon to do this than philosophy.
Philosophy will not make light of the prostration of religion; for a survey of history shows that the state of life has undergone a complete change since the epoch when religion exercised an undisputed supremacy. At that time the world and human life received all meaning and value from their relation to an invisible and supernatural order. The course of the Modern Age has made the world that surrounds us ever more significant, and since man has directed his activity upon this world, the world of faith has been allowed to recede more and more. The movement that led to our present position attained increasing power and consciousness through three stages: at the height of the Renaissance the divine was revered less in its world-transcendent sovereignty than in its world-pervading operation; then, the Pantheism of a speculative and æsthetic culture associated the world and God together in one reality; finally, in the investigation of inimitable nature and the formation of political and social relations the world of sense gives man so much to do, fetters his power so much, and gives him at the same time such a proud consciousness of this power, that the conception of a transcendent world fades entirely; and an Agnosticism that rejects as superfluous and unfruitful all reflection upon and care concerning such a world gains ground.
This change in the direction and in the disposition of lifemust itself have forced religion more or less out of the field of our attention. But it is fraught with far more dangers to religion that the work of the Modern Age in all its main tendencies is directed against the principles of the life upon which the development of religion rests. Modern natural science has dispossessed man of the central position that he formerly attributed to himself, and has deprived nature of its soul. The modern science of history, with its demonstration of ceaseless change in all that is human, has undermined the faith in an absolute truth. At the same time, with regard to the beginnings of Christianity, there is a wide divergence between the traditional conception of faith and the new conception obtained by historical research. The tendency of modern culture has been to make the increasing of power, in work upon things and in their control, the highest ideal; from the point of view of this ideal of impersonal power, the world of pure inwardness, the home of Christianity, has been able to appear to be simply a subjective and subsidiary accompaniment of the life-process. He who estimates rightly the fact that all these tendencies of modern life work together and strengthen one another cannot fail to recognise that they force religion from the centre of life to its circumference, and transform it from an impregnable fact into a difficult problem; they destroy that self-evidence of religion which previously made life secure and calm. If, however, religion no longer springs up in the consciousness of contemporaries from a necessity of their own life, it is not difficult to understand that the complications of the problem are too great for many of them; that the burden of obsolete forms over-balances the power of their own impulse, and thus, by a sudden revolution, to reject it seems the only way to save truth. Then religion seems to be only a delusion that arose in a past age—a delusion similar to astrology and alchemy; one which, in face of growing enlightenment, must ultimately be completely dispelled.
But if the philosophic treatment understands the negation rightly, it can only warn us against being hasty in ouracceptance of it. To be sure, quite apart from all the caprice and purpose of man, the condition of life has become very much changed; but it was less the state of affairs itself that permitted the changes to clash so irreconcilably with religion than the interpretation which it received and the exclusiveness which was attributed to it. The decision in this matter has depended in particular upon what is called the spirit of the age, which is often nothing more than the inclination and disposition of man; such inclination, as history shows, may change into the direct opposite; it does not form a sure touchstone of truth.
These considerations, indeed, do not make much headway in opposition to the storm and stress of the movements of the age: that which operates far more strongly in favour of religion is the experience and the feeling that the attempted negation of religion by no means easily and directly solves the problem of life; and, further, that along with religion much becomes untenable to which even the modern man cannot lightly renounce all claim. Whatever there may be in religion, it has brought man into union with the deepest basis of reality, and at the same time revealed to him a life of pure inwardness: it has set a task for life as a whole and has given to life a meaning and a value; it has counteracted the lower impulses and the egoism of mere self-preservation; and has organised humanity spiritually. These aims have hardly become superfluous and worthless: even without religion, and after abandoning its principles, it would be necessary to accomplish these aims in other ways. It is in the attempts at reconstruction that the futility of the negation of religion becomes painfully evident. Phrases concerning the greatness and noble-mindedness of all that bear human features; a blind faith in the elevating power of intellectual enlightenment or even of external organisation; a confusion of thought which, unobserved, rejects and elevates its own principles, and so maintains in the conclusion that which it rejected in the premises; all these things can deceive him alone concerning the spiritual poverty and the complete powerlessnessof what is offered in them, whose zeal in his antagonism to religion has deprived him of balance of feeling and impartiality of judgment. If it is inquired what content and value human life still retains after the surrender of all relation to the whole and of all inner relation, it will be recognised that the complete negation of religion consistently carried out must lead to an appalling convulsion of human existence as a whole.
But if such considerations counsel us to be cautious in regard to the negation of religion, they do not justify an adherence to its traditional form. The far-reaching changes of life that we are aware of cannot possibly be explained away or their significance lessened; they must be estimated, and brought into relation with religion. The boundary between the eternal and the temporal, the substance and the outward form in religion, has been made uncertain by these changes; in particular they forbid philosophy to treat the religious problem from the point of view of a dogmatic confession. The antithesis between Catholicism and Protestantism is the offspring of an age that preceded the development of modern culture, with all its deep-reaching revolutions. The main problem of religion at the time when the antithesis made its appearance was differently stated from the way in which we now state it. For then it was a question whether Christianity was to be formed from society or from personality; while to-day Christianity fights for its existence as a whole, and must defend its fundamental truths against a time in which activity is directed into other paths. The present antithesis cannot possibly be regarded as ultimately identical with the former one; and it is for this reason impossible to take up the present conflict concerning religion under the banner of a particular dogmatic confession. Such an ante-dating of the conflict also has the disadvantage that it prevents the great antitheses which are involved to-day both in Catholicism and Protestantism from being clearly displayed. Two different streams have been present in Catholicism from its beginning: to the one, the power ofthe ecclesiastical system is the main thing; while to the other, on the contrary, the religious disposition is of supreme importance. The influences of modern culture have increased this difference, both directly and indirectly, and, chiefly outside of Germany, there are signs of the beginning of a stronger movement towards a more inward Catholicism. Protestantism carries within it an antithesis of the old ecclesiastical form of religion, which adheres as much as possible to the state of things in the sixteenth century, and a form transformed by the Idealism in modern culture more into the universal, the free, the purely human, but also not infrequently into vagueness and superficial optimism. But so long as the bitterness of sectarian prejudice diverts the attention of men from the chief thing, these antitheses are not clearly expressed and energetically developed. There are serious contradictions involved in these views of religion, and they cannot be developed without giving rise to parties. Philosophy must strive with all its energy to bring it about that these parties shall be formed in relation to the present situation, and not from the point of view of a past age; and that the conflict shall be raised to a higher level, to truth and greatness, by bringing itself into relation with the needs of the age.
The task of philosophy is not limited to estimating as impartially as possible the state of things as we immediately experience it; that task also includes a positive treatment of the religious problem. That which is characteristic in the philosophy of life advocated in this treatise, Noëtism, as it might be called, must also find a definite expression and show what capacity it has, in the fulfilment of this task. In accordance with its fundamental relation to history, which has been much discussed, Noëtism cannot make history most important, even in religion, and cannot read into history as much as possible of what the present demands; it must regard any such procedure as a weakness and a half-truth. Noëtism must insist upon religion’s justifying itself and establishing its reality before thetribunal of the spiritual life: only then can the truth that exists in history and that which, through progressive differentiation, promotes the cause of transcendent truth and brings it nearer to humanity as a whole, be elucidated. We have not for a moment lost sight of the fact that it is essential to religion to be related not to single individuals but to all; and that religion can evolve no power without compelling men to some kind of unity.
Now, for the treatment of the religious problem, Noëtism offers first a position from which demands are made compatible which are otherwise directly opposed to one another. Religion is concerned with experiences which at one and the same time must possess a universal character, belong to our own life, and be immediately accessible to each. The attempt of speculative philosophy to establish religion by deduction from the nature of the whole has the required universal character; but it introduces religion to the soul from outside, and remains a mere intellectual gain. The contrary attempt to base religion in the individual soul developed an inwardness; but this attempt shows that the soul does not know how to build up a world and to contrast it with the subject, to present this world as something transcendent; it makes no sure progress beyond the fluctuation and undulation of feeling. Only an independent spiritual life, inwardly present to us, elevates us above this division of subjective feeling and a transcendent world, and inaugurates universal experiences in our own domain. How with the spiritual life new realities are manifested; how a world-whole which transcends human existence becomes evident, has already been discussed, and it is not necessary to make any repetition here. Every acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life is favourable to religion in so far as this acknowledgment makes us clearly perceive the inadequacy, the illusoriness, and the vanity of all narrowly human conduct and occupation, its futility in matters both small and great. So long as attention is fixed on individual matters, and so long as we may expect some improvement in thesein the present or in the future, we may not be aware of the futility of this conduct; but as soon as the situation is grasped as a whole and estimated as a whole, such human conduct is found to be entirely inadequate, these external aids are found wanting, and there remains only the inexorable “either—or”: either the power of a new world is operative in man, and makes him strong outwardly and inwardly, or the whole life of man is spiritually lost—one great delusion, one great error.
If from the point of view of the spiritual life the contour of a new world is acquired, we may turn back to history, and ask how far it indicates a movement which tends in the direction of such a world. The spiritual life itself brings a distinctive standard for this inquiry: the fundamental fact is not a single factor within life, but the existence of a self-conscious whole of life, of a spiritual process itself. From the point of view of the spiritual life, the chief thing in religions will be the kind of life they reveal; what they make of the life-process; how through the relation to an absolute life they evolve the life-process to a higher stage. Only so far as they express this life-process, and not in themselves, are the doctrines and practices of religion of value.
If we apply this test to the individual religions, Christianity distinctly shows itself to be far superior to the others. More than any of the other religions, Christianity fulfils the demands which are made by the nature of the spiritual life and its relation to the world; and so far as Christianity satisfies these demands, but not in its historical form as a whole, it may assert itself to be absolute.
If Christianity as a religion of redemption requires that we should tear ourselves from the old world and aspire to a new one, this demand receives a distinctive significance by the more detailed conception which Christianity forms of it. As evil and that which is to be overcome is regarded not, as among the Hindus, as mere appearance, but as moral guilt, which disorganises the world, it is not the fundamental reality of the world but a particular conceptionof it that is rejected; and so there remains the possibility of life being given a positive character; and in this the main thing is not intellectual enlightenment, but radical moral renewal, an elevation into a world of love, grace, and reverence. This view of the world makes it impossible to base life simply upon affirmation or negation; but affirmation and negation must be present within it, and thus life is given an inner comprehensiveness and an inner movement which it would not otherwise possess. Christianity included the innermost basis of human life in this movement and transformation, since it not only regarded the divine as influencing the human by individual manifestations of its power, but proclaimed a complete union of both, and maintained this through its whole development. A wearied and exhausted age may have formulated this fundamental truth in the most unfortunate manner in the doctrine of the divine humanity of Christ; nevertheless, the effectiveness of the truth involved was not prevented by this. Only from the power of a conception of a union of the divine and the human can religion acquire the character of pure and complete inwardness, of a spiritual self-consciousness: otherwise the relation of the divine and the human remains a more or less external one. But this is not the place to trace how the Christian type of life has been visibly embodied in the course of history in the personality and the life of its founder, and in the common labours of centuries, in which the Semitic and Germanic natures have been harmonised, and great peoples and personalities have given their best to the world: here we may only remark further that the whole is not a work completed at one particular point in time, but a continuous task of all ages; and that, in the fundamental life transcending all mere time, a fixed standard is offered by which to test the achievement of all particular ages, and to differentiate the results of the work of history as far as they correspond with the fundamental character of religion. Religion must maintain the fundamental character of the life that it advocates, in face of all change in the state ofculture, just as decidedly as for its development in detail it remains dependent upon the help of the work of culture.
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 andsettled 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 povertyof 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 awhole 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 genuinereality. 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 naturalegowithout 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; thisconception 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 anopportunity 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 loseits 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 isdesired 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 ashe 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 betweenthis 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 riseto 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 evenshow 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 madeshallow. 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; andwe 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, thespiritual 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 abundanceof 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.
This conception of its task will bring philosophy into a closer relation with personal life, as well as with the work of history, without making it the mere instrument either of the one or the other. Otherwise it would seem irrational, and a tendency from which one must free oneself as much as possible, that in philosophy, personality, not only in creative activity but also in appropriation, signifies so much. The object, on the contrary, acquires a positive value, if we are certain that the standard of life is ultimately also the standard of knowledge; if with this the degree of the development of life at a particular point necessarily decides the nature of the work of thought there achieved. The near relation of the thinker to the proximate and the more distant culture environment is explained from this position in a manner no less satisfactory: the relation can then remain close, even if in the first place it appears to be one of conflict and opposition. Similarly, the whole movement of history acquires a greater significance for knowledge; far-reaching changes of life transform the temporal situation, since they permit us to experience,see, and seek something else; all these changes, however, demand from thought an attention to and an appreciation of the whole. Nothing other than this is involved in the requirement that thought must correspond with the historical state of spiritual evolution.
This acknowledgment of personal and of historical life by philosophy makes it intelligible why philosophy manifests so much diversity and opposition, and why on the surface it shows so little unity. Where the conviction of an independent spiritual life rules, the faith in a unity of truth can be shaken by this fact just as little as the courage to creative activity can be paralysed. The basing of thought upon the spiritual life also has the advantage that the main types of thought can be derived from the different positions which may be taken up towards the spiritual life, and thus a limit may be set to the otherwise indefinite abundance. From this point of view there are for us five chief types of thought and world-conception. Minds first divide on the question whether we can unify life at all, and at the same time whether we may venture to make an assertion concerning reality as a whole. He who rejects this as impossible and readily surrenders himself to the conflict of immediate impressions might be called an indifferentist. If, however, a striving towards unity is admitted, then the question whether a spiritual life with a reality and values of its own in contrast with nature may be acknowledged or not becomes the point of decision, and the basis of division into opposing camps. He who gives a negative answer to the question, and regards nature as the whole of reality, becomes an advocate of Naturalism. He, however, who answers in the affirmative, and may be called an idealist, is immediately confronted with a new problem. He cannot acknowledge the spiritual life without at the same time giving it the supremacy; but now the doubt arises whether this supremacy may be easily and peacefully established, or whether it meets with strong opposition. When the existence of these oppositions is denied, or they are regarded as being easy to overcome,there grows up an optimistic, contemplative form of Idealism, which to the holders of other forms inevitably seems abstract and shallow. If, on the contrary, the oppositions are fully acknowledged, the final division originates with the question whether finally we are to submit to the state of stagnation brought about by these oppositions, or whether by some kind of reinforcement of the counteraction to this state of stagnation life may once more be set in progress: the former gives rise to Scepticism and Pessimism, the latter to Activism, as it has been discussed by us in an earlier section. It is easy to see what distinctive lines of conflict and what kinds of conflict must arise between the indifferentist, the naturalistic thinker, the optimist, the sceptic, and the activist. However, we cannot allow this to detain us; it must, nevertheless, be pointed out here, that in philosophy the possibilities are not yet exhausted, and that to avail ourselves of these possibilities nothing is more necessary than a close relation of its work with the life-process, and a firmer grounding in the independent spiritual life.
(c) ART AND LITERATURE
Nowhere does modern life throb more violently and more strongly than in art and literature. That which in this department has a claim to permanence acquires especial power from the fact that this department had to establish itself anew in opposition to an attempt to curtail it. For who could deny that a culture of work and of utility had a tendency to reduce artistic literary creation to the position of an accompaniment and a fringe of another kind of life, to a diversion for idle hours? The more we feel the limitations of the life of work and utility the more do art and literature become independent tasks. From art and literature we expect more lightness, more agility, and more joy in life; they should conduct lifefrom too great an attention to externals to self-consciousness, and in this way give life a soul. They should strengthen individuality in opposition to the levelling tendency of the culture of the masses, wrest simple fundamentals from chaotic confusion of life, and aid the time in reaching a comprehensive vital-feeling and a synthesis transcending its inconsistencies. In opposition to that which oppresses us and degrades us to instruments of a meaningless machinery, we desire some kind of province where life rests in itself and purposes nothing else but itself; where it springs up with complete spontaneity; and where it can express itself with complete freedom, and in this expression find its highest joy.
From such a longing a new art that permeates our life has arisen. Art must seek new means of expression for the new situation; it cannot serve the development of a new life-content without bringing about liberation from all conventional statutes; it cannot prevent a threatened tendency of life to become stagnant without desiring a fully free place for the subject, and for the development of his individuality. He who sees chiefly the dangers in everything forgets that nothing new and great can arise without bringing dangers with it.
From the point of view of the system that we champion, we can quite well understand the significance of the æsthetic movement of the present, acknowledge the deliverance of life which it has accomplished, and in general we can go a good distance with it. But there comes a point where the courses diverge; not because we think less of the capacity of art, but we believe that we think more highly of its task. This deliverance from the culture of work, this turning to individuality, promises an essential elevation of life only if a new kind of being, a new world, is able to break forth in the soul that depends upon itself; if the individual in his conflicts aids the development of the infinite life; if, through all transformations and prostrations, man wins an inner relation to the wholeand to things, and by this grows beyond the narrowly human.
If this does not come to pass, the movement remains on the surface of sense experience and related to the activity and occupation of mere man; and so it cannot make anything higher or essentially new of us; it remains subject to the oppositions of the age instead of becoming superior to them. We are, indeed, enriched by the most diverse forms of expression: even the most concealed circumstances, the most delicate pulsations of the soul, cannot withdraw themselves from being represented. None the less, the description of the world-environment acquires the most striking clearness and penetration, and in the incalculable wealth of individual forms of art virtuosi are not lacking at whose capacity of execution we are astonished. But all this gives to art no spiritual content and no real greatness. It can, indeed, bring an inexhaustible abundance of stimuli to bear upon individuals and spread a shiny gloss over existence and life, but it cannot raise life essentially. The care of the mere individual, with his changing circumstances, prevents art from taking up sufficiently the problems of the present situation as a whole; of the spiritual condition of humanity as a whole.
And so art in this form is not able to grasp the epoch with its spiritual movement as a whole, and to further humanity in the struggle for spiritual existence, in which to-day all individual problems are included. Humanity is in a serious crisis; the old foundations of life are about to give way, and the new are not yet secured. The world has rejected the standards which man had imposed upon it; it turns against him, and leaves him nothing more in particular. To be assured of a distinctive significance man needs a strengthening, and at the same time an aroused reflection forbids him all help from outside. The fact that that which is hostile and threatens to degrade and to annihilate man takes possession of his own province of life and penetrates into it gives a particular acuteness tothese problems. We are not only surrounded externally by a dark fate, but our soul also degenerates in it, and becomes more and more a soulless mechanism. Indeed, our own activity becomes the most dangerous opponent of the soul, since in forming and taking part in complexes of work which ever become greater it turns against us and takes the soul from the soul.
An art which has its basis in the individual and which does not advance to spiritual substance cannot possibly prevent the threatened dissolution of life. Even the most wonderful expression of disposition, even the most delicate and most fluid representations of conditions, do not free us from the chaos of the time: they might easily bind us still more strongly to it, since they weaken the power, indeed the tendency to energetic concentration, and increase the tendency to degenerate into a state of weakness and decay; while to overcome these dangers it is necessary primarily to increase our activity, to win again an active relation to reality. Art cannot free itself from that condition of feebleness without entering into a close relation with the central task of life and acknowledging a spirituality transcending the subjective circumstances and interests of mere man. If these requirements are not satisfied, no talent can prevent a decline of art into a more refined Epicureanism.
But where such a spiritual life is acknowledged, and at the same time there arises the task of winning for man a new life, a new spiritual reality, art inevitably acquires a great significance, and becomes absolutely indispensable. Without the liberation which it brings, and its presentation of things in a harmony, how could a whole with definite character be raised? How could the new that hovers before us acquire form and exert a penetrating power without the help of a constructive imagination which precedes its realisation? How could the soul’s innermost experience permeate life as a whole, and ennoble its whole structure without the help of art? The higher we place the ideal of life, the more does the spiritual content which immediate existence manifests become a mere sense form, the moreis æsthetic activity necessary to prevent disunion of life, in the midst of all oppositions to give it some kind of unity, and in the midst of the passion of conflict some rest within itself. But, to achieve this, art may not purpose to form an oasis in a wilderness of life, but, hand-in-hand with other activities, must fight for spiritual experience and a genuine meaning of life as a whole.