Part 22

This conception of truth determines also the nature of the effort to attain truth. The task cannot be to subordinate one side of life to the other, and to derive one side as far as possible from the other; that is, to transform the given condition of life as far as possible into free activity, or to adapt activity to the given condition in such a way that activity is merged into it; but the task is one of pressing forward to a transcendent active whole which unites the two sides, and develops them both; and in mutual relation gives to activity a content and to the given condition a soul. We have seen how a movement to attain such a unity runs through history and extends into the soul of the individual. That life is in general able to unify and raise itself is the presupposition of all striving after truth: the proof of this, however, is to be found in the actual furtherance of life, in the new contents which are thus obtained.

Such a way of regarding truth, that is, as an upward endeavour of life to its own unity, a unity not forced upon it but immanent, exhibits its unique nature especially in its opposition to the intellectualistic conception of truth, which, notwithstanding that it has been rejected and attacked so often, still continues to assert a mighty power. According to the intellectualist, cognition should treat the problem and solve it of its own capacity; it seems that the synthesis that is sought must be found in the first place in the realm of thought, and thence imparted to the rest of life. As a fact, however, knowledge itself is affected with particular severity by the division of free activity and fixed given condition; and from its own capacity thought cannot attain to a state of full creative activity which alone is able to overcome the division, but for the attainment of this is referred to an advance of life as a whole which alone can reach an essentially new position. To be sure, cognition has particular fundamental logical principles which regulate all its work. But to regulate and to produce are two different things. The most scrupulous adherence to these principles does not lead beyond reflection to an inner relation to the object, to an inner transcendence, a penetration, and an appropriation of the object; it leaves us still in the position of simply attempting to know, in a state of mere reflection and search. All real knowledge involves a spiritual creation, an advance, and a self-formation of life as a whole. The chief epochs of culture have therefore given a distinctly unique character to the inner nature and the fundamental texture of knowledge; the character given to it by one epoch being entirely different from that given to it by another. Modern knowledge does not differ from earlier knowledge only in a quantitative way: as soon as its connection with the chief synthesis characteristic of modern life is revealed, it can no longer be regarded as absolute knowledge, but only as a particular kind of knowledge beyond which there are possibilities of further developments.

From life as a whole the conflict will extend into all its individual departments, and give to the activity in them a greater intensity. Religion, art, and human society all have first to overcome the opposition of subjective power and alien given condition, and thereby to win a truth. In no case does truth mean a taking up of things which are presented to the activity of life--it means rather an advance of life to its own perfection.

In accordance with this conception of truth, that which claims to be true will not be able to prove its right otherwise than through its power, that is, through its capacity to embrace life as a whole and to raise it above opposition into the state of complete activity. Every such attempt must prove its power and its right in opposition to rivals by being able to wrest from them the truth contained by them, and in new relationships to lead beyond the state they reach, and to change life more into a self-consciousness than they are able.

Hence the endeavour after truth here shows more movement, more freedom, more multiplicity: different starting points and different ways may be chosen, and the correctness of the one need not involve the incorrectness of the other. The only indispensable thing is that the movement pass beyond the state of division and reflection to one of complete activity; only in that way can the content of life gain through the movement of life. And so we see the great significance of progress in work, in spiritual work; according as it succeeds, genuine life is distinguished from the mere will to live. To be sure, each piece of work that is here undertaken is a venture; it is far easier and far more secure to continue in the state of mere reflection and reasoning. But the latter does not lead us to an experience and a decision in a matter concerning the development of life, and therefore does not bring us a step further in this chief matter. Work with its failures is better than all subtle contemplation which leads to no activity; for failure can lead us beyond itself to truth, while feebleness and inactivity keep us in the old position.

In our conception of it truth is anything but a system of universal propositions out of which, by deduction, all detail might be derived. Rather the organisation of life into an inner unity, upon which in this view of truth everything depends, will exclude all that is only general and turn towards the differentiation of the whole. The more life progresses in this direction the less is it a mere application of general principles; the less does it find its consummation after the manner of a conclusion from given premises; the more does it become a progressive activity, a new formation and an elevation.

In this conception, there is also room for a truth peculiar to the single individuals. As the comprehensive life-synthesis can permeate every individual detail of existence, so it is necessary for every individual life-centre to realise its own particular synthesis, and that every individual should fight for his inner unity and thus, also, for a truth of his own; he must, however, realise this unity and truth in every particular activity. A truth which is not my truth is, for me, not a complete truth. Only it is necessary that such individualisation be effected within the whole, not independent of it; it must result from the inner necessity of creative activity, not out of a vain wish to excel. In any case, it follows here that, as the immanent and universal form of truth requires more activity and power, it is also able to grant more free movement and multiplicity. Truth and freedom have been thought opposed to one another in the course of history; if the former seemed to require unconditional submission, the latter had a strong tendency to shake off every tie as an oppressive yoke. If we see that truth of life can be reached only through freedom, and also that freedom acquires a content and a spiritual character only through its relation to truth, the opposition by no means entirely disappears, but a basis is won upon which we may strive to attain an agreement and a fruitful interaction between the two.

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So understood, the problem of truth has the closest connection with that of reality: with regard to the one as to the other we are concerned in a conflict against the external conception common to a naïve state of life, which, though far surpassed by the inner movement of the work of history, obstinately asserts itself through the evidence of the senses in single individuals and hardly ceases to impress men with its apparent self-evidence. The naïve way of thinking understands reality as a space which encompasses men and things; reality seems to be presented, "given," to man through the senses; only that which is exhibited to man in these sense-relations passes current as real. In this Ptolemaic form of life, dominated by sense impression, everything other than sense fades to a mere illusion, and this includes the spiritual life itself, although in it alone is reality known. Now, however, as science has with no mean power led beyond this Ptolemaic representation of nature, so the development of life has led beyond the Ptolemaic reality. Life could not emancipate itself from its attachment to the environment and develop an inwardness without effecting a revolution in this problem. The inward becomes the first and surest experience, with which all that is to pass current as real must show itself to be in consistent relation: everything external loses its proximity and becomes a problem; it can be established as real only through that which it achieves for the inner nature and in accordance with the standards of that nature. The power to convince possessed by sense impression is now based, not on its obviousness, but on the spiritual activity that it arouses. Here also, only the experiences of the spiritual life itself can lead to the experience of something less than spiritual.

As such a revolution brings clearly to consciousness the spiritual achievement in the formation of reality, so at the same time it gives the object more movement and transforms it in spiritual endeavour. Two things are necessary to the conception of reality: an independence of man, and a realisation of the many as a unity. Now, since that which lies wholly beyond experience must for that reason be inaccessible to us, this assertion of independence can have no other meaning than that, within life itself, something becomes detached from the stream of consciousness and fixes and asserts itself as independent of it. The power thus to transcend the time-process is a characteristic mark of all spiritual activity; this activity evolves within us something in opposition to us, and in so doing accomplishes a marvellous expansion. This is most clearly seen within the sphere of thought. For all the functions peculiar to thought receive their differentiating characteristic only through such a detachment from the flow of sense-presentation and by establishing themselves as independent of it: the concept presents its content as something fixed in contrast to the stream of presentations; the judgment proclaims its connection of concepts to be something that does not pass away with the act of connecting them but persists in face of all the changes of the psychical life. Life accomplishes a gradation within itself and lifts itself above the mere stream of change. Only because life establishes within itself a fixed nucleus, and in this manner wins an independence of its own momentary condition, can it oppose a world to itself, and set itself the task of appropriating this world--that, further, that independent nucleus should remain no mere collection, but should be inwardly unified is again a requirement and an achievement of the spiritual life. How far that requirement will be fulfilled depends upon the nature and the degree of the development of the spiritual life.

Reality, therefore, is to be found chiefly in the self-consciousness of the spiritual life; from this self-consciousness we build up our reality. Since spiritual requirement is from this point of view the measure of human undertaking, our activity is judged by the degree to which the state of the world is changed in it and has thus become our reality. How far our capacity reaches in this matter cannot be decided by preliminary consideration, but only by the progress of life itself: in particular it is not permissible to assume things-in-themselves independent of us and thus to reduce our world to a realm of mere appearances. For, so far as that independence reached, things could never enter our life, and never be inwardly appropriated; at most they could concern us only in their effects. As far as the conception of nature as a mechanism is concerned, which regards all occurrence as a texture of related individual points which exist, inaccessible, behind it, there is much to be said for the view that things are only known in their effects; but this view is an intolerable limitation--dogmatic in the highest degree--if it is meant to represent our fundamental relation to reality and to ourselves. For then we should be related to ourselves as to something alien; all the self-consciousness of life would be destroyed; there could be no development of being in contrast to single acts, but we must be completely resolved in the stream of appearances; there would be no advance in the striving after reality. As a matter of fact, we are concerned primarily with the content that life is able to give to itself; how far it presses forward to reality. Our world is to be measured more especially by the degree in which life becomes deepened. But from the beginning man, so far as he shares in the spiritual life, is not a being adjacent to reality, but within it. He would never be able to attain to a reality if he did not bear it within himself and needed only to develop it. Thus ultimately he does not look inwards from outside, but outwards from within; and his limitation is not the chief thing, but the secondary.

The inner structure of our life corresponds with this conviction. It is characteristic of all spiritual life that it does not pass hither and thither between individual points, but includes and develops a multiplicity within a transcendent unity; by this the spiritual life grows within itself, and more and more acquires a self-consciousness. And it is just in this way that it evolves to a reality. Reality, therefore, here is not a fixed and completed magnitude, but is of different degrees. In the first place there is a difference in the energy which maintains a union of the manifold and a transcendence of the division: according to the nature of this energy the self appears, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; its power of changing, at one time greater, at another smaller. Again, the force of the resistance that the given condition to be appropriated offers, differs according to the amount of its positive power; and the clash of the given condition and free activity will be harder or more gentle according to this power. One man finds intolerable contradictions where to another all is plain and smooth; one believes that things are transformed in their own being where another holds that only their surface is affected: and so, that which one regards as reality may seem to another only a realm of shadows.

Mere energy, however, is too subjective to be able to obtain a genuine reality from life: for that, a transformation of life in work, an elevation to full activity, is necessary; but the preceding paragraph has shown that this transformation and elevation is of different kinds and of different degrees. The system of the formation of being promises to give to life the most fundamental organisation and the most forceful reality. For into the single elements embraced by the movement of life it is able to breathe a life of their own, to confer upon them an incomparably greater independence than in those systems in which they are regarded as lifeless objects which are acted upon, and which only set isolated forces in motion. When within a comprehensive life different centres of life meet, and in their interaction the activity of the whole wins an ever richer content and a more stable nature, genuine reality must increasingly unfold itself.

Looked at from this position, reality is not a fact but a problem and an ideal; it does not lie at the beginning but at the end of the course: it is different with different individuals, peoples, and times; each in its particular nature and work has its own reality. Thus we cannot comprehend the problem of reality from experience without conceiving reality as existing in flux: the assertion of an independent spiritual life, transcendent over all human undertaking, is a sufficient safeguard against a destructive relativism. It is one of the most troublesome appearances in the conflicts of minds that they fail to recognise the many-sidedness and fluidity of our conceptions of reality; that each takes his conception as the self-evident one and urges it upon the others. In this way originate the many unfruitful disputes concerning this world and the next, immanence and transcendence, in which the most external and superficial conception is usually presented as self-evident; while yet, according to the fundamental relation and the chief basis of life, very different conceptions arise, and as a fact, systems of thought nowhere come into more severe conflict than with regard to their conceptions of reality. Only to a mode of thought which, without further consideration, accepts the world of sense as the genuine and only reality, can philosophy and religion, for example, appear to be occupied with things implying an "other" world, and which, therefore, are incomprehensible. On the contrary, Augustine thought to attain to genuine reality and at the same time a true life only by elevation to a realm above sense, so that to him the world of sense was secondary and derivative.

To-day we are again deeply concerned with the problem of reality. Notwithstanding all the passionate agitation of forces in the incalculable extension of and the breathless haste in work, a genuine reality fails us; our life lacks the proper character of being real; and so, in the midst of all the external results of our work, our life, spiritually discerned, threatens to become destitute and unreal. An eager desire for reality exists in our time; it is often thought possible to satisfy it by the closest possible connection with sense impression and impulse, and by expelling as far as possible all elements of thought. But thought is there, and cannot be expelled; with its power to analyse, it steps continually between us and things, takes away from them the proximity they have for us, and dissolves them into mere pictures and shadows. As a fact, the problem of reality lies primarily within the spiritual life; and it cannot be solved otherwise than in that the spiritual life advances within itself from division to unity, from the movement of forces to self-determining activity, from all mere activity to a formation of being. If thus our life becomes transformed into a self-preservation, if in it we unfold and assert a spiritual being, we become certain of a reality and feel a satisfaction. Never, however, can reality come to us from without.

(b) MAN AND THE WORLD

Through our whole investigation we have expressed the conviction that man acquires a secure relation to the world only through his belonging to a spiritual life acknowledged as independent; otherwise, all entrance to the world is shut off. The growing independence of the inner life has broken down the immediate connection which dominates the naïve way of thinking: if, however, man once finds himself set in a position of independence of the world, he can hardly draw it back to himself simply of his own capacity. All appeal to subtlety and reflection seems only to widen the gulf still more. Only the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life offers a way out of such a desperate situation: if in the spiritual life the world attains to a self-consciousness, and if, on the other hand, the spiritual life is present and active within man, there is a possibility that man and the world are united; and that, at the same time, human life also becomes cosmic. But it is a question how far the possibility comes to be realised; how far the union that exists in the innermost basis can be developed and transformed within us in the work of life. Only the actual experience of life can answer this question. We must ascertain whether there are any particular developments of life which are not productions of the human, but which manifest the operation of a transcendent world; and, further, whether these developments are able to find a more detailed formation in their contact with the world around us, and to adapt themselves to the multiplicity of this world. Such a turning to the individual thing would be impossible if a complete life-form ruled within us and impressed itself on things only from the outside. For in this case this form must inevitably be uniformly effective in its whole extent; in appropriating the multiplicity it could not itself advance to greater concreteness. If such an advance is effected, there is a contact within life between the one and the other; and so the world acquires an inner connection with our activity, and the spiritual movement can take possession of the breadth of our life and with its differentiation gain a greater intuitiveness.

An immediate union of man and world is indeed opposed to the fact that the spiritual life which should unite them always exists, for us, in its particular form in human existence and that this form cannot be projected beyond man into the whole. The form of human existence constitutes an insuperable boundary; if it governed our life as a whole, then man could never overstep his narrow, particular sphere. But it is a conviction that is fundamental to our investigation that our whole life does not come under this form, but that there are tendencies in life which are operative beyond this form of existence, and attain to an independence of it. So far as these life-tendencies may be detached and developed, man may confidently take up the problem of the world, and feel related to the world around him; he can try to transform its life into his own. The particularity of his manner of presentation and perception then simply sets the limitation, that that which may be admitted to be certain and true in its fundamental content can be presented only through the medium of human peculiarity; the more detailed amplification of the representation is always only of a symbolic character. We see from this fact that there is a contradiction ever present within our life that prevents it from ever gaining an ultimate conclusion; however, it does not take from us the possibility of an inner union and a community with the whole. Indeed, the contradiction itself, and the powerful movement that it calls forth, are to the train of thought here indicated a witness to a fundamental expansion of our life.

An attempt to unite our life with the whole appears in the first place in thought, in its work of obtaining knowledge. This emergence of thought involves a transformation of life that could never be occasioned by mere man, but can be understood only as the revelation of a new stage of universal life. In thought, the intellect, otherwise bound to the mechanism of the sequence of presentations, attains an independence. It places itself in a position independent of the world, and seeks to comprehend it as a whole, to appropriate it as a whole. The primary connection with things is dissolved, to become established anew upon a higher level and with an important transformation of its nature; through the deviation a real appropriation is achieved. All this is incomparably more than a merely becoming conscious of a given world, which is an experience that could arise in some way at isolated points; thought contains a development of the world which ultimately can proceed only from the power of the world itself. How can the individual matter be elucidated if the whole remain obscure? How can the desire for enlightenment obtain such a power over man, and assert itself in him in opposition to the interests of his physical self-preservation, if a universal movement were not operative in him? Man does not elucidate the world, but the world elucidates itself within him. What is thus reached is valid not for him alone, but universally; the development of this universal movement of thought enables him to win a closer relation to the world, a life embracing the world.