Part 23

Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science without producing and employing a definite logical structure with fixed principles: these principles are immanent in the work of thought; they are above all the caprice and all the differences of the individuals. This logical structure cannot be carried over and applied to the world around us, as all scientific research carries it over and applies it, without implicitly presupposing an objective logic of things, a conceivability of experience: in this, man does not simply project externally and apply mechanically forms already existing in a complete and final state within him. For the multiplicity of things not only gives to those principles a particular form, in the production of which they must themselves participate, but through the relation to the world the fundamental forms are also further developed in their nature as a whole; it is only with the co-operation of both sides that the thought-structure achieves what is ultimately reached. The chief thing is that thought actually transcends the state of contemplative reflection, and advances to fully active work; that out of the movement of our thought proceed further developments, which extend to the object also; that, moreover, we come under the compulsion of inner necessities, and, possessing the highest freedom, are raised securely above all caprice. This creative thought in us, which is at the same time our own thought, constitutes a witness to a meeting of our thought with a thought that has its basis in things and in the whole. Inability to imagine such a thought should never lead to the denial of an absolute logic, with which all scientific research stands or falls. The disclosure of this relation, however, gives to our thought, in the midst of all doubt, a firm foundation, a joyful certainty, an infinite task.

Artistic creation and appreciation brings another characteristic unfolding of life; and this also demonstrates an inner relation of man to the world, and can be developed only when this relation is acknowledged. In the first place, for this creation and appreciation a deliverance of life from the turmoil of ends and interests, which at first sway our existence, is essential; artistic creation and appreciation involves a resting and a tarrying in itself. If the world were no more than this turmoil, if it did not in some way attain to self-consciousness, how could such a deliverance be brought about? If a self-conscious life were not present in man, how could a longing for an artistic moulding of life arise in him? But an arousing of an inner life in things, the revelation of a soul, is accomplished not through imparting something from without, but through a meeting together of things and human endeavour. On the other hand, the spiritual expresses itself in a visible form and in doing so moulds itself. The chief thing in this connection is not mere beauty, a preparation for idle enjoyment, but a truth, a revelation of contents, a further development of life through and above the antithesis. How could something invisible and something visible, to express the matter briefly, find a common ground and combine together in a common action if nature were not more than the mere web of relations into which the mechanistic conception of it transforms it; if spiritual life were not more than the subjective form of life that it is supposed to be, according to general opinion; if from that form of life an inner life did not arise, and beyond all subjectivity attain to a full activity, and thus to the building up of a reality within its own province? That we do not simply become aware of a movement within ourselves, and then read it into nature, but only take up and lead to its own truth that which strives upward in nature, is again testified by the inner advance of this striving through its contact with the world, and by the infinite abundance of particular contents which are revealed to us in the world and which continually aid in our development. Again, our life experiences the most important elevation in that it takes up and carries further a movement of the whole, and is liberated from the narrowness of the particular sphere, without merging into a vague infinity. To realise clearly that we belong to the world, and energetically to amplify this relation, is of the greatest significance for artistic creation and appreciation. For it is only by becoming firmly established in these relations that artistic endeavour is able to resist the tendency to degenerate into play and pleasure--a tendency which threatens it with inner destruction; as in a similar manner the work of thought must guard itself from degenerating into mere reflection. In the realms of thought and art there remains much that is alien, ever surmise and symbol; but even symbol is not to be disdained, if it serves an important truth.

A universal character is shown most clearly by the movements that co-operate towards the ethical moulding of life. Without freedom there is no such moulding; but we saw above that freedom requires a world of spontaneous life and its presence within man. However, when freedom is thought of in these relations, it is elevated above the usual conception of it and also above the usual criticism. All moral life is pretence and delusion without the arousing and fundamental idea of duty. But where is the truth more clearly expressed than in duty, that what man does by no means concerns himself alone; and that nothing can constrain him but what he acknowledges as his own will, his own being? As duty is concerned ultimately not with something isolated but with a whole, not with a performance within the old order but with the creation of a new order, so in the moral life a whole new world appears to be taken up into man's own will and being. Duty exhibits the new world particularly in relation and in opposition to the old; the new world appears in itself to be pre-eminently a kingdom of love. Love is primarily not a subjective emotion, but an expansion and a deepening of life, through life setting itself in the other, taking the other up into itself; and in this movement life itself becomes greater, more comprehensive and noble. Love is not a mere relation of given individuals, but a development and a growing in communion, an elevation and an animation of the original condition. And this movement of love has no limits; it has all infinity for its development; it extends beyond the relation to persons to the relation to things; for things also reveal their innermost being only to a disposition of love. Again, the striving after truth in science and art cannot succeed without love and an animation that proceeds from it, without inwardly becoming one with the object. How could this unity and activity in the whole be possible, how could it even become an object of desire, if the whole itself did not strive? And how could such a wealth of cultures proceed out of this movement if that which was striven towards at one time was not taken up and carried further by other times; how could the single movements tend together without the unifying and elevating power of a universal life? As a phenomenon to the individual, the movement involves a definite contradiction: wherever it has been further and more freely developed it has been directed to a kingdom of love; and this has necessarily been thought of as the soul of reality, and a severe conflict has been taken up against the world of self-assertion. Thus in the realm of morality also we find ourselves in world-movements, we create out of the whole, work towards the whole, and are borne on the flood of infinite life.

Accordingly, life-developments of various and related kinds arise: with their manifold experiences they strive to attain to a harmony and a union with one another. They can seek these only on the basis of a self-consciousness of reality; find them only through their unification in a universal life, to which each individual tendency leads. Representations of the whole are attempted at the highest points of creative activity by philosophy, religion, and art; these representations accompany, indeed govern, the work in these spheres of life through history. But the limitations of our capacity, through which we are unable to give a suitable form to necessary contents, and through which we attribute and must attribute human traits to that which should lead us beyond the human, are of particular force in this matter of forming a representation of the whole; and, indeed, this is the more so the further we remove ourselves from that which may be immediately transformed in work. These representations of the whole are, therefore, inadequate; their content of truth is clothed in a wrapping of myth, and humanity lies under the danger of taking the myth for the chief thing and thus of obscuring the truth, and this must produce an incalculable amount of error and strife. Still, it is impossible to give up all claim to these representations of the whole; for they alone make the fact of our belonging to the whole and of the presence of the whole in our life quite clear and enable it to exert a far-reaching influence. Only with their help can the degeneration of life to the intolerable insignificance of the narrowly human be resisted; only with their help can a movement from whole to whole begin.

Thus it is a matter not so much of abandoning these representations of the whole as of referring them continually to their essence; to those unfoldings of life which are experienced by us; to test them by these and to renew them from these. It was the error of the earlier position--much too indulgent to Intellectualism-that it did not sufficiently maintain the relation with these living sources, and so fell into the danger of having no definite tendency, or even of failing to recognise the relativity of the myth. If a more energetic direction of life upon its own content and experiences teaches us to preserve these connections better and to develop them more forcefully, a new type of representation of the whole is yielded in contrast to the old, and far more different from it than may appear at the first glance. We may hope that with its development the truth will be seen more clearly through the myth, and that the striving, which we cannot give up, to win a universal life may not lead us astray into a world of dreams.

(c) THE MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN MAN

The question as to in which direction the spiritual life moves in man is implied through our whole investigation, and in it receives an answer. Nevertheless, it requires to be definitely stated and treated by itself, so that the distinctive character of the movement and its influence in the moulding of life may be fully acknowledged. It has become clearly evident to us that an independent and, therefore, genuine spiritual life cannot arise out of life in its usual condition, but only in opposition to this condition. For, however little this condition of life may lack spiritual elements, they are mixed and bound up with other elements far too much to be able to bind themselves immediately into a whole, and to display an independent power. That the spiritual life must and can gain a basis independent of this condition of life is the indispensable, fundamental idea of Idealism. But such attainment of independence of the usual condition would help little if the spiritual life which is based upon itself had not a particular nature of its own, and if from this it did not oppose everything alien and partly alien to itself. The doctrines of innate ideas, of an _a priori_, and so on, which have occupied humanity for thousands of years did not intend anything different from this. The details of the conception of these were indeed often open to criticism: it was sought to exhibit individual conceptions and propositions as existing complete at the beginning, where rather movements or tendencies are in question, which can find their realisation only within the work of life. Again, the _a priori_ was limited to the intellectual sphere, whereas it is indispensable to all spiritual activity; for example, how can morality, rising above merely natural preservation and rejecting all mere utility, as it does, be conceived without such an _a priori_? To deny to spiritual life an original nature and power--an _a priori_ in this more comprehensive sense--means nothing else than to eliminate that life as an independent factor, and to reduce it to the position of a secondary product. For without an original nature the spiritual life would be like soft wax that may be shaped in one form or another to suit our own pleasure: then the spiritual life could not possibly follow its own aims, could not possibly attain to an independence in the inner life, in which we recognised the characteristic nature of the inner life. As certain as it is that there is a spiritual life at all, so certainly does it bring certain fundamental tendencies and movements with it; as surely as it develops in particular directions--and that it does this we have seen--so surely is this _a priori_ also differentiated. To trace this fundamental state of spiritual activity in all its relations and multiplicity is an especially important task of philosophic research.

The revelation of such an original fundamental activity of the spirit must induce us to undertake to form our whole world from this activity, and to produce from it or to transform into it that which exists over against activity as an independent realm of experience. This has been attempted for thousands of years with the summoning of an enormous amount of spiritual power and the arousing of a proud self-consciousness. But failure was inevitable because it was not recognised that the development of the spiritual life in man is conditioned. However certain it may be that original spiritual movements must be active within us, they are not so with organised content and overwhelming power from the beginning, but they acquire content and power only through the process of life itself, only in grappling with the oppositions of experience and in the appropriation of the tasks and stimuli which experience brings to them. The incompleteness and the mutability of what was accepted earlier as a fixed and unchangeable racial possession of the spiritual life is to-day quite clearly perceived. What great changes morality, for example, has undergone in the course of the ages; how toilsomely has much been won which later ages have considered self-evident! To be sure, morality remains, even through all such changes, an original spiritual phenomenon, which can never be derived from an external source, but which could emerge and establish itself only as an inner necessity of the spiritual life in opposition to the realm of mere utility. But the actuality of this original phenomenon gives rise to a difficult problem, for the solution of which a closer contact with the environment, a fundamental arrangement with experience, is necessary. And so the problem is traced to a more ultimate source, and, though this makes the matter less simple, it gives a higher significance to our work and to the movement of history.

Even the fundamental forms of thought which are often accepted as of everything the most fixed share in this gradual amplification. Man, so far as he participates in spiritual impulse, thinks, of course, in conceptions; he gives to appearances fixed points of support by the establishing of things, and relates events causally. But all this is full of problems and is comprehended only in its upward endeavour; it raises more problems than it solves; and around the solution of these the whole work of science moves. What different things the "idea" meant to Plato and to Kant, and to ancient and to modern thought generally: how every thinker of moment has given a particular conception of substance and of causality; how whole epochs have exhibited their particular nature in the treatment of these problems!

For the sake of its own perfection, therefore, the spiritual life must continually turn back to the realm of experience, from which, at first, it tore itself free. Attempts to evolve the whole life from that _a priori_ have always given as a result something of a bloodless nature, abstract in the highest degree, a mere web of formulæ, in so far as experience, which had been relegated to the background, has not indirectly asserted its right again, and infused the formulæ with life. Accordingly, our life does not spend itself in one direction, but bears within it the counter-tendencies of a tearing oneself free from the world of sense and a returning back to it, of a detachment from it and an appropriation of it to oneself. But, in this, independent life and bound life do not become combined; how could that be the case without the loss of all inner unity? A basis is necessary; and it is furnished only by self-determining activity. Experience acquires a spiritual content and value only so far as it is based upon this activity, and is taken up into a spiritual movement. Experience does not share something with the spiritual life, but, through stimulation and opposition, it forces that life to further development within itself. The state in which the world of sense is first found undergoes an inner elevation in that appropriation: sense presentation, for example, is to scientific work something quite different from what it is to naïve perception; even if it obstinately withstands a complete resolution into magnitudes of pure thought, it takes up more and more thought elements; it enters into conceptual relations; it answers questions which the work of thought sets. To the whole sphere of sense science gives the background of a world of thought, and transforms mere sense into a spatially bound spirituality.

The same thing is valid with regard to the things of value in life; in these, also, sense and spirit are not simply combined; but something of sense becomes a spiritual good only so far as it serves the spiritual life in some way; it cannot do this, however, without itself undergoing a transformation. This is to be seen nowhere more clearly than in economics. Money and estate had at all times a value for self-preservation and enjoyment, but in the doctrine of economics and political economy they could obtain acknowledgment only after a power to advance the spiritual life had been recognised in them. As culture in the ancient world had not yet reached this point of view, it branded all endeavour after material wealth as inferior, and as far as possible checked such endeavour. Only since the Modern Age has recognised in money and estate an indispensable means of gaining control over the surrounding world and of increasing human power have they secured a place within the spiritual life, and as a result of this have become more highly estimated. At the same time, however, they have been changed inwardly in the process, since that which they achieve, not towards ostentatious display and enjoyment, but towards the increase of human power over things has become the chief matter.

As in this way the content and the value of that which is offered by the world of sense shows its dependence upon the condition of the spiritual life, so in science also a similar relation between experience and the spiritual life is found. Science appeals to experience with particular zeal, more especially after it has first accomplished far-reaching changes in its own thought constructions; only then does experience give anything new to knowledge and exhibit a greater depth. Experience can answer only in the measure in which it is questioned; the question, however, varies according to the stage of development of the spiritual life.

Such a view fully appreciates the significance of life-work, and must strive energetically to gain its acknowledgment. This work is not a carrying out of a complete scheme in a given condition of things, an application of firmly rooted principles to particular cases, but a self-realisation and self-perfecting of the spiritual life which builds up a self-conscious reality. In this our life is not divided between two different realms, but, in a comprehensive spiritual world, different stages of reality meet together, which must be brought into relation and developed. To be sure, the world of sense retains a certain independence; it resists a complete transformation into spiritual magnitudes, and our life, therefore, retains a certain restriction and impenetrability. But the self-consciousness of the spirit becomes more and more the chief basis and sphere of life: this self-consciousness continually takes up more into itself; it makes the world that was to us at first primary, indeed the only world, more and more secondary and subordinate.

This increasing spiritualisation of human life never becomes a sure possession that calls for no toil; ever anew it demands our attention and activity; it has continually to be won anew as a whole. As soon as the tension slackens, the world of experience with its appeal to sense preponderates, and it soon appears to be man's sole world, one which cannot tolerate anything beyond itself. For the spiritualisation of human life, a longing rooted in the whole being is primarily necessary; for with the keen feeling of the vanity of the world of sense experience, this leads to the removal of the centre of life into the invisible world of self-determining activity. Further, a clear presentation of this invisible world is needed; and in this the help of the visible is not to be dispensed with. For its own establishment the realm of the invisible must borrow means of expression from the visible, which now governs human presentation; must transform and refine them for its aims; prepare out of them an impressive presentation of the whole. Along with the energy of turning to the spiritual life a creative imagination is required, through which the invisible may become equal to holding its own against the visible.

The help of such imagination is indispensable for religion, in order that the supernatural world advocated by it may gain an effective presence in the province of humanity. And so with bold upward flights of imagination the heroes of religion have projected a new condition of reality as a whole, a kingdom of justice or of love, and have judged human existence by the standard of this new condition. Similarly, philosophy did not become an independent world of thought without the help of imagination; and of how indispensable it is to art we need not speak at all. Again, work in political, social, educational matters, at least as far as radical renewals are concerned, has really been taken up and carried on, and has won a triumphant power, only where the state striven for has been presented as something visible and clearly present; this alone has united the multiplicity, and has led with compelling force beyond the extant situation as though that were something intolerable. Humanity as a whole must be present in an ideal condition to our minds for us to be aroused sufficiently from our indolence.

Our life, therefore, contains movements which tend in opposite directions: there are a pressing forward and a turning backward, a detachment from experience and a taking up again of experience; and so we may well speak of an action and reaction within its movement. But the antitheses that arise aid in advancement only so long as they are encompassed by a whole of activity. In that the course of history increases far more than it diminishes the antitheses, the dangers grow more and more, the possibilities and the tasks of human existence, however, also grow.

(d) THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW TYPE OF LIFE