Part 24

The conception of the spiritual life here developed gives rise to a particular type of life which can bring about a transformation and elevation of man from two main positions: the union of man with the spiritual life is much closer, and the spiritual life in itself is incomparably more, than is represented by the customary conception of that life. For in our conception man does not merely enter into some kind of relation with the spiritual life, but finds his own being in it, and becomes so completely united with it that it is able to determine him immediately as his own self. The spiritual life is not a particular function among others, not a part or an aspect of a more comprehensive world, but is itself a world, and, indeed, a world in which life first attains to self-consciousness and becomes a complete reality. If this world becomes the immediate possession of man himself, his life must experience a deep-reaching change, indeed a revolution of its usual condition: to trace the main tendencies of this revolution is our immediate task.

(1) _Life's Attainment of Greatness_

The placing of man in the spiritual life, becoming aware of its own independence, must make the forms of this life his own, and in this way bring about a reversal of the commonplace of every day. Life is transposed from the narrowness of its merely particular nature to infinity; what was hitherto alien and hostile to man is changed into his own possession, and is able to arouse an animating and elevating love. At the same time a deliverance from subjectivity and its web of interests and ideas is effected, to the advantage of a life-process that takes up the object into itself, and thus advances to independence and sovereign creation; a life is attained that is not spent in movement to and fro between antitheses, but unfolds a content through them. As this life attains to complete independence only because it produces a universal activity in contrast to individual activities, so participation in this life must lead man beyond division to a comprehensive unity. It is this that is sought in the idea of personality--an idea which is often quite obscure and superficial, but which can in this context be elucidated, manifest its complete significance, and prove its power of development.

As the spiritual life is a self-consciousness, so man also wins from it a life that is not exhausted by activity directed upon anything external to this life, and that does not expect its content from outside like an empty vessel, but would be itself and realise the possibilities lying within itself. So far as such a life extends man does not stand on the border of things but in the centre, in the formation and creation of the whole; he experiences the world not as something external but from within. The question of the limits of this life is no longer primary but secondary, and the answer to this question is to be expected from the experience of life, not from preliminary reflections. Since, in this, life has a content in itself and develops this content through its movement, it distinctly grows above all the play of forces with which it is often confused; if such a play of forces suffices for a lower stage it cannot suffice for further development. For the feeling of joyous excitement which accompanies the exertion of power is not sufficient in opposition to the serious perplexities that accompany all spiritual work; indeed, not even against the cares and needs that are involved in the mere preservation of existence in an advancing culture. Life then easily comes to be regarded as full of trouble and of work, and becomes a burden from which one wishes to be delivered. Life is not from the beginning a good, but it must prove itself to be such by its more detailed development. In the spiritual life this comes to pass, since it produces a reality out of itself; it does not become valuable first in its relation to the external world, but it carries a value in itself, as is clearly shown by the joy that permeates all experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful. This joy must be further increased if all the multiplicity of this experience is regarded as the unfolding of a comprehensive and persistent fundamental life.

A life of this kind is no indefinite impulse; it cannot become an independent reality without penetrating into every aspect and making the ordinary state of things everywhere inadequate, indeed intolerable. Since the independent spirituality and spiritual character that is acquired, and that which the particular thing and activity signifies in the spiritual life as a whole, everywhere constitutes the most important question, the problem of truth will be raised at each point; and in this way a sharp division will be made between the genuine and the spurious; everything that strives within us in the direction of the spirit will unite and acquire a more stable basis; everything that would satisfy man in other ways will be seen to be empty and vain. Life now acquires a deeper reality, but this must first be reached and brought to complete effect. New forms, in contrast to the ordinary representations, must also make their appearance if life is to be equal to the task of developing content and character.

Life in the individual must have roots deeper than the immediate psychical life; for psychical life cannot itself produce and make clear that which occurs in it, for this reason at least, that it involves the antithesis of individual and environment, of subject and object, beyond which spiritual creation results. The spiritual impulse that the immediate life of the soul manifests can be based only upon deeper realities and more comprehensive relations. And so a _noölogical_ treatment is to be distinguished from the psychological, not in order to displace or limit the latter, but rather to complete it; and it is a problem to show the point of transition in the immediate life of the soul. The significance of the individual life, as far as content is concerned, will depend upon whether an independent spirituality arises within it, and constitutes it a distinctive life-centre. According to the new standards a free spiritual activity does not suffice, however extended it may be, and however sustained by subjective emotion. For all such activity may be without spiritual substance, and in spite of all external results the life that is nothing but this activity may remain spiritually destitute: how shallow many individuals are whose achievements deserve and obtain the highest appreciation! The inwardness that the spiritual life requires is not simply a reflex of work in the soul--from that little is gained--but the forming of a characteristic spiritual self-consciousness that lifts us above all mere achievement, and also by giving to activity a soul first makes it complete.

We have often seen how the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life forces us to make a sharper distinction between human history and human society and all merely natural history and merely natural co-existence of men. At the same time, in that which is called history and society, a distinction between an esoteric and an exoteric kind is also required. The value of individual epochs and of history as a whole depends upon the spiritual substance that grows up in them; everything else, to whatever extent it may, with commotion and external result, assume the air of being the chief thing, is only environment or supplement. Similarly, in the case of society, the spiritual content, if it has one at all, and human fortune and conduct must become more distinctly separated. There is far less genuine history and society than is usually assumed; but this little signifies incomparably more than both would imply without the spiritual life.

Similarly, with the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in us, a new light is shed upon the individual departments of life, and new tasks are set them. They have now, primarily, not to further human well-being, to be of service in the attainment of narrowly human aims, but they are characteristic unfoldings of the spiritual life. The particular nature of these departments has its basis in that life, and they must prove their capacity by advancing it. They are concerned with man only so far as he participates in the spiritual life; and so they will not so much strengthen him in his human nature as elevate him spiritually, and remould him more and more to the form of the spiritual life. A deliverance from the confusion of that which is narrowly human with the spiritual is also necessary, and, along with this, life as a whole must be more energetically based upon the spiritual life, and the spiritual life itself must be given a more distinct form. From the position of this life, that which has been handed down to us must be evaluated and new paths must be opened up for the future. Religion could obtain no content, and all change in it would be only an advance from a more crude to a more refined anthropomorphism, if it were based solely upon human needs and aided man to attain a supposed happiness. Religion rises above such a condition of doubt only if it exhibits its roots in an independent spiritual life and is able to show its actuality and its power by aiding the development of the spiritual life. At its highest religion has always been concerned with winning a new world and a new humanity, not with the achievement of something within the old world and for the old humanity. And as we need a religion of the spiritual life, we also need a morality, an art, and, finally, an all-comprehensive spiritual culture, through which something really new may be produced and man be elevated in this being, and not simply circle round and round continually in the old paths. Everywhere the matter is one of advance and revelation; from this point of view the complexes of every day must also be seen in a new light, and in what is apparently simple and self-evident great achievements and tasks become manifest. We now, for the first time and in another sense, win again that which we thought we already possessed; indeed, by the revolution to the spiritual life, life as a whole is transformed into a task. Every individual has such a life-embracing task in the cultivation of a genuine personality and a spiritual individuality. Humanity as a whole has such a task in the building up of a kingdom of reason within its domain, in the furtherance of the movement which comes to it from the whole and summons it to co-operation.

Human life by participation in the spiritual life finds its basis in the inward and spontaneous, in the infinite and eternal. The development and the experiences of the spiritual life and its conflict with a world, which is only being won, are here the chief content of human life and unite individuals inwardly; the destinies of individuals receive their particular nature from such a common life. As this life of independent spirituality is possible only by detachment from the chaotic condition of life as we find it at its general level, the development of the spiritual life must make us clearly conscious of the spiritual destitution of the majority; and especially must it oppose the attempt on the part of such a life as that of the majority to present itself as the whole, and to make itself the standard of human endeavour. In such an attempt the trivially human inevitably preponderates, and this now, at its highest points, invests itself with ostentatious pomp and a feeling of power; now, almost as a whole, relies on the reason of the masses, which loudly and noisily proclaims that those things which according to human opinion are valuable are of all things the highest; confidently makes its judgment and its task the standard of truth; and, with arrogant presumption, demands a reverence towards itself that is due solely to the spiritual world. From of old there have been many indictments of this, but as long as a new life, based in the spiritual world in contrast with merely human life, was not attained to, these indictments did not lead to a deliverance. Under the guidance of religion humanity has evolved such a life and for thousands of years has found support in it. However, humanity has lost this life and this support, in its old form, and the loss was inevitable. If humanity will strive after a new form and at the same time transcend mere appearance, it can attain to this only on the basis of the spiritual life, that is acknowledged to be independent. Only on this basis can it enter into the conflict on the side of gods against idols, for truth against appearance and emptiness.

The new life cannot develop without elevating the individual in his spiritual nature above all environment. For, as surely as the construction of a spiritual reality within humanity needs a union of all powers, there is a spontaneous springing up of the independent spiritual life only within the soul of the individual. All social and all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society; of a church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination he must assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the whole external world. But as the individual does not derive this superiority from himself, not from a natural particularity and peculiarity in distinction from others, but only from the presence of a spiritual world, so he is securely guarded from all vain self-assurance and the arrogance of the idea of the Superman, which grotesquely distorts the great fact of the revelation of a universal life at individual points.

The desire for the presence of the infinite at the individual point may be characterised as an approximation to mysticism. Indeed, we need both a metaphysic and a mysticism; but we want both in a new form, not in the old. It seems to us preposterous to declare that necessary demands of the spiritual life are finally disposed of, because the older solution has become inadequate. If man does not in some way succeed in appropriating the spiritual life, if it is not actively present as a whole within him and animating him, then his relation to the spiritual life remains for ever an external one; and this life cannot acquire a complete spontaneity in him, can never become a genuine life of his own. But the older mysticism was the offspring of a worn-out age, which primarily reflected upon quietness and peace, and was under the influence of a philosophy that sought the truth in striving towards the most comprehensive universal, and saw in all particularity a defect (_omnis determinatio negatio_). And so, to be completely merged in the formless infinite could be regarded as the culmination of life. As the spiritual life is to us, on the contrary, an increasing activity and creation, a world of self-determining activity, so its being called to life at individual points is a rousing of life to its highest energy; in this also, a continual appropriation is necessary. Further, the movement of the spiritual life does not appear to us as an advance from particular to universal, but as one from differentiation to the living whole; from the indefiniteness of the beginnings to complete organisation and distinctive form. The inwardness that we advocate is not a feeble echo and a yearning for dissolution, but is of an active and masculine nature, and rests on ceaseless self-determining activity. One may or may not call this mysticism; in any case mysticism of such a kind cannot be charged with that which now appears to us to be defect or error in the older form.

(2) _The Increase of Movement_

As certainly as a universal life must surround us and, with efficient power, in some way be implanted within us, yet only our own activity can appropriate and amplify that life for us. As the transition to the independent spiritual life changes the problem so that no achievement in a given world will satisfy it, but only the winning of a new world, our existence must become much more active; our life must be made not only much more comprehensive but also inwardly transformed and deepened.

Naïve opinion is accustomed to presuppose a fixed sphere for our activity; it is possible for it to do this only because it confuses the spiritual and that which is less than the spiritual and leaves them undifferentiated. Since the attainment of independence by the spiritual life makes this confusion impossible, it may at the same time be recognised that the fixed relations in which we seem to be are also in reality due to our own activity. From this fact a method of treatment is justified, the introduction of which constitutes one of the greatest services of Kant. This method in his own terminology is the transcendental method. Unlike ordinary opinion, it does not regard the relation of the departments of life and all its activities as being self-evident, but it enquires into the inner possibility of this relation, that is, it indicates the conditions without which the union of the manifold could not be accomplished; it reveals the spiritual activity that exists in the whole. It reveals a far finer texture of life; it shows syntheses from the whole to the elements; it indicates clearer limits and makes us more definitely recognise what differentiates the individual departments. This is what Kant did in the case of scientific knowledge, of morality, and of the realm of the beautiful. The transcendental method itself is first indisputably justified and given a secure foundation with the acknowledgment that a world of independent spirituality emerges in man, and this through his own activity, not by a mere favour and gift of destiny. For, when this independent spiritual world is acknowledged it first becomes a matter beyond doubt that the basis, and the bonds which unite the whole, could not be given, but must proceed from our own activity. The transcendental method must therefore be applied not only to the individual branches but also to the whole, and the possibility of a spiritual life in man in general made a problem. Then from the whole the method must also be extended to the departments that are not brought into prominence by Kant; it must discuss, for example, the possibility of history in a characteristically human sense. Since our reality is thus dependent in the first place upon our own activity, life and movement acquire a wider scope and a greater value.

The movement of life also tends to be increased by the fact that in our conviction the more detailed form of the spiritual life itself must first be won by our activity, and that this detail can be acquired only little by little through attempts, experiences, convulsions; that for man the spiritual life with its actuality forms a difficult problem. What more particularly separates us from the Enlightenment is that while for it the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appeared to be immediately present and to need only an energetic working out, we extend the historical treatment not only to the representation, but also to the nature, of the spiritual life; and so the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appears to be a high ideal, to which man can only gradually approximate. The fact that endeavour is centred not upon externals but primarily upon our own being must make our activity far more significant and more intense; and this leads to a higher estimate of history as well as of a historical treatment. As hence epochs are no longer distinguished simply by their achievements, but by the nature of their spiritual life, so the life of the present must also be given its place in the moving stream, and so our innermost nature also depends on spiritual work.

If with such an increase of movement much is mutable that otherwise seemed to be as firm as a rock; and if, in particular, the foundations of life themselves also suffer change, life seems to lose all support and to fall into an unlimited relativism. Indeed, life must thus lose all stability if in the spiritual sphere movement does not involve something in opposition to change: and this as a fact it does involve. As the spiritual life cannot develop a content without presenting it as timeless, there is no great achievement in history that does not include some kind of timeless truth, and the movement of the spiritual life is not merely a flowing onward with time but also an elevation above time. In spiritual work, therefore, the achievements of the ages can be surveyed and examined; indeed, in distinguishing between past and not past the sequence of times can be transformed into a timeless present. Of course this is valid only with the presupposition of an absolute spiritual life, which is present in all the uncertainty and change of human undertaking, and does not allow it to become fixed in error. Unless an immanence of the absolute spiritual life is acknowledged, an essential characteristic of the spiritual work of the Modern Age remains absolutely unintelligible, namely, its critical character. Modern work is not completely objective, and occupation with the object does not completely exhaust that work; but activity realises its independence of the object, investigates its relation to the object, surveys that which has been achieved, and tests it by transcendent standards. Such a critique belongs especially to the fundamental nature of the Enlightenment, to the proud self-confidence of which a conscientious self-examination forms a necessary antithesis. The critical method reached its highest point in Kant, and we can never go back again upon the transformation of life that has been effected by it. But how could the critique be justified and exercise such far-reaching influence as it has done, if it were not more than a product of a subjective reflection that accompanies the object, and that has to do with the object externally? The critique could effect an inner transformation and elevation of work only because it set new forces in motion. And it did this in that it measured all human achievement by the demands of a transcendent spiritual life and out of it developed inner necessities, to which all achievement had to correspond. So the movement was not lost through the lack of an aim; and life did not flow onward with the stream of presentations, but found a support in itself; it was able to exert a powerful counteraction; it did not need to acknowledge anything that had not proved its validity before the judgment-seat of immanent reason. This emergence of the question of validity in contrast to that of actuality must inwardly raise and ennoble the movement of life; it reveals to man an active relation not only to the environment but primarily to himself; it leads to a ceaseless differentiation and examination of the quality of life.