Part 29

If, with this achievement, modern culture may have the feeling of being the fulfilment of the strivings of the ages, yet its own course has produced oppositions, and engendered perplexities that culminate in a dangerous crisis. Culture, as it was represented at the height of German spiritual life, was directed chiefly towards the inner development of man; it was called with especial satisfaction "spiritual culture." Its adherents were concerned not so much with finding a better relation to the environment as with growing in the realm of their own soul, and with employing whatever the experience of life brought in the development of a self-conscious personality, of pure inwardness. Only in this way did they seem to advance from the previous state of limitation to the complete breadth of existence, and the exercise of all their powers. A joy in life, a firm confidence in the rationality of reality gave this inner culture a soul; and a bold flight bore it far above the narrowness and heaviness of daily life; æsthetic literary creation became the chief sphere of its work, and the chief means for the development and self-perfecting of personality.

Inner culture has by no means vanished from our life; effects of many kinds are felt from it in the present. But it has been forced to resign its supremacy in favour of a realistic culture, which makes the relation to the environment the chief matter, and removes the centre of life to the intellectual and practical control of this environment. In realistic culture the inner development of work, of work in the direction of natural science and technical art, as well as in politics and social endeavour, is less occupied with the acquiring of a powerful individuality than with the establishment of an agreeable condition of society as a whole. Since activity is related more and more closely with things, and receives laws and directions from them, culture is freed from dependence upon man and his subjectivity. Culture is an impersonal power in contrast with man; it does not lead ultimately to a good to him so much as make him simply a means and an instrument of its progressive movement. An immeasurable structure of life, a ceaseless self-assertion and self-advancement, an arousing and an exertion of all powers that can bring man into relation with the environment, are manifest in this culture: but at the same time there is an increasing transformation of our life into a mere life of relation and mediation, a deprivation and a vanishing of self-consciousness. In the midst of the magnificent triumphs in external matters there is an increasingly perceptible contrast between an astonishing development of the technical, and a pitiful neglect of the personal side of life: in regard to the former we surpass all other times, as much as we fall below most in regard to the latter. Along with a ceaseless increase of technical capacity, there is a rapid degeneration of personal life, a pauperising of the soul. Where the matter is one of a technical nature there is a magnificent condition, definite progress in all departments, work conscious of its aim; but there is a painful groping and helpless hesitation, a stagnation of production, an emptiness that is only just hidden by a veneer of academic education, where powerful personalities and impressive individualities are required.

For a time we were carried away entirely by the tendency to place our attention solely upon the environment, and we seemed to be satisfied absolutely by it. But the inner life that has been evolved within human experience by the work of thousands of years, and through severe convulsions, prevents this condition being accepted as a conclusion; that which has once become an independent centre cannot possibly permit itself to be degraded to the position of a mere means and an instrument. It is impossible to give up all claim to self-conscious and self-determining life and a satisfaction of this life. Our spiritual nature compels us to ask questions and to make claims; if they are not satisfied, then, notwithstanding all the wealth of experiences, the feeling of poverty spreads and we seek for aids, and, first, we turn back to that inner culture from which we had turned away. But we find the ways shut off; a direct return is impossible. This culture had characteristic principles and presuppositions; and the course of modern life itself has, if not overthrown them, involved them in serious doubt. We have become clearly conscious of the limitations which this inner culture had without itself feeling them; movements which it united have now separated, and have become hostile. Inner culture rested on a firm faith in the power of reason in reality, and this faith begot a joyful confidence. For it the world was sustained and determined by inner forces: we feel the rigid actuality of occurrences, the indifference of the machinery of the world towards the aims of the spirit, and the contradictions of existence. In the former case the greatness of man was the predominant faith; and this greatness was sought in his freedom: we, however, feel much more our bondage to obscure powers and at the same time our insignificance. In the former again, it aroused no opposition to call only a chosen part of humanity, the creative, to full and complete life, and to assign a most meagre portion to the majority: we cannot possibly renounce the concern for all mankind and for the welfare of every individual. In the former, morality and art were harmoniously united in the ideal of life; in our time they have separated and are at deadly enmity with one another. Everywhere life has given rise to more problems, more inconsistencies, more obscurities; thus, with all its external proximity, the joyfully secure ideal of life of our classical writers is inwardly removed far from us; without insincerity we cannot proclaim it to be our profession of faith. In particular the resort to Goethe, as to one with a secure standard of life, is in general no more than an expression of perplexity, no more than a flight from a clear decision of our own: the universality and the flexibility of his spirit permit a point of contact with him to be found by those whose views directly contradict those of one another, and allows each to abstract, and make a profession of faith of that which is preferable and pleasing to himself.

Thus to-day we are in a state of uncertainty and indefiniteness in reference to the problem of culture. Since the new does not suffice, and the old cannot be taken up again, we are in doubt with regard to the whole conception of culture; we know neither what we have of it nor what it demands from us. We cannot give up our claim to being something more than nature, without sinking again to the level of the mere animal; but in what this "more" consists and how it is at all possible to surpass nature is to us completely obscure. A developed historical consciousness and the free unfolding of the powers of the present permit many things to rush in upon us; and we are involved in much inconsistency. We have seen diverse systems of life arise and attract man to themselves; their conflict relegates to the background all that is common to them, produces the greatest uncertainty, and gives rise to the inclination, in order to avoid all perplexities, to regard life as being made up entirely of that which occurs within sense experience; and to acquire aims from this experience, as well as to derive powers from it. But in this we fall into the danger of idealising sense experience falsely, and of expecting achievements from movements within it which are possible only if these movements flow from deeper sources. We flee to morality to become free from all religion and metaphysics; as though morality, elevating man, as it does, above simply physical preservation and the compulsion of mere instinct, is not itself a metaphysic, and as though it does not of necessity require the existence of an order superior to nature. Then we flee to the subject with its unrestrained inwardness and contrast this inwardness with all the restricting relations of life; as though the subject had any content and any value without an independent inner world, the recognition of which involves a complete revolution of the representation of reality; as then according to the witness of history also humanity has reached such an inner world only through wearisome toil and forceful resolutions. The whole course of Antiquity had been leading up to this inner world, but the collision of Antiquity at the time of its decay, with Christianity which was then arising, first developed it clearly. Such an inner world must ever be justified anew; and for this our own activity and conviction are necessary. If we surrender its basis, it becomes dead capital which, little by little, is inevitably spent, and then the appeal to the subject that has lost its spiritual content is but a mere semblance of help, which deceives us concerning the seriousness of the situation with sweet-sounding words like "personality," "individuality," and so forth. If the spiritual life is not strengthened and does not energetically counteract this tendency, then, notwithstanding all external progress, we must inwardly sink lower and lower.

It is obvious that there is already such a counteraction in existence; otherwise, how could spiritual destitution and the insignificance of the merely human be so keenly felt in the present; how could so ardent a desire for an inner elevation spread amongst men as we experience it around us? There is no lack of attempts and endeavours after new aims and new ways. But much is still lacking for these attempts to be equal to satisfy the requirements of the matter. We place far too much hope in external reforms, instead of primarily strengthening the inner basis of life; we fix our attention far too much upon individual tasks instead of seizing the whole; we have far too much faith that we can rise to a new life out of this chaotic condition, instead of insisting upon an attainment of independence in relation to this condition.

How could independence be attained except by an energetic reflection of man upon himself, upon his fundamental relation to reality, upon the life dwelling in him, in short, except by self-consciousness? It is not the first time that, in the course of the ages, to satisfy such a demand has become the most urgent of all tasks. The work of history has not unshakable foundations from the beginning; but the spiritual nature of epochs always involves the activity and the decisions of man; it involves, therefore, presuppositions that for a long period may be accepted as established truths, and which, yet, finally become problematic. At the beginning of the Modern Age, especially in the transition to the Enlightenment, apparently established truths became problematic in this way: the present is in a similar situation. The threads that we have hitherto followed break; all external help is rejected, as is also the authority of history; nothing else remains to us than our own capacity, and the hope to find in it a new support and the basis for a new construction. Only by our own power, and after a break with the immediate present, shall we be able to strive after a new idea of culture which corresponds to the historical position of spiritual evolution, and which can take up into itself the experiences of humanity. Such times of error, of vacillation, of searching, of necessary renewal, are disagreeable and severe, but it depends only on the summoning of spiritual power whether they become great and fruitful. For, with regard to these central questions the times do not make men, but men make the times, not, of course, in accordance with their own preferences, but by seizing and realising the necessities that exist in the spiritual condition of the time.

Now, as scarcely anything else in life is more called upon to co-operate in the renewing of culture than philosophy, so the system here concisely presented is placed in the service of this task; it attempts a construction chiefly by the union of three demands and points of attack: it requires a more energetic development and a complete unification of the life-process; it requires the acknowledgment and development of a spiritual life of independent nature present to us; and lastly, it requires that this life shall be understood and treated as the world's consciousness of itself and thus as the only reality. All these demands must tend towards an essential alteration of the existent state of culture; they make much inadequate that previously sufficed; but they also reveal an abundance of new prospects and the possibility of a thorough inner elevation.

It is a leading idea of our whole investigation that only from the life-process itself are we able to orientate ourselves in relation to ourselves and the world; and this idea is in agreement with the present mode of thought in science. But to apply to our own time that which is already acknowledged in general ideas is by no means simple. To give the life-process such a position in our thought and to estimate it so highly is possible only when life is distinctly distinguished from the states of the mere subject, from the mere reflex of the environment in the individual. This detachment cannot be accomplished unless we comprehend as a whole that which exists in individual manifestations of life; distinguish different levels in life, indicate relations and movements within them, and thus advance to new experiences of life; reveal a union of fact, a distinctive synthesis in life, which from a transcendent unity shapes the multiplicity that it contains. But if in general it is difficult to free ourselves so much from the condition of life in which we find ourselves, to be able to illuminate this condition in this way, and to throw its inner framework into relief; for us there is also to be added the immeasurable expansion that directs the interests and the vision to the outside, and is accustomed to treat, as a mere supplement, a mere means and instrument, the life that in reality sustains all infinity. A culture that has made the attainment of results the chief thing has been detrimental to the spiritual, which no longer trusts itself to encompass these achievements and to change them in a development of life, to take up the conflict for dominion over reality. It willingly flees to the passivity of the subject, where sooner or later it expires in complete destitution.

If inwardness is so feeble and external relations so overwhelm us, life necessarily receives its content from outside, and seems to be determined essentially by that which happens around us. It is this that lends so much power to-day to a superficial enlightenment that centres in natural science, and expects life to be advanced without limit, and man to be revived and ennobled, simply by reaching a more valid representation of the environment. We do not ask here how far the representations proposed overcome the difficulties of the older representations, or whether new and more difficult problems do not arise from the solutions offered; but we do ask whether life can obtain its aim and content from outside, and whether it can be treated simply as an addition to nature without degenerating inwardly, and losing all inner motive. We ask what the theories based chiefly on externals make of man, and what they achieve for his soul. We summon him to an examination, to see whether the picture that is held up to him by these theories agrees with what he longs for, and, by a compelling necessity of his being, must long for.

To-day it will also be evident that the final decision does not rest with the intellect, but with life as a whole. For, little as intellectual achievement is absent from truth, the masses--and to the masses belong those at the average level of all classes, higher as well as lower--will always hold fast to the external impression. The advance beyond this impression and the appreciation of the inner conditions of knowledge will always remain a concern of the minority. There is, however, a point where the problem becomes real to each individual, and where each can offer his opinion: this is in reference to the question of the happiness and the content of life. The more this question is felt, the greater will be the thirst for a substantial truth in contrast with the shadows of the Enlightenment; the more will the question concerning the nature of life as a whole receive its due consideration, and the perception of things externally will give place to a comprehension of their inner reality. Only with such a revolution can our life and we ourselves be transformed from a state of spiritual destitution to one of independent energy; only thus can we discover the wealth that is within us; only thus can culture, from being an occupation with things, become a preservation and an unfolding of our own selves; only thus can we strive for more simplicity in contrast to the complexity that would otherwise be our condition; and only thus can we wrest from what would otherwise be chaos, fundamentals and tendencies. Our demand, therefore, that the starting-point should be the life-process itself is in harmony with the innermost longing of the time--even if this longing is often indefinite--after a deepening of life and an attainment of its independence.

If the turning to the life-process puts the question, the assertion of an independent spiritual life gives the answer to it: however strange this assertion may seem in relation to superficial temporal experience, it meets a deep longing. For we are completely satiated with narrowly human culture; the movements and experiences of the Modern Age, and in particular of the present, make us so clearly conscious of all that is trivial, simply apparent, disagreeable, feeble, shallow, empty, and futile in human conduct, that all hope of finding satisfaction in this conduct, and of advancing life essentially by its means and powers, must be abandoned. We have, therefore, to face the following alternative: either absolute doubt and the cessation of all effort, or the acknowledgment of a "more" in man; there is no third possibility. But in the context of our investigation no discussion is required to show that this "more" cannot consist in an individual's elevation of himself above others; that it cannot consist in a so-called Superman--a view that only involves us more in the narrowly human. Either the "more" sought for is only imaginary, a covering of tinsel with which we conceal our nakedness, or a world transcending the merely human, a new stage of reality, reveals itself to man, which can become his own life. As it is this transcendent world alone that engenders a universal life within us and opposes the insignificantly human; so also from this alone, and as its manifestation, can culture become independent in relation to man. Only when it is understood in this way can culture include aims and tasks that do not strengthen man in his narrowness, but free him from it, and make him spiritually greater.

Not only the conception but the whole nature of that which is called culture is an unstable hybrid. It should elevate man above nature, and give to his life a characteristic spiritual content; but at the same time we have a dread of a detachment from the experience of sense and of the construction of an independent world, because these must lead to that which, of all things, is the cause of most alarm, to a change of a metaphysical character, to a transformation of existence. In truth, in the work of humanity two tendencies are usually undistinguished, which, if life is to continue to advance, need to be distinctly separated: a spiritual culture and a merely human culture. The former reveals new contents and aims; with it a new world emerges within man, and transforms his life from its basis: the latter uses that which a higher organisation has given us, solely as a means for the advancement of our natural and social existence. Merely human culture turns the spiritual into a mere means to increase narrowly human happiness, whereas the spiritual by its very nature makes us feel the whole of this happiness to be too insignificant, indeed intolerable. The difference of a merely human and a spiritual culture extends from the fundamental disposition to all the separate departments of life. Religion, for example, is to the former a means by which the individual may make himself as comfortable and as secure as possible in an existent world, and conduct his own insignificant _ego_ through all dangers; to the latter, it signifies a radical break with that world and the gain of a new life, in which care for that _ego_, or even the state of society, is relegated completely into the background. To the one, morality is simply a means in the organisation of human social life, in the accommodation of the individual to his environment; to the other, it discloses a new fundamental relation to reality, and in the transformation of existence in self-determining activity allows life to win an inner union with the infinite and its self-consciousness. On the one hand, art, science, the life of the state, education, and so forth are the idols of utility, of expediency, the adornments of a given existence; on the other, they are the gods of truth, of inner independence, of world-renewing spontaneity. That there should be an end to the confusion of the worship of idols and of gods; that spiritual culture should be distinguished from merely human culture; that the spiritual content of the individual departments of life should be energetically developed, and the spiritual poverty of merely human culture made clear--all this is the urgent demand of the present, without the fulfilment of which its state of confusion cannot be overcome. Yet spiritual culture can never become independent unless the spiritual world is independent. Only the presence of this spiritual world makes it possible for culture, at the level at which it is generally found, to be tested by a transcendent standard to see how much spiritual substance, how much content and value, it contains. This test will prove that we possess far less spirituality than we think; and that the most of what is called culture is no more than the semblance of culture, no more than imagination and presumption. But at the same time we recognise and gain in the little spirituality that remains to us incomparably more; we win the presence of a new world, and by this, depth of life and the possibility of an inner renewal. Our life would be indescribably shallow if it were to pass on one level and were to be exhausted in the experiences at that level. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life saves us from this shallowness, in that it shows an inner gradation within our own province and sets life as a whole a task.