Part 35

But the more the idea of nationality has been brought from its high place in the realm of thought to the domain of human circumstance, the more has it been debased and the more dangers has it produced. If previously the cultivation of an ideal type of life was most prominent, and if the nations could thus permit one another to follow their own courses peacefully, this has become less and less the case in face of the desire and effort for power and expansion in the visible world; and owing to the narrowness of physical space occupied by the nations, the different strivings have clashed together more and more severely. If this tendency continues without the counteraction of an inner task common to humanity as a whole, and of unifying and elevating ideas, it is hardly possible to avoid mutual hostility, a degeneration into obstinacy and injustice. The idea of nationality may therefore become a danger to the ethical character of life. This is the case if, by milder or by severer means, one nation tries to force its own character and speech upon another. The mode of thought based on the old _cujus regio ejus natio_ is in no way better than that based on the old _cujus regio ejus religio_, which we are now accustomed to regard with contempt as a piece of barbarism. The desire for external power at the same time tends to lessen the attention to the inner development and unification of nationality, without which ultimately little progress can be made in the development of power. It is through a common national character, with its unification of the feelings and efforts of the individuals, that a people is first elevated into a genuine nation; it is a character such as this that gives to a people a power of influencing humanity as a whole; it is a character such as this that gives to the individuals the consciousness of being "members one of another," and with this a stability and a joy in life and activity. Such a national character necessitates certain natural conditions, that are like the veins in marble which prescribe a certain direction to the work of the artist. But these conditions must first be organised and by the complete elevation of their nature spiritually unified; and this cannot be achieved otherwise than through our own work, which through common events and experiences follows its ideal. So far, therefore, national character is not a gift of nature but a task which presents itself distinctively to each people according to its nature and conditions. In this matter a people must always in the first place realise a unity in its own nature.

In the fulfilment of this task hardly any other people has had to contend with keener opposition, both external and internal, than the Germans. Our physical environment does not direct us so definitely into distinctive paths as is the case with other peoples. But our inner nature contains, before all else, harsh antitheses. Our strength lies chiefly in arousing to life depths of the soul otherwise undreamt of. Thus in music and in poetry we have been able to surpass all other peoples; again, we have been able to give to religion a wonderful inwardness, and in education to evolve the leading ideas. At the same time, however, we are driven to the physical world to take possession of and to shape things; we are not the Hindus of Europe, as other people indeed previously called us. We came into history by achievements in war, and the desire for conflict and victory has been maintained through all the phases of our varied history. By the continued diligence of our citizens in work we have subordinated the world around us to our aims; our capacity for organisation has been most marked, as the present state of industry and trade shows. However, not only have these movements towards inwardness, and towards the world, a strong tendency to oppose one another, but also, in contrast with these magnificent gifts, there are many defects and tendencies that make the development of a powerful and unified life exceedingly difficult. We show a want of form and taste, a heaviness and formality, a tendency to occupation with detail and, in general, with what is petty in life, and, as a result of this, an uncultured "Philistinism" in all spheres of society, and along with this the inclination on the part of individuals to insist on the correctness of their positions, and thus to cause division; finally--and this is the worst of all--much envy and jealousy. None of these features can be denied. There is an infinite amount which must be altered and overcome amongst us if we are to become what we are capable of becoming, and if we are to reach the highest in our nature. The limitations that have been brought about by our history, which on the whole has not been a happy one, constitute an important determining factor in this matter. The more problems we bear within us, the more possibilities of genuine creation that exist within us, and the more we may be to humanity in the future, the more painful is it if attention and activity are diverted from the chief task, and if an externalising of the idea of nationality allows us to consider ourselves great rather than lead us to strive for true greatness. The people that has produced Luther and Bach, Kant and Goethe, cannot be devoid of true greatness, if it only remains faithful to its own nature, and if it concentrates its power and treats the chief thing really as such.

(e) THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The problems and antitheses that are to be found in the life of the present penetrate deeply into the life of the individual, and often make their appearance within him with a particular power. The antithesis that exists between the conceptions of the world and the demands of life is especially harsh. The tendency of the age is to form a conception of the world which reduces the status of the individual in the greatest degree: from the point of view of nature and of society, he seems to be no more than a fleeting appearance, a matter of indifference, and to show no independence, and never to be able to take part with spontaneous activity in the course of events. On the other hand, the contemporary form of life demands the greatest independence and freedom of the individual. We see in him the chief bearer of life, and we expect salvation from the severe perplexities of the time, primarily from his strengthening. This state of inconsistency cannot be tolerated for long; either the degradation of the individual, that is found in the conceptions of the world, must be applied to life, and lead it to a resigned submission to an impenetrable world-process, or the positive estimate of the individual which governs conduct must be acknowledged in the conviction concerning reality as a whole: only a weakness of disposition and a feebleness of thought can divide our existence between the one conviction and the other.

The course which our investigation has taken cannot leave any possible doubt as to the direction which our conviction points out to us in this matter: however much we also demand an energetic development of the individual, that the stagnation of the age may be overcome, at the same time we insist upon a necessary condition of this, on his inner strengthening by an inner world present to him, on his elevation by a spirituality transcending nature. Only if he thus acquires an inner relation to infinity, and becomes an independent centre of life, can he satisfy the demands that are generally made upon him, and, remarkably enough, especially by those who theoretically deny the inner world as a whole, and hail a most shallow Naturalism as a deliverance.

Of course that inner elevation of the individual by no means lifts him gently and simply out of all the confusion that the experience of our existence shows; at the first glance it may even seem to make the confusion greater. For, if each individual can become a co-operator in the building up of a new world, and if his activity thereby acquires a value for the whole, then the complete indifference with which, according to our human impression, the individual is treated by the course of the physical world, the inflexibility and injustice that he often experiences in this world, the defect of love and justice in this world, in which the bad so often obtain the victory and the good are led to destruction, are all the greater mystery. The more the development of the spiritual life widens the field of vision; the more it leads us beyond a lifeless resignation to the question of the rationality of events and compels us to compare the destiny of one man with that of another, the deeper must that feeling of mystery become. All attempts at a theodicy founder on this difficulty; we must inevitably submit to the view that with regard to this problem all is obscure to the eyes of man. There is, however, no need on this account to doubt and to regard our life as hopeless; our investigation also has shown this. For, in contrast with the obscurity of the world around us, we are able to set the fact of the emergence of a new world within us. Great things take place within us; not only does a new world appear, but we are called by an inner necessity of our own being to co-operate in its development, and this co-operation is not limited to individual activities, but involves our being as a whole. For it was just in this that we were able to recognise the development of being as the essence of the spiritual life--that the chief movement of our life is to win a genuine being, and that in the development of personality and spiritual individuality such a being is in question. We saw clearly enough that we are not personalities and individuals from the beginning; but that nature gives us only the possibility of becoming this. To realise this possibility our own activity is necessary; and this activity is not a sudden resolution, but requires a revolution of our being and the development of a new nature; and this can only be achieved by a faithful and zealous life-work, and even then only approximately. Thus life as a whole is a task which includes all multiplicity within it, the task of winning our own being completely, and just in this way to increase the kingdom of the spirit at our point.

This task cannot be completely recognised and adopted without making a great divergence from the aim, harsh oppositions and difficult conflicts, manifest in the inner recesses of the soul. If our life, therefore, appears to be in the highest degree incomplete, a mere beginning, then this increase of the task demonstrates more than anything else that, in this matter, we are concerned not with phantoms and imaginations, but with realities: so here, notwithstanding all our incompleteness, we can obtain the certainty of a spiritual existence, and even become strengthened by the direct resistance of the external world, because that world is henceforth reduced to the secondary position. Thus, as we saw, the question upon which minds separate into irreconcilable opposition is whether they acknowledge in the inwardness of being itself not merely individual problems but a universal task; if this is the case, the seriousness of the task will give to them an unshakable stability of possession and a security superior to all attacks; if it is not the case, the spiritual world is an unintelligible paradox, because the want of an independent inner life means that there is no basis for the development of an organ for the comprehension of a world of inwardness. In this matter there is no possibility of a direct agreement; only the proof of the spirit and of power can decide.

But where the life of the individual acquires a genuine being and a connection with the realm of self-consciousness, then, notwithstanding all that is fleeting and insubstantial, the individual cannot regard himself as a transitory appearance in the whole, even in the ultimate basis of his being. Where, in contrast with all the meaninglessness of mere nature and all the pretence of mere society, a movement towards inner unity and substantial being emerges, the individual will be elevated into a time-transcendent order, and must necessarily acquire some position within it. The whole movement towards spirituality in the human sphere would be vain, and all distinctively human life would be a meaningless contradiction, if the individuals in whom alone the spiritual life breaks forth spontaneously were included solely and entirely in the stream of the process of nature. If the spiritual life has once revealed itself to us, so far as to begin an independent and distinctive being within us, then this being will assert itself in some way. This does not imply agreement with the usual belief in immortality, which would preserve man just as he is through all eternity, and thus condemn him to the torture of rigid continuance in the same form; a state that would, indeed, be as unbearable as the pain of the traditional hell. As the world as a whole is in the highest degree mysterious to us, so our future is veiled in the deepest obscurity. But, if with the essence of our being we are elevated into a universal spiritual life, and if in the innermost basis of our life we participate in an eternal order, then the time-transcendence of this life assures to us also some kind of time-transcendence in our being.

_So löst sich jene grosse Frage Nach unserm zweiten Vaterland, Denn das Beständige der ird'schen Tage Verbürgt uns ewigen Bestand._

GOETHE

CONCLUSION

In conclusion a few words will suffice. The last section showed that the present sets great problems and reveals possibilities in every department of life; but that we men are very far from being equal to cope with these problems. We are limited especially by the fact that we are incapable of elevating ourselves inwardly above the present; that we do not take possession of it sufficiently as a whole, and find an inner independence in relation to it; and that therefore we do not enter with the necessary vigour into the conflict against the trivial and the poor-spirited, the decadent and the sceptical that the present contains. To point out the way to attain such independence appeared to us to be the chief task of philosophy in the present. In the service of this task, which cannot be achieved without the manifestation of a new actuality, without a fundamental deepening of our reality, we have made our investigation, which contains a distinctive conception of the spiritual life. In that everywhere we have pressed back from the results to the experience, and from the wealth of achievement to the generating basis, we have seen nature, history, culture, and human nature as a whole in a new light. We have hoped, by widening and strengthening life itself from within, to supply a substitute for the external supports that life has lost. How far we have succeeded in our endeavour is another question; we shall be satisfied even if our work only contributes to bring the present to a clearer consciousness of the state of spiritual crisis in which it exists and concerning the seriousness of which it deceives itself in a thousand ways. There is an enormous amount of vigorous activity and efficient work, of honest endeavour and serious disposition, in our time, and the tendency to make life more spiritual is also evident. But the movement is still far from attaining the depth which is necessary to the chief question of our spiritual existence; thus the conflict, instead of being between whole and whole, is divided; that which is significant and valuable in the endeavour of the time is in danger of becoming problematic, and of producing the opposite of what it purposes, because it does not fit itself into a universal life, and in this realise its limitations and at the same time its right. A more energetic concentration of life in itself is therefore the first condition of transcending the chaos of the life of the present and of preventing spiritual degeneration in the midst of too intense an occupation with externals. As for the rest, we may say with Plotinus: "The doctrine serves to point the way and guide the traveller; the vision, however, is for him who will see it."

INDEX

Abstractions; their power in modern life, 362 ff.

Activism; profession of faith in, 255 ff.; how it differs from a system of mere force, 255 ff.; its ethical character, 256; how it differs from Voluntarism and Pragmatism, 256 ff.

Æsthetic Individualism, 61 ff.

Æstheticism; its antithesis to Activism, 258 ff.

Antiquity; its distinctive synthesis of life, 208 ff.

_A priori_; its validity and its limitations, 234

Archimedean point in the spiritual life; its impossibility, 94 ff., 154

Art and literature, condition and tasks in the present, 354 ff.

Ascetic organisation of life; rejected, 281 ff.

Being, development of; as a system of life, 212 ff., 314

Catholicism; different tendencies in, 328 ff.

Christianity; its unique character, 6; the opposition to, 7 ff.; its permanent truth, 331 ff.; changes necessary to it, 332 ff.; Christian and Greek forms of life, 283 ff.

"Classical," the; its significance, 192

Concentration of life (within the whole), 156 ff., 160

Conscience; its significance, 129 ff.

Critical character of modern work; its presuppositions, 250 ff.

Culture, 110 ff.; genuine and apparent, 269 ff.; requirements of a new type, 298 ff.; organisation of, 315 ff.

Democratic tendency of modern culture, 361 ff.

Departments of life; their relation to life as a whole, 316 ff.

Dogmatic sectarian point of view; rejected, 328

Duty; significance of the idea, 184 ff., 231

Education; problems in the present state of, 343 ff.

Enlightenment, the; its synthesis of life, 209 ff.; how far problematic, 249; relation of the present to it, 347 ff.

Equality; problems of the present conception of, 362

Eternity; how far implied in the life of the individual, 372

Ethical character of life; how to be understood, 256, 258; of spiritual culture, 309 ff.; its necessity, 337 ff.

Ethics (morality); different types in the present time, 336 ff.; conditions of a morality, 338 ff.; requirements of morality in a spiritual culture, 339 ff.

Evil; the problem of, 263 ff.; the way in which it is solved, 279 ff.

Evolution, doctrine of; spiritual, its limitations, 194 ff., 257 ff.

Experience; its significance for the spiritual life in man, 235 ff.

Freedom; its nature, 174 ff.; its conflict with destiny, 181 ff.; genuine and false, 323 ff.; inconsistency in contemporary treatment of the problem, 360 ff.

German character; its greatness and its dangers, 317 ff., 368 ff.

Goethe; characteristic influence, 299

Good, the (idea of the good); how it differs from the Useful, 119 ff.; apparent inconsistency, 138 ff.; more detailed determination, 185 ff.

Great man, the; his relation to his time, 292

Greek and Christian forms of life, 283 ff.

Hegel; relation of the present to him indefinite, 348

Historical and social organisation of life; its limitations, 200

Historical Relativism; rejected, 290 ff., 323 ff.

History; the spiritual conception of, its conditions, 188 ff.; esoteric and exoteric history, 243 ff.

Human life; how far it is from the spiritual life, 161 ff.

Idealisation, false; of immediate existence, 83 ff., 362 ff.

Idealism and Realism; their unification in a spiritual culture, 312 ff.

Ideas in history; their unique character, 126 ff., 188 ff.

Imagination; indispensable in all departments of life, 239

Immanent Idealism, its rise and fall, 15 ff.

Immanental treatment (from the life-process), 107 ff.

Individual, the, and the Society; problems of their relation, 364 ff.

Individual, the; his significance in the new relations, 246, 369 ff.

Individual, life of the; its form in the new system, 369 ff.

Individuality (spiritual); as a problem, 132 ff., 181 ff., 370

Instruction; problems in the present time with reference to, 343 ff.

Inwardness; its attainment of independence in man, 123 ff., 146 ff.; as the inner life of reality, 148 ff.; inwardness and the inner world, 303

Irrationality, of existence; in what manner overcome, 279

Kant; inconsistency in the relation to him in the present time, 348

Knowledge; its form in the new system, 351

Life; its detachment from the mere individual, 119 ff.; the two movements in it, 282 ff.

Life-process; as the fundamental principle of investigation, 104 ff., 305 ff., 349 ff.

Life's attainment of greatness, 240 ff.

Life-work; its significance in acquiring stability, 253

Love; as a witness to the union with the whole, 231

Man; as a being of nature, 110 ff.; growing beyond nature, 113 ff.; his union with the whole, 226 ff.

Masses, the culture of the; its problems, 89 ff.

Mass-movements; their dangers and limitations, 363 ff.

Metaphysic; in what sense necessary, 141 ff.

"Modern," the; double meaning, 296

Modern Age, the (in a broad sense); the characteristic in its nature, 9 ff.

"Modern" Morality; discussed and rejected, 364 ff.

Movement, of the spiritual life in man; its uniqueness, 233 ff.; its increase in the new system of life, 247 ff.

Mysticism; in what sense justifiable, 246

National Character, 198, 367 ff.

Nationality, the idea of; its problems, 366 ff.

Naturalism; its significance and its limitations, 24 ff.

Nature and Spirit, 270 ff.

Negation; impossibility of an absolute, 267 ff.

Newer Systems of Life; what they have in common, 22 ff., 81 ff.

Noölogical Method; distinguished from the psychological and the cosmological, 243, 352

Norms; their significance, 184

Pantheism; vague character of the general conception of it, 84

Past; impossibility of flight to the, 93 ff.

People and nation, 366 ff.

Personal conviction, concerning reality as a whole; where the decision is made, 253, 281, 311 ff., 340, 372

Personality; the difficulty of the conception, 95 ff.; no mere gift of nature, 311, 370

Philosophy; its present position, 346 ff.; its three main tendencies in the present time, 347 ff.; chief demands, 349 ff.

Philosophy of life; the conception of a, 3 ff.

Political and social life; condition and tasks in the present time, 358 ff.

Present, the; difficulties of determining its extent, 289 ff.

Protestantism; the different tendencies in it, 329

Public opinion; manner of its formation, 364

Reality; difficulty of the conception, 84 ff.; longing for, 159 ff.; new conception of, 220 ff.

Relation (fundamental), of man to reality; new, from the point of view of the spiritual life, 152 ff.

Religion; the system of life of, 6 ff.; its form and its justification, 273 ff.; its necessity in a spiritual culture, 312 ff.; its present condition, 324; its requirements in a spiritual culture, 330 ff.; specific religious system of life rejected, 281 ff.

Romanticism; its significance and its limitations, 258 ff.

Science; its present greatness and problems, 345 ff.

Self-preservation, spiritual; distinguished from natural self-preservation, 126

Sense; its estimate, 260

Simplification (in revivals), 128

Socialistic system; its significance and its limitations, 41 ff.

Society; the spiritual conception of, 196 ff.; emphasis upon society in the nineteenth century, 358 ff.

Spiritual culture, and human culture, 308 ff.

Spiritual life; its independence a necessity, 141 ff.; as the fundamental principle of a new organisation of the individual departments of life, 157 ff., 244 ff.

Spiritual work; its relation to time, 290 ff.

Stability in life; how won, 251 ff.

State, the; the greater emphasis upon it in the nineteenth century, 359 ff.

Suffering and spiritual destitution, 314

Syntheses of life; in history, 207 ff.

Theodicy; rejected, 279 ff., 371