There are two fundamental problems in the life of the human mind,
to one or other of which everything belongs that is to be discussed
in this book. One of these problems concerns the possibility of
attaining to such a view of the essential nature of man as will
serve as a support for whatever else comes into his life by way
of experience or of science, and yet is subject to the suspicion of
having no support in itself and of being liable to be driven, by doubt
and criticism, into the limbo of uncertainties. The other problem is
this: Is man, as voluntary agent, entitled to attribute freedom to
himself, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to
recognise the threads of necessity on which his volition, like any
natural event, depends? It is no artificial tissue of theories which
provokes this question. In a certain mood it presents itself quite
naturally to the human mind. And it is easy to feel that a mind lacks
something of its full stature which has never once confronted with
the utmost seriousness of inquiry the two possibilities--freedom
or necessity. This book is intended to show that the spiritual
experiences which the second problem causes man to undergo, depend
upon the position he is able to take up towards the first problem. An
attempt will be made to prove that there is a view concerning the
essential nature of man which can support the rest of knowledge; and,
further, an attempt to point out how with this view we gain a complete
justification for the idea of free will, provided only that we have
first discovered that region of the mind in which free volition can
unfold itself.
The view to which we here refer is one which, once gained, is
capable of becoming part and parcel of the very life of the mind
itself. The answer given to the two problems will not be of the
purely theoretical sort which, once mastered, may be carried about
as a mere piece of memory-knowledge. Such an answer would, for the
whole manner of thinking adopted in this book, be no real answer at
all. The book will not give a finished and complete answer of this
sort, but point to a field of spiritual experience in which man's
own inward spiritual activity supplies a living answer to these
questions, as often as he needs one. Whoever has once discovered the
region of the mind where these questions arise, will find precisely
in his actual acquaintance with this region all that he needs for the
solution of his two problems. With the knowledge thus acquired he may
then, as desire or fate dictate, adventure further into the breadths
and depths of this unfathomable life of ours. Thus it would appear
that there is a kind of knowledge which proves its justification and
validity by its own inner life as well as by the kinship of its own
life with the whole life of the human mind.
This is how I conceived the contents of this book when I first wrote
it twenty-five years ago. To-day, once again, I have to set down
similar sentences if I am to characterise the leading thoughts of
my book. At the original writing I contented myself with saying no
more than was in the strictest sense connected with the fundamental
problems which I have outlined. If anyone should be astonished at
not finding in this book as yet any reference to that region of the
world of spiritual experience of which I have given an account in my
later writings, I would ask him to bear in mind that it was not my
purpose at that time to set down the results of spiritual research,
but first to lay the foundations on which such results can rest. The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity contains no special results of
this spiritual sort, as little as it contains special results of
the natural sciences. But what it does contain is, in my judgment,
indispensable for anyone who desires a secure foundation for such
knowledge. What I have said in this book may be acceptable even to
some who, for reasons of their own, refuse to have anything to do with
the results of my researches into the Spiritual Realm. But anyone who
finds something to attract him in my inquiries into the Spiritual
Realm may well appreciate the importance of what I was here trying
to do. It is this: to show that open-minded consideration simply of
the two problems which I have indicated and which are fundamental
for all knowledge, leads to the view that man lives in the midst of
a genuine Spiritual World. The aim of this book is to demonstrate,
prior to our entry upon spiritual experience, that knowledge of the
Spiritual World is a fact. This demonstration is so conducted that it
is never necessary, in order to accept the present arguments, to cast
furtive glances at the experiences on which I have dwelt in my later
writings. All that is necessary is that the reader should be willing
and able to adapt himself to the manner of the present discussions.
Thus it seems to me that in one sense this book occupies a
position completely independent of my writings on strictly spiritual
matters. Yet in another sense it seems to be most intimately connected
with them. These considerations have moved me now, after a lapse of
twenty-five years, to re-publish the contents of this book in the
main without essential alterations. I have only made additions of some
length to a number of chapters. The misunderstandings of my argument
with which I have met seemed to make these more detailed elaborations
necessary. Actual changes of text have been made by me only where
it seemed to me now that I had said clumsily what I meant to say a
quarter of a century ago. (Only malice could find in these changes
occasion to suggest that I have changed my fundamental conviction.)
For many years my book has been out of print. In spite of the fact,
which is apparent from what I have just said, that my utterances
of twenty-five years ago about these problems still seem to me just
as relevant today, I hesitated a long time about the completion of
this revised edition. Again and again I have asked myself whether I
ought not, at this point or that, to define my position towards the
numerous philosophical theories which have been put forward since the
publication of the first edition. Yet my preoccupation in recent years
with researches into the purely Spiritual Realm prevented my doing as I
could have wished. However, a survey, as thorough as I could make it,
of the philosophical literature of the present day has convinced me
that such a critical discussion, alluring though it would be in itself,
would be out of place in the context of what my book has to say. All
that, from the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
it seemed to me necessary to say about recent philosophical tendencies
may be found in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy.