life at all; whether it is not simply a compromise between a religious
shaping of life and a life turned towards sense experience; a _via
media_, which as merely transitional is only able to maintain itself for
a time. The historical experience of the Modern Age seems to show that
the latter hypothesis is the true one. At the beginning of the epoch
Religion stood in secure supremacy and the divine acted on man from a
sovereignty that was supreme over the world. Then the divine came ever
closer to the world that it might spread itself over it and permeate it,
till finally there was no longer any separation, and God and world
blended together in a single whole. At first this seemed a pure and a
great gain: the divine put off all rigid sovereignty and spoke to us
immediately out of the whole extent of life; the world was related,
through the power of the divine, to an inner whole and, illuminated by
it, received a transfigured appearance. And yet this solution was only
apparent; it contained an inner contradiction, which ultimately was
bound to break forth with a power of destruction. The divine had
developed its power and its depth in opposition to the world; will it
retain that power and that depth if the opposition ceases; will not the
renunciation of supremacy, the fusion with things, rob it of all
distinctive content? As a matter of fact, with this increase in
proximity and extension, the divine fades and dissolves more and more;
ever less power proceeds from it: and so the world is ever less
transformed and elevated by it; its transfiguring light is dissipated
and its inner relations are broken. From being a life-penetrating power
Pantheism becomes more and more a vague disposition; indeed, an empty
phrase. The living whole, which in the beginning raised things to
itself, has finally become a mere abstraction which cannot hold its
ground before vigorous thought. Thus, with an immanent dialectic, such
as historical life often enough shows, the movement, since it strove for
breadth, has been destroyed in its life-giving root; it has abandoned
the basis from which it derived its truth and power. Immanent Idealism
shows itself to be one great contradiction; a fascinating illusion,
which, instead of reality, presents us with mere appearance.
Of course, Immanent Idealism is not finally refuted by such doubts and
difficulties; it puts forward demands which need to be satisfied in
some way; it contains truths which in some manner must be acknowledged.
What would become of human life if it should abandon its striving
forwards to the whole; its spiritual penetration of the world; its
advance in greatness and breadth; its joyous and vigorous nature; the
excellence of its disposition? But the indispensable truth that is
involved in Immanent Idealism must be brought into wider relations, and
thus made clear and modified, so that it may be more secure and more
fruitful in its effect. Meanwhile, we see that here also we are in
complete uncertainty; that which was intended to give a firm support,
and to point out a clear course to our life, has itself become a
difficult problem.
(b) THE NEWER SYSTEMS
No attack from without and no relaxation from within could have brought
the older systems of life into the state of chaos which we actually find
them to be in, if the experience of sense had not become far more to man
and had not given him far more to do than in earlier times. Hitherto
genuine spiritual life seemed to be able to unfold itself only in
energetic detachment from the world of sense; it reduced this world to a
subordinate sphere which received its position and value only from a
transcendent order; thus, all tarrying with the things of sense seemed
to be a sign of a lower disposition, a falling from the heights of human
life.
This view has been radically altered by the course of the Modern Age.
When the invisible world became uncertain to man and the life directed
towards it shadowy, an intense thirst for reality, for a life out of the
abundance and truth of things, arose, and only the visible world seemed
to promise satisfaction. This world had been seen previously in a
particular light which is now felt to be artificial and distorting; if
this light fails and the world can unfold itself unaffected, it shows a
far richer content, far firmer relations, far greater tasks. All this is
more especially because the world no longer appears to be something
finished, but as still in process and as capable of a thorough-going
elevation; because great possibilities which human power is able to
awaken still lie dormant in it. In diverse directions sense experience
advances far beyond the older form; Natural Science analyses the visible
world into its single components and makes it penetrable to our thought,
and at the same time technical skill wins power over its forces. In the
political and social sphere men find new tasks not only in regard to
isolated questions, but throughout the whole of its organisation, and
great hopes of an essential elevation of life are raised. The individual
also appears more powerful and richer, in that the decay of traditional
ties gives him complete freedom for his development. Even if, in the
struggle for the control of life, these movements in many ways fall into
contradiction one with another, still, in the first place they unite in
advancing the world of sense in man's estimation, in fixing his love and
his work there, and in also making men more and more disinclined to
consider the life-systems rooted in the invisible. Sense experience
presents itself ever more decidedly as something which can tolerate
neither partner nor rival; the life directed towards it loses more and
more the nature of being an opponent, which it hitherto had, and it
undertakes to shape our whole existence characteristically in positive
achievement and also to satisfy the spiritual needs of man completely.
All this signifies an entire reversal of the order of life; for, since
the world which formerly had seemed secondary now becomes predominant,
indeed exclusive, all standards and values are changed, and the old
possession appears also as a new gain. It is true that the new mode of
thought misses the advantages which a long tradition gave to the old:
but in place of this, it has the charm of searching and finding for
itself, the joy of first discovery and successful exertion; here an
infinite horizon is disclosed; before the research and effort of man
lies an open way. Endeavour derives particular power and confidence
from the conviction that the new is nothing else than the old and
genuine, but hitherto misunderstood, nature: it is a return of life to
itself, to its plain and pure truth, which permits us to expect a new
world epoch. And so mankind, exalted in mind and with cheerful courage,
enters upon the course which promises so much.
1. THE NATURALISTIC SYSTEM
The movement towards giving sole attention to the world of sense cannot
make sure progress without a more definite decision concerning the main
agents and the main direction of work. Different possibilities here
offer themselves; three, however, in particular. In reality, these have
all evolved, sometimes blending together and strengthening one another,
at other times crossing and hindering one another.
None of these movements has displayed more energy and exercised more
power than that which makes the sense experience of surrounding nature
its basis, and strives to include man's entire being within this
experience. This is Naturalism, which, starting out from the mechanical
conception of nature, which has been developed in the Modern Age,
applies the ideas thus obtained to everything, and subordinates even the
life of the soul to them. The movement originated at the dawn of the
seventeenth century, when an independence and autonomy of nature began
to be acknowledged. Nature had been covered with a veil of explanation,
mainly æsthetic or religious in character, which gave it a colour
corresponding to the prevailing disposition, but at the same time
excluded the possibility of a scientific comprehension. A comprehension
of this kind could only be attained by getting rid of all subjective
addition which had been made by man, and by investigating nature purely
by itself. Since Descartes and Galileo that has been accomplished, and
nature now appears as an immense web of single threads, as a complex of
fundamentally mobile, but soulless, elements, whose movements take
simple basal forms, while the combination of these elements produces all
constructions, even the most complicated. This mighty machinery never
points beyond, and as it runs its course solely within itself, so it
requires to be understood solely from itself. Everything spiritual is
thus eliminated; this realm of fact has no implication of aims, or of a
meaning of events.
This new scientific conception of nature had first, with much toil and
difficulty, to wrestle with the traditional, naïvely human,
representation; this was chiefly a matter of reducing first appearances
to their simple elements, and of constructing the world anew from these.
By this process, nature at the same time became accessible to the
operation of man. For, the technical control of nature presupposes the
analytic character of research; only such a research, with its discovery
of the single elements and tendencies, places man in a relation of
activity towards nature; while in earlier times only an attitude of
contemplation had been granted to him. Natural Science thus created a
new type of life, a life energetic, masculine, pressing forward
unceasingly.
This life, like science itself, in the first place forms a special part
of a wider whole. As the expulsion of the soul from nature at first
brought about a strengthening of the soul in itself, nature was the less
immediately able to govern the whole. The individual of modern times
strengthened and asserted himself against nature, and insisted upon a
realm of independent inwardness. The contest was a severe one; yet the
more nature was seen to extend, on the one hand, to the infinitely
great, and, on the other, to the infinitely small, the more fixed
relations it showed, so much the more overwhelmingly did it draw man to
itself, the more did its conception tend to include the inner aspects of
the soul also. The final blow in the struggle was given by the modern
theory of descent, since this theory asserts man to be the product
solely of natural forces, and maintains that everything which man
ascribes to himself as characteristic and distinctive is derived from a
gradual development of natural factors. And so nature is exalted as an
all-comprehensive world--nature, that is, as represented in the modern
mechanistic theory, which is thus transformed into a final theory of the
world, a naturalistic metaphysic. The human and spiritual world, which
hitherto had been felt to be an independent realm in contrast with
nature, appears henceforth as its mere continuation, as something which
fits completely into a wider conception of nature.
A conviction of this kind must fundamentally alter the position of the
spiritual life, as well as its magnitudes and values: and this
conviction is no mere theory, but desires and strives to take possession
of the whole of existence and to change its form completely. Indeed, a
particular naturalistic type of life arises and wins a powerful
influence over the thought and activity of the time.
Naturalism denies all independence of the spiritual life, which it
regards as nothing more than an adjunct to the realm of nature, and one
that can only exist along with sense existence, as a part of or as a
supplement to it. Spirituality has, therefore, to subordinate itself and
conform entirely to the life of nature; it can never produce and guide a
movement from itself, never evolve a basal and comprehensive activity,
never withdraw itself into its own sphere as into an independent realm.
All self-existent spirituality fades to a world of mere shadows;
whatever makes itself felt in us can only become a complete reality by
winning flesh and blood through the appropriation of physical forces.
Life, thus understood, possesses nothing in itself; it receives
everything from its relations to the environment with which it is bound
up: thought brings forth no new ideas; all ideas are merely
abbreviations of sense impressions. Effort can never realise purely
spiritual values; the essence of all happiness is sensuous enjoyment,
however refined that may in some cases be. The naturalistic system of
life receives a more definite delineation from the representation of
nature, which the mechanical theory, together with a theory of descent
adapted to it, sketches and impressively holds up to the present age. By
this theory nature is completely resolved into a co-existence of
individual forces, which, within the narrow bounds of existence, must
clash violently together, and assert themselves one against the other in
ceaseless conflict. This conflict, however, is a source of progressive
movement, in that it brings together, establishes, and employs
everything useful for self-preservation; it keeps life in a state of
youthful freshness, in that new conditions continually arise and demand
new accommodations with respect to the biologico-economic environment. A
biologico-economic mode of thought is evolved which revolutionises all
previous estimations of values. Everything intrinsically valuable
disappears from the world; its expulsion seems a deliverance from a
confused, indeed a meaningless, conception of things; the useful, that
which promotes the interests of living beings, each after its kind, in
the struggle for existence, becomes the all-dominating value. No
mysterious being of things is apprehended in the True; but those
presentations and systems of thought are called true which ensure that
the best accommodation to the conditions of life shall be attained, and
which just in this way hold the individuals together. No longer does a
Good speak to man with austere demand from a transcendent sovereignty;
but that is good which, within our experience, is of service to the
preservation of life. The Beautiful, also, is subordinated to the
useful, and it is solely by its value in relation to this that it
asserts itself. In everything, it is only one's own welfare, the
interest of individual preservation, that directly inspires conduct; but
real life shows man in so many relations, so closely implicated with his
environment, that he can strive for nothing for himself without also
striving for others. This extension of interests has no limits; there is
nothing in the whole of infinity which could not in this way become to
man, indirectly, a means of self-preservation and thus an object of
desire.
The naturalistic type of life extends from the most general of impulses
to every branch of activity, and forms every department of life in a
distinctive fashion. Knowledge depends entirely upon experience; every
speculative element must be excluded as a subjective delusion; in all
its branches knowledge is nothing else than a broadened Natural Science.
Art may not pursue imaginary ideals; it finds its single task in the
faithful and simple reproduction of the natural environment. Social life
and endeavour will develop, above all, natural powers, and will seek to
adapt itself to the conditions given by nature, and, rejecting all aims
based upon mere imagination, it will care chiefly for the physical
welfare of the whole, as the source of all power and of all success.
It is not difficult to understand how this form of life was able to win
and carry away the minds of its contemporaries. In the first place it
has the character of simplicity and immediacy, which, in contrast with
the complexity and the remoteness of the traditional position, appears a
great advantage. For, in this scheme, life, with all its multiplicity,
is dominated and unified by the idea of natural self-preservation; and
the things which immediately affect us, which lie physically and
psychically near to us, come most directly into relation to this aim. It
is a further tendency of this scheme of life to bring the whole of
existence into a state of activity and restless advance. For the state
of conflict which prevails under the naturalistic system allows nothing
to persist merely because of its present existence or through the weight
of tradition, but everything must always be reasserting its right to
existence; it must stretch and extend itself in order to be useful in
the life of the present. That which cannot satisfy this test is
unmercifully thrown over as a dead weight. It is also of great
importance to the theory in question that nature and the world are
involved in ceaseless change, and that, along with the conditions of
life, the requirements also alter: the matter is one of continually
accommodating oneself anew; and so life is placed entirely in the
present, and the fixity of an absolute conception and treatment of
change yields to the instability of a relative one. Last of all, and
most especially, life according to its own conviction bears the
character of truth. For human striving appears to attain the firm basis
of reality, and to become truthful in itself only when it is definitely
related to the surrounding world; while, so long as it trusted to the
capacity of the subject--which fondly imagined itself independent--it
fell into unspeakable error. Only when delivered from subjectivity, only
when fixed within the web of the whole of nature, does life seem to
awaken out of a dream, and to become fully real, a genuine, securely
grounded life.
The energy of negation which this theory employs and with which it
drives out everything which has become old adds strength to the elements
of assertion and positive achievement in these changes. In this theory
there is nothing indefinite which could soften the opposition, nothing
mediatory which could overcome it, but, distinctly and harshly,
affirmation and negation stand face to face and call for a plain
decision between them. Whatever remains in doubt and under suspicion is
forced into the background, indeed eliminated altogether, through the
victorious onward march of modern Natural Science and the increasing
triumphs of technical skill, which seem to demonstrate, immediately, the
truth of the naturalistic type of life. Thus, this movement spreads in a
mighty flood through humanity, and seizes with a particular power the
classes which are struggling upward, and which meet science and culture
with a faith yet undisturbed. In matters temporal there is hardly
anything which seems able to withstand such an attack.
Nevertheless, that which gains the support of many contemporaries is not
thereby proved to be the supreme power and the final truth. In that
movement there may be far more, and something far more important than it
itself admits. It may be that it achieves that which it does achieve
only with the help of elements of another kind; perhaps, indeed, it is
able to maintain its truth only in so far as it enters into broader
relations in a wider whole and thereby changes its meaning essentially.
Whether such is the case can be ascertained not by reference to
subjective opinion, but by an examination of the life of humanity.
Now, the first movement of opposition is produced in just that sphere
which seemed Naturalism's strongest bulwark, that is, Natural Science,
the Natural Science based on mathematics and physics. Only the most
fleeting survey can lead to the confusion of Natural Science with
Naturalism; in reality, the naturalistic thinker cannot with justice
acknowledge any exact Natural Science, and a natural scientist cannot be
naturalistic in thought in consequence of his science, but only in spite
of it. For, Natural Science is anything but a mere copy of the sense
impressions which we experience; its origin and progress are due to the
fact that thought fundamentally acts upon and transforms those
impressions. If our intellect were no more than Naturalism can logically
make it out to be, it could, at most, only refine the animal
presentations a little; it never could have advanced beyond the single
presentations to a representative conception of the world as a whole.
Such an advance can be achieved only by thought raising itself above the
stream of appearances and placing itself over against it; but how could
a mere bundle of perceptions, to which Naturalism reduces the intellect,
achieve this? Incomparably more unity of being and freedom of operation
are necessary for this achievement than such a bundle could produce.
In earlier times, no doubt, man went very much astray in the
interpretation of his environment; he transferred his immediate feelings
into it; he coloured the whole world in human colours, and associated
with its realities as with beings of the same nature as himself. But
even the error shows a seeking and an interpretation; the simple putting
of the question proclaims a being becoming superior to mere nature. The
most important thing, however, is that man has not regarded the matter
as finally settled with this anthropomorphism; he has come to regard it
as inadequate and has pressed forward to a new way of thinking. What
could drive him to that change but a desire for truth, and how is such a
conception as _truth_ attainable from nature? And if thought has
succeeded in breaking through the misty veil of anthropomorphism and
seeks things in their own relations; if an objective consciousness of
the world has emerged, a consciousness which is as different from the
immediacy of sense impressions as the sky is distant from the earth, has
not man also grown in himself beyond mere sense impression; is it not a
work of thought which supports and governs the whole construction, and
differentiates genuine nature from appearance? How much power of
comprehension and of relating together is exhibited even by Natural
Science, in that it analyses the sense presentation of the environment
into its single elements, ascertains the laws of these, and traces the
movement from the simplest beginnings right up to its present stage of
development. All activity of thought is thus subject to a certain
reproach in that it must continually bring itself into relation to
perception: nevertheless it will interweave all that is imparted to it
by perception into a framework of thought--transform it, in fact, into a
realm of thought. Spirituality is bound; but how dull an individual must
be to confuse such a bound spirituality with mere sensuousness!
The error of Naturalism is obvious; concerned solely with the object and
its form, it entirely leaves out of account the psychical activity which
is involved in the perception of an object; it overlooks the
life-process within which alone we can have knowledge of an object and
occupy ourselves with it. As soon, however, as we regard the object from
this point of view, it will be transformed and will assume far more
spiritual traits. Reality will then burst asunder the framework into
which Naturalism desires to press it.
The type of life which Naturalism gives rise to also contains more than
Naturalism is able to explain. At first sight it seems as though man is
taken up completely into a wider conception of nature; as though his
life obeys its forces and impulses exclusively; as though all his
asserted superiority to nature is simply imaginary. As a matter of fact,
in this turning to nature, man, with his spiritual activity, stands not
within, but above, nature. For he does not appear as a mere piece of
nature, but experiences it and thinks over it: its kingdom, its
organisation, its stability become to him a joyful possession and a
widening of his being. The spiritual life has developed in relation to
nature; nature has not welded it together. The same may be said of the
idea of the increase of power, which constitutes the main gain of life
in the naturalistic system. For, in the naturalistic type of life power
is not directed towards externals, as in nature, but is experienced and
enjoyed, and only thus does it constitute a source of happiness; yet how
could it be that, without an organisation of life in an inner unity
which transcends individual occurrences? Thus, the intellectual and the
technical control of nature which the Modern Age has acquired attracts
men and prevails over them chiefly as a growth of life, as an increase
of self-reliance. Even material goods, wealth and property, do not
determine the endeavour of the man of culture so much through sensuous
enjoyment, the limit of which is soon reached, as through their
possibilities as means to activity and creation, to the advancement of
human capacity. It is this in particular which has filled the material
civilisation of the present with the spirit of restlessness and
extravagance, and gives it its demoniacal power over men. It is this
relation alone which explains and justifies the present estimate of
material goods, so much higher as that is in modern culture than it was
in the older systems of thought, which branded as unworthy all endeavour
directed to the acquirement of such things.