morality. The value of an energetic opposition to laws of convention and
external etiquette is beyond question; but it should not be forgotten
that such a conflict has been carried on within the sphere of morality
and religion from ancient times; that in every age that which was
spiritually highest has forcibly withstood the efforts of men
illegitimately to claim absolute validity for their statutes and
tendencies. But Individualism commits the error of asserting that the
mean morality which is reached at the average level of humanity
constitutes the essence of morality, and in so doing excludes from
itself the feeling for everything great and deep which lies within
morality. With all its talk of greatness and breadth, Individualism
makes life narrow, since it leads man solely to the cultivation and
unfolding of his own passive states of consciousness, and permits the
pleasure-seeking _ego_ to draw everything to itself and hold it fast
there. Everything, however, which exists beyond his sphere it interprets
as a mere "other" world, and thus declares all submission to the object
for its own sake, all forgetfulness of self, all becoming more
comprehensive, and all renewal through genuine love, to be only
delusory. Further, in this system, in which natural impulse governs
everything, the conceptions of responsibility and guilt, and with this
the antithesis of good and evil, must be held to be the result of a
narrowly human way of thinking, as something which, though serving no
real purpose, still alarms men and overawes life. Yet through the
development of a spiritual activity which places it in a more inward and
free relation to reality, humanity has really advanced beyond the
position in which man acted as a part of mere nature. In this, too,
Christianity also marks a great advance; we have only to picture to
ourselves the life-work of Augustine in order to have a clear example of
the separation of a genuine morality, as the expression of a new world
based upon freedom, from the attention to and cultivation of natural
instincts. The greatest thinker of the Modern Age, Kant, has only
established this distinction in a newer form. In this connection
responsibility and guilt, as transcending nature, also become a witness
of greatness; they give expression to the fact that man is an
independent co-operator in the universe, and regards the world as in
some sense his own; to the fact that life does not simply happen to him,
but also through him. For, along with freedom and its world, the old
world of given existence remains and holds us fast, not merely
externally but inwardly also; life is a severe conflict between higher
and lower, between freedom and destiny. With so much that is complicated
and perplex, life must be regarded as in the highest degree unfinished.
But just because of this it involves an incalculable tension, and even
in its constraints and pains it leaves the self-preservation and the
welfare of the mere subject at a level far beneath itself. When,
therefore, Individualism, neglecting the movement of universal history,
wishes to limit us to this mere subject, and, effacing all dividing
lines, calls upon us to submit to every force which plays upon us, and
to enter into the glad enjoyment of life, there is really no difference
between this and advising a man, who has gone through the many and
difficult experiences of life, to throw to the winds all he has thus
gained, and to please himself again with the games of childhood.
The position is similar with regard to the relation of the spiritual and
the sensuous, as Individualism represents it. It is rightly opposed to
both a monkish asceticism and a conventional, feigned, low estimate of
the sensuous; it is indeed with good reason that Æsthetic Individualism
defends the right of the sensuous. But to give the sensuous its right
does not mean to permit it to be joined together in an undifferentiated
unity with the spiritual, as though it were of equal value. Naïve ages
were able to strive for a perfect balance of spiritual and sensuous;
but, with the increasing depth of the life of the soul, a division has
resulted which no toil and no art can simply remove again. Now,
therefore, either the spiritual will be dominant over the sensuous or
the sensuous over the spiritual. In Individualism, with its amalgamation
of the spiritual and the sensuous, by which all claim to spiritual
activity, and therefore to all independence of spiritual life, is given
up, the sensuous will inevitably dominate over the spiritual. The result
is simply a degeneration of the spiritual, a refined sensuousness; and
it is defenceless against an intrusion of vulgar pleasure. Will any one
seriously assert that we find ourselves to-day in a naïve position in
relation to sense?
In this respect, as in all others, the strength of Individualism lies
chiefly in criticism; its refined perception makes it especially capable
of apprehending clearly the errors of the traditional conceptions of
life. Its influence, however, suffers from the contradiction which it
involves, in that it purposes to solve the problems, to which only an
independent and self-determining spiritual life is equal, with the means
of sense experience. Such a spiritual life is to be attained only by
transcending this sense experience. Owing to the fact that Individualism
places its sole attention upon the surface of sense experience, its
aims, in themselves of the highest necessity, must be distorted and
grossly misrepresented. Independence, greatness, and certainty--ever
hovering before life--cannot be attained by Individualism in reality,
but only in picture and semblance. And it can lend to this appearance a
moderate power of conviction only because, just in the same way as the
other modern organisations of life, it enriches itself imperceptibly
from the same traditional modes of thought and of culture, in opposition
to which it stands, and of which the impelling motives are to it a
sealed book.
Thus, in truth, it does not offer mere and pure subjectivity, but
subjectivity on the basis of a rich life of culture, which it is itself
unable to produce, but without which it would lapse at once into
complete emptiness. The æsthetic-individualistic scheme of life proves
to be a phenomenon, accompanying a ripe, indeed an over-ripe, culture.
An independent culture, with its labour and its sacrifice, it is unable
to produce.
To reject Æsthetic Individualism means to attack modern art and its
service to life just as little as to reject Naturalism and Socialism is
to estimate meanly modern natural science and present social endeavour.
On the contrary, it may be said that, as Naturalism has no keener
antagonist than modern natural science, so modern art, with the energy
which is bestowed upon it and with its many-sided expansion of the soul,
stands not in agreement with but in opposition to Æsthetic
Individualism. For, indeed, a creative artist of the first rank has
never subscribed to a merely æsthetic conception of life. Still, however
much artistic endeavour and a merely æsthetic conception of the world
may be associated by the individual, in their nature they remain
differentiated, and no appreciation of art is able to justify the
æsthetic conception of life, which subjects all life to a contradiction;
works against life in striving to attain its own ends; neglects the
development through the centuries; and, instead of the substance hoped
for, offers only opinion and appearance. How can life find a support in
this?
II. CONSIDERATION OF THE SITUATION AS A WHOLE AND PRELIMINARIES FOR
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
(a) THE NATURE OF THE NEW AS A WHOLE AND ITS RELATION TO THE OLD
From the description that has been given of the modern systems of life,
we have seen that the Modern Age is by no means homogeneous, and that
the conception "modern" has more than one meaning. Culture, in
particular, has a character fundamentally different according as life
finds its basis on the one hand in something external to itself, in
nature, or in society, or on the other hand in the subjective states of
consciousness. But that a common striving is present in spite of every
difference, indeed of every antithesis, is proved by the energy with
which all deny and reject the older form of culture and its
transcendence of sense experience; by the vigour of the struggle against
that which is regarded by the more modern systems as mere phantasy and
deception, but which nevertheless continues to dominate social life. The
kinship of these systems extends, beyond a common acquiescence in a
negation, to a common affirmation. On all sides a thirst after a more
forceful reality, and a more imposing immediacy of life, is to be found.
Sense experience manifests itself throughout as fuller in content and
more plastic; and so the chief point of support is found within it, and,
though in different ways, the whole of life is organised from it. Still,
granted that this could be effected only in opposition to the
traditional conduct of life, the new is by no means desirous of
remaining in a state of mere opposition. It seeks rather to unite the
opposing elements to itself, to adapt them to itself, and to satisfy to
the fullest extent the ideal demands of human nature. It is an attempt
entirely to renew and completely to revolutionise life--a vast
undertaking! Whether it has succeeded, or whether it is still engaged in
bringing the attempt to a successful issue, is the problem that we had
to investigate.
As far as our chief question is concerned, our result was a decided
negative. True, much that is great and much that may not be lost again
has been achieved. The new systems of life have indeed appropriated
whole groups of facts; have invigorated whole groups with new powers;
have revealed new tasks of the most fruitful kind, not only in the
individual but also for the whole; and have given to life dominating
impulses and a powerful impetus. But all this becomes a doubtful gain,
indeed it threatens to become a loss, if particular experience and
achievement desire to govern the whole of life, and to impress upon it
their own peculiar stamp. Not only does life become intolerably
one-sided in such a case, but its wealth of experience is cut down in
order to fit it into the given framework. We also saw that a serious
inner inconsistency originates. For a long period this inconsistency may
be concealed, but where any great energy is present in life, it must
break forth with a disturbing force and become intolerable. Since the
modern systems regard the whole of life as arising from relation,
whether it be to the environment or to the subjective states of
consciousness, they must reduce everything inward and universal to the
level of a derived and secondary product; they must repudiate and oppose
an original and independent spirituality, a self-conscious inner world.
Such an inner spiritual experience has evolved through the whole of
history, and transcends all forms of life-organisation: it is impossible
to explain it away. The modern systems must themselves experience this.
For they could not possibly transform the abundance of diverse
appearances into an organised whole; they could not pass from universal
to universal, without presupposing and employing the same transcendent
and encompassing inner world, which directly they attack. At the same
time, however, they give to every factor of life a position and a depth
wholly inconsistent with what they are justified in doing with their own
mode of thought. They cannot perform their own tasks without drawing
incessantly upon another kind of reality, one richer and more
substantial. In truth, they are something other, and something far more
than they believe themselves to be. Does this not show, beyond
possibility of refutation, that they do not fill the whole of life?
The contradiction immanent in the modern systems of life is especially
apparent in the fact that they are unable to banish supersensual powers
and to limit life to sense experience, without attributing to sense
experience more content and more value than that which experience itself
justifies, and which, to be consistent, they should not overstep. The
naturalistic thinker ascribes unperceived to nature, which to him can be
only a co-existence of soulless elements, an inner connection and a
living soul. Only thus can he revere it as a higher power, as a kind of
divinity; only thus can he pass from the fact of dependence to a
devotional surrender of his feelings. The socialist bases human society,
with its motives mixed with triviality and passion, on an invisible
community, an ideal humanity, which he clothes with the splendour of a
power and dignity that transfigures the immediate appearance of society.
It is only in this way that he is able to direct his whole effort upon
the welfare of mankind, and to expect a pure victory of reason within
its sphere. The individualist in his conception exalts the individual to
a height far more lofty than is justified by the individual as he is
found in experience; for his thought, the individual is far more
powerful and far more prominent and noble than immediate impressions
indicate. Only thus is he able, from the freedom and the development of
the individual, to hope for the beginning of a new epoch.
In these newer systems of life the conception of reality as a whole is
also subjected to the same groundless and, likewise, false idealisation.
As in these systems nothing may be acknowledged which transcends sense
experience, there can be no universal which pervades and holds together
the manifold. This being the case, reality must be a co-existence of
single pieces; but no one will readily confess himself of this opinion.
A pantheism, vague to the highest degree, is therefore seized upon as a
cure-all, that man may have something which permeates and connects; but
of this something, however, all more detailed description is lacking,
and is carefully avoided. A conception so vague allows us at the same
time to think and not to think something; at the same time to affirm and
to deny. It seems to accomplish so much and to demand so little; it
makes the impossible possible; and offers the most convenient asylum to
all indefiniteness and confusion. It is a pity that in all this it is
not a reality that surrounds us, but a mere _fata morgana_ which
deceives. And a conception so vague is to displace religion and accord
support to the new life! Truly, this requires a stronger faith than that
with which the older religions were satisfied.
The modern systems of life desire a more forceful reality; in this they
set work an aim which cannot be rejected. The course they have entered
upon, however, does not bring them nearer to this aim, but rather
removes them further from it. Neither the self-evidence of the senses
nor the oscillation of mood can ever represent genuine reality to a
being who, for good or for evil, has once learned to think. Many and
varied impressions may come and go in sense experience; but their
abundance cannot prevent the chief conceptions, by which they are here
accompanied, from receiving a character abstract and vague in the
highest degree. We hear continually of the whole, of reason, of power,
of evolution; but all these conceptions have no stability and little
content; they are like shadows and phantoms which vanish as soon as we
wish to take hold of them. So, by an irony of fate, just those modes of
thought whose chief impulse was the desire for more reality dissipate,
dissolve reality. We see that the spiritual life may be denied by the
individual, but not driven from the work of culture. It is true that
immediate experience, outer and inner, has become much more to the
present age than it was to earlier ages; but it has become so only
through spiritual endeavour. If, therefore, the Modern Age now turns
definitely against this spiritual activity, to rob it of all
independence, it destroys that which first gave it its own power.
The modern systems of life have raised the standard of human existence
enormously in regard to power and content; but they have done this at
the cost of its spiritual concreteness. They have suppressed the life of
inner spiritual experience and denied the problems of man's inner
nature. They know of no grappling of man either with the infinite or
with his own nature; they recognise no conflict between freedom and
fate, and no inner development of the soul. And all this because their
view of life as a whole takes away all depth, and transforms existence
into a mere series of appearances. Thus, for anyone who regards such
depth as the basis of life, and who, therefore, will not reject the
experience and the result of the work of universal history, it becomes a
necessity to reject and oppose the modern systems as guides of life. The
more explicitly and exclusively they are presented, the more decided
must his opposition be. For, what shall all the gain on the
circumference of life profit man if through attention to that the centre
of his life becomes empty and weak, if there emerges no content and no
meaning in life itself? What is the value of all the advancing and
refining of human existence if it does not bring with it a genuine
spiritual culture and an inward elevation of mankind?
The increasing experience and perception of such limitations in the new
may lead men to give more attention again to the old. The striving to
transcend mere sense experience can no longer appear as a mere flight
into an "other" world of dreams, or as due to a feeble and cowardly
disposition; it may now be admitted rather as a deeply rooted endeavour
to reach greater depths of life. Yet such a relaxation of the opposition
to the old, and such an inclination to estimate it more highly, by no
means justifies us in simply taking it up again in the form in which it
lies before us. For to this not merely the modern system of life, but
the whole development of life and work, is opposed. The contradictions
and doubts which have grown up in the course of this development are not
in the least overcome by the failure of the modern systems of life. For
we do not find ourselves confronted here with an "either--or," in which
the invalidity of the one alternative immediately establishes the
validity of the other; but both may be inadequate. So we remain
surrounded by the old and the new, under powerful influences from both,
but not in a position to accept either the one or the other exclusively.
(b) THE CONDITION OF THE PRESENT
This situation, with its juxtaposition of the new and the old, is so
full of confusion and perplexity that only a feeble disposition is
capable of acquiescing in it. In the old we respect or surmise a depth;
but this depth does not know how to give itself a form suitable to the
present, or to influence us with the means available in our own time.
The new directs all our attention to the immediate present and fills us
with its intuitions; but this present becomes superficial to us, and
with increasing power a desire for more substance and soul in life rises
up in opposition to it. The old lifted us to the proud height of a new
world, but this height showed signs of becoming severed from the rest of
existence, and lapsed therefore into a state of painful insecurity. The
new builds up from the experience of sense, but it finds no conclusion
without going beyond this experience and thus contradicting itself. The
old regarded the spiritual life of man, if not man himself, as occupying
the centre of all and thereby fell into the danger of a hastened
conclusion and of an anthropomorphic conception of reality. The new
takes from man every position by which he is especially distinguished,
and ignores all connection with ultimate depths, but in so doing it
overthrows more than it intends; it undermines nothing less than the
possibility of all spiritual work, all science, all culture.
And so we find ourselves in the midst of contradictions, drawn first in
one direction, then in another: that we are at a crisis in life as a
whole and in culture, that we are in state of spiritual need, cannot
fail to be recognised. This crisis is made all the more acute through
the peculiarity of the historical circumstances which have led up to it
and the social conditions which surround us. Historically, we are under
the influences of two cultures: one older, which up to the seventeenth
century was in undisputed supremacy and which has asserted its authority
up to the present day, especially in regard to the arrangements of
social life; and one newer, which, after the influence of many varied
preliminary tendencies, has arisen since that time with the energy of
youth, and which, in the minds of individuals, has easily become the
dominant power. The two cultures had different starting-points and
followed different main courses. The old culture carried within itself
the experiences of Greek life, the inner progress of which may be seen
especially in the development of its philosophy. In the old culture
endeavour was driven more and more beyond the world of sense to a world
of thought, in which it went on from a universal to an ethical and
ultimately to a religious conviction. To the thought of Greece, as she
grew old, the world of sense experience sank more and more in reality
and value, and life found its basis and chief realm of experience in a
region transcending sense. Christianity definitely established this view
of life, and made the invisible Kingdom of God the true home of man, the
most immediate and the most secure that this life knows.
New peoples then grew up in this way of thinking; peoples who still had
their work before them; to these, the break with the world of sense came
more as the imposition of an overpowering authority than as due to
their own experience. This fact constituted a point of weakness in every
way; but no serious complication arose so long as these peoples were not
yet ripe for spiritual independence. As soon, however, as this was the
case, it was inevitable that contradictions should manifest themselves,
and that a newly awakened impulse should urge the movement into an
entirely opposite direction.
That is what really happened; the main tendency of life is now directed
just as much upon the world as earlier it went beyond it; it has been
transferred from the invisible to the visible, from the supernatural to
the natural. We see this most clearly in the case of religion, which, as
though with immanent necessity, runs through the sequence of a
predominant transcendent Theism, a Panentheism, a Pantheism--gradually
becoming colourless--an Agnosticism, and a Positivism. Everything
supernatural disappears from thought, and life is concerned solely with
sense experience. Thus, finally, we appear to have arrived at the same
point as that from which the Greeks started out: the Monism of the most
modern coining, for example, is hardly to be distinguished from the
Hylozoism of the ancient Ionian thinkers. But is the whole result of the
movement of universal history really only a deception? Has it simply
brought us back again, from the false paths that we have tried, without
according us any kind of positive profit whatever? We have become men of
another kind; we think and feel differently; we have built up a rich
culture, have transformed the world, have created a spiritual
atmosphere; and we are capable of striving after infinite life and
ultimate truth. Could all of this spring out of mere error? If that were
so, should we not be compelled to reject the whole of this as phantasy
and deception? But if the error was a means and an instrument in the
attainment of truth, and if mankind in its going out from itself and in
its return to itself is inwardly developed, where does the boundary
between truth and error lie, and what is the meaning of the whole? So
here again we lapse into uncertainty; history, to other ages a secure
support, leads us into still greater doubt.