his will, to find the root of all evil in the moral failings of
humanity, have not been wanting. Universal religions have given these
attempts an embodiment. It has seemed as though the harmony of reality
is only disturbed by man, and as though his moral restoration were the
only thing necessary to lead to all good. To be sure, such a way of
thinking manifests a disposition of great seriousness, and it may appeal
to the fact that the perplexity of our existence is nowhere more real
than in reference to the ethical problem. Still, there is no possibility
of doubt for the man of the Modern Age that this conception is too
narrow; that it not only contradicts indisputable impressions and
experiences, but also takes the question much too subjectively and too
anthropomorphically, and thus falls into the danger of doing harm to the
cause that it wishes to serve. It is not simply our disposition, it is
our being as a whole and the circumstances that we are in, which
obstinately oppose the emergence and the development of an independent
spiritual world. It is the most elementary forms of life themselves that
prevent the elevation of our existence to the level of a genuine
spiritual life. We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that the greater
part of our life is bound up with a form of existence in which it is not
able to embrace the spiritual life. Any kind of appropriation of the
spiritual--if it is at all possible--can be effected therefore only in
opposition to that form of existence. In genuine spiritual life all
movement should proceed from the whole and should be sustained by the
whole, even when it is concentrated in the individual departments and
tendencies. Human existence presents the spectacle of individuals ranged
side by side; and if a movement to overcome the original inertia is to
begin at all, their impulses, their desire for happiness, and their
conflicts are necessary. The spiritual life knows no limits; it works
and creates from the infinite whole: the individual is narrowly limited,
and with all his activity and work constitutes but a tiny point in the
infinite whole. The spiritual life presents its content as transcending
time; even if for us it is only gradually revealed, time is in this a
mere means to the presentation of an eternal and immutable truth: man,
however, drifts with time; is dependent upon the momentary situation,
and experiences himself in an incessant change: how can he comprehend
the eternal? Spiritual creation is effected in the transcending of the
antithesis of subject and object: human endeavour is conditioned by this
antithesis. The former with its self-determining activity overcomes from
within the attachment to sense: man even in the highest flight of his
endeavour cannot withdraw himself from it. From the altitudes occupied
by the spiritual life submission to the impulses and the goods of sense
seems to be something mean and base: and yet without these man cannot
possibly preserve his life; he has not conferred sensuous needs and
desires upon himself by an act of will, but finds himself endowed with
them from the beginning. Spiritual life with its formation from within
banishes from itself all mechanism; all compulsion of blind actuality:
without a mechanism in thought and in conduct, without habits and
methods determined by custom, human life cannot attain to an enduring
stability either in the case of the individual or in that of society.
Thus, through the ever-present necessity of self-preservation and
self-renewal, human life is compulsorily related to something, bound to
something, that not only is not adequate to fulfil the tasks of an
independent spiritual life, but is directly opposed to them. There is
something in our life which we cannot dispense with, yet which, from the
spiritual point of view, it is an imperative duty to shake off.
We see clearly enough that it is not merely our will that is in play,
but that two worlds conflict within us, and that the world to which we
primarily belong, according to the testimony of experience, holds us
fixed with superior power, and draws back to itself all movement which
strives upward. If, in particular, the dimness and the weakness of the
spiritual life in man; its severance from its source; its disintegration
into isolated powers; and, finally, the moral perversity which human
existence exhibits, and the debasement of spiritual power to a mere
means for natural or social self-preservation, become clear to us, then
it is evident that a compromise between such a pitiable and shallow
confusion and a genuine spiritual life is absolutely impossible. The
acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world tends only to increase
the contradiction and make us more clearly conscious of it.
A clear consciousness of the inadequacy of the human is especially
important and necessary in contrast to the utter confusion which reigns
with regard to the spiritual life and vitiates the whole of the
endeavour of the present. The increasing transference of life to the
world of sense has led the present age to abandon all inner bonds of
mankind. The endeavour of Antiquity to lift our life above the
insignificantly human by giving it a share in the greatness and
magnificence of the whole, and the attempt of Christianity to give a new
nature to life from the relation to God, appear to the present age to be
Utopian. Since the faith of modern Idealism in the immanent universal
reason has become more and more dim, man is thrown back more and more
exclusively upon himself, upon man as he is, upon empirical society.
There has grown up a strong belief that this empirical existence is
quite sufficient in itself, and is able to satisfy our spiritual needs
from itself. The ennobling of man, the improvement of his condition
within this existence, becomes the aim of aims. Now, this presupposes
that within the province of man, the good, even if it does not entirely
preponderate, is still confident of a triumphant advance. It
presupposes, further, that the establishment of a certain state of life
will bring complete happiness with it. At the same time, all that is
disagreeable in human experience--the power of selfishness and pride;
the weakness of love; the feebleness of all spiritual impulse; the
incessant increase of the struggle for existence, with the consequent
degeneration of the inwardness of the whole--appears with dazzling
clearness to the more refined perception of the modern man. After even a
little consideration he cannot doubt that, if, in spite of all
limitations, an unclouded state of human well-being could be
established; if all pain could be banished from our life, life would
fall into the power of the other and worse enemy--emptiness and
monotony. As a refuge from such perplexities there is a tendency to flee
to society and history. From the point of view of humanity as a whole
and with the thought of a better future, all defects and losses of
individuals seem to vanish; the hope of an unceasing progressive
development rises above the feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of the
condition of the moment. But what are these relations of empirical
humanity other than those of a mere collection of individuals who never
become an inner community, and what is empirical history other than a
mere succession which never produces an inner unity of movement? In the
appeal to the former, as in that to the latter, it is only
surreptitiously that something essential can appear to be acquired. In
reality, conceptions are here made use of which in other relations have
a meaning, but which here signify nothing more than empty abstractions,
simply subjective constructions of thought. However, notwithstanding all
the glossing over, the real state of things must ultimately assert
itself: pessimism must then be the last word, and the belief in a
rationality in human existence must finally be given up. The faith in
the greatness of the empirical man is, indeed, of all faiths the
boldest. For, if the other faiths proclaim a new reality in contrast
with the world of sense, they have the possibility of one in an
invisible world. In the case that we are considering, however,
experience itself must offer more than mere experience; we must not only
be certain of a thing that we do not see, but that which we do not see
must coincide with that which exists immediately before us. Such a
position is no longer a faith, but a gross contradiction, a complete
absurdity.
(e) _Results and Prospects_
The immediate experience of man may by no means be rejected as a whole
on this account; if it were, spiritual work itself would degenerate and
lack content. However, we only need to take up into a whole the
impressions and experiences which each in his sphere acknowledges to be
indisputable, and it will be clear that a movement toward spiritual
independence can never proceed from such a pitiable state of confusion
as that which is thereby seen to exist. It is essential that the
movement toward spiritual independence have an independent starting
point, and proceed on its own course. Only then is it able to select and
appropriate the spirituality that exists in those confused experiences,
and at the same time purify and strengthen it. We may most decisively
reject all presumption to sovereignty on the part of the human realm;
nevertheless, for the construction of a spiritual world that realm
cannot be dispensed with. For this construction is not peacefully and
securely accomplished through the self-development of a spiritual power
placed in us, as was supposed by those who attempted to represent
reality as a whole as a cosmic process of thought. If through the
joyfulness of its faith and the definiteness of its undertaking this
attempt captivated the minds of men for a time, at last it was
frustrated by the fact that we men do not find ourselves immediately in
the atmosphere of reason, but have first through toil to raise ourselves
into it; that we have to do not with absolute spiritual life, but with
spiritual life under the conditions and limitations of human existence.
Thus, in the first place an independent spiritual life, a universal
self-consciousness, must work in us and be changed in our activity; and
this can be accomplished only by a revolutionary transformation of life
as we immediately experience it; only by the attainment of a new point
of view. But if at this point of view certain fundamentals of a new
world become evident, they are as yet only fundamentals, and, without
the help of a world of immediate existence, without recourse to the
movements and experiences of human life, they cannot be completely
developed and embodied. The complete development of a self-conscious
reality is by no means made possible by combining an original spiritual
movement with the world of sense brought to meet it. For the spiritual
life can be furthered by coming into contact with that world only so far
as the spiritual life takes it up and transforms it; the situation is
rather that the spiritual movement wrests a content from sense
experience and at the same time is raised in itself; it is a realisation
of self through the other. The further the movement advances the more
one may win one's own in what is apparently alien; the more that which
is really alien may be separated and opposed. Thus we have a
characteristic picture of the spiritual life in man; only the more
detailed treatment can confirm it.
The matter of greatest importance to the whole, and the one upon which
all hope of success rests, is that the movement towards an independent
spirituality, to the building up of a new world, should, in spite of the
opposition of immediate circumstances, become manifest also in the human
sphere in characteristic operation, and that it should establish stable
bases in this sphere and rise upon them to the highest by means of work.
We have now to investigate more closely, to demonstrate more exactly,
and as far as possible to show that at all the chief points of life such
movements begin; that one such movement advances another; and that all
are associated in a community of striving, and that from here the
spiritual movement that we see in history is lit up, strengthened, and
for the first time rendered practicable.
2. The Transformation and the Elevation of Human Life
(a) _Aims and Ways_
The question before us is whether any kind of transcendence of the gulf
between the spiritual world and man is effected; whether that world, in
spite of its antithesis to the world of sense, manifests itself also
with a characteristic effect in our sphere, and thereby inaugurates a
movement which takes possession of our whole life and advances it. Only
on the result of such an inquiry can we judge whether man is able again
to establish his position, which has been so shaken in the course of
modern culture; and to save the courage and faith of life from violent
changes and convulsions. At the same time we must ascertain whether the
representation of the spiritual life that we have sketched is true in
reference to things as they are found in the human sphere.
To be sure, proof or verification through experience is, in the case of
this problem, in the highest degree peculiar. No definite reality
spreads itself before us by which we must test the validity of our
representations of thought. Representation and object cannot be simply
brought into coincidence, but as life, which we wish to comprehend, is
found in movement, and as, further, in immediate experience genuine fact
and the form assumed by it in the idea of man are confused, so the
revelation of the spiritual life does not come to us immediately, but
has first to be extricated and wrested from the most diverse errors and
half-truths. Every attempt to obtain proof from experience rests on the
conviction that a movement of the kind, the recognition of which is
being fought for by us, is already in some way in process everywhere
where human life goes beyond mere nature; and that only the clear
comprehension of the aim and the taking it up with complete
self-conscious and self-determining activity are lacking. If now the aim
which is presented is the right one, that is, that which is implied in
the spiritual movement of life itself, then its acknowledgment and
appropriation must tend to the elucidation, the unification, and the
strengthening of all endeavour tending in the direction of this
movement; it must lead to a development and an elevation of life above
the condition in which it is immediately experienced. In the first
place, it must be shown that the connections, preparations, directions
in life in its general condition, tend towards the new according to its
chief demands; and, further, it must be shown that the existing
condition is raised essentially through becoming comprehended by the
revealed universal movement, and is led to its own perfection. Again, it
has to be shown that thus life wins a more precise content and a greater
power in its every aspect: that which is present in all human endeavour
as a necessary requirement must now become more intelligible, and at the
same time from something impossible of fulfilment to something possible,
and reveal new aspects and new tasks. Further, those elements which at
first sight exist unconnected side by side and tend to limit one another
must unite, and must strengthen one another. On the other hand,
divisions must arise: it is as necessary energetically to reject that
which follows wrong aims as to come to a peaceful settlement with that
which errs only in the means. The antitheses which the work of humanity
contains must also become intelligible, and at the same time a way must
be prepared by which these antitheses may be overcome, not one by which
merely a compromise between them may be arrived at. The breaking forth
of the new must tend always toward the self-elevation of life; with
arousing and strengthening power, it must take up the whole of life into
its movement: it must demonstrate a transcendence of all the reflection
and subjectivity of man, and this can be accomplished only through the
disclosure of new forms and contents of life. Accordingly attention must
in the first place be centred upon the pointing out of such new forms
and contents.
The union of the spiritual life with man, its being firmly rooted in
him, is seen to be at the same time something old and something
new--something old in so far as it must have been existent and in some
way effective from the beginning, something new in so far as its
distinct emergence and its transition to a state of self-determining
activity must alter the condition of things essentially; in fact, must
turn life as a whole into a problem. Where the reality of man is
reduced, as by Hegel, solely to an unfolding of thought and cognition,
the present may find its most important task in the complete
clarification and appropriation of the past; life comes to complete
satisfaction in the drawing of historical achievement to itself. Where
it is a question of the building up of a reality based on self-conscious
and self-determining activity, when we ourselves share in such activity,
we must find ourselves in an essentially different relation to things;
and with all the connection with the past, life will press forward,
changing and elevating in contrast with the whole past.
* * * * *
A contact, indeed a union, must therefore be established between the
independent spiritual world--which in some way must be operative in
us--and the activity of our own which struggles upward; and, through the
gain of such a contact, that world must be led to more complete
organisation, and that which strives upward made secure, unified, and
advanced. In this it is essential that the movements and the demands
which the fundamental idea of the spiritual life contains be present to
our minds. The spiritual life appears, so we saw reason to believe, in
the first place, to be something essentially new in contrast to the life
of nature. The spiritual life is not the product of a gradual
development from the life of nature, but has an independent origin, and
evolves new powers and standards: new beginnings must, therefore, be
recognisable in us if the spiritual life is to become our life. The new,
however, manifested a development of the inner life to independence in
opposition to its state of subjection at the level of nature, and so
thus in man also the inner life must in some way come to itself and
attain to freedom. We saw, further, that this development to
independence cannot be brought about through new achievements in a given
world, but that it needs the building up of a new world--a new basis for
life: it extends even to the final basal forms; not any kind of activity
could suffice, but a being within the activity, or, rather, a division
of activity into something sustaining and comprehending on the one hand,
and something demonstrating and producing on the other, is necessary. It
is only thus that life becomes turned toward itself and elevated to a
self-conscious life; activity to self-determining activity; experience
to self-conscious experience. Man could not participate in such a
self-conscious and self-determining life, if in him also a new life, a
spiritual self, had not begun to be in some way. It is impossible for
this self to be merely individual in nature: it can change the form of
things and convey a new world only if it encompasses the multiplicity
and experiences it as its own. An infinite self-conscious and
self-determining life must not only include man within itself; it must
become his own life, his true self.
To realise this life, this self, in more detail and to pass from mere
impulse to fruitful work, such as the building up of a new reality
necessitates, man must in some way transcend in his own sphere the mere
juxtaposition of individual powers. Connections must be formed within
the realm of man that somehow deal with that task and advance towards
its accomplishment in a way that is beyond the capacity of individuals.
A transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, that dominates
the greater part of life, is also essential to the new life; an
energetic revolution must raise life to a state of resting upon itself,
to autonomy: and so in man also movements must appear in opposition to
this antithesis--condensations and concentrations, in which life from
being a movement hither and thither becomes a forming of reality from
within. In these connections only out of a self-development of life has
a reality arisen at all; and its content was not there complete at the
outset, but was yielded only through the continuance of that
self-development: it must be shown, therefore, that in man also life
begins to turn toward itself, and that this makes it possible to attempt
tasks which to our capacity are otherwise inaccessible.
It is necessary to acknowledge that in all the spiritual movement which
appears in the domain of man, there is a revelation of the spiritual
world: as merely human power cannot lead the whole to new heights, in
all development of the spiritual life the communication of the new world
must precede the activity of man. At the same time, where we are
concerned with a life that is independent, and of which the activity is
conscious and self-determined, the change cannot possibly simply _happen
to_ man: it must be taken up by his own activity; it needs his own
decision and acceptance.
We shall consider the question of the possibility of this almost
immediately: so much, however, is certain--that this necessity of a
decision by man himself makes the matter far more complex and of far
greater risk. The establishment of an independent spiritual life in man
finds its chief enemy not in nature, but in the limitation and
perversion of spiritual impulse through man's subordinating it to his
own ends. The chief conflict is not between spirit and nature, but
between real and false spirituality. Thus thought emerges in man, seeks
a representation of the world and would in this attain to truth; but
when this striving first appears, man is wont to treat himself as the
central point of the whole, to measure the whole of infinity according
to what it achieves in relation to him, and to see reflections of
himself throughout its whole extent. And so we have the anthropomorphic
way of thinking, the nature of which we have become aware of only
through toil during the progress of the work of culture; a way of
thinking from which it has needed even more toil to protect ourselves,
and which, in forms often hardly noticeable, is ever ready to appear
again and to draw the spiritual movement into its paths. With the
emergence of the spiritual life, man becomes more free in relation to
his environment; more free also in relation to the necessities of mere
nature: his activity can exert itself more independently, concern itself
with lofty aims, strive towards the infinite. But all this capacity
becomes drawn into the service of the human; the wishes and the desires
of the individual grow to an enormous extent. Since out of the struggle
for existence, with its natural limitation, an interminable struggle for
more existence arises, naïve self-preservation becomes transformed into
an unrestricted egoism. That the more-than-human which appears in the
domain of man should be employed to the advancement of the merely human
is a danger that is present even at the highest stages of development:
at one time man would prove his own power in the more-than-human; at
another, and this more especially, he treats it as a means to attain his
material welfare. Religion, for example, would reveal to man a new depth
of reality, and so create a new life for him; and yet, how often even
this new reality is degraded to a means for the preservation of his
insignificant personality, and regarded as something which on his behalf
guides the whole world aright!
The development of the spiritual life in the human sphere can thus be
seen to be anything but a sure and steady progress; every step forward
brings new dangers; unutterable confusion arises through the use and the
perversion of the new in the interests of man. But, if the development
of the spiritual life within man is thus an unceasing conflict against
human error, this conflict, despite its exhibition of the littleness of
man, is at the same time a witness to his greatness. For it shows not
only that the spiritual movement needs the active co-operation of man,
but also that there is a conflict within humanity itself against the
perversion of the spiritual; that there must be more within man and
operative in him than the narrowly human. Indeed, in nothing does man
seem greater than in this development of a more-than-human within the
domain of man, in this severe and untiring conflict with himself. How
could this conflict arise and become the soul of universal history if
man did not possess a life and being transcending his particularity, and
if he did not realise more in himself than we at the first glance see in
him? The error of Positivism is that, although it shows most clearly how
this spiritual movement dissolves the forms of life as it is immediately
experienced, it does not perceive and value the fact that, at the same
time, a new life, an inner life emerges; that, indeed, the negation
itself is possible only through a more comprehensive spiritual
revelation. To consider the negative and the positive in their relation
to each other, and to weigh them one against the other, is the
indispensable condition for the adequate understanding of human life.
(b) _The Nature of Freedom_
The arousing of a new world to life within man is a problem and a task:
it cannot be effected unless the spontaneity and self-determining
activity that are distinctive of this world also manifest themselves
within him. Further, it cannot be effected unless within man, who with
the greater part of his being belongs primarily to nature, a deliverance
from nature is accomplished and the centre of life is removed to its
spiritual side; and this cannot happen without the co-operation of man.
We need freedom, therefore, in two senses: as the presence of an
independent inner life, and as man's capacity to change--and we cannot
fail to recognise that these are closely related.