of reality: with regard to the one as to the other we are concerned in
a conflict against the external conception common to a naïve state of
life, which, though far surpassed by the inner movement of the work of
history, obstinately asserts itself through the evidence of the senses
in single individuals and hardly ceases to impress men with its apparent
self-evidence. The naïve way of thinking understands reality as a space
which encompasses men and things; reality seems to be presented,
"given," to man through the senses; only that which is exhibited to man
in these sense-relations passes current as real. In this Ptolemaic form
of life, dominated by sense impression, everything other than sense
fades to a mere illusion, and this includes the spiritual life itself,
although in it alone is reality known. Now, however, as science has with
no mean power led beyond this Ptolemaic representation of nature, so the
development of life has led beyond the Ptolemaic reality. Life could not
emancipate itself from its attachment to the environment and develop an
inwardness without effecting a revolution in this problem. The inward
becomes the first and surest experience, with which all that is to pass
current as real must show itself to be in consistent relation:
everything external loses its proximity and becomes a problem; it can be
established as real only through that which it achieves for the inner
nature and in accordance with the standards of that nature. The power to
convince possessed by sense impression is now based, not on its
obviousness, but on the spiritual activity that it arouses. Here also,
only the experiences of the spiritual life itself can lead to the
experience of something less than spiritual.
As such a revolution brings clearly to consciousness the spiritual
achievement in the formation of reality, so at the same time it gives
the object more movement and transforms it in spiritual endeavour. Two
things are necessary to the conception of reality: an independence of
man, and a realisation of the many as a unity. Now, since that which
lies wholly beyond experience must for that reason be inaccessible to
us, this assertion of independence can have no other meaning than that,
within life itself, something becomes detached from the stream of
consciousness and fixes and asserts itself as independent of it. The
power thus to transcend the time-process is a characteristic mark of all
spiritual activity; this activity evolves within us something in
opposition to us, and in so doing accomplishes a marvellous expansion.
This is most clearly seen within the sphere of thought. For all the
functions peculiar to thought receive their differentiating
characteristic only through such a detachment from the flow of
sense-presentation and by establishing themselves as independent of it:
the concept presents its content as something fixed in contrast to the
stream of presentations; the judgment proclaims its connection of
concepts to be something that does not pass away with the act of
connecting them but persists in face of all the changes of the psychical
life. Life accomplishes a gradation within itself and lifts itself above
the mere stream of change. Only because life establishes within itself a
fixed nucleus, and in this manner wins an independence of its own
momentary condition, can it oppose a world to itself, and set itself the
task of appropriating this world--that, further, that independent
nucleus should remain no mere collection, but should be inwardly unified
is again a requirement and an achievement of the spiritual life. How far
that requirement will be fulfilled depends upon the nature and the
degree of the development of the spiritual life.
Reality, therefore, is to be found chiefly in the self-consciousness of
the spiritual life; from this self-consciousness we build up our
reality. Since spiritual requirement is from this point of view the
measure of human undertaking, our activity is judged by the degree to
which the state of the world is changed in it and has thus become our
reality. How far our capacity reaches in this matter cannot be decided
by preliminary consideration, but only by the progress of life itself:
in particular it is not permissible to assume things-in-themselves
independent of us and thus to reduce our world to a realm of mere
appearances. For, so far as that independence reached, things could
never enter our life, and never be inwardly appropriated; at most they
could concern us only in their effects. As far as the conception of
nature as a mechanism is concerned, which regards all occurrence as a
texture of related individual points which exist, inaccessible, behind
it, there is much to be said for the view that things are only known in
their effects; but this view is an intolerable limitation--dogmatic in
the highest degree--if it is meant to represent our fundamental relation
to reality and to ourselves. For then we should be related to ourselves
as to something alien; all the self-consciousness of life would be
destroyed; there could be no development of being in contrast to single
acts, but we must be completely resolved in the stream of appearances;
there would be no advance in the striving after reality. As a matter of
fact, we are concerned primarily with the content that life is able to
give to itself; how far it presses forward to reality. Our world is to
be measured more especially by the degree in which life becomes
deepened. But from the beginning man, so far as he shares in the
spiritual life, is not a being adjacent to reality, but within it. He
would never be able to attain to a reality if he did not bear it within
himself and needed only to develop it. Thus ultimately he does not look
inwards from outside, but outwards from within; and his limitation is
not the chief thing, but the secondary.
The inner structure of our life corresponds with this conviction. It is
characteristic of all spiritual life that it does not pass hither and
thither between individual points, but includes and develops a
multiplicity within a transcendent unity; by this the spiritual life
grows within itself, and more and more acquires a self-consciousness.
And it is just in this way that it evolves to a reality. Reality,
therefore, here is not a fixed and completed magnitude, but is of
different degrees. In the first place there is a difference in the
energy which maintains a union of the manifold and a transcendence of
the division: according to the nature of this energy the self appears,
sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; its power of changing, at one
time greater, at another smaller. Again, the force of the resistance
that the given condition to be appropriated offers, differs according to
the amount of its positive power; and the clash of the given condition
and free activity will be harder or more gentle according to this power.
One man finds intolerable contradictions where to another all is plain
and smooth; one believes that things are transformed in their own being
where another holds that only their surface is affected: and so, that
which one regards as reality may seem to another only a realm of
shadows.
Mere energy, however, is too subjective to be able to obtain a genuine
reality from life: for that, a transformation of life in work, an
elevation to full activity, is necessary; but the preceding paragraph
has shown that this transformation and elevation is of different kinds
and of different degrees. The system of the formation of being promises
to give to life the most fundamental organisation and the most forceful
reality. For into the single elements embraced by the movement of life
it is able to breathe a life of their own, to confer upon them an
incomparably greater independence than in those systems in which they
are regarded as lifeless objects which are acted upon, and which only
set isolated forces in motion. When within a comprehensive life
different centres of life meet, and in their interaction the activity of
the whole wins an ever richer content and a more stable nature, genuine
reality must increasingly unfold itself.
Looked at from this position, reality is not a fact but a problem and an
ideal; it does not lie at the beginning but at the end of the course: it
is different with different individuals, peoples, and times; each in its
particular nature and work has its own reality. Thus we cannot
comprehend the problem of reality from experience without conceiving
reality as existing in flux: the assertion of an independent spiritual
life, transcendent over all human undertaking, is a sufficient safeguard
against a destructive relativism. It is one of the most troublesome
appearances in the conflicts of minds that they fail to recognise the
many-sidedness and fluidity of our conceptions of reality; that each
takes his conception as the self-evident one and urges it upon the
others. In this way originate the many unfruitful disputes concerning
this world and the next, immanence and transcendence, in which the most
external and superficial conception is usually presented as
self-evident; while yet, according to the fundamental relation and the
chief basis of life, very different conceptions arise, and as a fact,
systems of thought nowhere come into more severe conflict than with
regard to their conceptions of reality. Only to a mode of thought which,
without further consideration, accepts the world of sense as the genuine
and only reality, can philosophy and religion, for example, appear to be
occupied with things implying an "other" world, and which, therefore,
are incomprehensible. On the contrary, Augustine thought to attain to
genuine reality and at the same time a true life only by elevation to a
realm above sense, so that to him the world of sense was secondary and
derivative.
To-day we are again deeply concerned with the problem of reality.
Notwithstanding all the passionate agitation of forces in the
incalculable extension of and the breathless haste in work, a genuine
reality fails us; our life lacks the proper character of being real; and
so, in the midst of all the external results of our work, our life,
spiritually discerned, threatens to become destitute and unreal. An
eager desire for reality exists in our time; it is often thought
possible to satisfy it by the closest possible connection with sense
impression and impulse, and by expelling as far as possible all elements
of thought. But thought is there, and cannot be expelled; with its power
to analyse, it steps continually between us and things, takes away from
them the proximity they have for us, and dissolves them into mere
pictures and shadows. As a fact, the problem of reality lies primarily
within the spiritual life; and it cannot be solved otherwise than in
that the spiritual life advances within itself from division to unity,
from the movement of forces to self-determining activity, from all mere
activity to a formation of being. If thus our life becomes transformed
into a self-preservation, if in it we unfold and assert a spiritual
being, we become certain of a reality and feel a satisfaction. Never,
however, can reality come to us from without.
(b) MAN AND THE WORLD
Through our whole investigation we have expressed the conviction that
man acquires a secure relation to the world only through his belonging
to a spiritual life acknowledged as independent; otherwise, all entrance
to the world is shut off. The growing independence of the inner life has
broken down the immediate connection which dominates the naïve way of
thinking: if, however, man once finds himself set in a position of
independence of the world, he can hardly draw it back to himself simply
of his own capacity. All appeal to subtlety and reflection seems only to
widen the gulf still more. Only the acknowledgment of an independent
spiritual life offers a way out of such a desperate situation: if in the
spiritual life the world attains to a self-consciousness, and if, on the
other hand, the spiritual life is present and active within man, there
is a possibility that man and the world are united; and that, at the
same time, human life also becomes cosmic. But it is a question how far
the possibility comes to be realised; how far the union that exists in
the innermost basis can be developed and transformed within us in the
work of life. Only the actual experience of life can answer this
question. We must ascertain whether there are any particular
developments of life which are not productions of the human, but which
manifest the operation of a transcendent world; and, further, whether
these developments are able to find a more detailed formation in their
contact with the world around us, and to adapt themselves to the
multiplicity of this world. Such a turning to the individual thing would
be impossible if a complete life-form ruled within us and impressed
itself on things only from the outside. For in this case this form must
inevitably be uniformly effective in its whole extent; in appropriating
the multiplicity it could not itself advance to greater concreteness. If
such an advance is effected, there is a contact within life between the
one and the other; and so the world acquires an inner connection with
our activity, and the spiritual movement can take possession of the
breadth of our life and with its differentiation gain a greater
intuitiveness.
An immediate union of man and world is indeed opposed to the fact that
the spiritual life which should unite them always exists, for us, in its
particular form in human existence and that this form cannot be
projected beyond man into the whole. The form of human existence
constitutes an insuperable boundary; if it governed our life as a whole,
then man could never overstep his narrow, particular sphere. But it is a
conviction that is fundamental to our investigation that our whole life
does not come under this form, but that there are tendencies in life
which are operative beyond this form of existence, and attain to an
independence of it. So far as these life-tendencies may be detached and
developed, man may confidently take up the problem of the world, and
feel related to the world around him; he can try to transform its life
into his own. The particularity of his manner of presentation and
perception then simply sets the limitation, that that which may be
admitted to be certain and true in its fundamental content can be
presented only through the medium of human peculiarity; the more
detailed amplification of the representation is always only of a
symbolic character. We see from this fact that there is a contradiction
ever present within our life that prevents it from ever gaining an
ultimate conclusion; however, it does not take from us the possibility
of an inner union and a community with the whole. Indeed, the
contradiction itself, and the powerful movement that it calls forth, are
to the train of thought here indicated a witness to a fundamental
expansion of our life.
An attempt to unite our life with the whole appears in the first place
in thought, in its work of obtaining knowledge. This emergence of
thought involves a transformation of life that could never be occasioned
by mere man, but can be understood only as the revelation of a new stage
of universal life. In thought, the intellect, otherwise bound to the
mechanism of the sequence of presentations, attains an independence. It
places itself in a position independent of the world, and seeks to
comprehend it as a whole, to appropriate it as a whole. The primary
connection with things is dissolved, to become established anew upon a
higher level and with an important transformation of its nature; through
the deviation a real appropriation is achieved. All this is incomparably
more than a merely becoming conscious of a given world, which is an
experience that could arise in some way at isolated points; thought
contains a development of the world which ultimately can proceed only
from the power of the world itself. How can the individual matter be
elucidated if the whole remain obscure? How can the desire for
enlightenment obtain such a power over man, and assert itself in him in
opposition to the interests of his physical self-preservation, if a
universal movement were not operative in him? Man does not elucidate the
world, but the world elucidates itself within him. What is thus reached
is valid not for him alone, but universally; the development of this
universal movement of thought enables him to win a closer relation to
the world, a life embracing the world.
Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science
without producing and employing a definite logical structure with fixed
principles: these principles are immanent in the work of thought; they
are above all the caprice and all the differences of the individuals.
This logical structure cannot be carried over and applied to the world
around us, as all scientific research carries it over and applies it,
without implicitly presupposing an objective logic of things, a
conceivability of experience: in this, man does not simply project
externally and apply mechanically forms already existing in a complete
and final state within him. For the multiplicity of things not only
gives to those principles a particular form, in the production of which
they must themselves participate, but through the relation to the world
the fundamental forms are also further developed in their nature as a
whole; it is only with the co-operation of both sides that the
thought-structure achieves what is ultimately reached. The chief thing
is that thought actually transcends the state of contemplative
reflection, and advances to fully active work; that out of the movement
of our thought proceed further developments, which extend to the object
also; that, moreover, we come under the compulsion of inner necessities,
and, possessing the highest freedom, are raised securely above all
caprice. This creative thought in us, which is at the same time our own
thought, constitutes a witness to a meeting of our thought with a
thought that has its basis in things and in the whole. Inability to
imagine such a thought should never lead to the denial of an absolute
logic, with which all scientific research stands or falls. The
disclosure of this relation, however, gives to our thought, in the midst
of all doubt, a firm foundation, a joyful certainty, an infinite task.
Artistic creation and appreciation brings another characteristic
unfolding of life; and this also demonstrates an inner relation of man
to the world, and can be developed only when this relation is
acknowledged. In the first place, for this creation and appreciation a
deliverance of life from the turmoil of ends and interests, which at
first sway our existence, is essential; artistic creation and
appreciation involves a resting and a tarrying in itself. If the world
were no more than this turmoil, if it did not in some way attain to
self-consciousness, how could such a deliverance be brought about? If a
self-conscious life were not present in man, how could a longing for an
artistic moulding of life arise in him? But an arousing of an inner
life in things, the revelation of a soul, is accomplished not through
imparting something from without, but through a meeting together of
things and human endeavour. On the other hand, the spiritual expresses
itself in a visible form and in doing so moulds itself. The chief thing
in this connection is not mere beauty, a preparation for idle enjoyment,
but a truth, a revelation of contents, a further development of life
through and above the antithesis. How could something invisible and
something visible, to express the matter briefly, find a common ground
and combine together in a common action if nature were not more than the
mere web of relations into which the mechanistic conception of it
transforms it; if spiritual life were not more than the subjective form
of life that it is supposed to be, according to general opinion; if from
that form of life an inner life did not arise, and beyond all
subjectivity attain to a full activity, and thus to the building up of a
reality within its own province? That we do not simply become aware of a
movement within ourselves, and then read it into nature, but only take
up and lead to its own truth that which strives upward in nature, is
again testified by the inner advance of this striving through its
contact with the world, and by the infinite abundance of particular
contents which are revealed to us in the world and which continually aid
in our development. Again, our life experiences the most important
elevation in that it takes up and carries further a movement of the
whole, and is liberated from the narrowness of the particular sphere,
without merging into a vague infinity. To realise clearly that we belong
to the world, and energetically to amplify this relation, is of the
greatest significance for artistic creation and appreciation. For it is
only by becoming firmly established in these relations that artistic
endeavour is able to resist the tendency to degenerate into play and
pleasure--a tendency which threatens it with inner destruction; as in a
similar manner the work of thought must guard itself from degenerating
into mere reflection. In the realms of thought and art there remains
much that is alien, ever surmise and symbol; but even symbol is not to
be disdained, if it serves an important truth.
A universal character is shown most clearly by the movements that
co-operate towards the ethical moulding of life. Without freedom there
is no such moulding; but we saw above that freedom requires a world of
spontaneous life and its presence within man. However, when freedom is
thought of in these relations, it is elevated above the usual conception
of it and also above the usual criticism. All moral life is pretence and
delusion without the arousing and fundamental idea of duty. But where is
the truth more clearly expressed than in duty, that what man does by no
means concerns himself alone; and that nothing can constrain him but
what he acknowledges as his own will, his own being? As duty is
concerned ultimately not with something isolated but with a whole, not
with a performance within the old order but with the creation of a new
order, so in the moral life a whole new world appears to be taken up
into man's own will and being. Duty exhibits the new world particularly
in relation and in opposition to the old; the new world appears in
itself to be pre-eminently a kingdom of love. Love is primarily not a
subjective emotion, but an expansion and a deepening of life, through
life setting itself in the other, taking the other up into itself; and
in this movement life itself becomes greater, more comprehensive and
noble. Love is not a mere relation of given individuals, but a
development and a growing in communion, an elevation and an animation of
the original condition. And this movement of love has no limits; it has
all infinity for its development; it extends beyond the relation to
persons to the relation to things; for things also reveal their
innermost being only to a disposition of love. Again, the striving after
truth in science and art cannot succeed without love and an animation
that proceeds from it, without inwardly becoming one with the object.
How could this unity and activity in the whole be possible, how could
it even become an object of desire, if the whole itself did not strive?
And how could such a wealth of cultures proceed out of this movement if
that which was striven towards at one time was not taken up and carried
further by other times; how could the single movements tend together
without the unifying and elevating power of a universal life? As a
phenomenon to the individual, the movement involves a definite
contradiction: wherever it has been further and more freely developed it
has been directed to a kingdom of love; and this has necessarily been
thought of as the soul of reality, and a severe conflict has been taken
up against the world of self-assertion. Thus in the realm of morality
also we find ourselves in world-movements, we create out of the whole,
work towards the whole, and are borne on the flood of infinite life.