us, a new light is shed upon the individual departments of life, and new
tasks are set them. They have now, primarily, not to further human
well-being, to be of service in the attainment of narrowly human aims,
but they are characteristic unfoldings of the spiritual life. The
particular nature of these departments has its basis in that life, and
they must prove their capacity by advancing it. They are concerned with
man only so far as he participates in the spiritual life; and so they
will not so much strengthen him in his human nature as elevate him
spiritually, and remould him more and more to the form of the spiritual
life. A deliverance from the confusion of that which is narrowly human
with the spiritual is also necessary, and, along with this, life as a
whole must be more energetically based upon the spiritual life, and the
spiritual life itself must be given a more distinct form. From the
position of this life, that which has been handed down to us must be
evaluated and new paths must be opened up for the future. Religion could
obtain no content, and all change in it would be only an advance from a
more crude to a more refined anthropomorphism, if it were based solely
upon human needs and aided man to attain a supposed happiness. Religion
rises above such a condition of doubt only if it exhibits its roots in
an independent spiritual life and is able to show its actuality and its
power by aiding the development of the spiritual life. At its highest
religion has always been concerned with winning a new world and a new
humanity, not with the achievement of something within the old world and
for the old humanity. And as we need a religion of the spiritual life,
we also need a morality, an art, and, finally, an all-comprehensive
spiritual culture, through which something really new may be produced
and man be elevated in this being, and not simply circle round and round
continually in the old paths. Everywhere the matter is one of advance
and revelation; from this point of view the complexes of every day must
also be seen in a new light, and in what is apparently simple and
self-evident great achievements and tasks become manifest. We now, for
the first time and in another sense, win again that which we thought we
already possessed; indeed, by the revolution to the spiritual life, life
as a whole is transformed into a task. Every individual has such a
life-embracing task in the cultivation of a genuine personality and a
spiritual individuality. Humanity as a whole has such a task in the
building up of a kingdom of reason within its domain, in the furtherance
of the movement which comes to it from the whole and summons it to
co-operation.
Human life by participation in the spiritual life finds its basis in the
inward and spontaneous, in the infinite and eternal. The development and
the experiences of the spiritual life and its conflict with a world,
which is only being won, are here the chief content of human life and
unite individuals inwardly; the destinies of individuals receive their
particular nature from such a common life. As this life of independent
spirituality is possible only by detachment from the chaotic condition
of life as we find it at its general level, the development of the
spiritual life must make us clearly conscious of the spiritual
destitution of the majority; and especially must it oppose the attempt
on the part of such a life as that of the majority to present itself as
the whole, and to make itself the standard of human endeavour. In such
an attempt the trivially human inevitably preponderates, and this now,
at its highest points, invests itself with ostentatious pomp and a
feeling of power; now, almost as a whole, relies on the reason of the
masses, which loudly and noisily proclaims that those things which
according to human opinion are valuable are of all things the highest;
confidently makes its judgment and its task the standard of truth; and,
with arrogant presumption, demands a reverence towards itself that is
due solely to the spiritual world. From of old there have been many
indictments of this, but as long as a new life, based in the spiritual
world in contrast with merely human life, was not attained to, these
indictments did not lead to a deliverance. Under the guidance of
religion humanity has evolved such a life and for thousands of years has
found support in it. However, humanity has lost this life and this
support, in its old form, and the loss was inevitable. If humanity will
strive after a new form and at the same time transcend mere appearance,
it can attain to this only on the basis of the spiritual life, that is
acknowledged to be independent. Only on this basis can it enter into the
conflict on the side of gods against idols, for truth against appearance
and emptiness.
The new life cannot develop without elevating the individual in his
spiritual nature above all environment. For, as surely as the
construction of a spiritual reality within humanity needs a union of all
powers, there is a spontaneous springing up of the independent spiritual
life only within the soul of the individual. All social and all
historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls
irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual
can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society; of a
church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination he must
assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the
whole external world. But as the individual does not derive this
superiority from himself, not from a natural particularity and
peculiarity in distinction from others, but only from the presence of a
spiritual world, so he is securely guarded from all vain self-assurance
and the arrogance of the idea of the Superman, which grotesquely
distorts the great fact of the revelation of a universal life at
individual points.
The desire for the presence of the infinite at the individual point may
be characterised as an approximation to mysticism. Indeed, we need both
a metaphysic and a mysticism; but we want both in a new form, not in the
old. It seems to us preposterous to declare that necessary demands of
the spiritual life are finally disposed of, because the older solution
has become inadequate. If man does not in some way succeed in
appropriating the spiritual life, if it is not actively present as a
whole within him and animating him, then his relation to the spiritual
life remains for ever an external one; and this life cannot acquire a
complete spontaneity in him, can never become a genuine life of his own.
But the older mysticism was the offspring of a worn-out age, which
primarily reflected upon quietness and peace, and was under the
influence of a philosophy that sought the truth in striving towards the
most comprehensive universal, and saw in all particularity a defect
(_omnis determinatio negatio_). And so, to be completely merged in the
formless infinite could be regarded as the culmination of life. As the
spiritual life is to us, on the contrary, an increasing activity and
creation, a world of self-determining activity, so its being called to
life at individual points is a rousing of life to its highest energy; in
this also, a continual appropriation is necessary. Further, the movement
of the spiritual life does not appear to us as an advance from
particular to universal, but as one from differentiation to the living
whole; from the indefiniteness of the beginnings to complete
organisation and distinctive form. The inwardness that we advocate is
not a feeble echo and a yearning for dissolution, but is of an active
and masculine nature, and rests on ceaseless self-determining activity.
One may or may not call this mysticism; in any case mysticism of such a
kind cannot be charged with that which now appears to us to be defect or
error in the older form.
(2) _The Increase of Movement_
As certainly as a universal life must surround us and, with efficient
power, in some way be implanted within us, yet only our own activity can
appropriate and amplify that life for us. As the transition to the
independent spiritual life changes the problem so that no achievement
in a given world will satisfy it, but only the winning of a new world,
our existence must become much more active; our life must be made not
only much more comprehensive but also inwardly transformed and deepened.
Naïve opinion is accustomed to presuppose a fixed sphere for our
activity; it is possible for it to do this only because it confuses the
spiritual and that which is less than the spiritual and leaves them
undifferentiated. Since the attainment of independence by the spiritual
life makes this confusion impossible, it may at the same time be
recognised that the fixed relations in which we seem to be are also in
reality due to our own activity. From this fact a method of treatment is
justified, the introduction of which constitutes one of the greatest
services of Kant. This method in his own terminology is the
transcendental method. Unlike ordinary opinion, it does not regard the
relation of the departments of life and all its activities as being
self-evident, but it enquires into the inner possibility of this
relation, that is, it indicates the conditions without which the union
of the manifold could not be accomplished; it reveals the spiritual
activity that exists in the whole. It reveals a far finer texture of
life; it shows syntheses from the whole to the elements; it indicates
clearer limits and makes us more definitely recognise what
differentiates the individual departments. This is what Kant did in the
case of scientific knowledge, of morality, and of the realm of the
beautiful. The transcendental method itself is first indisputably
justified and given a secure foundation with the acknowledgment that a
world of independent spirituality emerges in man, and this through his
own activity, not by a mere favour and gift of destiny. For, when this
independent spiritual world is acknowledged it first becomes a matter
beyond doubt that the basis, and the bonds which unite the whole, could
not be given, but must proceed from our own activity. The transcendental
method must therefore be applied not only to the individual branches but
also to the whole, and the possibility of a spiritual life in man in
general made a problem. Then from the whole the method must also be
extended to the departments that are not brought into prominence by
Kant; it must discuss, for example, the possibility of history in a
characteristically human sense. Since our reality is thus dependent in
the first place upon our own activity, life and movement acquire a wider
scope and a greater value.
The movement of life also tends to be increased by the fact that in our
conviction the more detailed form of the spiritual life itself must
first be won by our activity, and that this detail can be acquired only
little by little through attempts, experiences, convulsions; that for
man the spiritual life with its actuality forms a difficult problem.
What more particularly separates us from the Enlightenment is that while
for it the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appeared to be
immediately present and to need only an energetic working out, we extend
the historical treatment not only to the representation, but also to the
nature, of the spiritual life; and so the ultimately valid form of the
spiritual life appears to be a high ideal, to which man can only
gradually approximate. The fact that endeavour is centred not upon
externals but primarily upon our own being must make our activity far
more significant and more intense; and this leads to a higher estimate
of history as well as of a historical treatment. As hence epochs are no
longer distinguished simply by their achievements, but by the nature of
their spiritual life, so the life of the present must also be given its
place in the moving stream, and so our innermost nature also depends on
spiritual work.
If with such an increase of movement much is mutable that otherwise
seemed to be as firm as a rock; and if, in particular, the foundations
of life themselves also suffer change, life seems to lose all support
and to fall into an unlimited relativism. Indeed, life must thus lose
all stability if in the spiritual sphere movement does not involve
something in opposition to change: and this as a fact it does involve.
As the spiritual life cannot develop a content without presenting it as
timeless, there is no great achievement in history that does not include
some kind of timeless truth, and the movement of the spiritual life is
not merely a flowing onward with time but also an elevation above time.
In spiritual work, therefore, the achievements of the ages can be
surveyed and examined; indeed, in distinguishing between past and not
past the sequence of times can be transformed into a timeless present.
Of course this is valid only with the presupposition of an absolute
spiritual life, which is present in all the uncertainty and change of
human undertaking, and does not allow it to become fixed in error.
Unless an immanence of the absolute spiritual life is acknowledged, an
essential characteristic of the spiritual work of the Modern Age remains
absolutely unintelligible, namely, its critical character. Modern work
is not completely objective, and occupation with the object does not
completely exhaust that work; but activity realises its independence of
the object, investigates its relation to the object, surveys that which
has been achieved, and tests it by transcendent standards. Such a
critique belongs especially to the fundamental nature of the
Enlightenment, to the proud self-confidence of which a conscientious
self-examination forms a necessary antithesis. The critical method
reached its highest point in Kant, and we can never go back again upon
the transformation of life that has been effected by it. But how could
the critique be justified and exercise such far-reaching influence as it
has done, if it were not more than a product of a subjective reflection
that accompanies the object, and that has to do with the object
externally? The critique could effect an inner transformation and
elevation of work only because it set new forces in motion. And it did
this in that it measured all human achievement by the demands of a
transcendent spiritual life and out of it developed inner necessities,
to which all achievement had to correspond. So the movement was not lost
through the lack of an aim; and life did not flow onward with the stream
of presentations, but found a support in itself; it was able to exert a
powerful counteraction; it did not need to acknowledge anything that
had not proved its validity before the judgment-seat of immanent reason.
This emergence of the question of validity in contrast to that of
actuality must inwardly raise and ennoble the movement of life; it
reveals to man an active relation not only to the environment but
primarily to himself; it leads to a ceaseless differentiation and
examination of the quality of life.
It is true that the Enlightenment, which acknowledged that alone to be
true which was clearly and distinctly cognised, exercised this critique
in a too narrow manner; yet notwithstanding all that may be
problematical in its application to details, the right and the necessity
of the fundamental idea are not thereby overthrown: the question
remains; it can be fully justified only in the relations that we have
indicated; but at the same time it must be transferred from the merely
intellectual to the spiritual as a whole, and form in relation to the
whole that which in the state of culture contains and develops an
independent spirituality and a self-conscious life; but by this it gains
a content of truth. This self-consciousness alone can be regarded as
essence and genuine reality, while everything else is reduced to mere
environment and becomes matter of secondary importance, if not of mere
appearance. Task after task is revealed, more especially for the
present; we see how, with the attainment of independence by the
spiritual life, the movement is not only extended, but also grows
inwardly and tends towards the elevation of life.
(3) _The Gain of Stability_
The movement of the spiritual life as not only directed towards the
outside but also turned inwards towards itself gained for us a greater
independence. But even that which emerges from within exists only in the
process of formation, and in this that which satisfies us to-day may
to-morrow be uncertain; and so we cannot dismiss the question whether
the spiritual life lacks the necessary stability; whether, in the midst
of all becoming and change, caprice and subjectivity are not without the
necessary opposition. In any case, the question of fixation must have a
different appearance within a system of life based upon activity from
that it would have within a system which proceeded from a given world:
in the former, that which is fixed cannot be introduced from outside,
but must exist within the movement itself; it can manifest itself only
through a movement of a kind and form which transcend the utmost
capacity of the mere subject.
Our investigation as a whole contends that the fixity is of this kind;
and at this point only a short revision and a summing up are required.
All spiritual activity is, as we saw, a transcendence of the antithesis
of subject and object; it is progressive and formative universal
activity. But this activity cannot be produced and formed according to
desire or fancy; we must be elevated into it; and, as a result of this,
we feel that we are under the compulsion of an inner necessity, which
distinctly counteracts the caprice of the mere subject. We saw, further,
that within the life-process spiritual contents are raised out of the
stream of events, and that they unite so as to form a world in contrast
with that stream, a world greater and more comprehensive, which
nevertheless continues within our life. This applies to all the branches
of our work; everywhere the deciding step to joyful advance is when
activity proceeds from mere search and contemplation under the necessity
of the object. No resolution, however, or even the most sincere
volition, can of itself force us to this decisive step. Man must be
taken possession of by a spiritual activity and power, and elevated
above the state of groping and doubt. This is shown in all scientific
work and artistic creation; everywhere success does not appear to be the
work of the human, but a gift and a grace from higher forces; everywhere
those who have created have felt guided and sustained by such forces.
Beyond individuals humanity as a whole develops complexes in science, in
law, and so on, which evolve inner necessities and require their
recognition and fulfilment by man, and follow courses of their own
regardless of the weal or the woe of individuals; so far as life follows
these tendencies, it is elevated above doubt to a state of stability and
joyfulness.
Such movements appear at first as a multiplicity, and are most directly
effective through that which is distinctive in the particular
departments of life. But through all multiplicity and above it, there is
a striving towards a comprehensive unity; every advance towards this
unity is an immediate gain in stability and certainty. Nothing helps the
individual to become inwardly firm more than the unification of his life
in a whole of activity, more than becoming certain of an inward
all-comprehensive task in the development of a spiritual individuality.
The development of a spiritual individuality is a task that comes to him
from within, and which, while it is more than anything else his own, is
yet above all caprice. This task may tend little to promote that which
is usually called happiness; the striving to fulfil it may transform the
whole of existence into a state of toil and trouble, of conflict and
care; and yet it alone gives to life a meaning and a value, a sure
direction and a secure self-consciousness, and by assuring man of a
spiritual existence of his own makes him certain of the spiritual life
as a whole. Such a unification of the manifold activities so as to form
a life-work, an incomparable kind of spiritual being, is something
entirely axiomatic, which is in no way derived from outside. Again, this
unification does not depend upon particular representations of the
world; only the fanaticism of party can bind it to definite doctrines of
the human and the divine. It itself, however, is a secure starting-point
for the development of convictions; its acknowledgment involves the
acknowledgment of a spiritual world independent of and operative within
us, and summoning us to co-operation, even though this implication is
often concealed from consciousness. Where our own life lacks such a
fountain-head the conviction of a spiritual life never attains to
axiomatic certainty, but depends on the thin threads of reasons and
proofs, and therefore is most easy to overthrow. And so, for the
overcoming of doubt and faintheartedness everything depends upon
attaining to a unity of activity and creation which inwardly embraces
life as a whole, and with this, upon being something, not simply doing
something.
What is valid of individuals is valid also of peoples and epochs, of
humanity as a whole. Whether a people feels certain of a spiritual life,
and is thereby elevated to a state of inward joyfulness, depends
primarily upon whether it recognises and acknowledges in itself a common
spiritual task: if this is not the case, the acutest apologetic cannot
prevent the increase of doubt and faintness of heart. Similarly, the
disposition and life-feeling of epochs is decided primarily by whether
their endeavour unites them inwardly or whether it is divided, and at
the same time becomes inconsistent. The endeavour of our own time does
suffer from such division and inconsistency; it is this in particular
that gives the negative tendency so much power over us and in the midst
of all greatness of achievement in external matters makes us inwardly
despondent. Humanity as a whole can attain to a stable spiritual life
which is more than that of the particular times and peoples only by the
revelation and appropriation of an all-comprehensive task which governs
it with inner necessities. Such a task alone makes life a preservation
of spiritual character; and gives conviction an unshakable firmness, and
a joyous confidence of victory. And so everywhere only the formation of
life itself is able to guarantee to it inner stability; the movement
itself by its elevation above all caprice and its inner unity is alone
able to overcome the dangers which the transformation of life into
activity brings with it.
(e) ACTIVISM: A PROFESSION OF FAITH