in the renewing of culture than philosophy, so the system here concisely
presented is placed in the service of this task; it attempts a
construction chiefly by the union of three demands and points of attack:
it requires a more energetic development and a complete unification of
the life-process; it requires the acknowledgment and development of a
spiritual life of independent nature present to us; and lastly, it
requires that this life shall be understood and treated as the world's
consciousness of itself and thus as the only reality. All these demands
must tend towards an essential alteration of the existent state of
culture; they make much inadequate that previously sufficed; but they
also reveal an abundance of new prospects and the possibility of a
thorough inner elevation.
It is a leading idea of our whole investigation that only from the
life-process itself are we able to orientate ourselves in relation to
ourselves and the world; and this idea is in agreement with the present
mode of thought in science. But to apply to our own time that which is
already acknowledged in general ideas is by no means simple. To give the
life-process such a position in our thought and to estimate it so highly
is possible only when life is distinctly distinguished from the states
of the mere subject, from the mere reflex of the environment in the
individual. This detachment cannot be accomplished unless we comprehend
as a whole that which exists in individual manifestations of life;
distinguish different levels in life, indicate relations and movements
within them, and thus advance to new experiences of life; reveal a union
of fact, a distinctive synthesis in life, which from a transcendent
unity shapes the multiplicity that it contains. But if in general it is
difficult to free ourselves so much from the condition of life in which
we find ourselves, to be able to illuminate this condition in this way,
and to throw its inner framework into relief; for us there is also to be
added the immeasurable expansion that directs the interests and the
vision to the outside, and is accustomed to treat, as a mere supplement,
a mere means and instrument, the life that in reality sustains all
infinity. A culture that has made the attainment of results the chief
thing has been detrimental to the spiritual, which no longer trusts
itself to encompass these achievements and to change them in a
development of life, to take up the conflict for dominion over reality.
It willingly flees to the passivity of the subject, where sooner or
later it expires in complete destitution.
If inwardness is so feeble and external relations so overwhelm us, life
necessarily receives its content from outside, and seems to be
determined essentially by that which happens around us. It is this that
lends so much power to-day to a superficial enlightenment that centres
in natural science, and expects life to be advanced without limit, and
man to be revived and ennobled, simply by reaching a more valid
representation of the environment. We do not ask here how far the
representations proposed overcome the difficulties of the older
representations, or whether new and more difficult problems do not arise
from the solutions offered; but we do ask whether life can obtain its
aim and content from outside, and whether it can be treated simply as an
addition to nature without degenerating inwardly, and losing all inner
motive. We ask what the theories based chiefly on externals make of man,
and what they achieve for his soul. We summon him to an examination, to
see whether the picture that is held up to him by these theories agrees
with what he longs for, and, by a compelling necessity of his being,
must long for.
To-day it will also be evident that the final decision does not rest
with the intellect, but with life as a whole. For, little as
intellectual achievement is absent from truth, the masses--and to the
masses belong those at the average level of all classes, higher as well
as lower--will always hold fast to the external impression. The advance
beyond this impression and the appreciation of the inner conditions of
knowledge will always remain a concern of the minority. There is,
however, a point where the problem becomes real to each individual, and
where each can offer his opinion: this is in reference to the question
of the happiness and the content of life. The more this question is
felt, the greater will be the thirst for a substantial truth in contrast
with the shadows of the Enlightenment; the more will the question
concerning the nature of life as a whole receive its due consideration,
and the perception of things externally will give place to a
comprehension of their inner reality. Only with such a revolution can
our life and we ourselves be transformed from a state of spiritual
destitution to one of independent energy; only thus can we discover the
wealth that is within us; only thus can culture, from being an
occupation with things, become a preservation and an unfolding of our
own selves; only thus can we strive for more simplicity in contrast to
the complexity that would otherwise be our condition; and only thus can
we wrest from what would otherwise be chaos, fundamentals and
tendencies. Our demand, therefore, that the starting-point should be the
life-process itself is in harmony with the innermost longing of the
time--even if this longing is often indefinite--after a deepening of
life and an attainment of its independence.
If the turning to the life-process puts the question, the assertion of
an independent spiritual life gives the answer to it: however strange
this assertion may seem in relation to superficial temporal experience,
it meets a deep longing. For we are completely satiated with narrowly
human culture; the movements and experiences of the Modern Age, and in
particular of the present, make us so clearly conscious of all that is
trivial, simply apparent, disagreeable, feeble, shallow, empty, and
futile in human conduct, that all hope of finding satisfaction in this
conduct, and of advancing life essentially by its means and powers, must
be abandoned. We have, therefore, to face the following alternative:
either absolute doubt and the cessation of all effort, or the
acknowledgment of a "more" in man; there is no third possibility. But in
the context of our investigation no discussion is required to show that
this "more" cannot consist in an individual's elevation of himself above
others; that it cannot consist in a so-called Superman--a view that
only involves us more in the narrowly human. Either the "more" sought
for is only imaginary, a covering of tinsel with which we conceal our
nakedness, or a world transcending the merely human, a new stage of
reality, reveals itself to man, which can become his own life. As it is
this transcendent world alone that engenders a universal life within us
and opposes the insignificantly human; so also from this alone, and as
its manifestation, can culture become independent in relation to man.
Only when it is understood in this way can culture include aims and
tasks that do not strengthen man in his narrowness, but free him from
it, and make him spiritually greater.
Not only the conception but the whole nature of that which is called
culture is an unstable hybrid. It should elevate man above nature, and
give to his life a characteristic spiritual content; but at the same
time we have a dread of a detachment from the experience of sense and of
the construction of an independent world, because these must lead to
that which, of all things, is the cause of most alarm, to a change of a
metaphysical character, to a transformation of existence. In truth, in
the work of humanity two tendencies are usually undistinguished, which,
if life is to continue to advance, need to be distinctly separated: a
spiritual culture and a merely human culture. The former reveals new
contents and aims; with it a new world emerges within man, and
transforms his life from its basis: the latter uses that which a higher
organisation has given us, solely as a means for the advancement of our
natural and social existence. Merely human culture turns the spiritual
into a mere means to increase narrowly human happiness, whereas the
spiritual by its very nature makes us feel the whole of this happiness
to be too insignificant, indeed intolerable. The difference of a merely
human and a spiritual culture extends from the fundamental disposition
to all the separate departments of life. Religion, for example, is to
the former a means by which the individual may make himself as
comfortable and as secure as possible in an existent world, and conduct
his own insignificant _ego_ through all dangers; to the latter, it
signifies a radical break with that world and the gain of a new life, in
which care for that _ego_, or even the state of society, is relegated
completely into the background. To the one, morality is simply a means
in the organisation of human social life, in the accommodation of the
individual to his environment; to the other, it discloses a new
fundamental relation to reality, and in the transformation of existence
in self-determining activity allows life to win an inner union with the
infinite and its self-consciousness. On the one hand, art, science, the
life of the state, education, and so forth are the idols of utility, of
expediency, the adornments of a given existence; on the other, they are
the gods of truth, of inner independence, of world-renewing spontaneity.
That there should be an end to the confusion of the worship of idols and
of gods; that spiritual culture should be distinguished from merely
human culture; that the spiritual content of the individual departments
of life should be energetically developed, and the spiritual poverty of
merely human culture made clear--all this is the urgent demand of the
present, without the fulfilment of which its state of confusion cannot
be overcome. Yet spiritual culture can never become independent unless
the spiritual world is independent. Only the presence of this spiritual
world makes it possible for culture, at the level at which it is
generally found, to be tested by a transcendent standard to see how much
spiritual substance, how much content and value, it contains. This test
will prove that we possess far less spirituality than we think; and that
the most of what is called culture is no more than the semblance of
culture, no more than imagination and presumption. But at the same time
we recognise and gain in the little spirituality that remains to us
incomparably more; we win the presence of a new world, and by this,
depth of life and the possibility of an inner renewal. Our life would be
indescribably shallow if it were to pass on one level and were to be
exhausted in the experiences at that level. The acknowledgment of an
independent spiritual life saves us from this shallowness, in that it
shows an inner gradation within our own province and sets life as a
whole a task.
If the acknowledgment of a spiritual world, inwardly present to us,
gives to culture a distinctive character, this character receives a
further modification from the particular manner in which the spiritual
life makes its appearance and becomes established within our existence;
at the same time, from this position there is also the possibility of
different sides and tasks within an all-comprehensive work of culture.
Of special significance in reference to this modification is the
circumstance that the spiritual life does not possess man as a natural
fact, does not operate within him with complete power and sure direction
from the beginning, but is present to him at first only as a
possibility, and as a transcendence of the general condition of things.
In accordance with this, although the spiritual belongs to our nature,
it is not so much "given" to us as set as a task; for its realisation it
needs our own attention and appropriation; all development of the
spiritual life within us, therefore, involves our own activity and so
receives an ethical character. The spiritual life also has such an
ethical character because, transcending our original condition, it must
be conveyed to us, and must be maintained by an imparting and an
activity. In the spiritual life we find ourselves in a sphere of
activity and of freedom in contrast with that of nature; in this way our
life becomes our work, our own life in a much more real sense. We see
this in the case of the fundamental form of the spiritual life that is
called "personality." We men are by no means personalities from the
beginning; but we bear within us simply the potentiality of becoming a
personality. Whether we shall realise our personality is decided by our
own work; it depends primarily upon the extent to which we succeed in
striving beyond the given existence to a state of self-determining
activity. The fact that we thus take part in the formation of our own
being proves that we are citizens of a new world--a world other than
nature--and shows that we are incomparably more than we could become
simply as parts of nature. Neither philosophy nor religion will convince
one who, at this point, does not recognise an elevation to a higher
power, indeed a transformation of existence. But one who recognises this
will desire such a transformation and such an elevation of culture also;
he will not come to an easy compromise with the given condition of
things and draw the greatest possible amount of pleasure from this
condition; but he will set culture an objective ideal; arouse it from
the prevailing state of indolence; fully acknowledge the antitheses of
experience, and will be provoked rather to make further exertions than
disposed to abandon himself to these antitheses. Life finds its main
problem in itself, solely in the development of an ethical character,
and attains to complete independence and a transcendence of nature only
when the spiritual takes precedence. Every culture that does not treat
the ethical task, in the widest sense, as the most important of tasks
and the one that decides all, sinks inevitably to a semblance of
culture, a half-culture, indeed a comedy. The æsthetic system, with its
transformation of life into play and pleasure, with its beautiful
language and its spiritual poverty, is such a life. To-day, therefore,
we can revive and strengthen culture only by establishing such an
ethical conviction. Only a culture of an ethical character can develop
an independent and positive spirituality; only such a culture can free
the impulse of life from being directed simply to natural
self-preservation, and in doing this not make the impulse weaker, but
stronger. In nothing have minds been more divided and in nothing will
they become more divided than with regard to the question whether, after
the perception of the inadequacy of mere nature and society, a new world
reveals itself to them, or whether this negation is the ultimate
conclusion; the former will be possible only through that which we call
ethical.
The conception that we have here presented of the spiritual life and of
its relation to man also makes it for the first time possible to
understand and acknowledge the manifold and opposing elements in our
time without falling into a shallow eclecticism. Realism advances in
power, and Idealism seems to be endangered in respect not only of its
form but also of its innermost nature. Idealism is indeed in danger so
long as the spiritual life has not attained to independence in relation
to man; for, so long as the spiritual life is regarded as a production
of man the knowledge of man's relation to nature and his animal origin
must lead to a serious prostration, to a complete dissolution of
Idealism. If, on the other hand, it is established that with the
spiritual life a new order transcending the power of man makes its
appearance within him, then the recognition of human incapacity becomes
a direct witness to the independence of the spiritual life. We must,
therefore, cease to treat spiritual developments, such as religion, art,
morality, as the natural attributes of all called men. Man's natural
character simply offers tendencies and relations which can find a
spiritual character only by the revelation of a spiritual world. The
decisive point of transition is not between man and animal, but between
nature and spirit. But even where culture is supposed to be at its
highest, human existence is for the most part at the level of
nature--and is only embellished in some degree.
In Idealism a religious shaping of life is to be distinguished from an
immanent shaping of life by spiritual creation, especially in art and
science. The demand for a universal spiritual system involves the
rejection of the specific religious system as being in many ways too
narrow and open to hostile criticism; this universal system, however, as
it is presented when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be
independent, is closely related to religion. Not only is all
spirituality within us dependent upon a universal spiritual life, but
this spiritual life within us always presents itself as something
transcendent and is not coincident with our life. This religious
character must be the more clearly emphasised the greater the toil with
which the spiritual life must defend itself from a world apparently
alien and hostile. Immanent Idealism, filling life as it does through
art and science, cannot possibly be the whole and conclusive--for this
reason at least, that it has too little with which to counteract the
perplexities of spiritual and of material life, and because it
concentrates life too little within itself. But a scientific character
is indispensable to a universal spiritual culture, in order that life
may not pass in subjective feeling and presentation, and that life may
have an objective character, and be led to the clearness of a universal
consciousness. An æsthetic form and creative activity pertain also to
this life; for, otherwise, no representation of reality as a whole could
be obtained from the confused impressions of immediate experience; the
spiritual could attain to no clear present, and could not permeate
reality with ennobling power, and change all that is deformed and
indifferent to it in the original condition of things.
From the point of view of spiritual culture the movements in the
direction of Realism also may be regarded as of value, if only they do
not desire to dominate life and to impress their form directly upon it.
The tendency to place a low estimate upon the natural and material
conditions of life and of human social relationship has everywhere
revenged itself upon the spiritual life, since it has allowed that life
to fall into a state of weakness and effeminacy, and prevented it from
realising its full power and strength.
The acknowledgment of the multiplicity of tasks that are involved in all
the departments must be a source of great danger to life, if every
department of human experience does not serve the development of an
independent spiritual life. The more power the spiritual life acquires,
the more securely will it tend to prevent division. Nevertheless,
everything is in a state of movement; man must first win a coherent
character for his life. But it is already a great gain that we are not
defenceless in face of the antitheses within the human sphere, that the
presence of an independent spiritual life elevates us inwardly above
them and only allows an inner unity to take up a conflict.
We may also briefly consider how the conception of the spiritual life as
a coming of reality to itself, as a formation and development of being,
must tend to deepen and strengthen the work of culture. How much more
this work must become to us, how much more indispensable must it be, if
it is not simply a matter of giving an existent material a new form, of
arousing dormant powers, but if in it we first advance from a life that
is only a half-life and a life of pretence to a real and genuine life;
if we struggle not for one thing or another within existence, but for
our being as a whole! If once life is awakened to reflect upon itself,
and if at the same time it makes a claim to self-consciousness and a
content, it cannot doubt the poverty of the life of mere nature and just
as little that of the life of mere society; in the former, as in the
latter, there are only suggestions of a genuine life, only
possibilities, most of which do not come to be realised. Not suffering,
but spiritual destitution is man's worst enemy. From this position the
outlook of the life of the majority can be only a cloudy one, its value
only mean. If we abstract from the experience of man that which is due
to the necessity of self-preservation and to social training, how much
inner movement, how much life of his own, how much that is spiritual
remains in him! How many dead souls there are in all classes of society;
how many who, allowing their powers to lie dormant, drift about
aimlessly! Nevertheless other possibilities exist in man, and even if
they are not positively developed, still they prevent him from feeling
satisfied in that state of spiritual poverty, and always keep him in an
insecure state of suspension.
The less we think of the immediate welfare and capacity of man, the more
will the spiritual life transcend us and the more urgent will the task
of the spiritual life become--to preserve to human existence in the
midst of all externality and pretence some kind of substance and some
kind of soul. However, we have already occupied ourselves with the
question of the nature and significance of truth and reality in the
spiritual life.
(b) THE ORGANISATION OF THE WORK OF CULTURE
A problem from which no system of life can escape is that of the
organisation of culture, the question how the work of culture can be
divided into different departments and at the same time preserve a
unity. To-day we are in a state of great perplexity in this matter; an
old solution has become untenable, and a new one has not yet been found.
The Middle Ages handed down to us a system of culture that may be
described as a hierarchy, in the widest sense of that term. The
multiplicity of life was united into a whole; but this whole was
dominated by distinctive religious and philosophic convictions, which
assigned to each individual department its place in the whole and set it
its task; these departments attained to a complete independence as
little as that system had an independence for individual forms. The
Modern Age has evolved and has realised a system of freedom in
increasing opposition to the earlier system. How this everywhere effects
an emancipation is demonstrated by our problem of the increasing
development to independence by the individual departments of life. The
state and society, science and art, find their tasks more and more
within themselves, in their own development; they engender distinctive
laws and methods of their own; they seem to be able to reach their aims
of their own capacity. Effort is directed more and more into individual
departments, and there is a feeling of complete satisfaction in this
tendency. Our life has gained immensely in comprehensiveness and breadth
by the transition to this modern system: it comes more closely into
touch with the realm of fact; it produces a greater diversity of
movement, since the different departments have their own
starting-points, enter upon distinctive paths, and direct their powers
into these paths. The attainment of independence by the individual
departments of life constitutes one of the chief gains of modern
culture, and it cannot again be given up.