If we pass from the individual to the whole of mankind, we see in civilisation and culture a new form of life opposed to mere nature. For man is no longer swayed and ruled by what assails him from without, but he confronts it with new aims and ideals. He judges and weighs; he approves and rejects; he forms new complexes, like those of state organisation and of science. In all this, man is the representative of a new and specific kind of life; he manifests an independence unknown to nature.
This new life differs from nature and from what may be attained on the basis of nature, not only in single characteristics, but in all its manifestations and even in its fundamental essence. Nature forms a tissue of separate elements, which come into reciprocal action but lack all inner cohesion. Great complexes are thus formed, but no combination amounts to real cohesion: there is no inner whole, and no life proceeding from such an inner entity.
All life grows out of contact with the environment; therefore intellectual participation is indissolubly bound to the world of sense. In this life of nature, the intellect can create no conceptions independent of sense impressions, and action cannot free itself from the power of natural impulse. All inner values can here be nothing more than an accessory and reminiscence of what reaches us from without.
We see something essentially different, wherever spiritual life develops. Here life is not decomposed into a multitude of separate particles, but inner cohesions are formed, which embrace and dominate all achievement of individual beings. This is especially the case when human thought aspires towards Truth. Every individual has his own sum of conceptions and his own special associations; but he does not possess a truth of his own. All search for truth is based on the conviction that something must be acquired which is common to all men, and which embraces and governs them all. Aspiration thus extends far beyond separate individuals. We have here not a disconnected mass of assertion and dogma; all is gathered into a well ordered cohesion, and all separate efforts result in progression to the whole. Every kind of intellectual endeavour presents a similar situation. Thus the Good and the Beautiful are not values confined to single individuals; every man striving after them, only contributes towards the sum of common endeavour, and what he wins for himself is at the same time a gain for all. Aspiration is not confined to a limited number of separate results, but the manifestation of a great whole is sought for: a comprehensive realm of the good and the beautiful.
Once the mind is thus concentrated on the whole, greater spiritual independence inevitably ensues. For it is necessary to rise above the sense impression and constantly to assert the autonomy of the soul, if aspiration from the whole and to the whole is to be successfully developed. From being a mere accessory, the soul now becomes in all respects a source of independent life. In science ideas gain a significance of their own, apart from the impressions of sense; they develop their own laws, and react with transforming power on what they have absorbed, as we see in the case of mathematics. Our own mind supplies the forms in which we shape our world. Feeling also frees itself from sense impressions. Sense enjoyment no longer suffices for man's happiness. His relation to other human beings does not remain confined to external contact; pity and love can embrace the whole of mankind, as is proved by the great religions. We can no longer doubt man's capacity of aspiring to values far beyond external possessions; and his inner life, the development of his own individual personality may become a matter of paramount importance to him.
But this inner life, with all its distinct manifestations, can cope successfully with the outer world and its forcible inroads, only by developing an inner realm which it extends to an independent world of its own. This does in reality take place. What was at first beside us and apart from us, can be transferred to the soul without merging into it. The antithesis between internal and external values, which at first seemed to disintegrate life, can be overcome, if spiritual endeavour absorbs the object and brings it into reciprocal action with spiritual forces. Where spiritual development is at its highest, life does not fluctuate between the subjective and objective, but unites both in itself, brings them into reciprocal action, and develops one by means of the other. Such a triumph over antitheses is to be seen most clearly in the province of art. Art is not merely capable of copying external objects as exactly as possible, or of rendering with the greatest possible truth the feeling of the individual: really great art must embrace both factors and blend them to a perfect unity. This is how a real work of art is created, which then gives to life an inner expansion and a new reality.
As in art, so also in the other provinces human life. In the mutual relation of man to man, the spiritual phase by no means does away with all distinctions, but it exalts us above them, and embraces them all from a higher point of view. Individuals are not to be merged in a hazy and colourless whole, but in rising towards a higher life an inner communion becomes possible, within which even what is alien becomes to a certain extent our own. This enables men to understand each other, to put themselves in the place of one another, to find themselves in others. Man acquires in such communion a vaster self, which is not dependent on one tiny atom, but has a whole world of its own.
If scientific research is not to degenerate into barren scepticism, it must also overcome the antithesis of the subjective and the objective. To do this, it assimilates external objects by means of thought, and strives to embrace at the same time both the inner man and the outer world, developing one by means of the other.
We observe everywhere this tendency to subject everything to the operation of spiritual forces—to create and develop an inner world. Here all problems are confined to life itself, which is no longer concerned with extraneous matters, but with itself alone. In this inner world, life develops in its own way; it finds its aims and ideals in itself, in its own perfection, in its complete triumph over the antitheses it embraces.
How are we to interpret this new life and its origin? It cannot have proceeded from that nature inferior to man, from which it differs even in its most elementary fundamental forms. It cannot be a creation of man alone, in whom—as experience proves—it is far too weak, too much alloyed with lower and sensual elements, for a new gradation of life to originate in him. Nothing therefore remains but to recognise in this inward tendency a movement of the universe—a movement in which man is privileged to participate, but which he could never engender from out of his own nature. The recognition of such a movement completely changes the aspect of reality. The universe now seems to embrace two planes, and to be rising—at least as far as humanity is concerned—from one plane to the other. A new light is cast on reality, which ceases to be a collection of separate and non-cohesive elements, and becomes capable of comprehensive operation and of self-concentration. We realise that what at first appeared to be the whole of reality was only its outer aspect, which is supplemented by the new depth revealed to us. It is only the development of these depths that gives life its real significance; values come into existence which lie beyond the natural instinct of self-preservation—such values as the good, the true, and the beautiful.