These tendencies are tendencies of reaction with all their one-sidedness. But can we deny that a great change of life has been accomplished, a change which reaches far beyond these tendencies, and which is still working itself out? That which previously was most proximate to us is now made to recede; what held currency as absolutely certain must now be laboriously proved, and, through continual reflection, loses all freshness and power to convince; immediate experience, axiomatic certainty, immovable conviction are lacking. The self-evident certainties in the light of which earlier ages lived and worked are wanting, and we are compelled to acknowledge that some things become uncertain, even impossible, when they cease to be self-evident. Again, it cannot fail to be recognised that we are tired of a merely religious way of life; we feel its limitations; new needs are awakened and seek new forms of life and expression; even the traditional terminology displeases us; even the acutest dialectic cannot lend to the old the power of youth.
Of course the matter is not finally settled by these judgments of the age. For, a later age is not the infallible judge of an earlier; much which to us moderns seems certain may soon become problematic; much which satisfies us may soon be shown to be inadequate. It may be that the old is capable of asserting the ultimate depth of life in contrast to the new; that the world of inner spiritual experience which it discloses may finally show itself superior to every assault. But, in any case, the new contains a wealth of fact not only in individual results but in the whole of its being; through its emergence it has transformed the whole condition of things; it is impossible to decry it as a mere apostasy and to appeal to the consciences of individuals. It may be that spiritual power here stands against spiritual power in a titanic struggle for the soul of man: victory must fall to the power which penetrates to the primary depths of life and is capable of taking possession of what is true in the others. But if in this the older view of life is inwardly superior, it can develop such superiority only by its own complete renewal and energetic inward elevation, through the most fundamental settlement with everything antagonistic in an all-comprehensive whole of life. Yet how deeply the age is still involved in its search! How far it is from the conclusion! For the present, as far as the life of culture is concerned, Religion has fallen into complete uncertainty; its chief support and realm lie not within but outside of that life. It is this which makes all affirmation of Religion weak and all negation strong; it is this which threatens to stamp, as something subjective and false, every conception of a “supernatural.” Religion has become uncertain to us not merely in single doctrines and tendencies, but in the whole of its being, in its fundamental contention as to the nature of life; and what it offers in the traditional form in which it has come to us no longer satisfies a life which has been aroused to greater breadth and freedom.
2. The System of Immanent Idealism
By the side of the religious system of life, for thousands of years, now as supplementary, now as contradictory, there has been another which may be designated as Immanent Idealism. The latter system is not so fixed and overawing a structure as the former, but with a quieter force it penetrates the whole of life. It is not of a simple nature, but is found in many different forms; still, there exists so much in common in these that they clearly exhibit and emphasise one common tendency. Like the religious system, this Idealism also places life primarily in a world of thought, from which it organises sense experience; it is distinguished from the former system, however, in that it never separates the two worlds one from the other, but conceives them as related elements or aspects of a single whole. They are related to one another as appearance and reality, as cause and effect, as animating and animated nature (natura naturans and naturata). The divine is not so much a power transcending the world as one permeating it and living in it; not something specific outside of things, but their connection in a living unity; it does not make demands and present us with problems so much as give to the world its truth and depth. Thus, reality appears as an inwardly co-ordinated whole: the individual finds his genuine being only as a part of this whole. And so, here, the fundamental relation of life is that to the invisible whole of reality; with the development of this relation, that which seems lifeless becomes animated; the elements which seem isolated are brought together; and the world discloses an infinite content and gives it to man for a joyous possession.
But it would be impossible for man to accomplish the transition from appearance to reality, if he were not rooted in the fundamental permanencies and if, in the comprehending of the world, he did not find his own being. If this is the case, however, and if, through courageous turning from the superficiality to which he in the first place belongs, he is able to set himself in the depth of reality, then a magnificent life with the widest prospects opens out before him. For, now, he may win the whole of infinity for his own and set himself free from the triviality of the merely human without losing himself in an alien world; he may direct the movement of life to a positive gain, since he guides it from within and from the whole. This life will find its centre in the activities which bring man into relation with the whole and broaden him from within to the whole; thus, in science and art spiritual creation becomes the chief concern; its forceful development allows us to hope for an ennobling of the whole of existence. With this creative activity as centre, the rest is regarded as its environment, its means, its presupposition; but there remain a clear distinction and gradation between that which a creative life evolves immediately, and that which forms a mere condition for this and may never become an aim in itself. Thus, the beautiful is separated sharply from the merely useful; the inner life from all preservation of physical existence; a genuine spiritual culture, as the revelation of the depth of things, from all perfecting of natural and social conditions, from mere civilisation. Here life finds an aim and a task in itself; they are not presented to it from a transcendent world; but it can evolve a morality in the sense of taking up the whole into one’s own volition, the subjection of caprice to the necessity of things.
A life thus full of content and joyous activity arose when Greek culture was at its height, and exercised its influence through the course of the centuries; Christianity also soon laid aside its original suspicion against this life and joined it to itself. This life, however, first attained complete independence and self-consciousness in modern culture so far as this culture followed the way of Idealism. It is felt to be superior to Religion and hopes to be able to shape the world of man more satisfactorily than Religion can. In this system formulated conceptions and perplexing doctrines of the divine are not necessary, as they are in Religion, because the divine is present immediately in the process of life and surrounds man on all sides. Man’s powers are not drawn in a particular direction and nothing is discarded, but everything is to be uniformly developed and unified in an all-inclusive harmony; natural instincts are restrained and ennobled through their relations in a larger whole. A power of organisation is displayed which reaches the finest vein of the soul, throws the genuinely human into relief in contrast with environment and tradition, and makes it the matter of chief concern: with all this it deepens life in itself and finds incalculable treasure in such depth. Everywhere there is powerful effort and creative activity on the part of man, but at the same time the consciousness of an invisible order; a joyful affirmation of life, but at the same time a deliverance from unrestrained curiosity and coarse enjoyment; a breadth and a freedom of life, and with this a clear consciousness of the greatness but also of the limitations of man. Such was the state of conviction in the classical period of German literature.
This form of life has, with remarkable quickness, been relegated into the distance; with all its external proximity it has become inwardly more alien to us than the world of Religion. All this has come to pass, however, not so much through direct conflict, which its free and comprehensive nature could scarcely provoke, as through inner changes of conditions and strivings, which have now thrust other facts into prominence and driven men to other tasks. The transformation could hardly have been effected so quickly and so fundamentally if this mode of life did not involve fixed limits and problematic presuppositions which we have now become fully conscious of for the first time.
It is the aristocratic nature of this Immanent Idealism which first awakens suspicion and opposition. Spiritual creation, from which it expects complete salvation, can take possession of and satisfy the whole soul only where it breaks forth spontaneously with great and powerful effect, where, with overwhelming power, it raises man above himself. An incontrovertible experience shows us that this takes place only in rare and exceptional cases; there must be a union of many forces before man can rise to such a height and be swayed by the compulsion of this creation. Now, it is true that the gain of such red-letter days carries its effect into ordinary days and that from the heights light pours down upon lower levels. But in such transmission there is a serious and inevitable loss in power and purity; indeed, in veracity: that which fills the life of those producing it and arouses it to its highest passion easily becomes to the receiver a subsidiary matter, a pleasant accompanying experience. Thus we see epochs of organisation follow upon times of creation, but we see that such organisation sinks more and more into a reflective and passive reproduction. Such organisation tends to become mere imagination; the man imbued with the spirit of such organisation easily seems to himself more than he is; with a false self-consciousness talks and feels as though he were at a supreme height; lives less his own life than an alien one. Sooner or later opposition must necessarily arise against such a half-life, such a life of pretence, and this opposition will become especially strong if it is animated by the desire that all who bear human features should participate in the chief goods of our existence and freely co-operate in the highest tasks. It must be observed that this longing is one which, at the present time, is found to be irresistible. And so the aristocratic character of Immanent Idealism produces a type of life rigidly exclusive, harsh and intolerable.
But not only does this type of life lack complete power and truthfulness in regard to mankind as a whole; it is subject to similar limitations in relation to the world and to things. All success in our relation to the world and to things depends on the spiritual constituting the thing’s own depth, on things finding their genuine being in it, and where this depth is reached, on the visible world uniting with it willingly, indeed joyfully, and moulding itself solely and completely for spiritual expression. Spirit and world must strive together in mutual trust and each must finally be completely involved one in the other; reality must build itself up, if not at one stroke, at any rate in ceaseless advance as a kingdom of reason. A solution at once so simple and so easy bluntly contradicts the experiences of the last century. Both without and within the soul of man an infinite concreteness makes itself evident, which withstands all derivation from general principles, all insertion into a comprehensive scheme, obstinately asserts its particularity, forms its own complexes, and follows its own course. The realistic mode of thought of the Modern Age has brought this aspect of reality to full recognition. If the spiritual life cannot take complete possession of things, if a realm of facts continues to exist over against it, it may be doubted whether the spiritual is of the ultimate being of the world and reveals the reality of things, or whether it merely comes to them from without and only touches their surface. In the latter case external limitation becomes the cause of an inward convulsion. This is a fact which we find corroborated when we come to reflect that Immanent Idealism treats the spiritual life in man much too hastily and boldly as absolute spiritual life; that it attributes to human capacity, without further consideration, that which belongs to spiritual life in general. The experiences of modern life place the particularity and insignificant of man more and more before our eyes; they enable us to see with what difficulty and how slowly any kind of spiritual life whatever has emerged in the human sphere, and with what toil it maintains itself there; they insist that, if the spiritual life is not to sink down to a mere appearance to man, a sharp distinction must be made between the substance of the spiritual life and the form of its existence in man; in every sphere modern life puts questions which lead beyond the position of Immanent Idealism. Immanent Idealism seems to treat the problem of life much too summarily and not to penetrate sufficiently to ultimate depths.
The conflict between Immanent Idealism and modern life is still more keen in regard to the problem whether reality is rational. It is essential to this Idealism to affirm this rationality; it need not conceive it as present in a complete state, but it must be sure of an advance to it; the movement of reality, with its antitheses and conflicts, must pass in elements of reason. Immanent Idealism tolerates no inner division of the spiritual life; wherever spiritual movement emerges, there can be no doubt concerning the aim; the development of power must bring the right disposition with it; every limitation can come only from weakness or misunderstanding; there can be no radical evil. With an optimism of this kind the leading minds of German classical literature are imbued; but how much, in the midst of all the progress of civilisation, in the nineteenth century the appearance of the world has been darkened! We see now with complete clearness the indifference of the forces of nature towards the aims of the spirit; we see the incessant crossing of the work of reason by blind necessity; we see the spiritual life divided against itself, eminent spiritual powers drawn into the service of lower interests, and carried away by unrestrained passion. In a time of extraordinary increase of technical and social culture, we see the spiritual life win scarcely anything, in fact, seriously recede; we see it become perplexed concerning its main direction, and oscillate in uncertainty between different possibilities. We experience in every sphere a violent convulsion of the spirit. How can Immanent Idealism satisfy us under such circumstances; how can it assure to our life a firm basis?