Further, the taking up of the object into the life-process, the transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, is characteristic of the spiritual life. But this remained an inner contradiction, a complete impossibility so long as the spiritual life was regarded as an occurrence in a being who, with a closed nature, stands over against things as though they were alien; and who can take up nothing into himself without accommodating it to his own particular nature. The contradiction is removed only when the spiritual becomes independent; for then both sides of the antithesis come to belong to each other and are related to each other in a single life; and a life transcending the division may develop, a life that produces the antithesis from within, lives in the different sides and seeks in them its own perfection. The life-process is now seen to be a movement that is neither from object to subject, nor from subject to object; neither the subject’s attainment of content from the object, nor the object’s becoming controlled by the subject, but an advance of a self-conscious life in and through the antithesis. Life, by this movement, ceases to be a single, thin thread; it wins breadth; it expands to an inner universality. At the same time a depth is manifested in that a persistent and comprehensive activity emerges which lives in the antithesis. In this manner life first becomes a life in a spiritual sense, a self-conscious and self-determining life, a self-consciousness.
That this change is possible and brings with it a new type of life is shown with complete clearness by experience in the separate departments of the spiritual life. Thus, artistic creation at its highest is neither the production of the truest possible copy of an external object, the artist painfully abstaining from all subjective addition; nor a presentation of subjective situations and moods, the artist endeavouring to the utmost to avoid everything objective; but a transcendence of the opposition of soulless objectivity and empty subjectivity by an art that is sovereign, autonomous, and with a character of its own; the creative activity belonging to which gives life from the soul to the object, and moulds the soul by means of the object. This kind of artistic creation is directed primarily towards an inner truth, not towards a truth that is produced by the object, but one that arises only in the contact of the object with the soul. It is manifest that creation is effected here not as an interaction between subject and object, but above and through this antithesis; it is only by transcending the antithesis that the artist can give himself in his work, lend to it a soul, place an infinity within it. In this respect conduct manifests a character similar to that of creation. Conduct would never attain an inner stability and enter upon an independent course, if it could not raise itself above the opposition of a submission to orders that are forced upon it from without, and a mere play of subjective inclination; if it were not able to become the self-assertion and self-development of a life transcending that opposition. At this point also the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life teaches us to comprehend as a whole that which, in a many-sided development, the different departments of life show to be real.
The obscurity in which the conception of inwardness was hitherto involved begins to disappear when the spiritual life is no longer regarded as supplementary but as an independent life. It cannot be denied that, within humanity, there is an endeavour to develop the life of the soul to a state of self-determining activity and, at the same time, to free that life from the bondage to sense in which it remains at the level of nature. Yet, definite affirmation that shall correspond to the negation of sense has been lacking; it has not been clear how inwardness might find content and characteristic forms; there has been no advance from the subjective to the substantial. But since a universal activity is operative within the multiplicity and through the division, and since it sets itself in the division and from this returns to itself, a self-conscious inwardness becomes conceivable which has a life of its own with new experiences. Since within this life “to receive” presupposes the comprehending power and the self-determining activity of a vital whole, something other than sense is able to evolve and through all the persistence of sense to become the chief matter. The spiritual life is not directed to a reality adjacent to it, but evolves a reality out of itself; or rather, it evolves as a reality, a kingdom, a world; and so it advances from vague outline to more complete development; it struggles for itself, for its own perfection, not for anything external.
It is directly implied in the above conception that the spiritual life is something different from single psychical functions, such as cognition, volition, and the like; and that man, so far as he shares in it, is more than one such function or a sum of such functions. For these functions come under the antithesis of subject and object, while the spiritual life transcends it. It is also clear that the spiritual life does not change this or that in a life which already exists, or add this or that to it, but that it introduces a new kind of life—a life by which man is distinguished clearly from everything inferior to him.
If the spiritual life is an evolution of a reality in the life-process, then the question arises as to how this reality is related to the world that immediate experience shows us to be surrounded by. As surely as man in his subjective reflection is able to free himself from the world and to place himself in opposition to it, so there can be no doubt that the spiritual life belongs to the permanent reality of the world and, as we see it, grows up out of its movement. The transition to an independent inwardness is not something which happens externally to the world but within it: no special sphere, separate from all the rest, is originated; but reality itself evolves an inner life: it is the world itself that reveals a spiritual depth, or, as we might say, a soul. We are not justified in doubting and attacking this view simply because the spiritual life meets us only in man, and thus, in contrast with the infinity of nature, is in its external manifestation so insignificant. For something essentially new appears in it, something that involves another order of things: the fact that little falls within our range of vision is in this connection not at all relevant. If anyone is disturbed and driven to denial by the external insignificance of the manifestations of the spiritual life, he shows only that he misunderstands what is distinctive and revolutionising in that life. The spiritual life is not to be thought of merely in reference to the experiences of the individual, but also to the work of humanity, to history, to the advance of culture. All these show us a development of life that presents the world from a new side; and this must be an important factor in the estimation of the world, especially if the spiritual is recognised as having a life independent of man.
The inward must necessarily present itself as the fundamental and the comprehensive; as that which in its invisibility sustains, dominates, and unifies the visible world. Nature, which there was a tendency to regard as the whole, is now of the essence of a wider reality and a stage in its development; and it is impossible for the conception formed from it to be regulative of the whole. Ultimately, therefore, reality cannot be regarded as something dead, detached, and given: it signifies to us something living, something experienced in itself, something sustained by incessant activity. At the same time, the lateness of the appearance of the spiritual life within our realm and the many ways in which this appearance is conditioned force us to acknowledge that the life of the world as a whole has a history. The conception of history that we have become familiar with in its application to nature and to the spiritual life throughout is now extended to the relation between the two. However many mysteries it yet involves, definite progress in our conception of the world must be admitted.
Most of all it is man with his life and endeavour that appears in a new light. Two worlds meet together in him, and, indeed, not merely in such a manner that he provides the place in which they meet and enter into conflict, but so that he acquires an independent participation in the new world, and through his own decision co-operates in its development. For spiritual life, with its self-determining activity, can never become itself as a mere effect; to become this it must be apprehended and roused to activity as cause. But it is cause and animating power only in its being as a whole; so, as a whole it must be present to man and become his own life. Thus, in contrast to the particularity of his natural existence, a life having its source in the infinite grows up within him: in the former a mere part of a world; in the latter he becomes a world in himself: in the one, bound up with the particular nature of man; in the other, he is elevated above all particularity to something more than human, to something cosmic.
To such changes in the content of life there must be corresponding changes in its form. Empirical consciousness with its discreteness and succession of presentations and states cannot possibly comprehend the new life; to do that the soul must acquire a greater depth. It must be capable of an activity which, with single phases, extends into this consciousness, but which as a whole and in its creative work must transcend it. With the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in man two questions giving rise to different methods of treatment necessarily become distinguished: the one as to the nature and extent of the spiritual that is revealed in him; and the other, how, under the specific conditions of his nature, it emerges and establishes itself. It will become evident how important it is to distinguish these sufficiently, and yet on the other hand to associate them closely.
(b) The Demands of a New System of Life
If the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality thus alters the view of reality as a whole, and in particular of man, we are faced with the question whether we may not attain a new synthesis through this spirituality, and whether it does not begin a characteristic formation of our world. Our treatment of the philosophies of life of the present day makes it possible for us to approach this question with definite demands. We saw life branch off in different movements, each of which took up into itself a wealth of fact; but we found none of them strong enough to absorb the others into itself, or even able to estimate them. If life is not finally to fall into dissolution, it needs, in contrast to these movements, one more universal in character, and this can be more than a weak compromise only when there is a still more fundamental relation of life than that which the developments that we have considered proffered. In that case the more original basal relation ought to be able to manifest itself as a presupposition of those developments; it should make intelligible how divisions can originate in the condition of man; in particular it should illuminate the opposition between the idealistic and the naturalistic systems of life—an opposition which, like a deep gulf, divides the life of the present. In short, it should depend upon whether the change that results with the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life makes it possible for us permanently to transcend those oppositions and to work towards their reconciliation. But we ought then to see that, with its universality, the system of life striven for does not fall into a state vague and lacking in character. Through its whole being, in affirmation and in negation, the system of life must definitely express itself; it must synthesise and differentiate, elevate and exclude. But it will be able to do this only if it produces a new kind of life-process and a new web of life: only thus can essentially new evaluations and tasks, new experiences and genuine developments, originate; only thus can life as a whole be definitely raised. Of course, this new cannot signify something that has just been discovered and that has arisen suddenly. How could it be a truth which gives to us security, and how could it dominate our life, if it is not rooted in our being, and if it had not exerted an influence at all times? But it makes a great difference whether the new has been concealed, obscure and against the tendency of our own activity; or whether it is taken up fully in our own self-determining activity and thereby essentially advanced. If, on the one hand, the new must be something old, on the other hand the old must become something new if it is to liberate, strengthen, and elevate our life where its needs are so urgent.