When we consider all the facts together, we do not get the impression that the spiritual life is simply a fleeting illusion that may easily be banished; but rather, that there are serious complications, out of which we cannot find our way; and that something occurs within us, something is begun within us, that is unaffected by mood and caprice, and that shows us to be in relations much more comprehensive, though obscure in the highest degree. In particular, for a treatment that starts out from the life-process, and sees the spiritual movement chiefly in strivings, collisions, and even in failures, there can be no doubt concerning the actuality of this movement, the emergence of a new life, and thus of a new stage of reality in man.
When we recognise the actuality of the spiritual movement the relation of the spiritual life to nature and to the world is also to be regarded differently from the manner in which the negative mode of thought represents it. It is now impossible, as it often happens, more particularly among philosophising natural scientists, to consider the representation of nature as a complete representation of reality, and to leave the spiritual life out of attention as something supplementary and subsidiary. The spiritual life is now itself acknowledged to be a reality, and must help to determine the representation of reality as a whole. Nature must be more than a soulless machine if its evolution is to lead, as it does, to the point where a self-conscious life emerges. Within our own experience points of transition are not lacking where nature produces something that becomes elevated to the spiritual, and furthers the spiritual life. The difference of the sexes, for example, is primarily a matter of natural organisation, and what a rich source of spiritual animation it is! Nothing manifests the union between nature and the spiritual life more convincingly than the beautiful, when, in accordance with the result of our investigation, it is regarded as a characteristic unfolding of the spiritual life, and not as something which merely fascinates man and is a source of pleasure to him. For how could the external receive a characteristic soul by being taken up into the inner life; how could the inward need an external form for its perfection if the two realms were not united, if a comprehensive reality did not transcend the antithesis?
Lastly, it should not be forgotten that it is modern science, especially in its latest phases, with its destruction of the supposed self-evidence of the sense impression of nature, that has placed the relation of nature to the spiritual life in a more favourable light than it was placed by the dogmatic mechanistic theory, which in earlier times seemed to be the ultimate solution of the problem of their relation. Nature has again become far more of a problem to us, and we recognise that our conception of it is a work of the spirit. The old facts of the connection and interaction of phenomena, of the conformity to law on the part of occurrences, of the developments of form, and of a progress to even more artistic complexes and ever finer organisation, once more make us feel, and far more keenly than before, that they involve difficult problems. It is more clearly evident to us than it was formerly that every attempt to make these facts intelligible is made by the spiritual life and by analogy with the spiritual life. If in such analogy we do not go beyond symbols, yet the symbols themselves betray a depth and a secret of reality. At the present time when scientific work is at its highest stage of development, the shallowness and the rashness of a radical negation are distinctly recognised.
It is true that for the particular life-problem that we are considering we have not yet gained much from this recognition; to perceive the impossibility of an absolute negation does not in itself imply the victory of a joyful affirmation. For all the perplexities that previously occupied us still remain, as do the limitation and the curtailment of the spiritual life which proceeded from these perplexities; the whole movement also remains in its state of stagnation. As certainly as on the one hand there is too much of the spiritual life presented to us to allow of negation, so on the other it is by no means sufficient for the removal of all doubt.
Mere research can tolerate a state of hesitation between affirmation and negation; it must often refrain from a decision in the case of special problems. Life, however, cannot endure any such intermediary position; for life, such hesitation in arriving at a decision must result in complete stagnation, and this would help the negation to victory. If life is faced with an “either—or” the affirmation has a prospect of victory only if the situation previously described may be in some way transformed in its favour. This cannot come to pass unless the spiritual movement can transcend the limitations which appear in human life, and unless a further development can proceed out of the limitations themselves. Only such an advance can help the endangered affirmation to victory. But whether the spiritual movement does transcend these limitations, not a logical consideration of concepts but only the experience of life will decide; let us enquire therefore whether life offers what we seek.
(c) THE VICTORY
The questions that are given rise to in the consideration of human life as it is are answered in the affirmative with joyful certainty by the religions. The religions do this in that they announce to man the help of a transcendent order; an appearance of divine power and goodness in the domain of man. But after the far-reaching changes of life and of conviction that we have experienced, can this confidence still be justified? And have we a place for this assertion of help from a transcendent order when we acknowledge the reality of the independent spiritual life?
Everything of a religious character and even that which is related to it meets, at least upon the surface, in the present the keenest opposition. This opposition is aroused in the first place by anthropomorphism—the indulgence in merely human representations and desires—which is often found associated with religion. If the essence of religion were inseparable from such anthropomorphism, the dissolution and submergence of religion could hardly be prevented. But according to the witness of history, an energetic conflict against all such mere anthropomorphism has been carried on within religion itself and, in its highest stages of development, religion has demanded a complete surrender of everything narrowly human: anthropomorphism and religion are, therefore, not absolutely identical. Our investigation, emphasising as it does the radical distinction between the substance of the spiritual life and its appropriation by man, counselled us to be cautious in reference to this matter, and warned us against a hasty rejection of religion.
The essence of religion is still less affected by the charge that modern natural science in conceiving of the spatial world as infinite leaves no room for a visible heaven. For, to take such a criticism seriously, we must not only think of religion as at a primitive stage which, in the development of its spiritual content, it has overstepped, but we must also completely ignore the fundamental revolution that modern philosophy and the whole tendency of modern thought have accomplished in the representation of the visible world. Modern thought has destroyed the self-evidence that the naïve man attributed to that representation, by the experience and the proof that the visible world around us does not come to us completely as we represent it, but that we form the representation from our point of view, and under the conditions of our spiritual nature. Our own activity is embodied in the representation; and it will depend upon the value of this activity how far the representation may be accepted as reality as a whole and the ultimate and absolute world. Now, as in the visible world the spiritual life is always bound up with something alien and which cannot be completely transformed by the activity of that life, so every assertion of an independent spiritual life is a protest against the view that the world of sense is the only world. But in that, unless the spiritual life is independent, there is neither science nor culture, the priority of a world other than that of sense cannot be in any way a matter of doubt to philosophy.