We find ourselves therefore in the present in a difficult situation with regard to the organisation of culture. To give up the independence of the individual departments, or even only to limit it in any way, would be an enormous and impossible retrogression; on the other hand, some kind of inner unity of life must be obtained. A transcendence of the antithesis must, therefore, be sought; and this needs a distinctive structure of life. The spiritual life offers such a structure in so far as it constitutes the development of being. For we saw how independent centres and characteristic movements arise in an all-comprehensive life. Between these movements there may be manifold relations and antitheses, but they are within a vital whole and with their experiences can aid its further development. Viewing the departments of life from this position, it will be necessary to show that each individual department has a root in life as a whole and a significance for this life; only thus can the power of this whole life be exerted in the individual departments, and penetrate them. But the department does not receive its form simply from the whole by way of derivation; but it can take up and treat the problem independently, and with its own means; that which exists in the whole as an affirmation may be only a question and a suggestion in the individual department. Yet this is in no way without value: for, nevertheless, it leads us beyond the indefiniteness of the original condition, and guides effort in circumscribed paths. What gives work in the individual departments special significance and intensity is the fact that they take up the problem of the whole in a particular sphere, and can treat that problem in a characteristic manner; that they are not mere aids and assistants, but independent co-operators. In this connection it is of especial importance that the spiritual life is not conferred upon man in a finished form; but that within him it must first be worked towards with great toil and through doubt and error, from indefinite outlines to more detailed development. It is obvious that the form of the whole will ever be questionable; and that the individual departments must co-operate in the examination and justification of the forms proposed. Indeed, it is just the mark of great achievements in the individual departments that, while they transform their own sphere, they at the same time develop the whole. It is this that distinguishes Leibniz from Wolff, and Kant from Herbart.
Such an organisation gives to life a movement in two directions: it must be conducted from whole to part, and from part to whole. The individual departments must be developed far enough to reveal their particularity and to produce a characteristic tendency of their own; but they must remain within a whole, to receive from it and to lead back to it. The relations between the individual departments will be distinctive in such a system; the influence of one upon another will be without suspicion, and advantageous, only when it is exerted through the mediation of the whole; while disturbances are inevitable, when one conveys immediate experiences to another and imposes its nature upon another. It was necessary, for example, to reject the earlier encroachments of religion upon other departments of life; art, too, often found it necessary to resist the tendency to subordinate it to morality; and to-day there is a strong inclination to shape every department of life in accordance with the instructions of natural science. Yet although such encroachments must be rejected, and the independence of each in relation to the others preserved, the changes that are effected in one department are by no means indifferent and lost to the other departments. For, if through these changes life as a whole is developed, then the effect of the change must extend to the other departments. In this manner of mediation religion has exercised a strong influence upon the other departments of life; and in this sense, to-day, an influence of natural science upon the whole circle of existence will be readily acknowledged. But this does not involve a limitation or an enslaving of other departments, because the change in life as a whole must now be ascertained first; and, besides, each individual department must test by its own experiences the suggestion coming from the whole.
When we take all these facts into consideration we see that the organisation of culture is a difficult problem and that our organisation is unstable. In culture, different tendencies will cross one another; antitheses cannot be avoided, and collisions will not be lacking. But that which life loses in completeness and exclusiveness, it gains in wealth and movement; and division need not be a cause of anxiety so long as a powerful spiritual life embraces and unifies the multiplicity. Without such a counteraction by the spiritual life we must drift towards ever greater specialisation; and, with this, we should not only see life become more and more disintegrated, but we should also become less and less spiritual, and be transformed into a soulless mechanism.
II. THE FORM OF THE INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS
Preliminary Considerations
Before we proceed to discuss the individual departments of life we may briefly consider the common task that is imposed upon them all by the distinctive condition of the time: they must become independent in relation to the earlier as well as to the more modern conceptions of them, and, if necessary, take up a conflict against both. The course of our investigation can have left no doubt with regard to the state of prostration of the older forms of life: the uncertainty affects the whole and the fundamental principles much more than it has ever done before. Formerly the struggle was concerned rather with individual departments or individual tendencies of life; it was carried on more in reference to the conception and meaning of fundamental truths than with regard to the validity of those truths themselves. The passionate struggles of the period of the Reformation left the fundamentals of Christianity untouched; in a similar manner the later attacks upon ecclesiastical religion usually had a basis of firm faith in morality, and derived their power more especially from it. To-day the authority of morality is just as seriously shaken as that of religion; and the conception of truth is itself in the same condition of uncertainty.
In this condition of things an appeal to history cannot be employed as proof of any position; a patchwork of our own and of something alien gives us still less a position above perplexity: there is no other way than to take up the problem with the means of the present itself. For this the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life forms a fit foundation. The spiritual life is not dependent upon and fixed to particular temporal conditions; ever anew it can break forth spontaneously, and from the particularity of the time advance to eternal truths. It is to us a source of joy that a time has come again when we need not follow other paths, but must go our own; when nothing can bind us but that which has been approved by our own being and our own conviction. It is not necessary for a time such as this to take up an attitude of hostility towards the whole past; rather—and especially when it thinks worthily of itself—it will seek a friendly relationship with history. But this is possible only when the present has attained complete independence, and only from this independent position; only when an eternal content is revealed in that which history conveys to us. In opposition to submission to authority such a time makes a demand for unlimited freedom and complete spontaneity; such freedom and spontaneity are essential if life is again to find the truthfulness and the inner power that we so painfully miss.
Such a requirement of life and thought arising out of the immediate present may easily lead us to separate from those to whom the crisis does not seem so serious, and who believe that it is possible to transform the old in a quiet and inhostile manner into the new. The conflict will be far more acute with those who, with us, make the demand for an independent present; but who, by the conceptions of an independent present, freedom and spontaneity, understand something totally different from that which we ourselves understand by them from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. In all times of spiritual revival the freedom and immediacy which the spiritual life needs for itself have been usurped by mere man as though they were a right pertaining to him: and then it appears that only the complete emancipation of individuals, a severance of all connections, unconditional submission to the passing moment, are necessary in order to lead life to truth and greatness, and man to a glorious state of happiness. Such a movement cannot spread without making the antitheses of life appear less acute, concealing its problems and its depths, and falsely idealising man with all the contingency of his experience: with all the bustle of its preparation and all its agitation the movement must terminate in a state of spiritual destitution; it threatens life with inner destruction. With a modernity of this kind we have nothing in common.