The presence of all these tendencies and motives in morality subjects us to-day to an abundance of ethical stimuli; but it does not give us an ethic. At the most it conceals the fact that the multiplicity of activities do not form for us a universal task, which could counteract the separation into individuals, parties, particular departments, and give us the consciousness of serving in our work aims that transcend the well-being and preference of mere man. We are in need of a morality that proceeds from our own life; and in this we need much more than we are conscious of needing. For we have no universal aim that we might take up in our disposition, and by which we might test all individual activities; and so life must become disunified and inwardly alien; we lose all spiritual relation to the world. The world surrounds us in the first place as a dark and immovable fate; we do not make ourselves masters of this fate, just because we give ourselves too much to do with things. Rather, to accomplish this, we must transform reality from its very foundation by our own activity and decision; we must wage war against obscurity and irrationality, and this conflict must tend to divide our whole existence into friend and enemy, good and evil, but along with this first give to life complete activity, and lead it to world-embracing greatness. Only in this way does man, from being simply a spectator, become a co-operator in the building up of the world; only thus does that which occurs within him become in the fullest sense his own. Everything which obscures the ethical character of human life involves, therefore, a loss in greatness and dignity; a degeneration to a state of servitude, to being a mere part of an alien whole. Particular parties may be in agreement with and find satisfaction in this condition; humanity as a whole will not rest content with it. As certainly as humanity confidently maintains that its life has meaning and value, so certainly will it take up the problem of morality ever anew against all attempted intimidation.
If to-day we are again to take up this problem, then in the first place the conditions and the requirements of the problem must be quite clear. We can never acquire a morality from the troubled confusion of social life; on the contrary, morality involves a transcendence of this; it necessitates distinctive convictions concerning the world as a whole and our position in it. There is no independent morality, no morality in itself; morality involves a fundamental whole of life, which is appropriated in it and by this appropriation first attains to perfection. In contrast to the existing condition of things a new condition must first be raised in ideas that precede conduct. The new condition acquires a moral character only through requiring on the one hand moral freedom as opposed to the mechanism of natural impulse, on the other a transcendent ideal in opposition to mere self-preservation. These two together reveal a new order of things distinct from nature; they must seem impossible from the point of view of the world of sense, not only freedom with its apparent annulling of all connections, but also the freeing of conduct from bondage to mere nature. For how would one conceive an activity that did not tend ultimately to the good of the agent, and so aid in his self-preservation? Does it not involve a contradiction for him to exert his power for something alien to himself?
If in the present we feel such problems in the fullness of their force, and if we must fight for morality as a whole, we must go back to the foundations of our existence, and seek primarily for a secure position in contrast with the instability of temporal experiences. In accordance with the whole course of our investigation, we can find such a position, and by further development a distinctive morality also, only in an independent spiritual life, which first conducts the world to self-consciousness and so to genuine reality. The two requirements discussed above cause no difficulty from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. We convinced ourselves in a previous section of the reality of freedom in the spiritual life; in morality also conduct can free itself from the natural ego without degenerating into a state of emptiness, because the spiritual life reveals a new and the alone genuine self. Thus here activity is not spent upon something alien to us, something presented to it from outside, but is within our own being, which here, indeed, includes the whole infinity within it. Activity in the spiritual life serves true self-preservation, which has only the name in common with natural self-preservation.
Wherever it is acknowledged that the spiritual life involves a turning of reality to complete independence and spontaneity, morality must take a significant, indeed the central, position. For it is clear that only the taking up in our own activity and conviction, only complete appropriation, can bring life to the highest degree of perfection. Morality does not find in existence a life-content which it must convey to the individual subject, but is itself within the life-process; a complete self-consciousness of the spiritual life is attained first in morality, and morality must develop the content of that life. It is not that man in morality turns toward the spiritual life, but that the spiritual life elevates itself in the whole of its nature; all human morality must have its basis in a morality of the spiritual life.
With such a basis in the innermost nature, morality must concern the whole multiplicity of life; it can include and estimate the most diverse relations and experiences of our existence. But whatever is thus brought under the sway of the morality of the spiritual life must undergo an essential change, and must be elevated above the nature of that which is not taken up in this manner. By an ethical formation and development of art and science we do not mean that the individual should be loyal and straightforward in their pursuit, and should follow honest aims; this conception would be much too narrow. But it is that we should take possession of and treat as our own life and being that which otherwise remains outside as something half alien to us; that the work should acquire the power and fervour of self-preservation; and that in this unification the necessity of the object becomes a definite demand of our life, and the gain of the object an advance of our life. Only such a life which transcends the antithesis of subject and object gives to the object a soul, and freedom a content.
The experience of history also makes it clearly evident to us that the spiritual life first acquires a secure position and an indisputable supremacy over nature by its acknowledgment and appropriation in self-determining activity. For history shows that wherever morality is not central, the spiritual life, even in the midst of the most magnificent results in external matters, languishes inwardly and loses its hold. With individuals also the final decision concerning the problems of the world and of life always depends upon whether they do or do not recognise that man has an inner moral task in his nature as a whole. If this is acknowledged, then—and this just in oppositions and conflicts—a realm of inwardness is assured us which all apparently contrary experiences of the external world cannot expel from its central position; but if there is no such acknowledgment, the triumph of these experiences and the collapse of the spiritual life cannot be avoided.
The morality of the spiritual life, as we advocate it, will have distinctive features in comparison with other conceptions of morality; of these we can mention but a few here. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life makes life as a whole a task, since it requires that as a whole it should be changed into a state of self-determining activity; that everything must be aroused and set in motion. Thus the morality of the spiritual life is constructive and progressive, and not simply regulative in character; it is not its purpose simply to place life under regulations and to let activity wait until there is an opportunity to fulfil them; but, calling forth all our powers, morality must work and create, arouse and prepare the opportunities, so that in everything the realm of the spirit may be increased within the province of humanity. Like the spiritual life itself, the morality proceeding from it must be of a transcendent nature. To-day or to-morrow may not be considered beyond good and evil; morality may not sink to being a mere means of realising the wishes of the time. If, however, morality transcends time, and is able to separate the transitory and the eternal in time, then, within its task, it may very well acknowledge distinctive situations and problems, and present different sides; indeed, only by a close relation with the time and by penetrating deeply into the experiences of the time will morality acquire the necessary proximity and impressiveness. To this extent, therefore, we also insist upon a modern morality, however decidedly we reject that which to-day is called “modern” morality, and which for the most part is no more than a surrender of morality to the wishes and moods of the individual.
If in these features the morality of the spiritual life already manifests a distinctive character, this distinctiveness is further increased by the particular nature of the actual relation of man to the moral task, as it appears here. The highering of the ideal will necessarily increase its divergence from man, as he is. It will become quite evident that morality is not a continuation of nature, a natural attribute of man, or a product of social relationship, but the most pronounced expression of a great change in the direction of life, the institution of a new order of things. If at the same time life is to be fashioned morally, a conflict is inevitable; and the general outlook of life and of conduct will depend upon where we find the centre of opposition and what is the main direction of the conflict. In the first place, morality must take up a definite attitude towards the sense-nature of man; that nature must be subordinated to the aims of the spirit. But we have already seen that there is a danger that the ethical task will lose its depth, and that life as a whole will be perverted, if the rights of nature are misunderstood and there arises the desire to suppress it completely, and if, in a tendency to asceticism, this suppression is made the chief concern. The chief moral task is the development and establishment of a genuine and real spiritual life, as opposed to a false and merely apparent one, which is found in human conditions, not only in the state of society but also in the soul of the individual: thus a mere transition from society to the individual can never give any aid. The condition in which life is generally found evolves no independent spiritual life; but it uses the spiritual impulse that is present within it simply as a means to other ends, and thus the result is an inner perversion; at the same time man is generally zealously occupied with giving himself the appearance of intending to follow the spiritual for its own sake, and of sacrificing everything to it. In opposition to such radical insincerity, to acquire a sincere and genuine life is the chief task and the chief desire of morality; for the establishment of sincerity and truth in face of an opposing world the soul needs before all else loyalty and courage.
And so morality involves life in a great division: it cannot possibly take up a friendly attitude towards everything and readily admit everything: its chief task must be to arouse life from its confusion and apathy. But this does not prevent a morality of the spiritual life striving for universality in its inner nature. The morality of the spiritual life must, therefore, establish a definite relationship on the basis of the present with the prevailing types of morality which were previously mentioned. If the morality of the spiritual life is certain of its own nature, it is quite possible for it to recognise a certain validity in every other kind of morality without degenerating into a feeble eclecticism. The relation that we recognised between the spiritual life and religion also makes religion valuable to morality: the moral significance of culture may be especially acknowledged where a universal character is desired for the spiritual life; the relation of man to man may also become inwardly important where it is necessary to the inner construction of the life of society. Again the morality of the spiritual life fully agrees with the demand for an independence of morality and for an elevation above narrowly human aims, in the manner that the morality of reason advocates; finally, individuality also can obtain its due in the spiritual life. All this, however, is valid only with the presupposition that we acquire a position above the antitheses of experience and not between them, and an inner independence in relation to the chaos of time. Only from this position and this independence can we advance in any way, even within time.
3. Education and Instruction