Of course that inner elevation of the individual by no means lifts him gently and simply out of all the confusion that the experience of our existence shows; at the first glance it may even seem to make the confusion greater. For, if each individual can become a co-operator in the building up of a new world, and if his activity thereby acquires a value for the whole, then the complete indifference with which, according to our human impression, the individual is treated by the course of the physical world, the inflexibility and injustice that he often experiences in this world, the defect of love and justice in this world, in which the bad so often obtain the victory and the good are led to destruction, are all the greater mystery. The more the development of the spiritual life widens the field of vision; the more it leads us beyond a lifeless resignation to the question of the rationality of events and compels us to compare the destiny of one man with that of another, the deeper must that feeling of mystery become. All attempts at a theodicy founder on this difficulty; we must inevitably submit to the view that with regard to this problem all is obscure to the eyes of man. There is, however, no need on this account to doubt and to regard our life as hopeless; our investigation also has shown this. For, in contrast with the obscurity of the world around us, we are able to set the fact of the emergence of a new world within us. Great things take place within us; not only does a new world appear, but we are called by an inner necessity of our own being to co-operate in its development, and this co-operation is not limited to individual activities, but involves our being as a whole. For it was just in this that we were able to recognise the development of being as the essence of the spiritual life—that the chief movement of our life is to win a genuine being, and that in the development of personality and spiritual individuality such a being is in question. We saw clearly enough that we are not personalities and individuals from the beginning; but that nature gives us only the possibility of becoming this. To realise this possibility our own activity is necessary; and this activity is not a sudden resolution, but requires a revolution of our being and the development of a new nature; and this can only be achieved by a faithful and zealous life-work, and even then only approximately. Thus life as a whole is a task which includes all multiplicity within it, the task of winning our own being completely, and just in this way to increase the kingdom of the spirit at our point.
This task cannot be completely recognised and adopted without making a great divergence from the aim, harsh oppositions and difficult conflicts, manifest in the inner recesses of the soul. If our life, therefore, appears to be in the highest degree incomplete, a mere beginning, then this increase of the task demonstrates more than anything else that, in this matter, we are concerned not with phantoms and imaginations, but with realities: so here, notwithstanding all our incompleteness, we can obtain the certainty of a spiritual existence, and even become strengthened by the direct resistance of the external world, because that world is henceforth reduced to the secondary position. Thus, as we saw, the question upon which minds separate into irreconcilable opposition is whether they acknowledge in the inwardness of being itself not merely individual problems but a universal task; if this is the case, the seriousness of the task will give to them an unshakable stability of possession and a security superior to all attacks; if it is not the case, the spiritual world is an unintelligible paradox, because the want of an independent inner life means that there is no basis for the development of an organ for the comprehension of a world of inwardness. In this matter there is no possibility of a direct agreement; only the proof of the spirit and of power can decide.
But where the life of the individual acquires a genuine being and a connection with the realm of self-consciousness, then, notwithstanding all that is fleeting and insubstantial, the individual cannot regard himself as a transitory appearance in the whole, even in the ultimate basis of his being. Where, in contrast with all the meaninglessness of mere nature and all the pretence of mere society, a movement towards inner unity and substantial being emerges, the individual will be elevated into a time-transcendent order, and must necessarily acquire some position within it. The whole movement towards spirituality in the human sphere would be vain, and all distinctively human life would be a meaningless contradiction, if the individuals in whom alone the spiritual life breaks forth spontaneously were included solely and entirely in the stream of the process of nature. If the spiritual life has once revealed itself to us, so far as to begin an independent and distinctive being within us, then this being will assert itself in some way. This does not imply agreement with the usual belief in immortality, which would preserve man just as he is through all eternity, and thus condemn him to the torture of rigid continuance in the same form; a state that would, indeed, be as unbearable as the pain of the traditional hell. As the world as a whole is in the highest degree mysterious to us, so our future is veiled in the deepest obscurity. But, if with the essence of our being we are elevated into a universal spiritual life, and if in the innermost basis of our life we participate in an eternal order, then the time-transcendence of this life assures to us also some kind of time-transcendence in our being.
| So löst sich jene grosse Frage Nach unserm zweiten Vaterland, Denn das Beständige der ird’schen Tage Verbürgt uns ewigen Bestand. Goethe |
CONCLUSION
In conclusion a few words will suffice. The last section showed that the present sets great problems and reveals possibilities in every department of life; but that we men are very far from being equal to cope with these problems. We are limited especially by the fact that we are incapable of elevating ourselves inwardly above the present; that we do not take possession of it sufficiently as a whole, and find an inner independence in relation to it; and that therefore we do not enter with the necessary vigour into the conflict against the trivial and the poor-spirited, the decadent and the sceptical that the present contains. To point out the way to attain such independence appeared to us to be the chief task of philosophy in the present. In the service of this task, which cannot be achieved without the manifestation of a new actuality, without a fundamental deepening of our reality, we have made our investigation, which contains a distinctive conception of the spiritual life. In that everywhere we have pressed back from the results to the experience, and from the wealth of achievement to the generating basis, we have seen nature, history, culture, and human nature as a whole in a new light. We have hoped, by widening and strengthening life itself from within, to supply a substitute for the external supports that life has lost. How far we have succeeded in our endeavour is another question; we shall be satisfied even if our work only contributes to bring the present to a clearer consciousness of the state of spiritual crisis in which it exists and concerning the seriousness of which it deceives itself in a thousand ways. There is an enormous amount of vigorous activity and efficient work, of honest endeavour and serious disposition, in our time, and the tendency to make life more spiritual is also evident. But the movement is still far from attaining the depth which is necessary to the chief question of our spiritual existence; thus the conflict, instead of being between whole and whole, is divided; that which is significant and valuable in the endeavour of the time is in danger of becoming problematic, and of producing the opposite of what it purposes, because it does not fit itself into a universal life, and in this realise its limitations and at the same time its right. A more energetic concentration of life in itself is therefore the first condition of transcending the chaos of the life of the present and of preventing spiritual degeneration in the midst of too intense an occupation with externals. As for the rest, we may say with Plotinus: “The doctrine serves to point the way and guide the traveller; the vision, however, is for him who will see it.”
INDEX