Riddles of Philosophy
Part II
GA 18
Translated by Steiner Online Library
Modern Man and his Worldview
[ 1 ] The Austrian thinker Bartholomäus Carneri (1821-1909) sought to use Darwinism to open up broad perspectives on the world view and the organization of life. He emerged eleven years after the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species" with his book "Morality and Darwinism" (Vienna 1871), in which he made the new world of ideas the basis of an ethical world view in a comprehensive manner. Since then, he has constantly endeavored to expand Darwinian ethics. (Cf. his writings "Grundlegung der Ethik", 1881; "Der Mensch als Selbstzweck", 1878, and "Der moderne Mensch. Versuche einer Lebensführung", 1891) Carneri attempts to find the elements in the image of nature through which the self-conscious ego can be imagined within this image. He wants to think this image of nature so broad and large that it can encompass the human soul. Thus he is concerned with reuniting the ego, which has separated itself from the mother earth of nature, with this mother earth. In his conception of the world, he represents the opposite of that for which the world becomes an illusion of imagination, and which thereby renounces all connection with the existence of the world for knowledge. Carneri rejects all moral views that seek to give man moral precepts other than those that arise from his own human nature. One must hold on to the idea that man is not conceived as a special being alongside all other natural things, but as one that has gradually developed from lower entities according to purely natural laws. Carneri is convinced that all life is like a chemical process: "Digestion in man is like the nutrition of a plant." At the same time, however, he emphasizes that the chemical process must rise to a higher form of development if it is to become plant or animal. "Life is a chemical process of its own kind, it is the chemical process that has become individual. For the chemical process can reach a point at which it can dispense with certain conditions which it has hitherto required ... ..." Carneri traces how lower natural processes increase to higher ones, how the substance reaches higher forms of existence by perfecting its modes of action. "We understand substance as matter insofar as the phenomena resulting from its divisibility and movement have a physical effect on our senses, i.e. as mass. If the division or differentiation goes so far that the resulting phenomena are no longer perceptible to the senses, but only to the thinker, then the effect of matter is a spiritual one." The moral, too, does not exist as a special form of existence; it is a natural process on a higher level. Therefore, the question cannot arise: What should man do in the sense of any moral commandments especially applicable to him? - but only the question: What appears as morality when the lower processes rise to the highest spiritual ones? "While moral philosophy lays down certain moral laws and commands them to be observed, so that man may be what he ought, ethics develops man as he is, limiting itself to showing him what he can still become: there are duties whose observance penalties seek to enforce, here there is an ideal from which all compulsion would distract, because the approach is only by way of knowledge and freedom." Just as the chemical process individualizes itself into a living being at a higher level, so life rises to self-consciousness at an even higher level. The self-conscious being no longer merely looks out into nature; it looks into itself. "The awakening self-consciousness was, dualistically conceived, a rupture with nature, and man felt himself separated from it. The rupture was only there for him, but for him it was complete. It did not arise as suddenly as Genesis teaches, just as the days of creation are not to be taken literally; but with the completion of self-consciousness the rift was a fact, and with the feeling of boundless isolation that came over man, his ethical development began." Up to a certain point nature leads life. At this point self-consciousness arises, man comes into being. "His further development is his own work, and what kept him on the path of progress was the power and gradual clarification of his desires." Nature takes care of all other beings: it endows man with desires, which it leaves him to satisfy himself. He has the drive within him to shape his existence according to his desires. This drive is the bliss drive. "This instinct is alien to the animal: it knows only the instinct of self-preservation, and to elevate it to the instinct of happiness is the basic condition of human self-consciousness." The pursuit of happiness underlies all action. "The martyr who lays down his life here for his scientific convictions, there for his faith in God, has nothing else in mind but his happiness; the former finds it in his loyalty to his convictions, the latter seeks it in a better world. Happiness is the ultimate goal for all, and however different the image that the individual forms of it may be, from the crudest times to the most educated, it is the beginning and end of the sentient being's thinking and feeling." Since nature only gives man the need for happiness, the image of happiness must arise from within himself. Man creates his own images of happiness. They spring from his ethical imagination. In this imagination Carneri finds the new concept that outlines the ideals of our actions for our thinking. For Carneri, the "good" is "identical with development. And since development is pleasure, then ... bliss is not only the goal, but also the moving element that drives us towards the goal."
[ 2 ] Carneri sought to find the path from the laws of nature to the sources of morality. He believes that he has found the ideal power which, as the driving element of the moral world order, acts just as creatively from ethical occurrence to ethical occurrence as the material forces in the physical world develop form from form, fact from fact.
[ 3 ] Carneri's mode of conception is entirely in the sense of the idea of development, which does not allow the later to be already pre-formed in the earlier, but for which the later is a real new formation. (Cf. Volume I, p. 286 ff.) The chemical process does not contain the animal life already wrapped up; bliss is formed as a completely new element on the basis of the animal's instinct of self-preservation. The difficulty inherent in this thought gave an astute thinker, W. H. Rolph. the impetus for the explanations which he set down in the book "Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch zur Entwickelung einer rationellen Ethik". (Leipzig 1884.) Rolph asks himself: What is the reason that a life form does not remain at a certain stage, but continues to develop and perfect itself? He who allows the later to be already wrapped up in the earlier finds no difficulty in this question. For it is clear to him without further ado that what is wrapped up unfolds at a certain point in time. Rolph, however, did not want to give himself this answer. On the other hand, the mere "struggle for existence" of living beings was not enough for him either. If a living being only fights to fulfill its necessary needs, it will indeed beat other weaker forms out of the field; but it will itself remain what it is. If one does not wish to place in it a mysterious, mystical striving for perfection, one must seek the reasons for this perfection in external, natural conditions. Rolph finds them in the fact that every being satisfies its needs to a greater extent than the immediate need demands, if the possibility is available. "It is only through the introduction of insatiability that the Darwinian principle of perfection in the struggle for life becomes acceptable. For only now do we have an explanation for the fact that the creature, wherever it can, acquires more than it needs to maintain its status quo, that it grows in excess where the opportunity is given." (Biological Problems, p.96 f.) In Rolph's opinion, what takes place in the realm of living beings is not a struggle to acquire the most necessary necessities of life, but a "struggle to acquire more". "So while for the Darwinist there is no struggle for existence wherever the existence of the creature is not threatened, for me the struggle is omnipresent. It is primarily a struggle for life, a struggle to increase life, but not a struggle for existence." (Biological Problems, p.97.) Rolph draws conclusions for ethics from these scientific premises. "Increasing life, not preserving life, the struggle for preference, not for existence, is the watchword. The mere acquisition of the necessities of life and food is not enough; leisureliness, if not wealth, power and influence must also be acquired. The addiction, the striving for constant improvement of the living situation is the characteristic drive of animals and humans." (Biological Problems, p.222 f.)
[ 4 ] Rolph's thoughts inspired Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) to develop his ideas of development after he had first gone through other forms of his mental life. At the beginning of his career as a writer, he was far removed from the idea of development and natural science in general. He was initially greatly impressed by Arthur Schopenhauer's view of the world. The pain at the bottom of all existence is an idea that he absorbed from Schopenhauer. He did not seek redemption from this pain in the fulfillment of moral tasks like Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann; rather, he believed that shaping life into a work of art would overcome the pain of existence. The Greeks created a world of beauty, of appearance, in order to make their painful existence bearable. And in Richard Wagner's musical drama, he believed he found a world that elevated people above their pain through beauty. In a sense, it was a world of illusion that Nietzsche consciously sought in order to get over the misery of the world. He was of the opinion that the oldest Greek culture was based on man's drive to forget the real world by putting himself in a state of intoxication. "By singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community. He has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way to flying up into the air while dancing." This is how Nietzsche describes and explains the cult of the ancient servants of Dionysus, in which the root of all art lies. Socrates had tamed this Dionysian impulse by making reason the judge of impulses. The sentence "Virtue is teachable" means the replacement of a comprehensive impulsive culture by a watered-down culture held in check by thinking. Such ideas arose in Nietzsche under Schopenhauer's influence, who placed the unrestrained, restless will above the organizing imagination, and through Richard Wagner, who as a man and artist professed his allegiance to Schopenhauer. But Nietzsche was, by his very nature, also a contemplative. After he had given himself over for a time to the view of a redemption of the world through beautiful appearances, he perceived this view as a foreign element in his own being, which had been transplanted into him through the personal influence of his friend Richard Wagner. He sought to free himself from this school of thought and to devote himself to a view of reality more in keeping with his own. Nietzsche was compelled by the basic character of his personality to experience the ideas and impulses of the newer worldview development as a direct individual destiny. Others have formed worldviews, and their philosophizing was absorbed in these forms. Nietzsche confronts the worldviews of the second half of the nineteenth century. And his fate will be to personally experience all the bliss, but also all the suffering, that these world views can produce when they pour themselves over the entire being of the human soul. Not theoretically, no, with the application of his entire individuality, Nietzsche's worldview life took shape in such a way that the characteristic worldviews of the newer era took hold of him completely and he had to penetrate the solutions to life in his most personal existence. How to live when one has to reproach oneself that the world is as it is presented by Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, that became the riddle for him; but not a riddle to which he sought an answer through thinking, through knowledge, but whose solution he had to experience with every fiber of his being. Others think philosophy; Nietzsche had to live philosophy. The newer worldview life becomes personality in Nietzsche himself. The world-views of other thinkers confront the observer in such a way that he is struck by the ideas: this is one-sided, this is incorrect, etc.; with Nietzsche, this observer sees himself confronted with the life of the world-view in a human being; and he sees that this human being becomes healthy through one idea, suffering through another. This is the reason why Nietzsche becomes more and more a poet in his depiction of the world view, and why those who do not want to make friends with this depiction as philosophy can still admire it through its poetic power. What a completely different tone Nietzsche brings to the more recent development of the world view than Hamerling, Wundt and even Schopenhauer! These search for the ground of existence through contemplation and arrive at the will, which they find in the depths of the human soul. This will lives in Nietzsche; and he absorbs the philosophical ideas, glows through them with his will-nature and then creates a new one: a life in which will-born idea, idea-illuminated will pulsate. This is what Nietzsche did in his first creative period, which began with the "Birth of Tragedy" in 1870) and which came to revelation in the four "Untimely Reflections" (David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer; On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life; Schopenhauer as Educator; Richard Wagner in Bayreuth). - In a second period of his life, it was Nietzsche's destiny to experience what a world view based solely on scientific habits of thought can be for the human soul. This period of his life is expressed in the works "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches" (1878), "Morgenröte", "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft" (1881). The ideals that enlivened Nietzsche's soul in his first period now grow cold in him; they prove to be light, foamy forms of knowledge; the soul wants to strengthen itself in its feeling through the "real" content of what the scientific mode of imagination can give. But Nietzsche's soul is full of life; the power of this inner life strives beyond what it can owe to the contemplation of nature. The observation of nature shows how the animal becomes a human being; in feeling the inner life force of the soul, the idea arises: the animal has carried the human being within itself; must not the human being carry a higher being, the superhuman? And now Nietzsche's soul experiences within itself the emergence of the superman from the human being; this soul revels in lifting the newer idea of development, which is based on the sense world, up into the realm that the senses do not see, which is felt when the soul experiences the sense of development within itself. What Rolph has achieved through his observation: "The mere acquisition of the necessities of life and food is not enough, it is also necessary to acquire leisure, if not wealth, power and influence. The addiction, the striving for constant improvement of one's life situation is the characteristic drive of animals and humans", - with Nietzsche this result of observation becomes an inner experience, a grandiose hymn of knowledge. The cognition that reflects the outer world is not enough: it must fruitfully increase this cognition within itself; self-observation is inner poverty. The product of a new inner being, which outshines everything that man already is in himself, arises in Nietzsche's soul: in man the not-yet-being, the superman, is born as the meaning of existence. Knowledge grows beyond what it was; it becomes a creative power. And by creating, man places himself in the meaning of life. In Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" (1884), what his soul feels is clothed in lyrical momentum; experienced in the creative bliss of the "superman" out of the human being. Such creative feeling knowledge feels more in the ego of man than what can be lived out in the individual course of life; what is present in this individual life cannot be exhausted in it. It will always return to new life. Thus, in Nietzsche, the idea of the "eternal return" of the human soul was added to the idea of the superman.
[ 5 ] Rolph's idea of the "increase of life" grows in Nietzsche into the idea of the "will to power", which he ascribes to all being and life in animals and humans. He sees in life "appropriation, violation, overpowering of the alien and the weaker, oppression, harshness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at the very least, mildest exploitation". In "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Nietzsche sang a "high song" to the belief in reality, in the development of man into the "superman"; in the unfinished work "The Will to Power (Revaluation of All Values)", he wanted to carry out the reshaping of all ideas from the point of view that no other will in man has the highest dominion than only that of "power".
[ 6 ] In Nietzsche, the striving for knowledge becomes a being of existence that animates itself in the human soul. By feeling this animation within himself, Nietzsche places life above the knowledge and truth that does not fire itself to life. For him, this led to a rejection of all truth and to the replacement of the will to truth with the "will to power", which no longer asks: Is knowledge true? Is it life-sustaining, life-promoting? "All philosophizing was not about 'truth' at all, but about something completely different, let's say about health, the future, growth, power, life . . " Actually, man has always striven for power; only he was under the illusion that he wanted "truth". He confused the means with the end. Truth is only a means to the end of "power". "The falsity of a judgment is not yet an objection to the judgment." What matters is not whether a judgment is true, but "how far it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding". "Most of the philosopher's thinking is secretly guided by his instincts and forced into certain paths." Nietzsche's world view is personal feeling as individual experience and destiny. In Goethe the deep impulse of the newer world-view life emerged; he felt the idea in the self-conscious ego revive in such a way that with the revitalized idea this ego can know itself in the inner being of the world; in Nietzsche the impulse is present to let man live beyond himself; he feels that then the meaning of life must reveal itself in what is inwardly self-generated. But he does not penetrate essentially to that which is generated in man beyond man as the meaning of life. He sings of the superman in a grandiose manner, but he does not shape him; he feels his weaving existence, but he does not see it. He speaks of an "eternal return", but he does not describe what returns. He speaks of the elevation of life through the will to power, but the form of the elevated life - . where is its description? Nietzsche speaks of something that must be there in the unknown, but it remains an allusion to the unknown. The powers unfolded in the self-conscious ego are also not sufficient for Nietzsche to vividly create what he knows to be weaving and blowing in human nature.
[ 7 ] Nietzsche's view of the world has a counterpart in the materialist conception of history and view of life, which found its most concise expression in Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx denied the idea any part in historical development. What should really underlie this development are the real factors of life, from which the opinions about the world have arisen, which people have been able to form depending on how they have been placed in their particular circumstances. The physical laborer, dominated by another, has a different conception of the world than the intellectual laborer. An age that replaces one old form of economy with another also brings other views of life to the surface of history. If you want to understand any age, you have to use its social conditions and economic events to explain it. All political and spiritual currents are only a reflection of these events on the surface. By their very nature they present themselves as ideal consequences of real facts; they have no part in these facts themselves. Therefore, no world view that has come about through ideal factors can have any part in the further development of the present way of life; rather, the task is to take up the real conflicts where they have arrived today and to continue them in the same sense. This view arose through a materialist reinterpretation of Hegelianism. For Hegel, the idea is in eternal development, and the consequences of this development are the actual occurrences of life. - What August Comte formed out of scientific ideas, a conception of society based on the actual occurrences of life, Karl Marx wanted to achieve through the direct observation of economic development. Marxism is the boldest manifestation of an intellectual current that takes the observation of external historical phenomena accessible to direct perception as its starting point for understanding the spiritual life, the entire cultural development of man. This is modern "sociology". It does not take man as an individual being in any direction, but as a member of social development. How man conceives, recognizes, acts, feels: all this is conceived as a result of social forces under whose influence the individual stands. Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) calls the totality of forces that determine every cultural occurrence the "milieu". Every work of art, every institution, every action can be explained by the preceding and simultaneous circumstances. If one knows the race, milieu and moment from which and in which a human work arises, then one has explained it. Ferdinand Nasale (1825 to 1864) showed in his "System of Acquired Rights" how legal institutions: Property, contract, family, inheritance law, etc. arise and develop from the imaginative circles of a people. The Roman way of thinking created a different kind of rights than the German way of thinking. In all these circles of thought the question is not raised: What arises in the single human individual, what does he accomplish out of his very own nature? but the: What causes lie in the sociable social associations for the individual's purpose in life? One can see in this current an opposite preference to that which prevailed at the beginning of the century with regard to questions about man's relationship to the world. At that time the question was asked: What rights are due to the individual human being by his own nature (natural rights), or how does man recognize in accordance with his individual reason? The sociological current, on the other hand, asks: What ideas of rights, what concepts of knowledge do social associations place in the individual? The fact that I form certain ideas about things does not depend on my reason, but is a result of the development from which I was born. In Marxism the self-conscious ego is completely stripped of its own essence; it drifts in the sea of facts which take place according to the laws of natural science and social relations. In this view of the world, the powerlessness of recent philosophizing towards the human soul pushes it to an extreme. The "I" - the self-conscious human soul - wants to find in itself the essence through which it creates validity for itself in world existence; but it does not want to deepen itself; it fears not to find in its own depths that which gives it existence and essence. It wants to be given its own essence from a being that lies outside itself. In doing so, it turns to the world of either material events or social becoming, in accordance with the habits of thought that recent times have produced under the influence of the natural sciences. It believes that it understands itself in the whole of life when it can say to itself: I am conditioned in a certain way by this happening, by this becoming. Such striving for a world-view shows how forces are at work in the souls for knowledge of which these souls have a dark feeling, but which they cannot at first satisfy with what the newer habits of thought and research have produced. A spiritual life hidden from consciousness is at work in the souls. It drives these souls to descend so deeply into the self-conscious ego that this ego can find something in its depths that leads into the source of world existence - into that source in which the human soul feels related to a world being that does not emerge in the mere natural phenomena and natural beings themselves. In relation to these natural phenomena and natural beings, modern times have achieved an ideal of research with which they feel secure in their search. One would now like to feel just as secure when researching the human soul being. The preceding remarks have shown how, among leading thinkers, the striving for such certainty in research has led to world views that no longer contain any elements from which satisfactory ideas about the human soul can be gained. One wants to shape philosophy in a scientific way; but in doing so one loses the meaning of philosophical questions. The task that is set for the human soul from its depths goes far beyond what the thinkers want to recognize as safe research methods according to the newer habits of thought. An overview of the situation of the newer development of the world view characterized in this way reveals as its most outstanding characteristic the pressure which the scientific way of thinking has exerted on the spirits since its blossoming. And the reason for this pressure can be recognized as the fertility, the carrying power of this way of thinking. To see this confirmed, look at a scientific thinker such as T'homas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). He does not subscribe to the view that something can be seen in scientific knowledge that answers the ultimate questions about the human soul. But he believes that human research must remain within the scientific way of looking at things and admit that man has no means of acquiring knowledge about what lies beyond nature. It is the result of this opinion: natural science says nothing about man's highest hopes of knowledge; but it gives the feeling that it places research on safe ground; so let everything else that does not lie within its sphere be left to itself or be the object of faith.
[ 8 ] The effect of this pressure coming from the scientific way of thinking can be clearly seen in the current of thought which, under the name of "pragmatism" at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, wanted to place all human striving for truth on safe ground. The name "pragmatism" comes from an essay published by Charles Peirce in the American journal "Popular Science" in 1878. The most effective proponents of this type of conception are William James (1842-1910) in America and F. C. Schiller in England. (The latter uses the name "humanism": see "Humanism" 1903, "Studies in Humanism" 1907.) Pragmatism can be called disbelief in the power of thought. It denies thinking, which wants to remain in itself, the ability to produce something that can prove itself as truth, as knowledge justified by itself. Man faces the processes of the world and must act. Thinking serves him as a helper in this. It summarizes the facts of the external world in ideas, combines them. And those ideas are the best which help man to act rightly so that he can find his goals in harmony with the phenomena of the world. And man recognizes such best ideas as his truth. The will is the ruler in man's relationship to the world, not thinking. In his book "The Will to Believe" (translated into German in 1899), James expresses himself thus: "The will determines life, that is its primal right; therefore it will also have a right to exert an influence on thoughts. Not indeed on the ascertainment of facts in detail: here the mind should be guided solely by the facts themselves; but on the conception and interpretation of reality as a whole. If scientific knowledge reached to the end of things, then we would live by science alone. Since it only sheds a little light on the edges of the dark continent that we call the universe, and since we must at our peril form some thoughts of the universe to which we belong with our lives, we shall do right if we form such thoughts as correspond to our nature; thoughts that enable us to work, to hope, to live." According to this view, thought has no life of its own that can deepen into itself and penetrate to the source of existence, for example in the sense of Hegel; it only lights up in the human ego in order to follow the ego when it intervenes in the world in a willing and living way. Pragmatism strips thought of the power it has had since the rise of the Greek world view. Knowledge is thereby made a product of the human will; it can no longer be the element into which man immerses himself in order to find himself in his true nature. The self-conscious ego does not immerse itself in thinking; it loses itself in the dark undergrounds of the will, in which thought illuminates nothing but the goals of life, which as such, however, do not spring from thought. - The power of external facts over man has become overpowering; the consciousness of finding a light in the intrinsic life of thought that illuminates the ultimate questions of existence has sunk to zero. In pragmatism, the achievement of the newer worldview development is the furthest removed from what the spirit of this development demands: to find oneself thinking with the self-conscious ego in world depths in which this ego feels as connected with the source point of existence as Greek research through the perceived thought. The fact that this spirit demands such a thing is revealed in particular by pragmatism. It places "man" at the center of its view of the world. The human being should show how reality prevails in existence. So the main question is directed towards the element in which the self-conscious ego rests. But the power of thought is not sufficient to carry light into this element. Thought remains in the upper layers of the soul when the ego wants to go into its depths.
[ 9 ] In Germany, Hans Vaihinger's (1852-1933) "philosophy of as if" followed the same path as pragmatism. This philosopher sees the guiding ideas that people form about world phenomena not as mental images through which the cognizing soul places itself in a spiritual reality, but as fictions that guide them when it comes to finding their way in the world. The "atom", for example, is imperceptible. Man forms the thought of the "atom". He cannot form it in such a way that he knows something about a reality, but "as if" the external phenomena of nature arose through the interaction of atoms. If one imagines that atoms are present, then order comes into the chaos of the perceived natural phenomena. And so it is with all guiding ideas. They are not assumed in order to depict the actual, which is given solely by perception; they are conceived and reality is arranged "as if" what is imagined in them underlies this reality. The powerlessness of thought is thus consciously placed at the center of philosophizing. The power of external facts presses so violently on the mind of the thinker that he does not dare to penetrate with "mere thought" into those regions from which external reality springs forth as from its primordial source. But since there is only hope of fathoming something about the essence of man if one has a spiritual means of penetrating into the characterized regions, there can be no question of approaching the highest mysteries of the world in "as-if philosophy".
[ 10 ] Now both pragmatism and as-if philosophy have grown out of the thinking practice of the age dominated by the scientific mode of conception. Natural science can only be concerned with investigating the connection between external facts - those facts that take place in the field of sensory observation. For science it cannot be a question of the connections which it investigates being perceptible to the senses, but of these connections arising in the field indicated. By observing this foundation, modern natural science has become the model for all scientific cognition. And towards the present day, it has been driven more and more towards a way of thinking that is in the spirit of pragmatism and as-if philosophy. Darwinism, for example, was first driven to draw up a line of development of living beings from the most imperfect to the most perfect, and in doing so to regard man as a higher form of development of the man-like apes. However, the anatomist Karl Gegenbaur (see above p. 407) already pointed out in 1870 that the kind of research used for such a developmental idea is the fruitful one. Now this kind of research has been continued in more recent times; and one is well entitled to say that this kind of research, by remaining true to itself, has led beyond the views with which it was first associated. Research was made "as if" man was to be sought in the line of progress of the man-like apes; and we are at present near to recognizing that this cannot be, but that there must have been a being in prehistoric times which had its true descendant in man, while the man-like apes have formed themselves away from this being into a more imperfect species. Thus the original newer idea of evolution was only an aid to research.
[ 11 ] Inasmuch as such thinking practice prevails in natural science, it seems justified to deny any scientific cognitive value to pure thought research, to a search for the solution of the world's riddles in the self-conscious ego. The natural scientist feels that he stands on a secure foundation if he sees in thinking only a means of orienting himself in the world of external facts. The great achievements of natural science at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are well suited to such a way of thinking. Pragmatism and as-if philosophy are at work in the research methods of natural science; if these now also appear as philosophical schools of thought, then this fact reveals the basic scientific character of the more recent development of world views.
[ 12 ] Thinkers who instinctively feel the demand of the newer worldview spirit working in secret are therefore understandably confronted with the question: How can an idea of the self-conscious ego be maintained in the face of exemplary natural science? One could say that natural science is on the way to producing a world view in which the self-conscious ego has no place. For what natural science can give as an image of the (outer) human being, the self-conscious soul contains only in the same way as the magnet has its power. There are now two possibilities. Either one gives in to the delusion that with the expression "the brain thinks" one has really said something serious, and that the "spiritual man" is only the surface expression of the material; or one recognizes in this "spiritual man" an in itself independently essential reality, then one is driven out of natural science with the knowledge of man. Thinkers who are under the influence of the latter possibility are the French philosophers Emile Boutroux (1845 to 1921) and Henri Bergson (1859-1890).
[ 13 ] Boutroux takes as his starting point a critique of the newer mode of conception, which seeks to trace all world events back to scientifically comprehensible laws. One understands his train of thought if one considers, for example, that a plant certainly contains within itself processes that proceed according to the laws that are also effective in the mineral world, but that it is completely impossible to imagine that the mineral laws call forth plant life from their own content. If one wishes to recognize that plant existence develops on the ground of mineral activity, one must presuppose that the mineral is quite indifferent as to whether the plant life emerges from it. Rather, something inherently creative must be added to the mineral if the vegetable is to arise. In the natural order, therefore, something creative prevails everywhere. The mineral kingdom is there; but behind it there is a creative element. This lets the vegetable emerge from itself and places it on the ground of the mineral. And so it is with all spheres in the natural order up to the conscious human soul, even up to sociological events. The human soul does not spring from the mere laws of life, but directly from the Primordial Creative and appropriates the laws of life to its essence. In the sociological, too, a primordial creation is revealed that brings the human souls into the corresponding context and into interaction. In Boutroux's book "On the Concept of Natural Law in Science and Contemporary Philosophy" we find the following sentences: "Science shows us ... a hierarchy of sciences, a hierarchy of laws, which we can bring closer together, but which cannot be merged into a single science and a single law. It also shows us, in addition to the relative dissimilarity of the laws, their mutual influence. The physical laws impose themselves on the living being, but the biological laws interact with the physical laws." (German edition, 1907, p.130.) In this way, Boutroux turns the observing gaze away from the laws of nature visualized in thought to the creative force behind these laws. And directly emerging from this are the beings that fill the world. How these beings relate to each other, how they interact, can be expressed by laws that can be grasped in thought. Thought thus becomes a revelation of the beings in the world. And matter becomes the basis for this kind of conception, as it is for the laws of nature. The beings are real and reveal themselves according to laws; the totality of these laws, i.e. basically the unreal, linked to an imagined being, gives matter. Thus Boutroux can say: "Movement" (he means the totality of what happens between beings according to the laws of nature) "in itself is obviously just as much an abstraction as thought in itself. In fact, there are only living beings whose nature is a middle ground between the pure concept of thought and movement. These living beings form a hierarchy, and activity circulates in them from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Mind does not move matter either directly or indirectly. But there is no brute matter, and that which constitutes the essence of matter is closely related to that which constitutes the essence of spirit. " (In the same book, p.13 1.) But if the laws of nature are only the summary of the interrelationship of beings, then the human soul does not stand in the world as a whole in such a way that it can be explained from the laws of nature, but it adds its revelation from its own being to the other laws. In this way, however, the freedom of the human soul, the self-revelation of its being, is secured. One can see in this philosophical way of thinking the attempt to come to a clear understanding of the true nature of the image of nature in order to fathom how the human soul relates to this image. And Boutroux arrives at such a conception of the human soul, which can only arise from the self-revelation of the same itself. In earlier times, according to Boutroux, the interactions of beings were seen as the revelation of the "whim and arbitrariness" of spiritual beings; modern thinking has been freed from this by the recognition of the laws of nature. Since these only exist in the interaction of beings, nothing can be contained in them that determines the beings. "The mechanical laws of nature discovered by modern science are in fact the bond that links the external with the internal. Far from being a necessity, they liberate us; they allow us to add to the contemplation in which the ancients were locked, a science of action." (At the end of the book mentioned.) This is a reference to the demand of the newer worldview spirit often mentioned in this writing. The ancients had to stop at contemplation. For them the soul was in the element of its true essence in the contemplation of thought. The newer development demands a "science of action". However, this could only arise if the soul were to grasp itself in the self-conscious ego through thought and, through spiritual experience, arrive at inner self-generations with which it can see itself standing in its essence.
[ 14 ] In a different way, Henri Bergson seeks to penetrate to the essence of the self-conscious ego in such a way that the scientific mode of conception does not become an obstacle to this penetration. The essence of thought has itself become a world enigma through the development of world views from Greek times to the present. Thought has lifted the human soul out of the world as a whole. Thus it lives, as it were, with the thought and must address the question to it: How can you bring me back to an element in which I can really feel secure in the world as a whole? Bergson looks at scientific thinking. He does not find in it the power by which it could, as it were, swing itself into a true reality. The thinking soul faces reality and gains mental images from it. It puts these together. But what it thus acquires does not stand within reality; it stands outside it. Bergson speaks of thinking as follows: "One realizes that through our thinking fixed concepts can be drawn from the moving reality; but it is quite impossible to reconstruct the mobility of the real with the solidity of the concepts . . " (Thus in the essay "Introduction to Metaphysics". German edition, 1909, p.42.) Based on such thoughts, Bergson finds that all attempts to penetrate reality from thinking must fail because they have undertaken something that thinking - as it operates in life and in science - is powerless to do, to penetrate true reality. If Bergson seems to recognize the impotence of thinking in this way, this is no reason for him to arrive at true reality through right experience in the self-conscious ego. For there is a non-thoughtful path in the ego, the path of direct experience, of intuition. "Philosophizing consists in reversing the usual direction of thought." "Relative is the symbolic cognition through pre-existing concepts, which goes from the fixed to the moving, but by no means the intuitive cognition, which places itself in the moving and makes the life of things itself its own." (Introduction to Metaphysics, p.46.) Bergson considers a transformation of ordinary thinking possible, so that through this transformation the soul experiences itself in an activity - in an intuitive perception - that is one with an existence beyond that which is perceived through ordinary cognition. In such intuitive perception, the soul experiences itself as a being that is not conditioned by bodily processes. It is through these processes that sensation is evoked and the movements of the human being are brought about. When man perceives through the senses, when he moves his limbs, a physical being is active in him; but already when he remembers an idea, a purely soul-spiritual process takes place, which is not conditioned by corresponding physical processes. And so the whole inner life of the soul is a life of its own of a soul-spiritual nature, which takes place in and on the body, but not through it. Bergson has examined in detail those scientific results that contradict his view. Indeed, the idea that mental expressions are rooted only in bodily processes seems so justified when one realizes, for example, how the disease of a part of the brain causes the loss of speech activity. An unlimited number of facts of this kind can be cited. Bergson deals with them in his work "Matter and Memory" (German 908). And he finds that they provide no evidence against the view of the spiritual-soul life of its own.
[ 15 ] In Bergson, modern philosophy thus seems to turn to the task demanded by the times, the deepening into the experience of the self-conscious ego; but it accomplishes this step by decreeing the powerlessness of thought. Where the I should experience itself in its essence, it can do nothing with thought. And so it is for Bergson with the exploration of life. What drives the development of living beings, what places these beings in the world in a series from the imperfect to the perfect, is not revealed to cognition through the thinking contemplation of living beings as they present themselves before man in their forms. No, when man experiences himself as soul life in himself, he stands in the life element that lives in the beings and that looks at itself in him in a recognizing way. This life element has first had to pour itself out in countless forms in order to prepare itself through this outpouring for what it has become in man. The life-swinging power, which in man raises itself to the thinking being, is already there when it reveals itself in the simplest living being; it has then spent itself in the creation of the living beings in such a way that only a part of its total beingness has remained behind in the revelation in man, but that which reveals itself as the fruit of all preceding life-creation. Thus the essence of man exists before all other living beings; but it can only live itself out as man when it has cast off the other forms of life, which man can then only observe from the outside, as one among them. Bergson wants to let his intuitive cognition animate the results of natural science in such a way that he can say: "Everything happens as if an indeterminate and volitional being, whether one calls it man or superhuman, had striven for realization and only achieved it by giving up part of its being on the way. It is these losses that the rest of the animal world, and even the plant world, represent; at least in so far as they signify something positive, something removed from the accidents of development." (Bergson, Creative Development. German edition, 1912, page 270.)
[ 16 ] From lightly woven, easily attainable reflection, Bergson thus brings forth an idea of development that Wilhelm Heinrich Preuß had already previously expressed in 1882 in his book "Geist und Stoff" (Spirit and Substance) (new edition Stuttgart 1922). For this thinker, too, man did not emerge from the other natural beings, but he is, from the beginning, the basic being, which only, before it could give itself the form it deserved on earth, first had to cast off its precursor in the other living beings. One reads in the aforementioned book: "It may ... be time to develop a ... ... a doctrine of the origin of organic species, which is not based solely on one-sided propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are also laws of human thought. A doctrine at the same time which is devoid of all hypothesizing and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine which rescues the concept of species according to actual possibility but at the same time takes over the concept of development established by Darwin into its field and seeks to make it fruitful. - The center of this new doctrine is the human being, the only once returning species on our planet: Homo sapiens. It is curious that the older observers began with the objects of nature and then lost their way to such an extent that they could not find their way to man, which Darwin also succeeded in doing only in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals - while the natural scientist would have to begin with himself as man in order to return progressively through the whole field of being and thinking to mankind. ... It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of all telluric processes and every other form that emerges alongside him has borrowed its traits from his own. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos... When his germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What remained became animal or plant ... "
[ 17 ] Such a view strives to recognize man placed on himself - apart from nature - by the newer development of the world view, in order to then find in such knowledge of man something that throws light on the nature of the world surrounding man. In the little-known thinker from Elsfleth, W. H. Preuß, the longing emerges to gain knowledge of the world through knowledge of man. His energetic and significant ideas are aimed directly at the human being. He sees this entity struggling into existence. And what it must leave behind on its path - strip off from itself - remains as nature with its entities on a lower level in the development and presents itself as man's environment. - That the path to the mysteries of the world in modern philosophy is to be taken through an exploration of the human being, which reveals itself in the self-conscious ego, is shown by the development of this philosophy. The more one endeavors to penetrate into its striving and searching, the more one can become aware of how this searching is directed towards such experiences in the human soul which not only enlighten us about this human soul itself, but in which something shines forth which provides certain information about the world lying outside the human being. A look at the views of Hegel and related thinkers caused the newer philosophers to doubt that the life of thought could contain the power to illuminate beyond the sphere of the soul. The thought element seemed to be too weak to unfold a life in itself that could contain revelations about the nature of the world. The scientific mode of conception demanded such a penetration into the core of the soul, which stands on firmer ground than thought can provide.
[ 18 ] The efforts of Wilhelm Dilthey (1 833 to 1911) play a significant role in this search and striving of the latest era. In writings such as "Introduction to the Humanities" and in his Berlin Academy treatise "Contributions to the solution of the question of the origin of our belief in the reality of the external world and its right" (1890), he offered explanations that are directly filled with everything that weighs as a philosophical riddle on the development of the modern worldview. Dilthey's presentation in the scholarly form of expression currently in use, however, prevents what he had to say from making a more general impression. - Dilthey's view is that with what is thought-like, imaginative in his soul, man cannot even arrive at a certainty as to whether what the senses perceive corresponds to a real entity independent of man. Everything thoughtful, imaginative, sensually perceived is an image; and the world that surrounds man could be a dream of images of his own being, without a reality independent of him, if he were solely dependent on becoming aware of reality through such images. But these images alone do not reveal themselves in the soul. A context of life reveals itself in it in will, striving, feeling, which emanates from it, in which it feels itself in it, and whose reality it must recognize not only through thoughtful cognition, but through direct experience. Willing and feeling, the soul experiences itself as reality. But if it only experienced itself in this way, it would have to believe that its reality is the only one in the world. This would only be justified if its will could radiate out in all directions without resistance. But this is not the case. The intentions of the will cannot live themselves out in this way. Something forces its way into them that they do not produce themselves and yet which they must absorb into themselves. Such a philosopher's train of thought can appear hair-splitting to "common sense". Historical observation must not look at such judgments. It is important for it to gain an insight into the difficulty that modern philosophy must cause itself with regard to the simple question that even seems superfluous to "common sense": whether the world that man sees, hears etc. can rightly be called real? The "I", which has detached itself from the world - as the history of the development of philosophical world puzzles presented here has shown - wants to find its way back to the world in its being, which has become lonely for its own contemplation. Dilthey believes that this path cannot be found, for example, by saying: The soul experiences images (thoughts, ideas, sensations), and since these images appear in consciousness, they must have their causes in a real external world Such a conclusion would - in Dilthey's opinion - give no right to speak of a real external world. For this conclusion is drawn within the soul, according to the needs of this soul; and nothing guarantees that what the soul believes, according to its needs, must be real in the external world. No, the soul cannot conclude about an external world; it exposes itself to the danger that its conclusion only has a life in itself and remains without any meaning for the external world. The soul can only gain certainty about an external world if this external world penetrates into the inner life of the "I", so that in this "I" not only the "I" but the external world itself lives. According to Dilthey, this happens when the soul experiences something in its wanting and feeling that does not originate from itself. Dilthey endeavors to use the most self-evident facts to decide a question that for him is a fundamental question of all worldview. Take the following explanation he gives: "When a child pushes its hand against the chair to move it, its power is measured by the resistance: its own life and objects are experienced together. But now the child is locked up, it shakes the door in vain: then its whole excited life of will becomes subject to the pressure of an overpowering external world, which inhibits, restricts and, as it were, compresses its own life. What the child experiences goes through the whole life of the adult. Resistance becomes pressure, walls of reality seem to surround us, which we cannot break through. The impressions persist, regardless of whether we want to change them; they disappear, although we strive to hold on to them; certain impulses to move, which are guided by the idea of avoiding the unpleasant, are regularly followed under certain circumstances by movements of the mind, which keep us in the region of the unpleasant. And so the reality of the outside world becomes more and more concentrated around us, as it were." Why is such a seemingly insignificant consideration for many people made in connection with high worldview questions? It seems hopeless to arrive at a view of the position of the human soul in the world as a whole from such starting points. The essential thing, however, is that philosophy has arrived at such a view on the path that - once again we may recall Brentano's words - has been undertaken "to gain certainty for the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle about the survival of our better part after the dissolution of our body ... " Gaining such certainty seems increasingly difficult the further the development of thought progresses. The "self-conscious ego" feels itself more and more ejected from the world; it seems to find less and less in itself the elements that connect it with the world, nor in any other way than through the "body" subjected to "dissolution". In seeking a certain knowledge of its connection with an eternal world of the spirit, it itself lost the certainty of an insight into the connection with the world that reveals itself to the perceptions of the senses. - In considering Goethe's world view, attention could be drawn to how within it the search is made for such experiences in the soul that project this soul out into a reality that lies behind sense perception as a spiritual world. So something is sought to be experienced within the soul, through which the soul no longer stands merely in itself, although it feels the experience as its own. The soul seeks experiences of the world within itself, through which it experiences that in the world which is impossible for it to experience through the mediation of the mere bodily organs. Despite the seemingly superfluous nature of his approach, Dilthey stands within the same current of philosophical development. He wants to show something within the soul which, as true as it is experienced in the soul, nevertheless does not belong to it, but to something independent of it. He wants to prove that the world projects into the experience of the soul. He does not believe that this intrusion can be in the mental, but for him the soul takes something into itself in its entire life content in willing, striving and feeling that is not merely soul, but the real outside world. The soul does not recognize a person standing opposite it as real in the outside world by the fact that this person stands opposite it and it forms a conception of him, but by the fact that it takes up his willing, his feeling, his living soul context into its own willing and feeling. Thus, in Dilthey's sense, the human soul does not accept a real external world because this external world proclaims itself as real to the thoughtful, but because the soul, the self-conscious ego, experiences the external world in itself. Thus, this philosopher stands before the recognition of the higher significance of spiritual life compared to mere natural existence. With this view, he provides a counterweight to the scientific way of thinking. Indeed, he believes that nature as a real external world is only recognized because it is experienced by the spiritual in the soul. The experience of the natural is a sub-area in the general experience of the soul, which is of a spiritual nature. And spiritually the soul is part of a general spiritual unfolding of earthly existence. A great spiritual organism develops and unfolds in the cultural systems, in the spiritual experiences and creations of peoples and times. What develops its powers in this spiritual organism permeates the individual human souls. These are embedded in the spiritual organism. What they experience, accomplish, create, does not merely receive its impulses from natural drives, but from the comprehensive spiritual life. - Dilthey's style is full of understanding for the scientific way of thinking. He often refers to the results of natural scientists in his explanations. However, he contrasts the recognition of natural development with the independent existence of a spiritual world. For him, the content of a science of the spiritual is provided by the sight of what the cultures of peoples and times contain.
[ 1 ] Rudolf Eucken (1846-1926) arrived at a similar recognition of an independent spiritual world. He found that the scientific way of thinking comes into contradiction with itself if it wants to be more than an observation of only one side of existence, if it wants to declare that which it is possible to recognize as the only reality. If one were to observe nature as it presents itself to the senses alone, one could never arrive at an overall view of it. In order to explain nature, one must draw on what the mind can only experience through itself, what it can never obtain from external observation. Eucken starts from the living feeling that the soul has of its own independent work and creation, even when it devotes itself to the observation of external nature. He does not fail to recognize how the soul is dependent on what it feels and perceives with its sensory instruments, how it is determined by everything that lies in the natural basis of the body. But he focuses on the soul's autonomous, organizing, enlivening activity that is independent of the body. The soul gives the world of sensation and perception its direction, its self-contained coherence. It is not merely determined by impulses that come to it through the physical world, but experiences purely spiritual impulses within itself. Through these it knows itself to be standing in a real spiritual world. Forces from a spiritual world to which it belongs work into what it experiences and creates. This spiritual world is really experienced directly in the soul, in that the soul knows itself to be one with it. Thus, in Eucken's sense, the soul sees itself carried by a spiritual world that is alive and creative in itself. - And Eucken is of the opinion that the thoughtful, the intellectual is not powerful enough to exhaust the depths of this spiritual world. What flows into man from the spiritual world pours into the whole comprehensive life of the soul, not merely into the intellect. The spiritual world is of an essential nature, endowed with personality character. It also fertilizes the intellectual, but not only the intellectual. The soul can feel itself in an essential spiritual context. In his numerous writings, Eucken knows how to depict the weaving and essence of this spiritual world in a lively manner. In "Kampf um den geistigen Lebensinhalt", in "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion", "Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung", "Geistige Strömungen der Gegenwart", "Lebensanschauungen der großen Denker", "Erkennen und Leben", he tries to show from various points of view how the human soul, by experiencing itself and understanding itself correctly in this experience, knows that it is permeated and pulsated by a creative, living spiritual being, within which it is a part and member. Like Dilthey, Eucken also describes the content of independent spiritual life as that which is represented in the culture of humanity, in the moral, technical, social and artistic creations of peoples and times.
[ 19 ] There is no room for criticism of the worldviews described in a historical account such as the one we are aiming for here. But it is not criticism if it is pointed out how a worldview drives new questions out of itself through its own character. For thereby it becomes a link in historical development. Dilthey and Eucken speak of an independent spiritual world in which the individual human soul is embedded. Their science of this spiritual world, however, leaves the questions unanswered: What is this spiritual world and how does the human soul belong to it? Does the individual soul disappear with the dissolution of the body, after it has participated within this body in the development of the spiritual life that lives itself out in the cultural creations of peoples and times? Certainly, it is possible to answer these questions from Dilthey's and Eucken's point of view: It is precisely that which the human soul can recognize in its own life that does not lead to results about these questions. However, it is precisely this that must be said to characterize such world views, that their way of looking at things does not lead to means of knowledge that take the soul - or the self-conscious ego - beyond what is experienced in connection with the body. As intensely as Eucken emphasizes the independence and reality of the spiritual world: what the soul experiences in and with this spiritual world according to his world view, it experiences with the body. The hopes of Plato and Aristotle, often cited in this work, with regard to the nature of the soul and its bodiless relationship to the spiritual world are not affected by such a world view. It is no more shown than that the soul, as long as it appears in the body, participates in a world of spirit rightly called real. What it is in the spiritual world as an independent spiritual entity cannot be spoken of in the proper sense within this philosophy. It is the characteristic feature of these types of conception that they come to recognize a world and also the spiritual nature of the human soul, but that from this recognition no knowledge results as to what position in the reality of the world the soul - the self-conscious ego has apart from the fact that it acquires a consciousness of the spiritual world through bodily life. Light is thrown on the historical position of these types of conception in the development of philosophy when one recognizes that they generate questions which they cannot answer with their own means. They energetically assert that the soul becomes conscious in itself of a spiritual world independent of itself. But how is this consciousness achieved? Only with the means of knowledge that the soul has within and through its bodily existence. Within this existence, certainty arises that a spiritual world exists. But the soul finds no way to experience its own self-contained being outside the bodily existence in the spirit. What the spirit lives out, stimulates and creates within it, it perceives insofar as bodily existence gives it the opportunity to do so. What it is as spirit in the spiritual world, indeed whether it is a special entity therein, is a question that cannot be answered by merely recognizing the fact that the soul in the body can know itself to be one with a living, creating spiritual world. For such an answer it would be necessary that the self-conscious human soul, by penetrating to a knowledge of the spiritual world, could now also become aware of how it lives in the spiritual world itself, independently of the bodily existence. The spiritual world would not have to give the soul being merely the possibility that it can recognize it, but it would have to communicate something of its own nature to it. It would have to show it how it is different from the world of the senses and how it allows the soul being to participate in this other way of being.
[ 20 ] A feeling for this question lives in those philosophers who want to view the spiritual world by directing their gaze to something that, in their opinion, cannot occur within the mere observation of nature. If there were something in the face of which the scientific way of thinking would prove powerless, then this could be a guarantee for the justification of the assumption of a spiritual world. Such a school of thought has already been hinted at by Lotze (cf. p.503); it has found energetic representatives in the present day in Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936) and other philosophers. They are of the opinion that an element enters into the observation of the world against which the scientific way of thinking bounces off when attention is drawn to the "values" that are decisive in human life. The world is not a dream, but a reality, if it can be proven that something independent of the soul itself lives in the experiences of the soul. The soul's actions, strivings and impulses of will are not sparks in the sea of existence that flash up and fade away again, if one must acknowledge that they are endowed with something values that are independent of the soul. But the soul must accept such values for its impulses of will, its actions, just as it must accept for its perceptions that these are not merely generated in it. An action, a volition of man does not merely appear like natural facts; they must be thought of from the point of view of a legal, moral, social, aesthetic, scientific value. And even if it is rightly emphasized that in the course of the development of peoples and in the course of time people's views on legal, moral, beauty and truth values change, even if Nietzsche could speak of a "revaluation of all values", it must nevertheless be recognized that the value of an action, thought, will is determined from the outside in a similar way to how an idea is given the character of reality from the outside. In the sense of the "philosophy of value" it can be said: Just as the pressure or resistance of the natural external world decides whether an idea is fantasy or reality, so the glory and the approval, which fall from the spiritual external world onto the life of the soul, decides whether an impulse of will, an action, a thought have value in the context of the world or are merely arbitrary outflows of the soul. - The spiritual world flows as a stream of values through the lives of human beings in the course of history. As the human soul perceives itself as standing in a world determined by values, it experiences itself in a spiritual element. - If this mode of conception were to be taken completely seriously, then all statements which man makes about the spiritual would have to manifest themselves in the form of value judgments. In the case of everything that does not reveal itself naturally and is therefore not recognized by the scientific mode of conception, one would only have to speak of how and in what direction it has a value in the universe that is independent of the soul. The following question should arise:
[ 21 ] If one disregards everything that natural science has to say about the human soul, is it then, as a member of the spiritual world, a valuable thing whose value does not depend on itself? And can the philosophical riddles concerning the soul be solved if one cannot speak of its existence, but only of its value? Will not the philosophy of value always have to adopt a figure of speech for these riddles, similar to that in which Lotze speaks of the soul's perpetuity? (cf. p. 508): "Since we regard every being only as a creature of God, there is absolutely no originally valid right to which the individual soul, for example as a "substance", could refer in order to demand eternal individual continuity. Rather, we can only assert that every being will be preserved by God as long as its existence has a valuable meaning for the whole of his world plan . . " Here the "valuable" of the soul is spoken of as the decisive factor; but consideration is nevertheless given to the extent to which this valuable could be connected with the preservation of existence. The position of the philosophy of value in the development of the world-view can be understood if one considers that the scientific mode of conception has the tendency to claim all knowledge of existence for itself. Then all that remains for philosophy is to investigate something other than existence. Such an other is seen in "values". This can be recognized as an unresolved question from Lotze's statement: Is it at all possible to stop at the determination of value and dispense with a realization of the form of existence of values?
[ 22 ] Many of the latest schools of thought present themselves as attempts to seek something in the self-conscious ego, which feels increasingly detached from the world in the course of the development of philosophy, that leads back to a connection with it. Dilthey's, Eucken's, Windelband's, Rickert's and other ideas are such attempts within contemporary philosophy that seek to take account of the requirements of the knowledge of nature and the contemplation of mental experience in such a way that a spiritual science appears possible alongside natural science. The schools of thought pursued by Hermann Cohen (1842-1918; cf. p. 473), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), August Stadler (1850-1910), Ernst Cassirer (1874 to 1945), Walter Kinkel (born 1871) and their philosophical contemporaries have the same goal. By directing their spiritual gaze towards thinking itself, these thinkers believe that in the highest intellectual activity of the self-conscious ego they grasp a possession of the soul that allows the soul to submerge into real existence. They direct their attention to what appears to them to be the highest fruit of thinking: to thinking that is no longer dependent on perception, to pure thinking that is only active with thoughts (concepts). A simple example of this would be the thinking of a circle, in which one completely disregards the idea of this or that circle. As much as one can think purely in this way, that is how far the power of that which can submerge into reality reaches in the soul. For what can be thought in this way expresses its own essence through thinking in the human consciousness. The sciences strive, through their observations, experiments and methods, to arrive at such results about the world as are grasped in pure thinking. They will, however, have to leave the attainment of this goal to a distant future; but nevertheless it can be said that in so far as they strive to have pure thoughts, they also strive to bring the true nature of things into the possession of the self-conscious ego. - When man observes something in the sensory external world or in the course of historical life, he has - in the sense of this mode of conception - no true reality before him. What the observation of the senses offers is only the invitation to seek a reality, not a reality itself. Only when, through the activity of the soul, a thought is seen, as it were, at the place where the observation occurs, is the reality of what is at that place recognized. Progressive cognition replaces what is observed in the world with thoughts. What observation first showed was only there because man visualizes things and beings in his limited way with his senses, with his everyday ideas. What he visualizes in this way has no meaning in the world apart from himself. What he puts as a thought in the place of what he observes no longer has anything to do with his limitation. It is as it is thought. For the thought determines itself and reveals itself according to its own character in the self-conscious ego. It does not allow its character to be determined in any way by this ego.
[ 23 ] In this worldview lives a perception of the development of the life of thought since its philosophical blossoming within Greek intellectual life. The experience of thought has given the self-conscious ego the power to know itself powerfully in its independent being. In the present, this power of thought can be experienced in the soul as the impulse which is grasped in the self-conscious ego, giving it an awareness that it is not a mere external observer of things, but lives essentially with the reality of things. In the thought itself, the soul can sense that there is true existence in it that is centered on itself. By feeling itself thus interwoven with thought as a content of life that breathes reality, the soul can again feel the carrying power of thought as it was felt in Greek philosophy, in that philosophy which regarded thought as perception. In the world view of Cohen and related spirits, however, thought cannot be regarded as perception in the sense of Greek philosophy; but it experiences the inner interweaving of the ego with the world of thought created by this ego in such a way that the experience of reality is felt at the same time as this experience. The connection with Greek philosophy is emphasized by the thinkers under consideration here. Cohen states: "We must stick to the relation that Parmenides forged between the identity of thinking and being." And another proponent of this view, Walter Rinkel, is convinced that "only thinking ... can recognize being", "because both thinking and being are basically the same thing. Through this doctrine, Parmenides actually became the creator of scientific idealism" (cf. Kinkel, Idealismus und Realismus, p. 13). But it is also evident from the presentations of these thinkers how they shape their words in a way that has as a prerequisite the centuries-long effect of the thought loan in the philosophical development of souls since Greek times. Despite the starting-point which these thinkers take from Kant, and which could be a reason for them to believe that the thought lives only in the soul, outside true reality, the power of the thought breaks through with them. It has gone beyond Kant's restriction and imposes on thinkers who devote themselves to the contemplation of its nature the conviction that it is reality itself and also leads the soul into reality if it works it out correctly and seeks the way into the outside world with it. - In this philosophical way of thinking, thought is thus intimately connected with the self-conscious ego's view of the world. The basic impulse of this way of thinking appears to be an awareness of what thought can do for the ego. Among its proponents one reads views such as these: "Only thinking itself can produce what may be regarded as being." "Being is the being of thought" (Cohen). - The question now arises: Can the experience of thought in the sense of these philosophers expect the same from the thought produced in the self-conscious ego as the Greek philosopher expected from it, since he accepted it as perception? If one assumes to perceive the thought, then one can be of the opinion that it is the true world that reveals the thought. And by feeling connected with the perceived thought, the soul can think of itself as belonging to what is thought in the world, indestructible thought; whereas sense perception only reveals beings that can be destroyed. What can be perceived by the human being through the senses can then be believed to be transient; but what comes to life in the human soul as thought makes it appear as a member of the spiritual, the truly real existence. Through such a view the soul can imagine its belonging to the truly real world. A newer world view could only do this if it were able to show that the experience of thought not only leads knowledge into a true reality, but also develops the power to really snatch the soul from the senses and place it in true reality. The doubts that arise about this cannot be dispelled by the insight into the reality of the thought if it is not regarded as perceived, but as having been worked out by the soul. For where should the certainty come from that what the soul works out in the senses also gives it a real meaning in a world that is not perceived by the senses? It could be that through the acquired thought the soul grasps reality in a recognizing way, but that as a real being it is not rooted in this reality. This view of the world, too, only leads to pointing to a spiritual life, but cannot avoid the fact that for the uninitiated the philosophical riddles stand at its end begging for answers, demanding experiences of the soul for which it does not provide the foundations. It can turn the essentiality of thought into conviction, but cannot find a guarantee for the essentiality of the soul through thought.
[ 24 ] How the striving for a worldview can be banished to the circumference of the self-conscious ego without recognizing a possibility of finding the way out of this circumference to where this ego could link its existence to a world existence is shown by a philosophical way of thinking that Anton v. Leclair (born 1848), Wilheim Schuppe (1836-1913), Johannes Rehmke (1848 to 1930), Richard von Schubert-Soldern (born 1852) and others have developed. Their philosophies differ, but what characterizes them is that they focus above all on how everything that man can count as part of the world must reveal itself in his consciousness. On its ground, the thought cannot even be conceived of presupposing anything about a world realm if, with this presupposition, the soul wanted to move out of the realm of consciousness with its ideas. Because the "I" must grasp everything that it recognizes into its consciousness, and thus holds it within consciousness, therefore the whole world also appears to this view to stand within the boundaries of this consciousness. That the soul asks itself: How do I stand with the possession of my consciousness in a world independent of this consciousness? - that is an impossibility for this world view. From its point of view one would have to decide to renounce all questions which lie in this direction. One would have to make oneself inattentive to the fact that in the realm of the conscious life of the soul itself there are necessities to look beyond this realm in roughly the same way as, when reading a writing, one seeks its meaning not within what one sees on the paper, but in what the writing expresses. Just as reading cannot be a matter of studying the forms of the letters, but just as it is unessential for what is conveyed by the writing to consider its own essence, so it could be unessential for the insight into true reality that within the "I" everything recognizable bears the character of consciousness.
[ 25 ] CarI du Prels (1839-1899) stands as an antithesis to this philosophical opinion within the more recent development of the world view. He is one of those minds who deeply felt the inadequacy of the view that the only way of explaining the world is to be found in the scientific conception to which many people have become accustomed. He points out how this way of thinking unconsciously sins against its own assertions in its explanations. Natural science has to admit from its results "that we do not perceive the objective processes of nature at all, but only their effect on us, not athere vibrations, but light, not air vibrations, but sounds. We therefore have, so to speak, a subjectively falsified view of the world; but this does not affect our practical orientation, because this falsification is not individual and proceeds in a legally constant manner." "Materialism, as a natural science, has itself proved that the world extends beyond our senses; it has undermined its own foundation; it has sawn off the branch on which it itself was sitting. As philosophy, however, it claims to still be sitting on top. Materialism therefore has no right to call itself a world view ... It only has the justification of a branch of knowledge, and what is more, the world, the object of its study, is a world of mere appearances, and to want to build a world view on this is an obvious contradiction. The real world is quite different, qualitatively and quantitatively, from that known to materialism, and only the real world can be the object of a philosophy." (Cf. du Prel, "Das Rätsel des Menschen" p. 17 f.) Such objections must be raised by the materialistically colored scientific way of thinking. Many more recent minds have noted its weakness from the point of view of du Prel. The latter may be regarded here as the representative of a world-view current that is asserting itself. It is characteristic of it how it wants to penetrate into the realm of the real world. In the nature of this intrusion, the scientific way of thinking still has an effect, although at the same time it is fiercely opposed. Natural science proceeds from that which is accessible to sensory consciousness. It is compelled to point to something supersensible itself. For only light is perceptible to the senses, not etheric vibrations. These therefore belong - at least - to an extrasensory realm. But is natural science justified in speaking of an extrasensory realm? It wants to research only in the field of the sensible. Is anyone at all entitled to speak of the supersensible who limits his research to the area of what presents itself to consciousness bound to the senses, i.e. to the body? Du Prel wants to concede the right to investigate the supersensible only to those who do not seek the human soul in its essence in the realm of the sensible. Now he sees the main demand in this direction in the fact that expressions of the soul are shown which prove that the existence of the soul does not only work when it is bound to the body. Through the body the soul lives itself out in sensual consciousness. In the phenomena of hypnotism, suggestion and somnambulism, however, it is evident that the soul takes effect when sensory consciousness is switched off. The scope of the life of the soul thus extends further than that of consciousness. In this, du Prel's view is the antithesis of that of the philosophers of consciousness characterized above, who believe that the scope of consciousness is at the same time the scope of what man can philosophize about. For du Prel, the essence of the soul is to be sought outside the circle of this consciousness. If one observes - that is in his sense - the soul when it comes to activity without the usual sensory path, then one has provided the proof that it is of a supersensible nature. According to du Prel and many others, one of the ways in which this can happen, apart from the observation of the listed "abnormal" soul phenomena, is spiritualism. It is not necessary to consider du Prel's opinion here with regard to this area. For the basic thrust of his view is also evident if one only looks at his position on hypnotism, suggestion and somnambulism. Whoever wants to explain the spiritual nature of the human soul must not content himself with showing how in recognition this soul is pointed to a supersensible world. For, as has already been said here, the stronger scientific way of thinking could reply that with its recognition of the supersensible world the soul, according to its essence, may not yet be thought of as standing within the supersensible realm. It could very well be that even a cognition that goes into the supersensible is only dependent on the work of the body, and thus only has meaning for a soul bound to the body. In contrast, du Prel feels that it is necessary to show how the soul not only cognizes the supersensible in the body, but also experiences the supersensible outside the body. With this view he also arms himself against objections that can be made from the point of view of scientific thinking against the views of Eucken, Dilthey, Cohen, Kinkel and other advocates of a knowledge of the spiritual world. It is different, however, with the doubts that must arise against his own path. As true as it is that the soul can only find a way into the supersensible if it is able to demonstrate how it works outside the sensible itself, the lifting of the soul out of the sensible through the phenomena of hypnotism, somnambulism and suggestion, as well as all the other processes that du Prel still refers to, is just as uncertain. It may be said of all these phenomena that the philosopher who attempts to explain them does so by the means of his ordinary consciousness. Now if this consciousness is supposed to be useless for a real explanation of the world, how should its explanations be decisive for phenomena that spread over these phenomena in the sense of this consciousness? That is the peculiar thing about du Prel, that he directs the gaze to special facts which point to a supersensible, but that he wants to remain entirely on the ground of the scientific way of thinking when he explains these facts. But would not the soul also have to enter into the supersensible with its mode of explanation if it wants to speak of the supersensible? Du Prel looks at the supersensible; but as an observer he remains in the sensible. If he did not want this, he would have to demand that only a hypnotized person in hypnosis can say the right thing about his experiences, that only in the somnambulistic state can knowledge about the supersensible be gathered, and that what the non-hypnotized, the non-somnambulist must think about the phenomena in question cannot apply. This consequence, however, leads to the impossible. If one speaks of a transfer of the soul out of the sense being into another being, then one must also want to acquire the knowledge itself, which one wants to attain, within this realm. It points du Prel to a path that must be taken in order to reach the supersensible. But he also leaves open the question of the right means to be used on this path.
[ 26 ] A new direction of thought has been stimulated by the transformation of fundamental physical concepts attempted by Einstein (1879-1955). This attempt is also important for the development of world views. Until now, physics has pursued the phenomena available to it in such a way that it thought of them as being arranged in empty three-dimensional space and taking place in one-dimensional time. Space and time were assumed to be external to things and processes. They were, as it were, rigid quantities existing in themselves. Distances were measured in space for things and durations were measured for processes. According to this view, distance and duration belonged to space and time, not to things and processes. This is now countered by the theory of relativity introduced by Einstein. For them, the distance between two things is something that belongs to these things themselves. Just as a thing has other properties, it also has the property of being at a certain distance from some other thing. Apart from these relations to one another, which things give themselves through their nature, there is no such thing as space anywhere. The assumption of a space makes possible a geometry conceived for this space. This geometry can then be applied to the world of things. It comes about in the mere world of thought. Things must conform to it. One can say that the laws established in thought before the observation of things must be followed by the relationships of the world. In the sense of the theory of relativity, this geometry is dethroned. Only things exist, and these are related to each other in a geometric way. Geometry becomes a part of physics. But then one can no longer speak of its laws being established before the observation of things. No thing has any location in space, but only distances in relation to other things.
[ 27 ] The same is assumed for time. No process is at one point in time; rather, it occurs at a distance in time from another process. Thus, however, time distances of things in relation to each other and space distances flow into each other as similar. Time becomes a fourth dimension that is similar to the three spatial dimensions. A process on an object can only be defined as that which occurs at a distance in time and space from other processes. The movement of a thing becomes something that can only be conceived in relation to other things.
[ 28 ] It is expected that only this view will provide perfect explanations of certain physical processes, whereas such processes lead to contradictory thoughts when assuming a space and time that exist for themselves.
[ 29 ] If one considers that for many thinkers only that which can be represented mathematically has been regarded as a science of nature, then this theory of relativity is nothing less than a declaration of the nullity of any real science of nature. For the scientific nature of mathematics was seen precisely in the fact that it could establish the laws of space and time independently of the observation of nature. In contrast, natural things and natural processes themselves are supposed to determine the relationships between space and time. They are supposed to provide the mathematical. The only certainty is handed over to their uncertainty.
[ 30 ] According to this view, any thought of an essence that gives itself its purpose in being is excluded from man's relationship to nature. Everything is only in relation to something else.
[ 31 ] Insofar as man considers himself within natural things and natural processes, he will not be able to escape the consequences of this theory of relativity. - But if he does not want to lose himself in mere relativities as in a spiritual impotence, as the experience of his own being makes it necessary, he will henceforth not be allowed to seek the "being-in-itself" in the realm of nature, but in the elevation above nature in the realm of the spirit.
[ 32 ] The theory of relativity for the physical world will not be escaped; however, one will be driven into the knowledge of the spirit through it. The significance of the theory of relativity lies in the demonstration of the necessity of spiritual knowledge, which is sought independently of the observation of nature by spiritual means. The fact that it compels us to think in this way constitutes its value within the development of the world view.
[ 33 ] The purpose of this presentation is to describe the progress of the actual philosophical work on the world puzzle. Therefore, the struggle of such spirits as Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy and others must be left aside, however significant a consideration of this struggle might appear if it were a matter of following the currents that lead from philosophy into general intellectual culture.