INTRODUCTION
There are certain magical formulæ which operate throughout the centuries of Man’s mental history in ever new ways. In Greece one such formula was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It runs: “Know Thyself.” Such sentences seem to conceal within them an unending life. One comes upon them when following the most diverse roads in mental life. The further one advances, the more one penetrates into the knowledge of things, the deeper appears the significance of these formulæ. In many a moment of our brooding and thinking, they flash out like lightning, illuminating our whole inner being. In such moments there quickens within us a feeling as if we heard the heart-beat of the evolution of mankind. How close do we not feel ourselves to personalities of the past, when the feeling comes over us, through one of their winged words, that they are revealing to us that they, too, had had such moments!
We feel ourselves then brought into intimate touch with these personalities. For instance, we learn to know Hegel intimately when, in the third volume of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History we come across the words: “Such stuff, one may say, the abstractions that we contemplate when we allow the philosophers to quarrel and battle in our study, and make it out to be thus or so—mere verbal abstractions! No! No! These are deeds of the world-spirit and therefore of destiny. Therein the Philosophers are nearer to the Master than are those who feed themselves with the crumbs of the spirit; they read or write the Cabinet Orders in the original at once; they are constrained to write them out along with Him. The Philosophers are the Mystæ who, at the crisis in the inmost shrine, were there and took part.” When Hegel said this, he had experienced one of those moments just spoken of. He uttered the phrases when, in the course of his remarks, he had reached the close of Greek philosophy; and through them he showed that once, like a gleam of lightning, the meaning of the Neoplatonic philosophy, of which he was just treating, had flashed upon him. In the instant of this flash, he had become intimate with minds like Plotinus and Proklus; and we become intimate with him when we read his words.
We become intimate, too, with that solitary thinker, the Pastor of Zschopau, M. Valentin Weigel, when we read the opening words of his little book Know Thyself, written in 1578: “We read in the wise men of old the useful saying, ‘Know Thyself,’ which, though it be right well used about worldly manners, as thus: ‘regard well thyself, what thou art, seek in thine own bosom, judge thyself and lay no blame on others,’ a saying, I repeat, which, though thus used of human life and manners, may well and appropriately be applied by us to the natural and supernatural knowing of the whole man; so indeed, that man shall not only consider himself and thereby remember how he should bear himself before people, but that he shall also know his own nature, inner and outer, in spirit and in Nature; whence he cometh and whereof he is made, to what end he is ordained.” So, from points of view peculiar to himself, Valentin Weigel attained to insight which in his mind summed itself up in this oracle of Apollo.
A similar path to insight and a like relation to the saying “Know Thyself” may be ascribed to a series of deep-natured thinkers, beginning with Master Eckhart (1250-1327), and ending with Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), among whom may be found also Valentin Weigel himself.
All these thinkers have in common a strong sense of the fact that in man’s knowing of himself there rises a sun which illuminates something very different from the mere accidental, separated personality of the beholder. What Spinoza became conscious of in the ethereal heights of pure thought,—viz., that “the human soul possesses an adequate knowledge of the Eternal and Infinite Being of God,”—that same consciousness lived in them as immediate feeling; and self-knowledge was to them the path leading to this Eternal and Infinite Being. It was clear to them that self-knowledge in its true form enriched man with a new sense, which unlocked for him a world standing in relation to the world accessible to him without this new sense as does the world of one possessing physical sight to that of a blind man.
It would be difficult to find a better description of the import of this new sense than the one given by J. G. Fichte in his Berlin Lectures (1813):
“Imagine a world of men born blind, to whom all objects and their relations are known only through the sense of touch. Go amongst them and speak to them of colours and other relations, which are rendered visible only through light. Either you are talking to them of nothing,—and if they say this, it is the luckier, for thus you will soon see your mistake, and, if you cannot open their eyes, cease your useless talking,—or, for some reason or other, they will insist upon giving some meaning or other to what you say; then they can only interpret it in relation to what they know by touch. They will seek to feel, they will imagine they do feel light and colour, and the other incidents of visibility, they will invent something for themselves, deceive themselves with something within the world of touch, which they will call colour. Then they will misunderstand, distort, and misinterpret it.”
The same thing applies to what the thinkers we are speaking of sought after. They beheld a new sense opening in self-knowledge, and this sense yielded, according to their experiences, views of things which are simply non-existent for one who does not see in self-knowledge what distinguishes it from all other kinds of knowing. One in whom this new sense has not been opened, believes that self-knowing, or self-perception, is the same thing as perception through the outer senses, or through any other means acting from without. He thinks: “Knowing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving.” Only in the one case the object is something lying in the world outside, in the other this object is his own soul. He finds words merely, or at best, abstract thoughts, in that which for those who see more deeply is the very foundation of their inner life; namely, in the proposition: that in every other kind of knowing or perception we have the object perceived outside of ourselves, while in self-knowledge or self-perception we stand within that object; that we see every other object coming to us already complete and finished off, while in ourselves we, as actors and creators, are weaving that which we observe within us. This may appear to be nothing but a merely verbal explanation, perhaps even a triviality; it may appear, on the other hand, as a higher light which illuminates every other cognition. One to whom it appears in the first way, is in the position of a blind man, to whom one says: there is a glittering object. He hears the words, but for him the glitter is not there. He might unite in himself the whole sum of knowledge of his time; but if he does not feel and realise the significance of self-knowledge, then it is all, in the higher sense, a blind knowledge.
The world, outside of and independent of us, exists for us by communicating itself to our consciousness. What is thus made known must needs be expressed in the language peculiar to ourselves. A book, the contents of which were offered in a language unknown to us, would for us be without meaning. Similarly, the world would be meaningless for us did it not speak to us in our own tongue; and the same language which reaches us from things, we also hear from within ourselves. But in that case, it is we ourselves who speak. The really important point is that we should correctly apprehend the transposition which occurs when we close our perception against external things and listen only to that which then speaks from within. But to do this needs this new sense. If it has not been awakened, we believe that in what is thus told us about ourselves we are hearing only about something external to us; we fancy that somewhere there is hidden something which is speaking to us in the same way as external things speak. But if we possess this new sense, then we know that these perceptions differ essentially from those relating to external things. Then we realise that this new sense does not leave what it perceives outside of itself, as the eye leaves the object it sees; but that it can take up its object wholly into itself, leaving no remainder. If I see a thing, that thing remains outside of me; if I perceive myself, then I myself enter into my perception. Whoever seeks for something more of himself than what is perceived, shows thereby that for him the real content in the perception has not come to light. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), has expressed this truth in the apt words: “If I were a king and knew it not, then should I be no king. If I do not shine forth for myself in my own self-perception, then for myself I do not exist. But if for myself I do shine out, then I possess myself also in my perception, in my own most deeply original being. There remains no residue of myself left outside of my perception.”
J. G. Fichte, in the following words, vigorously points to the difference between self-perception and every other kind of perception: “The majority of men could be more easily brought to believe themselves a lump of lava in the moon than an ‘ego.’ Whoever is not at one with himself as to this, understands no thorough-going philosophy and has need of none. Nature, whose machine he is, will guide him in all the things he has to do without any sort of added help from him. For philosophising, self-reliance is needed, and this one can only give to oneself. We ought not to want to see without the eye; but also we ought not to maintain that it is the eye which sees.”
Thus the perception of oneself is also the awakening of oneself. In our cognition we combine the being of things with our own being. The communications, which things make to us in our own language, become members of our own selves. An object in front of me is not separated from me, once I have known it. What I am able to receive from it becomes part and parcel of my own being. If, now, I awaken my own self, if I become aware of the content of my own inner being, then I also awaken to a higher mode of being, that which from without I have made part of my own being. The light that falls upon me at my awakening falls also upon whatever I have made my own from the things of the outside world. A light springs up within me and illumines me, and with me all that I have cognised of the world. Whatever I might know would remain blind knowledge, did not this light fall upon it. I might search the world through and through with my perception; still the world would not be that which in me it must become, unless that perception were awakened in me to a higher mode of being.
That which I add to things through this awakening is not a new idea, is not an enrichment of the content of my knowing; it is an uplifting of the knowledge, of the cognition, to a higher level, where everything is suffused with a new glory. So long as I do not raise my consciousness to this level, all knowledge continues to be for me, in the higher sense, valueless. The things are there without my presence. They have their being in themselves. What possible meaning could there be in my linking with their being, which they have outside and apart from me, another spiritual existence in addition, which repeats the things over again within me? If only a mere repetition of things were involved, it would be senseless to carry it out. But, really, a mere repetition is only involved so long as I have not awakened, along with my own self, the mental content of these things upon a higher level. When this occurs, then I have not merely repeated within myself the being of things, but I have brought it to a new birth on a higher level. With the awakening of my self, there is accomplished a spiritual re-birth of the things of the world.
What the things reveal in this re-birth did not previously belong to them. There, without, stands the tree. I take it up into my consciousness. I throw my inner light upon that which I have thus conceived. The tree becomes in me more than it is outside. That in it which finds entrance through the gate of the senses is taken up into a conscious content. An ideal replica of the tree is within me, and that has infinitely more to say about the tree than what the tree itself, outside, can tell me. Then, for the first time there shines out from within me, towards the tree, what the tree is. The tree is now no longer the isolated being that it is out there in space. It becomes a link in the entire conscious world that lives in me. It links its content with other ideas that are in me. It becomes a member of the whole world of ideas that embraces the vegetable kingdom; it takes its place, further, in the series of all that lives.
Another example: I throw a stone in a horizontal direction away from me. It moves in a curved line and after some time falls to the ground. I see it in successive moments of time in different places. Through observation and reflection I acquire the following: During its motion the stone is subject to different influences. If it were subject only to the influence of the impulse which I imparted to it, it would go on flying for ever in a straight line, without altering its velocity. But now the earth exerts an influence upon it. It attracts the stone towards itself. If, instead of throwing the stone, I had simply let it go, it would have fallen vertically to earth; and its velocity in doing so would have constantly increased. From the mutual interaction of these two influences arises that which I actually see.
Let us assume that I could not in thought separate the two influences, and from this orderly combination put together again in thought what I see: in that case, the matter would end with the actual happening. It would be mentally a blind staring at what happened; a perception of the successive positions which the stone occupies. But in actual fact, matters do not stop there. The whole occurrence takes place twice. Once outside, and then my eye sees it; then my mind causes the whole happening to repeat itself again, in a mental or conscious manner. My inner sense must be directed upon the mental occurrence, which my eye does not see, and then it becomes clear to that sense that I, by my own inner power, awaken that occurrence as a mental one.
Again, another sentence of J. G. Fichte’s may be quoted which brings this fact clearly before the mind. “Thus the new sense is the sense for the spirit; that for which there exists only spirit and absolutely nothing else, and for which also the ‘other,’ the given being, assumes the form of spirit and transforms itself into spirit, for which therefore being in its own proper form has actually disappeared.... There has been the faculty of seeing with this sense ever since men have existed, and all that is great and excellent in the world, which alone upholds humanity, originates in what has been seen by means of this sense. It is, however, not the case that this sense has been perceived or known in its difference and its contrast with that other, ordinary sense. The impressions of the two senses melted into one another, life fell apart into these two halves without a bond of union.”
The bond of union is created by the fact that the inner sense grasps in its spirituality the spiritual element which it awakens in its intercourse with the outer world. That which we take up into our consciousness from outside things thereby ceases to appear as a mere meaningless repetition. It appears as something new over against that which only external perception can give. The simple occurrence of throwing the stone, and my perception thereof, appear in a higher light when I make clear to myself the kind of task which my inner sense has to perform in regard to the whole thing. In order to fit together in thought the two influences and their modes of action, an amount of mental content is needed which I must already have acquired when I cognise the flying stone. I therefore apply a spiritual content already stored up within me to something that confronts me in the external world. And this occurrence in the external world fits itself into the spiritual content already present. It reveals itself in its own special individuality as an expression of this content.
Through the understanding of my inner sense, there is thus disclosed to me the nature of the relation that obtains between the content of this sense and the things of the external world. Fichte would say that without the understanding of this sense, the world falls apart for me into two halves: into things outside of me, and into pictures of these things within me. The two halves become united when the inner self understands itself and consequently recognises clearly what sort of illumination it throws upon things in the cognitive process. And Fichte could also venture to say that this inner sense sees only Spirit. For it perceives how the Spirit enlightens the sense-world by making it part and parcel of the spiritual world. The inner sense causes the outer sense-world to arise within itself as a spiritual being on a higher level. An external object is completely known when there is no part of it which has not thus undergone a spiritual re-birth. Thus every external object fits itself into a spiritual content, which, when it has been grasped by the inner sense, shares the destiny of self-knowledge. The spiritual content, which belongs to an object through its illumination from within, merges itself wholly, like the very self, into the world of ideas, leaving no remainder behind.
These developments contain nothing which is susceptible or even in need of logical proof. They are nothing but the results of inner experience. Whoever calls into question this content, shows only that he is lacking in this inner experience. It is impossible to dispute with him; as little could one discuss colour with a blind man.
It must not, however, be contended that this inner experience is made possible only through the special endowment of a few chosen people. It is a common property. Every one can enter upon the path to this experience who does not of his own will shut himself against it. This closing up of oneself against it, is, however, common enough. And in dealing with objections raised in this direction, one always has the feeling that it is not so much a matter of people being unable to attain this inner experience, as of their having hopelessly blocked the entrance to it with all kinds of logical spiders’ webs. It is almost as if some one looking through a telescope and discovering a new planet should yet deny its existence because his calculations have shown that there can be no planet in that position.
But with all this there is still in most people the clearly marked feeling that all that really lies in the being of things cannot be completely given in what the outer senses and the analysing understanding can cognise. They then believe that the remainder so left over must be just as much in the external world as are the things of our perceptions themselves. They think that there must be something which remains unknown to cognition. What they ought to attain by again perceiving with the inner sense, on a higher plane, the very object which they have already cognised and grasped with the understanding,—this they transfer as something inaccessible and unknown into the external world. Then they talk of the limits of knowledge which prevent our reaching the “thing-in-itself.” They talk of the unknown “being” of things. That this very “being” of things shines out when the inner sense lets its light fall upon the things, is what they will not recognise. The famous “Ignorabimus” speech of the scientist, Du Bois-Reymond, in the year 1876, furnished a particularly blatant example of this error. We are supposed to be able to get in every direction only so far as to be able to see in all natural processes the manifestations of “matter.” What “matter” itself is, we are supposed to be unable to know. Du Bois-Reymond contends that we shall never succeed in penetrating to wherever it is that “matter” leads its ghostly life in space. The reason why we cannot get there lies, however, in the fact that there is nothing whatsoever to be looked for there. Whoever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond must have a feeling that the knowledge of Nature yields results which point to a something further and other which Nature-knowledge itself cannot give. But he refuses to follow the road,—the road of inner experience, which leads to this other. Therefore he stands at a complete loss before the question of “matter” as before a dark riddle. In him who treads the path of inner experience, objects attain to a new birth; and that in them which remains unknown to outer experience then shines forth.
In such wise the inner being of man obtains light not only as regards itself but also as regards external things. From this point of view an endless perspective opens out before man’s knowledge. Within him shines a light whose illumination is not restricted to that which is within him. It is a sun which lights up all reality at once. Something makes its appearance in us which links us with the whole world. No longer are we simply isolated, chance human beings, no longer this or that individual. The entire world reveals itself in us. It unveils to us its own coherence; and it unveils to us how we ourselves as individuals are bound up with it. From out of self-knowledge is born knowledge of the world. And our own limited individuality merges itself spiritually into the great interconnected world-whole, because in us something has come to life that reaches out beyond this individuality, that embraces along with it everything of which this individuality forms a part.
Thinking which does not block up its own road to inner experience with logical preconceptions always comes, in the long run, to a recognition of the entity that rules in us and connects us with the entire world, because through this entity we overcome the opposition of “inner” and “outer” in regard to man. Paul Asmus, the keen-sighted philosopher, who died young, expressed himself as follows about this position (cp. his book Das Ich und das Ding an Sich, p. 14 et seq.):—“Let us make it clear by an example: imagine a piece of sugar; it is square, sweet, impenetrable, etc., etc., these are one and all qualities which we understand; one thing, however, hovers before us as something totally different, that we do not understand, that is so different from ourselves that we cannot penetrate into it without losing ourselves; from the mere surface of which thought starts back afraid. This one thing is the unknown bearer of all these qualities; the thing-in-itself, which constitutes the inmost self of the object. Thus Hegel rightly says that the entire content of our perception is related as mere accident to this obscure subject, while we, without penetrating into its depths, merely attach determinations to what it is in itself,—which ultimately, since we do not know the thing itself, remain merely subjective and have no objective value. Conceptual thought, on the other hand, has no such unknowable subject, whose determinations might be mere accidents, but the objective subject falls within the concept. If I cognise anything, then it is present in its entire fulness in my conception; I am at home in the inmost shrine of its being, not because it has no proper being-in-itself of its own, but because it compels me to re-think its concept, in virtue of that necessity of the concept which hovers over us both and appears subjectively in me and objectively in the concept itself. Through this re-thinking there reveals itself to us at the same time, as Hegel says,—just as this is our own subjective activity—the true nature of the object.” So can speak only a man who is able to illuminate the life of thought with the light of inner experience.
In my Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin, 1894, Verlag Emil Felber), starting from other points of view, I have also pointed out the root-fact of the inner life (p. 46): “It is therefore unquestionable: in our thinking we hold the world-process by one corner, where we must be present, if it is to come about at all. And that is just the very thing we are here concerned with. That is just the reason why things seem to confront me so mysteriously: that I am so without any share in their coming into existence. I simply find them there; in thinking, however, I know how it is done. Hence one can find no more original starting point for a consideration of the world-process than that of thought.”
For one who looks thus upon the inner life of man, it is also obvious what is the meaning of human cognition within the whole world-process. It is not a mere empty accompaniment to the rest of the world happenings. It would be such if it represented merely an ideal repetition of what is outwardly present. But in cognition something is accomplished which accomplishes itself nowhere in the outer world: the world-process sets before itself its own spiritual being. The world-process would be to all eternity a mere half-thing, if it did not attain to this confrontation. Therewithal man’s inner experience finds its place in the objective world-process; and without it that process would be incomplete.
It is apparent that only the life which is ruled by the inner sense, man’s highest spiritual life in its most proper sense,—it is this life only which can thus raise man above himself. For only in this life does the being of things unveil itself before itself. The matter lies quite differently in regard to the lower perceptive power. For instance, the eye which meditates the seeing of an object is the theatre of a process which, in contrast to the inner life, is exactly like any other external process. My organs are members of the spacial world like other things, and their perceptions are processes in time like any others. Further, their being only appears when they are sunk into the inner life. I thus live a double life; the life of an object among other objects, which lives within its own embodiment and perceives through its organs what lies outside this embodiment; and above this life a higher life, that knows no such inside and outside, that extends, stretching and bridging over both the outside world and itself. I shall therefore be forced to say: at one time I am an individual, a limited “self”; at another time I am a general, universal “Self.” This, too, Paul Asmus has expressed in excellent words (cp. his book: Die indogermanischen Religionen in den Hauptpunkten ihrer Entwickelung, p. 29 of Vol. I.):
“The activity of merging ourselves in something else, is what we call ‘thinking’; in thinking, the ego has fulfilled its concept, it has given itself up as a single thing; therefore, in thinking do we find ourselves in a sphere which is alike for all, for the principle of separateness which is involved in the relation of our ‘self’ to that which is other than itself has vanished in the activity of the self-cancelling of the single ‘self,’ and there remains then only the ‘Self-hood’ common to all.”
Spinoza has exactly the same thing in view when he describes, as the highest activity of knowing, that which “advances from an adequate conception of the real nature of some of the attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the nature of things.” This advancing is no other than the illumination of things with the light of inner experience. Spinoza describes in glowing colours the life in this inner experience: “The highest virtue of the soul is to know God, or to obtain insight into things in the third—the highest—mode of knowing. This virtue is the greater, the more the soul knows things by this method of knowing; thus he who can grasp things in this mode of knowing attains the highest human perfection and consequently becomes filled with the highest joy, accompanied, moreover, by the conceptions of himself and of virtue. Thus there arises from this mode of knowing the highest peace of soul that is possible.”
He who knows things in this way, transforms himself within himself; for his single separated “self” becomes at such moments absorbed by the universal “Self”; all beings appear not to a single limited individual in subordinated importance, they appear to “themselves.” On this level there remains no difference between Plato and me; what separated us belongs to a lower level of cognition. We are separated only as individuals; the individual which works within us is one and the same. But about this fact it is impossible to argue with one who has no experience of it. He will everlastingly emphasise: Plato and you are two. That this duality, that all multiplicity, is reborn as unity in the outbursting life of the highest level of knowledge: that cannot be proved, that must be experienced. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is the truth: the idea which Plato conceived and the like idea which I conceive are not two ideas. It is one and the same idea. And there are not two ideas: one in Plato’s head and one in mine; but in the higher sense Plato’s head and mine interpenetrate each other; all heads interpenetrate which grasp one and the same idea; and this idea is only once there as a single idea. It is there; and the heads all go to one and the same place in order to have this idea in them.
The transformation that is brought about in the whole being of man when he learns to see things thus, is indicated in beautiful words by the Hindu poem, the Bhagavad-Gîtâ, about which Wilhelm von Humboldt said that he was thankful to the fate which had allowed him to live long enough to become acquainted with this work. In this poem, the inner light declares: “An eternal ray from myself, having attained a distinct existence in the world of personal life, draws around itself the five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature. When the spirit, shining from above, embodies itself in space and time, or when it quits embodiment, it seizes upon things and carries them away with it, as the zephyr seizes the perfumes of the flowers and bears them away with it. The inner light rules the ear, touch, taste and smell, as also the emotions: it knits together the link between itself and the objects of the senses. The ignorant know not when the inner light shines forth or is extinguished, nor when it is married to objects; only he who partakes of the inner light can know thereof.”
So strongly does the Bhagavad-Gîtâ insist upon the transformation of the man, that it says of the wise man that he can no longer err, no longer sin. If, apparently, he errs or sins, then he must illuminate his thoughts or his actions with a light wherein that no longer appears as error or as sin which to the ordinary consciousness appears as such. “He who has raised himself and whose knowledge is of the purest kind, he kills not, nor does he stain himself, even though he should have slain another.” This points only to the same basic mood of the soul flowing from the highest knowledge, of which Spinoza, after having described it in his Ethics, breaks out into the passionate words: “Here is concluded that which I aimed to bring forward in regard to the power of the soul over its affections or in regard to the freedom of the soul. Hence it is clear how very greatly the wise man is superior to the ignorant, and how much more powerful than he who is ruled only by his lusts. For the ignorant is not merely driven hither and thither by external causes in many ways and never attains to the true peace of soul, but he also lives in ignorance of himself, of God and of things, and when his suffering ceases, his existence ceases also; while on the other hand, the wise man, as such, feels hardly any disturbance in his spirit and ever enjoys the true peace of the soul. Even if the road which I have outlined as leading thereto appears very difficult, still it can be found. And well may it be difficult, because it is so seldom found. For how could it be possible, if salvation lay close at hand and could be found without great trouble, that it should be neglected by almost all? Yet all that is noble is as difficult as it is rare.”
Goethe has indicated in monumental form the point of view of the highest knowledge in the words: “If I know my relation to myself and to the outer world, I call it truth. And thus every one can have his own truth, and yet it is always one and the same.” Each has his own truth: because each is an individual, separate being, beside and along with others. These other beings act upon him through his organs. From the individual standpoint at which he is placed, and according to the constitution of his power of perception, he builds up his own truth for himself in intercourse with the things around him. He acquires his relation to things. If, then, he enters into self-knowledge, if he learns to know his relation to himself, then his special separate truth is merged in the universal Truth; and this universal Truth is in all the same.
The understanding of the raising of the individual, of the single self, into the Universal Self in the personality, is regarded by deeper natures as the secret which reveals itself in the inmost heart of man as the root-mystery of life. And Goethe has found an apt expression for this: “And so long as thou hast not that, this: Die and Become! Then thou art but a melancholy guest upon this dark earth.”
Not a mere repetition in thought, but a real part of the world-process, is that which goes on in man’s inner life. The world would not be what it is if the factor belonging thereto in the human soul did not play its part. And if one calls the highest which is attainable by man the Divine, then one must say that this Divine is not present as something external, to be repeated pictorially in the human mind, but that this Divine is awakened in man. Angelus Silesius has found the right words for this: “I know that without me God can live no instant; if I become nothing, He must of necessity give up the ghost.” “Without me God may make no single smallest worm: if I do not sustain it with Him, then it must straightway perish.” Only he can make such an assertion who presupposes that in man something comes to light, without which external being cannot exist. If everything pertaining to the “worm” were there present without man, then one could not possibly say that it must perish if man did not sustain it.
The innermost kernel of the world comes to life as spiritual content in self-knowledge. The experience of self-knowledge means for man working and weaving within the kernel of the world. He who is permeated with self-knowledge naturally carries out his own action in the light of self-knowledge. Human action is—in general—determined by motives. Robert Hamerling, the poet-philosopher, has rightly said (Atomistik des Willens, p. 213):
“A man can indeed do what he wills—but he cannot will whatever he pleases, because his will is determined by motives. He cannot will whatever he pleases? Look again at these words more closely. Is there any sensible meaning in them? Freedom of the will ought then to consist in being able to will something without reason, without motive. But what does willing mean other than the ‘having a reason’ for preferring to do or endeavour to attain this, rather than that? To will something without reason, without motive, would mean to will something ‘without willing it.’ The concept of motive is inseparably bound up with that of willing. Without a definite motive the will is an empty potentiality: only through a motive does it become active and real. It is therefore quite correct that man’s will is in so far not free as its direction is always determined by the strongest motive.”
For all action that is not accomplished in the light of self-knowledge, the motive, the reason for action, must needs be felt as a constraint. But the matter is otherwise when the reason or motive is taken up into self-knowledge. Then this reason becomes a part of the self. The willing is no longer determined; it determines itself. The law-abidingness, the motives of willing, now no longer rule over the one who wills, but are one and the same with this willing. To illuminate the laws of one’s action with the light of self-observation means to overcome all constraint of motive. By so doing, will transfers itself into the realm of freedom.
It is not all human action which bears the marks of freedom. Only such action is free action which in its every part is lighted up with the glow of self-observation. And because self-observation raises the individual self up to the Universal Self, therefore free action is that which flows from the Universal Self. The old controversy whether man’s will is free or subject to a universal law, to an unalterable necessity, is a problem wrongly stated. All action is bound which is done by a man as an individual; all action free which is accomplished after his spiritual re-birth. Man, therefore, is not, in general, either free or bound. He is both the one and the other. He is bound before his re-birth; and he can become free through this re-birth. The individual upward development of man consists in the transformation of unfree willing into will possessing the character of freedom. The man who has realised the law-abidingness of his action as his own, has overcome the constraint of this law-abidingness and therewith of un-freedom. Freedom is not from the outset a fact of human existence, but a goal thereof.
With the attainment of free action, man resolves a contradiction between the world and himself. His own deeds become deeds of universal being. He feels himself in the fullest harmony with this universal being. He feels every discord between himself and another as the outcome of a not yet fully awakened self. But such is the fate of the self, that only in its separation from the whole can it find its contact with this whole. Man would not be man if he were not shut off as an individual self from everything else; but also he is not man in the highest sense if he does not, as such a shut-off and isolated self, widen himself out again into the Universal Self. It belongs through and through to the nature of man that it should overcome an inherent contradiction which has lain therein from the beginning.
Any one who regards spirit as, in the main, logical understanding, may well feel his blood run cold at the idea that objects should be supposed to undergo their re-birth in spirit. He will compare the fresh, living flower, outside there in its fulness of colour, with the cold, faded, schematic thought of the flower. He will feel himself particularly ill at ease with the conception that the man who draws his motives from the solitude of his own self-consciousness is more free than the original, naïve personality which acts from its immediate impulses, from the fulness of its own nature. To one who sees only one-sided logic, another man who sinks himself into his own inner being will appear like a mere walking scheme of concepts, like a mere ghost in contrast with the man who remains in his own natural individuality.
Such objections to the re-birth of things in spirit are especially to be heard from those whose power of perception fails in the presence of things with a purely spiritual content; although they are well provided with healthy organs of sense-perception and with impulses and passions full of life. As soon as they are called upon to perceive the purely spiritual, the power to do so fails them; they can deal only with mere conceptual husks, when even they are not limited to empty words. They remain, therefore, in what concerns spiritual content, men of “dry, abstract understanding.” But the man who in things purely spiritual possesses a gift of perception like that in things of the senses, finds life assuredly not the poorer when he has enriched it with its spiritual content. If I look out upon a flower, why should its rich colours lose aught whatever of their freshness, because not only does my eye see the colours, but my inner sense also perceives the spiritual being of the flower? Why should the life of my personality become poorer, because I do not follow my passions and impulses in spiritual blindness, but illuminate them throughout with the light of higher knowledge? Not poorer, but fuller, richer, is that life which is given back again in the spirit.