Instead of going on bridging this abyss with forced logic and imaginative ideas, we must make up our minds to get to the root of the problem and let it work upon us as it comes straight to meet us in the facts. The solution is, not to try to get rid of dualism from the world, but to realize it as something which can no longer do us any harm. That is possible if we leave behind us all the arts and the unveracities of thought and bow to the fact that, as we cannot harmonize our life-view and our world-view, we must make up our minds to put the former above the latter. The volition which is given in our will-to-live reaches beyond our knowledge of the world. What is decisive for our life-view is not our knowledge of the world but the character of the volition which is given in our will-to-live. The universal spirit meets us in nature as puzzling creative power. In our will-to-live we experience [pg xiii] it within us as volition which is both world- and life-affirming and ethical. Our relation to the world as it is given in the character of our will-to-live, when this latter seeks to comprehend itself in thought: that is our view of the world. World-view is a product of life-view, not _vice versâ_. The rational thought of to-day, therefore, does not hunt the phantom of getting to know the world. It leaves knowledge of the world on one side as something unattainable by us, and tries to come to clear ideas about the will-to-live which is within us. The problem of world-view, then, brought back to facts and tackled by rational thought without assumptions being made, may be put thus: “What is the relation of my will-to-live, when it learns to think, to itself and to the world?” And the answer is: “From an inner compulsion to be true to itself and to remain consistent with itself, our will-to-live enters into relations with our own individual being and with all manifestations of the will-to-live which surround it, that are determined by the sentiment of reverence for life.” Reverence for life, _veneratio vitæ_, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live. In reverence for life my knowledge passes into experience. The unsophisticated world- and life-affirmation which is within me just because I am will-to-live has, therefore, no need to enter into controversy with itself, if my will-to-live learns to think and yet does not understand the meaning of the world. In spite of the negative results of knowledge I have to hold fast to world- and life-affirmation and deepen it. My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, viz. the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values.