But if we would approach to an understanding of psychological things we must remember the fact of the subjective conditioning of all knowledge. The world is _as we see it_ and not simply objective; this holds true even more of the mind. Of course it is possible to look at the mind objectively, just as at Faust, or a Gothic Cathedral. In this objective conception there is comprised the whole worth and worthlessness of current experimental psychology and psychoanalysis. The scientific mind, thinking causally, is incapable of understanding what is ahead; it only understands what is past, that is, retrospective. Like Ahriman, the Persian devil, it has the gift of After-Knowledge. But this spirit is only one half of a complete comprehension. The other more important half is prospective or constructive; if we are not able to understand what lies ahead, then nothing is understood. If psychoanalysis, following Freud's orientation, should succeed in presenting an uninterrupted and conclusive connection between Goethe's infantile sexual development and his work, or, following Adler, between the infantile struggle for power and the adult Goethe and his work, an interesting proposition would have been solved--we should have learnt how a masterpiece can be reduced to the simplest thinkable elements, which are universal, and to be found working within the depths of everything and everybody. But did Goethe construct his work to _this_ end? Was it his intention that it should be thus conceived? It must be sufficiently clear that such an understanding, though undoubtedly scientific, would be entirely, utterly, beside the mark. This statement is valid for psychology in general. To understand the psyche causally, means to understand but half of it. The causal understanding of Faust enlightens us as to how it became a finished work of art, but reveals nothing of the living meaning of the poet. That meaning only lives if we experience it, in and through ourselves. In so far as our actual present life is for us something essentially new and not a repetition of all that has gone before, the great value of such a work is to be seen, not in its causal development, but in its living reality for our own lives. We should be indeed depreciating a work like Faust if we were only to regard it as something that has been perfected and finished; it is only understood when conceived as a becoming and as an ever new-experiencing. Thus we must regard the human psyche. Only on one side is the mind a Has Been, and as such subordinate to the causal principle. On the other side the mind is a Becoming that can only be grasped synthetically or constructively. The causal standpoint asks how it is this actual mind has become what it appears to-day? The constructive standpoint asks how a bridge can be built from this actual psyche to its own future?