A closer consideration of the results of our inquiry leaves no doubt with regard to the direction which research has to take to accomplish its task. Diverse, fundamentally different systems passed in review before us; each came forward as the unadorned and true expression of a reality that seemed common to them all; their struggle appeared to be a conflict concerning the interpretation of this reality. It became evident, however, that the conflict is, on the contrary, in regard not to the interpretation but the fundamental nature of reality; different realities arise which are irreconcilably opposed. The systems do not originate in a common and secure basis: the basis itself is sought, and may assume various forms. The conflict therefore is much more over ultimate problems than is usually supposed; it arises primarily out of the nature of life itself, out of the inner movement which advances against the illimitable world around us, and seeks to gain the mastery over it. Our life and our world acquire a definite character only by our taking up such a movement of counteraction, the particular nature of which decides over all further moulding of life. We have seen that when we ourselves became active we took up and emphasised one of the possibilities which lie within the range of our life, and held it as supreme over all the rest; we took as the fundamental relation one of the relations of which our life is capable, as, for example, the relation to God, to the immanent reason of the universe, to nature, to society, to one's own individuality. A particular sphere of life was thus marked out; a scheme of life was yielded which appeared capable of taking up all experience into itself: according to the starting-point adopted, we sketched a distinctive outline and sought to include the whole content of human industry, man's universe of work--as we might call it--in order to lead to our own perfection. This scheme, assumed to be true, then had to show what it was capable of; a powerful effort was brought forth to overcome the resistance of a world which, even when it was grasped from within, still remained alien to our nature; and, ultimately, to form the whole into a unity. We were not, as it were, an empty vessel into which a content flows from outside, but we generated from within a movement which went onward and onward, and desired to take up everything in itself; it was a matter of radically transforming the external into an inner life. We could succeed in this only in that life self-consciously pressed forward to win new powers; formed connections, branches, and graduations; accomplished an inner construction; and with progressive self-elevation became an all-inclusive whole, which did not possess a reality by the side of itself, but itself became complete reality. Thus, life took possession of the world only in that it widened itself from within to the world, and, in the appropriation of