The conclusion we are led to is that a new life distinct from that of nature arises in our soul. With a great diversity of manifestations, it surrounds us with an indisputable actuality; no one can fail to recognise that something of importance, something distinctive comes to pass in us. But as soon as we try to comprehend these manifestations as a whole, and to ascertain the meaning of the whole, a difficult problem arises. It is comparatively easy, however, to come to an understanding as to the negative aspect of the matter. It is obvious that the new life is not an embellishment or a continuation of nature; it would bring with it something essentially new. Again, it is obvious that it is not a product of a single psychical function, such as thought or feeling; it would form a whole transcending the psychical functions, and from this whole determine the form of each function distinctively. But what is this new reality and this whole to which the course of the movement trends? The more we reflect over the question the more strongly we feel that it is a direction rather than a conclusion that is offered to us in this matter; something higher, something inward and so on is to evolve, but what is embedded in the inward and in what this supremacy is based is at present not apparent. Further, every attempt at a more definite orientation at once reveals to us a wide gulf, indeed a harsh contradiction, between the content of that which is sought and the form of existence from which it is sought. The chief impulse of the spiritual life is that it wills to liberate us from the merely human; to give us a share in the life of the whole; to remove us from a happening between things to their fundamental happening. Seen from within, the history of humanity is primarily an increasing deliverance of life from bondage to the narrowly human, an emergence of something more than human, and an attempt to shape our life from the point of view of this: it is an increasing conflict of man with himself. At the same time, however, it is a taking up of the whole into himself; since man in all his planning and striving is related to the whole, it seems to him that his own nature must remain alien to himself if the whole does not disclose itself to him and allow him to participate in a life which has its source in ultimate depths; if in the life of the whole he does not find a purer and a more genuine self. The idea of truth impels us beyond all the limitations to which a particular being is subject, beyond all communication of things from without. There must be nothing between us and reality; the inner life of reality must become ours, and thus our life will emerge for the first time from a shadowy existence to full reality, from the narrowness of the mere individual to the comprehensiveness of infinity. The idea of the good makes similar demands. To the spiritual movement, the advancement of merely human well-being is far too mean an aim. This movement makes us clearly