Such considerations again show us that a complete negation is impossible; and it seems that we must remain for ever in painful suspense between an unattainable affirmation and an impossible negation. We might be able to endure this condition of affairs if it concerned a problem which arose in reference to something of little importance to our life, something that we could relegate to the background, and simply permit to lie there, without compromising our life. But our problem lies at the centre of life; is, in fact, itself the centre. To be left in suspense here means to condemn life as a whole to a state of paralysis, to surrender it to complete dissolution. Against this everyone who has any vital energy in him will contend; with his whole might he will seek to escape from a condition so intolerable; he will not hold back from making a bold venture, mindful of the words of Goethe, "Necessity is the best counsellor." In seeking a way out of the contradiction, it is essentially necessary not to forget the source of the contradiction. We saw that source to be in the fact that the spiritual life would set up a new world, and at the same time remains bound up with the merely human and presents itself as an endeavour of mere man. To the spiritual life a universal character is indispensable; of this claim nothing can be abated. There must therefore be a change as regards man; it must be that more comes to pass in him than the first impression makes evident. It must be that the spiritual within him, which seems at first to be his own product, is a participation in wider connections; the spiritual must be operative in man, but not originate out of the merely human. It is true that this makes a reversal of the traditional position necessary, and not merely of its representations; and such a reversal provokes serious doubt. Modern science, however, has taught us sufficiently often that the first appearance of anything need not be the ultimate one; that there may be cogent reasons for regarding something that at first seems based in itself as the proof of something existing beyond. Thus, modern natural science has transformed the world of sense into a world present only to the eyes of research. Certainly, science accomplishes these changes within the bounds of experience: on the contrary, in regard to our problem, in which the fundamental form of reality is in question, it is indispensable that we should transcend these bounds; without a change in respect of the whole, and hence without a resort to metaphysics, it is not possible to accomplish our purpose. It is quite clear that the tendency of our time is opposed to appeals to metaphysics: yet it is a question how far this attitude is justified. So far as metaphysics assumes the same form as in the past--that of conceptual speculation of a thought hovering unrestrained over the existing world--then it is rightly opposed. But the attitude is unjustifiable which assumes that