Further, the taking up of the object into the life-process, the transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, is characteristic of the spiritual life. But this remained an inner contradiction, a complete impossibility so long as the spiritual life was regarded as an occurrence in a being who, with a closed nature, stands over against things as though they were alien; and who can take up nothing into himself without accommodating it to his own particular nature. The contradiction is removed only when the spiritual becomes independent; for then both sides of the antithesis come to belong to each other and are related to each other in a single life; and a life transcending the division may develop, a life that produces the antithesis from within, lives in the different sides and seeks in them its own perfection. The life-process is now seen to be a movement that is neither from object to subject, nor from subject to object; neither the subject's attainment of content from the object, nor the object's becoming controlled by the subject, but an advance of a self-conscious life in and through the antithesis. Life, by this movement, ceases to be a single, thin thread; it wins breadth; it expands to an inner universality. At the same time a depth is manifested in that a persistent and comprehensive activity emerges which lives in the antithesis. In this manner life first becomes a life in a spiritual sense, a self-conscious and self-determining life, a self-consciousness. That this change is possible and brings with it a new type of life is shown with complete clearness by experience in the separate departments of the spiritual life. Thus, artistic creation at its highest is neither the production of the truest possible copy of an external object, the artist painfully abstaining from all subjective addition; nor a presentation of subjective situations and moods, the artist endeavouring to the utmost to avoid everything objective; but a transcendence of the opposition of soulless objectivity and empty subjectivity by an art that is sovereign, autonomous, and with a character of its own; the creative activity belonging to which gives life from the soul to the object, and moulds the soul by means of the object. This kind of artistic creation is directed primarily towards an inner truth, not towards a truth that is produced by the object, but one that arises only in the contact of the object with the soul. It is manifest that creation is effected here not as an interaction between subject and object, but above and through this antithesis; it is only by transcending the antithesis that the artist can give himself in his work, lend to it a soul, place an infinity within it. In this respect conduct manifests a character similar to that of creation. Conduct would never attain an inner stability and enter upon an independent course, if it could not raise itself above the opposition of a submission to orders that are forced