If the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality thus alters the view of reality as a whole, and in particular of man, we are faced with the question whether we may not attain a new synthesis through this spirituality, and whether it does not begin a characteristic formation of our world. Our treatment of the philosophies of life of the present day makes it possible for us to approach this question with definite demands. We saw life branch off in different movements, each of which took up into itself a wealth of fact; but we found none of them strong enough to absorb the others into itself, or even able to estimate them. If life is not finally to fall into dissolution, it needs, in contrast to these movements, one more universal in character, and this can be more than a weak compromise only when there is a still more fundamental relation of life than that which the developments that we have considered proffered. In that case the more original basal relation ought to be able to manifest itself as a presupposition of those developments; it should make intelligible how divisions can originate in the condition of man; in particular it should illuminate the opposition between the idealistic and the naturalistic systems of life--an opposition which, like a deep gulf, divides the life of the present. In short, it should depend upon whether the change that results with the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life makes it possible for us permanently to transcend those oppositions and to work towards their reconciliation. But we ought then to see that, with its universality, the system of life striven for does not fall into a state vague and lacking in character. Through its whole being, in affirmation and in negation, the system of life must definitely express itself; it must synthesise and differentiate, elevate and exclude. But it will be able to do this only if it produces a new kind of life-process and a new web of life: only thus can essentially new evaluations and tasks, new experiences and genuine developments, originate; only thus can life as a whole be definitely raised. Of course, this new cannot signify something that has just been discovered and that has arisen suddenly. How could it be a truth which gives to us security, and how could it dominate our life, if it is not rooted in our being, and if it had not exerted an influence at all times? But it makes a great difference whether the new has been concealed, obscure and against the tendency of our own activity; or whether it is taken up fully in our own self-determining activity and thereby essentially advanced. If, on the one hand, the new must be something old, on the other hand the old must become something new if it is to liberate, strengthen, and elevate our life where its needs are so urgent. (c) _The Spiritual Basis of the System of Life_