It is true that the possibility of an elevation has its fixed conditions; it necessitates particular convictions with regard to the world and to man. We must view the world as being still in a state of flux and regard man as not being simply a closed and limited individual. The infinite spiritual life must be present as a whole to him, and arouse a new world to life in him; his conduct must be rooted in the power and content of the infinite life: only thus can we understand that in man also a movement begins and a change is brought about. And so it remains ever an inderivable, original phenomenon, which we must acknowledge as a fact, that a spontaneous life breaks forth in man, a new and relatively independent life-centre originates. We always come back in the long run to original phenomena; the origin of living being in general is also an original phenomenon. May we deny the fact of such original phenomena, because they make our representation of the world less uniform and simple? To do so would be nothing else than to make our previously formed conceptions the measure of reality; it would be a new, specifically modern anthropomorphism. This freedom, with its requirement of a world of inner life that introduces new contents, and also that we belong in some way to this world, is by no means a capacity to make a decision capriciously at any moment; it is not a denial of the power of necessity. Of course, it implies that there may be some kind of counteraction to this necessity; and that if this counteraction can attain success only as a result of the activity of life as a whole, even the individual moment need not be a matter of indifference. For, as the spiritual life has always to win its own height anew, so the present in its relations is not a mere consequence of the past: times of temptation can come repeatedly when all that which has been achieved becomes doubtful again; but times of elevation also come when an advance is made beyond that previously achieved. It is not possible for us simply to reject the present existence and all the conditions which constrain us, and to choose for ourselves a new kind of existence, instead of the one we have; from that it is impossible to free ourselves: in all further endeavour we have to take it into account, to make our peace with it. Nevertheless, life can attain to a transcendent point of view, from which the world of sense becomes the object of judgment and of adaptation; from which, to be regarded as completely ours, it needs acknowledgment and appropriation by us; and from which it is seen not to constitute our whole life, as that which is ultimate. Indeed, the tendencies within us which are concerned with nature, first reach their highest through such acknowledgment and appropriation by us: placed on a spiritual basis they lose their rigid exclusiveness and become unified; our particular nature no longer constitutes our whole being, but becomes the central point of