These beginnings appear in an elevation of life accessible to every individual, an elevation above the forms as well as the content of mere nature. We perceive this in the norms with which the research of the present is busily occupied. Our life does not consist entirely of simple matters of fact, but in certain directions qualities and forms are presented to it which are able to contradict the immediate state of things and to exercise a certain power over it. Thus the norms of thought, the norms of conduct and of artistic creation are evolved, each making particular demands, and being different in the manner of its operation. However, we are concerned here not with the aspects of difference, but with that which is common to all; and this consists in the working of an actuality in us that is something other than natural occurrence, an actuality that needs our acknowledgment, and through this acknowledgment first wins power over us. The demands which these norms make upon us are in no way convenient to us; they limit our caprice; they often cost hard toil and heavy sacrifice; our desire for natural happiness does not commend them to us. How is it then that we do not simply reject them? what is it that gives to them a constraining power over us? If they remained isolated and impenetrable experiences, if they adhered to us as something alien in nature, were foreign elements in our being, their power would be unintelligible. It is to be explained only upon the hypothesis that they are unfoldings of our own life, which by these unfoldings is proved to be something other than a life of nature. Unless they are rooted in our own life, these norms are like misty forms in the air. They obtain complete reality and motive power first as movements of our self, which then is no mere point by the side of other points, but an independent manifestation of life of the spiritual world.