In another direction complexities arise in that something objective is evolved and established which, however, is not brought sufficiently into relation with life as a whole and united with it. Then, work may progress within its own province constantly and vigorously, but it loses touch with our soul; we do not realise or develop ourselves in it. With all the feverish tension of individual powers work is then inwardly alien to us, and its power over us may become a heavy oppression. Through such a detachment from life as a whole work loses soul and is nothing more than mechanical; in short, we have all those results of division between work and soul which we may feel with particular acuteness in the contemporary state of culture. Experiences rising from this division lead us to demand that work shall be so organised as to be capable of taking up life as a whole into itself, and with this of becoming our true self. Again, life as a whole cannot enter upon work as complete, for then it would force something alien upon work, and by this pervert it; life as a whole can be evolved only from the unification and elevation of work itself. We do not begin and carry on work as a fixed individuality, but we form individuality first through work by the continual overcoming of the opposition of subjective disposition and object. Spiritual contents are not produced by a communication of something that is in itself complete to something else that is in itself complete, an interaction of disposition and object; rather must we say that genuine work sets both sides in motion and with elevating power unites them in a single life. So understood, every movement which tends to the development of spirituality in individuals, peoples, ages, and finally of humanity as a whole, is a witness to the possibility of a transcendence of this opposition, of the emergence of a reality within the life-process. We cannot give work a spiritual nature in this way, and make it the instrument of a new reality, without being compelled to acknowledge that there is much less genuine work among men than we are accustomed to assume. On the other hand, we must also recognise that the little that there is signifies much more, and indicates much greater advances of life than it is usual to admit. Nothing differentiates individuals and ages more from one another than the extent to which they take part in genuine work; the degree to which they transform their life in such work. Mere reflection and good will can accomplish very little in this matter; without an energetic nature, a strong inner disposition with a definite tendency, as well as the favour of destiny, not much can be achieved. What is usually called "life" is only a will to live, a straining after life; it yields but an outward appearance and a shadow of life: genuine life is first brought forth by that transformation.