II. THE MORE DETAILED FORM OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE (a) THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND REALITY Whatever there is peculiar in our conception of the spiritual life must be manifested and proved in reference to the problem of truth and reality. In the first place our conception decidedly rejects the widely held view of truth as a correspondence of our thought with an external reality. For the attainment of independence by the inner life makes it impossible for something externally existing to be taken up into life without undergoing an essential change. It is also inconceivable from this point of view how something beyond us could in any way attract and arouse us. The problem of truth can do this only if it originates within our own life: it can become a compelling power only if the attainment of truth aids us to transcend a division within ourselves which has become intolerable. The representation of life, that we have given, makes it quite evident that such a division does spring up within us. Within our own life a certain activity begins, which becomes wider and wider, and which would signify our whole being. But this activity finds limits and contradiction within ourselves: much takes place in our experience independent of this activity and apparently without our co-operation; a certain condition of things exists, and asserts a rigid actuality; and, so far as this condition extends, we are bound; we bear something impenetrable within us. So long as these two sides of our being remain separated life is not complete and genuine: activity lacks a foundation, a content, and a direction that is sure of its aim; and all the bustle of free movements, all effort of reflection cannot conceal the state of spiritual poverty. On the other hand, the fact that we bear so much within us that only half belongs to us and that presses upon us like a fate must cramp and oppress us. And so life does not experience itself as a unity; it lacks an inner truth, since activity presents itself as a whole and yet is not one. Life itself is therefore a problem. The problem must be felt to be the more serious the stronger the desire for a self-consciousness becomes. However, self-consciousness cannot possibly be reached without a transcendence of the division between activity and the given condition of things. Life has first to seek itself, its unity, its perfection; and it is just this that is the problem of truth: and in this problem life is turned not towards externals, but towards itself. We understand now how the desire for truth can exert such an enormous power, for, in this struggle for truth, we fight not for something alien, but for our own being.