This increasing spiritualisation of human life never becomes a sure possession that calls for no toil; ever anew it demands our attention and activity; it has continually to be won anew as a whole. As soon as the tension slackens, the world of experience with its appeal to sense preponderates, and it soon appears to be man's sole world, one which cannot tolerate anything beyond itself. For the spiritualisation of human life, a longing rooted in the whole being is primarily necessary; for with the keen feeling of the vanity of the world of sense experience, this leads to the removal of the centre of life into the invisible world of self-determining activity. Further, a clear presentation of this invisible world is needed; and in this the help of the visible is not to be dispensed with. For its own establishment the realm of the invisible must borrow means of expression from the visible, which now governs human presentation; must transform and refine them for its aims; prepare out of them an impressive presentation of the whole. Along with the energy of turning to the spiritual life a creative imagination is required, through which the invisible may become equal to holding its own against the visible. The help of such imagination is indispensable for religion, in order that the supernatural world advocated by it may gain an effective presence in the province of humanity. And so with bold upward flights of imagination the heroes of religion have projected a new condition of reality as a whole, a kingdom of justice or of love, and have judged human existence by the standard of this new condition. Similarly, philosophy did not become an independent world of thought without the help of imagination; and of how indispensable it is to art we need not speak at all. Again, work in political, social, educational matters, at least as far as radical renewals are concerned, has really been taken up and carried on, and has won a triumphant power, only where the state striven for has been presented as something visible and clearly present; this alone has united the multiplicity, and has led with compelling force beyond the extant situation as though that were something intolerable. Humanity as a whole must be present in an ideal condition to our minds for us to be aroused sufficiently from our indolence. Our life, therefore, contains movements which tend in opposite directions: there are a pressing forward and a turning backward, a detachment from experience and a taking up again of experience; and so we may well speak of an action and reaction within its movement. But the antitheses that arise aid in advancement only so long as they are encompassed by a whole of activity. In that the course of history increases far more than it diminishes the antitheses, the dangers grow more and more, the possibilities and the tasks of human existence, however, also grow. (d) THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW TYPE OF LIFE