Enlightenment, to the proud self-confidence of which a conscientious self-examination forms a necessary antithesis. The critical method reached its highest point in Kant, and we can never go back again upon the transformation of life that has been effected by it. But how could the critique be justified and exercise such far-reaching influence as it has done, if it were not more than a product of a subjective reflection that accompanies the object, and that has to do with the object externally? The critique could effect an inner transformation and elevation of work only because it set new forces in motion. And it did this in that it measured all human achievement by the demands of a transcendent spiritual life and out of it developed inner necessities, to which all achievement had to correspond. So the movement was not lost through the lack of an aim; and life did not flow onward with the stream of presentations, but found a support in itself; it was able to exert a powerful counteraction; it did not need to acknowledge anything that had not proved its validity before the judgment-seat of immanent reason. This emergence of the question of validity in contrast to that of actuality must inwardly raise and ennoble the movement of life; it reveals to man an active relation not only to the environment but primarily to himself; it leads to a ceaseless differentiation and examination of the quality of life. It is true that the Enlightenment, which acknowledged that alone to be true which was clearly and distinctly cognised, exercised this critique in a too narrow manner; yet notwithstanding all that may be problematical in its application to details, the right and the necessity of the fundamental idea are not thereby overthrown: the question remains; it can be fully justified only in the relations that we have indicated; but at the same time it must be transferred from the merely intellectual to the spiritual as a whole, and form in relation to the whole that which in the state of culture contains and develops an independent spirituality and a self-conscious life; but by this it gains a content of truth. This self-consciousness alone can be regarded as essence and genuine reality, while everything else is reduced to mere environment and becomes matter of secondary importance, if not of mere appearance. Task after task is revealed, more especially for the present; we see how, with the attainment of independence by the spiritual life, the movement is not only extended, but also grows inwardly and tends towards the elevation of life. (3) _The Gain of Stability_