Activity in this way acquires an ethical character; it is this which draws the boundary line between spiritual activity and merely natural impulse, and distinguishes genuine from imaginary self-determining activity. Ethical relation does not mean a submission to alien and unsympathetic regulations, but a taking up of the infinite spiritual world into our own volition and being: this relation brings things close to us and reveals them, so that they are able to impart their life to us, and we are able to grow with their growth. So understood, ethical relation is primarily not regulative but productive; it is not merely being prepared to fulfil certain demands, when they are made upon us, to live in accordance with strict regulations, but it involves the motive of aiding in the development of the world, of advancing everything good and true: it requires an untiring forward endeavour and advance to the building up of a kingdom of reason and love. If in this way conduct is lifted above the pursuit of that which pleases and interests the mere subject, this is not on behalf of something alien, but for the elevation of our own being, for the sake of this genuine being, for the sake of our spiritual self. It is this inner elevation and this demand for a new world that distinguishes Activism from all mere Voluntarism and Pragmatism, to which it appears to approximate, and with which, in its negative aspect, it is, indeed, associated. For it shares with them the rejection of an intellectualistic view of life, in which cognition is regarded as finding truth of its own power and as conveying it to the rest of life. Further, Activism desires, as do Voluntarism and Pragmatism also, the basing of truth upon a more spontaneous and essential activity. But the flight to the will is more a reaction against Intellectualism than an overcoming of the difficulty. As such the will does not yield a new world and a transcendent power; it may, therefore, be that mere volition is implicitly transformed into a self-determining activity encompassing the whole extent of life. Pragmatism, also, which has recently made so much headway among English-speaking peoples and beyond them, is more inclined to shape the world and life in accordance with human condition and needs than to invest spiritual activity with an independence in relation to these, and apply its standards to the testing and sifting of the whole content of human life. But after the experiences of history the claim to this latter can scarcely be given up. After man has been seen to be particular and limited in nature, as things first present themselves, he no longer suffices for the starting-point of the endeavour for truth, but to attain to this starting-point an elevation above the human into a universal spiritual life is necessary. And that is the intention of Activism.