Activism does not imply that immediately and at one stroke our life may be transformed into spiritual activity and may quickly establish a positive relation to reality: that would be to fail to recognise the conditions under which man exists, and the necessity of undergoing experiences and changes. Such an attitude might easily lead to the formation of syntheses of life that would be much too hasty and far too narrow; and the necessary breaking up of these would arouse a keen distrust of the whole undertaking. The power which the Romantic movement from time to time wins over minds is based on the fact that it warns us against an over-estimation of our activity; that it demands that the soul should be open to the influences of the world; that its impressions should be appropriated without restriction and permitted to fade away completely; that in opposition to all the limitation and organisation of life, it still longs for the infinite; and that it also to some extent satisfies by turning to unrestrained feeling. At the same time, the Romantic movement makes us clearly conscious of the power of destiny, the transcendence of external and internal necessities above all human intention and utilitarian conduct. In this way life acquires a much greater comprehensiveness and freshness; it seems to return to its source, to retain far more immediacy. But it is one thing to acknowledge the importance of this, another to make it the essence of life. When such precedence is given to this Romantic tendency life threatens to become delicate, feeble, effeminate; it knows no energetic opposition to the flow of presentations; instead of a definite union it offers aphoristic thoughts and stimuli; through the lack of logical acuteness it falls into the direst contradictions; it sacrifices all distinct form and organisation to a revelling in vague moods. As in such a state of weakness the spiritual life does not succeed in gaining complete independence in face of the natural conditions of our existence, so it does not attain the necessary ascendancy over sense. Sense, in its own province entirely incontestable, raises doubts in us in that it flows together with the spiritual, is undifferentiated from it, brings it under itself, and turns it from its course. And, in this, sense does not possess the naïve freshness and the natural limitation of its original state, but it is over-refined and too full of excitement.