Now, however much work in the world forms the main part of our life and asserts itself to be such, yet, as a fact, our life is not taken up entirely by such work. In the striving of humanity and in the soul of the individual there is a movement towards a world-transcendent life, a life that first attains to a complete inwardness when it becomes world-transcendent. Only such an inwardness offers a firm support, a spirituality unperverted by the perplexities of the world; but this is not possible otherwise than by man's gaining participation in a world-transcendent spiritual life which is purely and absolutely self-conscious: this life must become man's own life, and spirituality in this way self-consciously advance towards divinity. This makes it for the first time intelligible how life, even when it suffers complete failure in its work in the world, even when the activity exerted upon the world is completely frustrated, by no means degenerates into a state of destitution and ruin. For a new task is now revealed to man in his own attitude to the spiritual life as a whole, a relation which may in different cases be very different in character, and he may find in the solution of the task incalculable difficulties. Here activity also changes its character, since without any external manifestation it can become complete and purely inward: character can free itself of everything passive and become fully active; from being a mere accompaniment it can become an active whole. All this, however, is possible only if life is directed toward a world-transcendent spirituality and only by the power of such a spirituality. As this new kind of life does not make its appearance suddenly, but is prepared by the whole evolution of spiritual life, which we have previously considered, so its main individual tendencies are also related to this evolution. Essential qualities of the spiritual life are manifested in work in the world, but in this they do not come to pure formation and victorious establishment: only the elevation to the world-transcendent self-consciousness makes possible that with which the spiritual life as a whole cannot well dispense, indeed in which it has its essential nature. The striving itself, and its arousing and motive power, could not be explained if the end were not operative within our life: "Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not already found me" (Pascal).