this so, and why do we renounce all claim to a life in accordance with our own nature? Certainly not because our time lacks problems and tasks of its own, or because it is deficient in spiritual possibilities and necessities; for, of these there is an abundance; in this matter our time is not behind any other. But there predominates a wrong relation between these tasks and the central power of the spiritual life, which is equal to cope with them and out of the possibilities create a reality. In any case spiritual work has a great deal to do with the time; and in regard to this it finds itself in no simple situation. Spiritual work must acknowledge a given condition, which it cannot alter to suit its own preferences; but it can make something else out of this condition and also see something else in it than immediately meets the eye. The possibilities of a time are revealed only in spiritual work, and through it alone are they separated from the human additions that usually overgrow them. These possibilities cannot become clearly evident, unless a close relation to history is won: they are not suggestions simply of the moment, for they have been prepared by the whole work of history. History acquires quite a different--a far more positive--meaning when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be independent, and when it is admitted that spiritual life is not just the embellishment of a reality other than spiritual, but the formation of the only genuine and substantial reality, the transition to a self-consciousness of life. For, as such a formation of reality, this creative activity extends beyond the particular time in which it originates, and becomes part of a time-transcending present. True, this activity always appears in a garment that seems simply temporary; but this garment does not constitute its being: the imperishable in it, its fundamental life, remains inwardly near and present even after great changes of temporal condition; and within the sphere of spiritual work is always capable of new effect. Christianity, for example, in spite of the attacks that are and have been made upon it, still asserts itself as a living power. Yet there cannot be the slightest doubt that in everything that lies on the surface of our life we are as far as possible removed from the centuries of its formation; that not only the view of the world but also the tasks of life and the nature of feeling and disposition have become radically different. But life is not exhausted in these activities on the surface, which must be regarded as external manifestations that proceed from an inner unity. That which these centuries have performed for the essence of life: the realisation of a freedom of spiritual inwardness, the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world with great aims and tasks, may, indeed, become obscured for the consciousness of individuals and of whole periods; it remains, however, an essential part, a presupposition of all further spiritual life.