particular the resort to Goethe, as to one with a secure standard of life, is in general no more than an expression of perplexity, no more than a flight from a clear decision of our own: the universality and the flexibility of his spirit permit a point of contact with him to be found by those whose views directly contradict those of one another, and allows each to abstract, and make a profession of faith of that which is preferable and pleasing to himself. Thus to-day we are in a state of uncertainty and indefiniteness in reference to the problem of culture. Since the new does not suffice, and the old cannot be taken up again, we are in doubt with regard to the whole conception of culture; we know neither what we have of it nor what it demands from us. We cannot give up our claim to being something more than nature, without sinking again to the level of the mere animal; but in what this "more" consists and how it is at all possible to surpass nature is to us completely obscure. A developed historical consciousness and the free unfolding of the powers of the present permit many things to rush in upon us; and we are involved in much inconsistency. We have seen diverse systems of life arise and attract man to themselves; their conflict relegates to the background all that is common to them, produces the greatest uncertainty, and gives rise to the inclination, in order to avoid all perplexities, to regard life as being made up entirely of that which occurs within sense experience; and to acquire aims from this experience, as well as to derive powers from it. But in this we fall into the danger of idealising sense experience falsely, and of expecting achievements from movements within it which are possible only if these movements flow from deeper sources. We flee to morality to become free from all religion and metaphysics; as though morality, elevating man, as it does, above simply physical preservation and the compulsion of mere instinct, is not itself a metaphysic, and as though it does not of necessity require the existence of an order superior to nature. Then we flee to the subject with its unrestrained inwardness and contrast this inwardness with all the restricting relations of life; as though the subject had any content and any value without an independent inner world, the recognition of which involves a complete revolution of the representation of reality; as then according to the witness of history also humanity has reached such an inner world only through wearisome toil and forceful resolutions. The whole course of Antiquity had been leading up to this inner world, but the collision of Antiquity at the time of its decay, with Christianity which was then arising, first developed it clearly. Such an inner world must ever be justified anew; and for this our own activity and conviction are necessary. If we surrender its basis, it becomes dead capital which, little by little, is inevitably spent, and then the appeal to the