If the turning to the life-process puts the question, the assertion of an independent spiritual life gives the answer to it: however strange this assertion may seem in relation to superficial temporal experience, it meets a deep longing. For we are completely satiated with narrowly human culture; the movements and experiences of the Modern Age, and in particular of the present, make us so clearly conscious of all that is trivial, simply apparent, disagreeable, feeble, shallow, empty, and futile in human conduct, that all hope of finding satisfaction in this conduct, and of advancing life essentially by its means and powers, must be abandoned. We have, therefore, to face the following alternative: either absolute doubt and the cessation of all effort, or the acknowledgment of a "more" in man; there is no third possibility. But in the context of our investigation no discussion is required to show that this "more" cannot consist in an individual's elevation of himself above others; that it cannot consist in a so-called Superman--a view that only involves us more in the narrowly human. Either the "more" sought for is only imaginary, a covering of tinsel with which we conceal our nakedness, or a world transcending the merely human, a new stage of reality, reveals itself to man, which can become his own life. As it is this transcendent world alone that engenders a universal life within us and opposes the insignificantly human; so also from this alone, and as its manifestation, can culture become independent in relation to man. Only when it is understood in this way can culture include aims and tasks that do not strengthen man in his narrowness, but free him from it, and make him spiritually greater.