An art which has its basis in the individual and which does not advance to spiritual substance cannot possibly prevent the threatened dissolution of life. Even the most wonderful expression of disposition, even the most delicate and most fluid representations of conditions, do not free us from the chaos of the time: they might easily bind us still more strongly to it, since they weaken the power, indeed the tendency to energetic concentration, and increase the tendency to degenerate into a state of weakness and decay; while to overcome these dangers it is necessary primarily to increase our activity, to win again an active relation to reality. Art cannot free itself from that condition of feebleness without entering into a close relation with the central task of life and acknowledging a spirituality transcending the subjective circumstances and interests of mere man. If these requirements are not satisfied, no talent can prevent a decline of art into a more refined Epicureanism. But where such a spiritual life is acknowledged, and at the same time there arises the task of winning for man a new life, a new spiritual reality, art inevitably acquires a great significance, and becomes absolutely indispensable. Without the liberation which it brings, and its presentation of things in a harmony, how could a whole with definite character be raised? How could the new that hovers before us acquire form and exert a penetrating power without the help of a constructive imagination which precedes its realisation? How could the soul's innermost experience permeate life as a whole, and ennoble its whole structure without the help of art? The higher we place the ideal of life, the more does the spiritual content which immediate existence manifests become a mere sense form, the more is æsthetic activity necessary to prevent disunion of life, in the midst of all oppositions to give it some kind of unity, and in the midst of the passion of conflict some rest within itself. But, to achieve this, art may not purpose to form an oasis in a wilderness of life, but, hand-in-hand with other activities, must fight for spiritual experience and a genuine meaning of life as a whole. (d) POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE To treat of the complicated problems of the political and social life of the present does not come within our purpose; we can consider them only so far as the task of the construction of an independent spiritual world is affected either for good or evil by the nature of their solution.