In short, even Naturalism in no way eliminates the subject with its inwardness; rather in its own development it everywhere presupposes the subject. It does not shape life out of mere and pure nature, but out of a close union of a transcendent spiritual life with nature, and out of an energetic insistence upon elements of nature within the soul. However, man experiences not so much the things themselves as himself in the things; the relating together, the surveying, the experiencing of the whole is always a spiritual performance. This performance makes something different out of nature, just as the naturalistic culture that is striven for is different from the state of nature that is found at the beginning. The misconception of the relation of nature to the mind; the postulation of nature without mind, in place of nature with mind, makes Naturalism self-contradictory and untenable. Naturalism therefore struggles vainly against the following dilemma: if it is really in earnest in the elimination of spiritual realities, it must inevitably destroy its own fundamental basis and, as a system of life, must break down; while if it in any way acknowledges a transcendence of nature, and a transcendence just in that which is fundamental to it, then it is necessarily driven beyond itself. But such contradiction in the basal position must be present through the whole development of Naturalism and must make all its factors variating in colour and double in meaning, since at one and the same time they involve the spiritual element and reject it, eliminate it and bring it into the foreground, the former openly and explicitly, the latter concealedly and implicitly. Such is the case, in particular, with the fundamental conception of the _struggle for existence_. In the context of Naturalism, this conception can signify nothing else than the preservation of natural existence, of mere life; such a conception, however, is as incapable of comprehending the whole wealth of the work of civilisation and culture as it is of developing within itself. If the preservation of existence in this sense were really the highest aim, then, all the work of humanity, incalculable and great as it is, all the toil and creative activity of history, would be without result; in no way would it lead beyond the starting-point; we should, of course, have life, but nothing along with and in life. Indeed, the movement would be a continual retrogression, for the experience of the present shows us clearly enough that the conflict of life becomes ever more difficult, toilsome, and embittered. If all this toil does not yield more than was possessed in the original condition, that is, physical existence, then this implies that we have to make an ever greater detour to establish that which formerly devolved upon us immediately. In such a case our life would be a continual sinking, a toil continually increasing in difficulty, in order that we might simply be something, without being