All these attempts therefore prove to be inadequate because they lead back to the state of uncertainty they were meant to overcome. To reject them, however, involves us in a certain assertion, which to some extent points out the main direction which further investigation must follow. No external compromise can help us, but only the winning of a transcendent position which is capable of giving to each factor its right without reduction; no flight into history can lead us to the truth, but only an activity of the present, not, however, of the present of the mere moment, but which embraces the work of universal history; no placing a single point or sphere into a supreme and all-dominant position can help us to overcome division, but only a conflict for a new whole; no mere turning to personality is of value before a sure basis is given to it from the whole! All leads us to this conclusion: we must strive for a new system of life. And to achieve this is not impossible, for, as we saw, a system of life is not imposed upon us by fate, but must arise from our own activity. If the systems which have previously been formed no longer satisfy, why cannot mankind evolve others? Or is it proved that the existent forms exhaust all possibilities? A too narrow conception of life was seen to be a common defect of all these systems; its richness broke through the attempted unifications, and with this they fell into irreconcilable contradiction. Should not a synthesis be possible which would do more justice to the whole extent of life; which need not deny and exclude so much; and which might also unite what at first seems absolutely contradictory? Doubtless such a synthesis would not be achieved all at once; it is inevitable that growing life should involve many discords and movements within itself. Yet this synthesis would present itself at least in a manner similar to that of the extant systems; and, since it strives after something human, it must always be mindful of its limits. Should such a universal synthesis be at all possible, it must certainly be something which is to be found and disclosed rather than something which simply is to be produced from ourselves. How could we hope to advance to it if it were not somehow involved in the depth of our being, and in our fundamental relation to the world, and if it did not already exist here in some way? It is a matter, therefore, of arousing to fuller independence and at the same time of raising inwardly something which exists within us; of recognising something new and even astonishing in the old and the supposedly self-evident, so that the truth of the universe may become our truth and give power to our life.