Thus, on the higher level of knowledge, the innocence of Nature is given back to man. He fulfils the tasks that are set him in the feeling of an external necessity. He says to himself: Through this iron necessity it is given into thy hand to withdraw from this very iron necessity the link which has been allotted to thee. “Ye men, learn but from the meadow flower: how ye shall please God and be beautiful as well.”--“The rose exists without why and because, she blooms because she blooms; she takes no heed of herself, asks not if men see her.” The man who has arisen upon the higher level feels in himself the eternal, necessary pressure of the All, as does the meadow flower; he acts, as the meadow flower blooms. The feeling of his moral responsibility grows in all his doing into the immeasurable. For that which he does not do is withdrawn from the All, is a slaying of that All, so far as the possibility of such a slaying lies with him. “What is it, not to sin? Thou need’st not question long: go, the dumb flowers will tell it thee.”--“All must be slain. If thou slayest not thyself for God, then at last eternal death shall slay thee for the enemy.” AFTERWORD Nearly two and a half centuries have passed since Angelus Silesius gathered up the profound wisdom of his predecessors in his _Cherubinean Wanderer_. These centuries have brought rich insights into Nature. Goethe opened a vast perspective to natural science. He sought to follow up the eternal, unchangeable laws of Nature’s working, to that summit where, with like necessity, they cause man to come into being, just as on a lower level they bring forth the stone.[21] Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel, and others, have laboured further in the direction of this way of conceiving things. The “question of all questions,” that in regard to the natural origin of man, found its answer in the nineteenth century; and other related problems in the realm of natural events have also found their solutions. To-day men comprehend that it is not necessary to step outside of the realm of the actual and the sensible in order to understand the serial succession of beings, right up to man, in its development in a purely natural manner. [21] Cp. my book: _Goethe’s Weltanschauung_, Weimar, 1897. And, further, J. G. Fichte’s penetration has thrown light into the being of the human ego, and shown the soul of man where to seek itself and what it is.[22] Hegel has extended the realm of thought over all the provinces of being, and striven to grasp in thought the entire sensible existence of Nature, as also the loftiest creations of the human spirit.[23] [22] Cp. ante, and the section upon Fichte in my book: _Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, vol. i., Berlin, S. Cronbach. [23] Cp. my presentation of Hegel in _Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, vol. i.