Soul ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯➛ World \——————————————————————————————————v———————————————————————————————/ Life, Direction Extension Destiny-Experience Causal Knowledge The uniquely The occurring and irrevocable constantly-possible “Fact” “Truth” Physiognomic tact (instinct) Systematic criticism (reason) ↓ [Crossed downward ↓ arrows] Consciousness Consciousness as _servant_ of Being as _master_ of Being The world-image of “History” The world-image of "Nature" _Life-experience_ _Scientific methods_ Image of the Past Religion. Natural Science Constructive Contemplation Theoretical: Myth and Dogma. Hypothesis (Historian, Tragic Dramatist) Practical: Cult. Technique to _investigate_ Destiny Direction into the Future Constructive Action (Statesman) to _be_ Destiny XI Is it permissible to fix upon one, any one, group of social, religious, physiological or ethical facts as the “cause” of another? “Certainly,” the rationalistic school of history, and still more the up-to-date sociology, would reply. That, they would say, is what is meant by our comprehending history and deepening our knowledge of it. But in reality, with “civilized” man there is always the implicit postulate of an underlying _rational_ purpose—without which indeed his world would be meaningless. And there is something rather comic in the most unscientific freedom that he allows himself in his _choice_ of his fundamental causes. One man selects this, another that, group as _prima causa_—an inexhaustible source of polemics—and all fill their works with pretended elucidations of the “course of history” on natural-science lines. Schiller has given us the classical expression of this method in one of his immortal banalities, the verse in which the “Weltgetriebe” is stat “durch Hunger und durch Liebe”; and the Nineteenth Century, progressing from Rationalism to Materialism, has made this opinion canonical. The cult of the useful was set up on high. To it Darwin, in the name of his century, sacrificed Goethe’s Nature-theory. The organic logic of the facts of life was supplanted by a mechanics in physiological garb. Heredity, adaptation, natural selection, are utility-causes of purely mechanical connotation. The historical _dispensations_ were superseded by a naturalistic _movement_ “in space.” (But _are there_ historical or spiritual “processes,” or life-