All this we know. The beast does not know, and what he does not know does not exist in his experienced world-around. But if the image of the past vanishes, the longing to give a deeper meaning to the passing vanishes also. And so it is with reference to the purely human macrocosm that we apply the oft- quoted line, which shall serve as motto for all that follows: _Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis_. From this we are led, without our noticing it, back to the space- problem, though now it takes on a fresh and surprising form. Indeed, it is as a corollary to these ideas that it appears for the first time as capable of solution—or, to speak more modestly, of enunciation—just as the time-problem was made more comprehensible by way of the Destiny- idea. From the moment of our awakening, the fateful and directed life appears in the phenomenal life as an experienced _depth_. Everything extends itself, but it is not yet “space,” not something established in itself but a self-extension continued from the moving here to the moving there. World-experience is bound up with the essence of _depth_ (i.e., _far-ness_ or _distance_). In the abstract system of mathematics, “depth” is taken along with “length” and “breadth” as a “third” dimension; but this trinity of elements of like order is misleading from the outset, for in our impression of the spatial world these elements are unquestionably _not_ equivalents, let alone homogeneous. Length and breadth are no doubt, experientially, a unit and not a mere sum, but they are (the phrase is used deliberately) simply a form of reception; they represent the purely sensuous impression. But depth is a representation of _expression_, of _Nature_, and with it begins the “world.” This discrimination between the “third” and the other two dimensions, so called, which needless to say is wholly alien to mathematics, is inherent also in the opposition of the notions of sensation and contemplation. Extension into depth converts the former into the latter; in fact, depth is the first and genuine dimension in the literal sense of the word.[180] In it the waking consciousness is active, whereas in the others it is strictly passive. It is the _symbolic content of a particular order_ as understood by one particular Culture that is expressed by this original fundamental and unanalysable element. The experiencing of depth (this is a premiss upon which all that follows is dependent) is an act, as entirely involuntary and necessary as it is creative, whereby the ego keeps its world, so to say, in subordination (zudiktiert erhält). Out of the rain of impressions the ego fashions a formal unit, a cinematic _picture_, which as soon as it is mastered by the understanding is subjected to law and the causality principle; and therefore, as the projection of an individual spirit it is transient and mortal.