IV. Body, Soul and Spirit

By thinking, man is led above and beyond his own personal life. He acquires something that extends beyond his soul. He comes to take for granted his conviction that the laws of thought are in conformity with the laws of the world. And he feels at home in the world because this conformity exists. This conformity is one of the weighty facts through which man learns to know his own nature. Man searches in his soul for truth; and through this truth it is not only the soul that speaks, but the things of the world. That which is recognised as truth by means of thought has an independent significance, which refers to the things of the world, and not merely to one's own soul. In my delight at the starry heavens I live in my own inner being; the thoughts which I form for myself about the paths of heavenly bodies have the same significance for the thinking of every other person as they have for mine. It would be absurd to speak of my delight were I not in existence; but it is not in the same way absurd to speak of my thoughts, even without reference to myself. For the truth which I think to-day was true also yesterday; will be true to-morrow, although I concern myself with it only to-day. If a piece of knowledge gives me joy, the joy has significance just so long as it lives in me; the truth of the knowledge has its significance quite independently of this joy. By grasping the truth the soul connects itself with something that carries its value in itself. And this value does not vanish with the feeling in the soul any more than it arose with it. What is really truth neither arises nor passes away: it has a significance which cannot be destroyed. This is not contradicted by the fact that certain human “truths” have a value which is transitory, inasmuch as they are recognised after a certain period as partial or complete errors. A man must say to himself that truth exists in itself, and that his conceptions are only transient forms of eternal truths. Even he who says, like Lessing, that he contents himself with the eternal striving towards truth because the full, pure truth can, after all, only exist for a God, does not deny the eternity of truth but establishes it by such an utterance. For only that which has an eternal significance in itself can call forth an eternal striving after it. Were truth not in itself independent, if it acquired its value and significance through the feelings of the human soul, then it could not be the one unique goal for all mankind. One concedes its independent being by the very fact that one sets oneself to strive after it.