I believe I am indicating correctly one of the fundamental characteristics of our age when I say that, at the present day, all human interests tend to center on human individuality. An energetic effort is being made to shake off every kind of authority. Nothing is accepted as valid, unless it springs from the roots of individuality. Everything which hinders the individual in the full development of his or her powers is thrust aside. The saying “Each one of us must choose his hero in whose footsteps he toils up to Olympus” no longer holds for us. We allow no ideals to be forced upon us. We are convinced that in each of us, if only we probe deep enough into the very heart of our being, there dwells something noble, something worthy of development. We no longer believe that there is a norm of human life to which we must all strive to conform. We regard the perfection of the whole as depending on the unique perfection of each single individual. We do not want to do what anyone else can do equally well. No, our contribution to the development of the world, however trifling, must be something which, by reason of the uniqueness of our nature, we alone can offer. Never have artists been less concerned about rules and norms in art than today. Each of them asserts their right to express, in the creations of art, what is unique in them. There are dramatists who write in dialect rather than conform to the standard diction which grammar demands.

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We only have conviction in the truth that appears to each of us inwardly.

Only truth can give us certainty in developing our individual powers. In someone tormented by doubts, the powers are weakened. Baffled by a world full of riddles, people cannot find an aim for their creative powers.

It is no longer enough merely to believe, we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths that are not quite clear to us. But the individuality that seeks to experience everything in the depths of its own being, is repelled by what it cannot understand. The only knowing that satisfies us is one that does not submit to outer norms, but rather springs from the inner life of the personality.

Nor do we want any kind of knowledge that has been frozen once and for all into rigid academic rules and stored away in encyclopedias as valid for all time. As individuals, we claim the right to start from the facts that we know, from our closest experiences, and from there ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive for certainty in knowledge, but each in his or her own way.

Our scientific doctrines, too, should no longer be presented as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. No one should want to give a scientific work a title like Fichte once did: "A Crystal Clear Report for the General Public on the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Reader to Understand." Today, no one should be compelled to understand. We demand no acceptance or agreement from anyone unless their own particular, individual need moves a person to a given view. Even the still immature human being, the child, should not be crammed with facts of knowledge. We seek, rather, to develop capacities so that one no longer needs to be compelled to understand, but wants to understand.

I am under no illusion as to the characteristics of the present times. I know how widespread the tendency is to be stereotypical, lacking all individuality. But I also know that many of my contemporaries are striving to orient their lives in the direction of the principles I have suggested here. To them I would dedicate this book. It is not meant to give "the only possible" path to Truth, but is meant to describe the path taken by one whose heart is set upon Truth.

This text leads the reader at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines in order to reach clearly defined positions. But the reader will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am fully convinced that one cannot do without soaring into the ethereal heights of concepts if one's experience is to penetrate life in all directions. Whoever is limited to the pleasures of the senses misses the sweetest enjoyments of life. The Oriental sages require their disciples to live a life of renunciation and asceticism for years before they impart to them their own wisdom. The Western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic practices as a preparation for science, but it does require the willingness to withdraw for a short time from the immediate impressions of life and enter the realm of pure thought.

The realms of life are many. For each of them special sciences develop. But life itself is a unity, and the more deeply the sciences try to penetrate into their separate realms, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be one supreme science which seeks in the separate sciences the elements needed to lead human beings back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks through his or her findings to develop awareness of the world and how it works. This book has a philosophical aim -- that science itself is here infused with the life of an organic whole. The separate sciences are stages on the way to this all-inclusive science. A similar relationship is found in the arts. The composers work is based on the theory of composition. This theory is a collection of principles which one has to know in order to compose. In composing, the laws of composition serve life, serve actual reality. In exactly the same sense, philosophy is an art. All genuine philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts. For them, human ideas were their artists' materials and scientific method their artistic technique. In this way abstract thinking attains concrete, individual life. Ideas become powerful forces in life. Then we do not merely have knowledge about things, but have made knowledge into a real, self-governing organism, ruled by its own laws. Our consciousness, alive and active, has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

How philosophy as an art is related to human freedom, what freedom is, and whether we do, or can, participate in it, are the principle problems dealt with in my book. All other scientific discussions are included solely because they ultimately throw light on these questions that, in my opinion, is the most immediate concern of humankind. These pages offer a "Philosophy of Freedom".

All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity if it did not strive to raise the value of existence of the human personality. The sciences attain true value only by showing that their results have significance for humanity. The final goal of the individual can never be the cultivation of a single faculty, but only the development of all the capacities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round development of the human being's whole nature.

This book, therefore, does not conceive the relationship between science and life in such a way that human beings must bow down before an idea and devote their powers to its service. On the contrary, it shows that we take possision of the world of ideas in order to use them for our own human aims, which go beyond the aims of mere science.

One must be able to face an idea and experience it; or else one falls into its bondage.