Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/105

 this pattern from art, and in so far it might appear that science and art exist as means to an end, which is active life. But in this form of activity life itself is never completed and made absolute as a unity, but goes on into the infinite. Now, if life is to exist as such an absolute unity, it must be in another form. This form is that of pure thought, which produces the religious insight described in the third address, a form which, as absolute unity, is utterly incompatible with infinity of action and which can never be completely expressed in action. Hence both of them, thought as well as activity, are forms incompatible only in the world of appearance, but in the world beyond appearance they are both equally one and the same absolute life. One cannot say that thought exists, and exists as it does, for the sake of activity, or vice versa; one must say that both must simply exist, since life must be a completed whole in the phenomenal world, just as it is in the noumenal. Within this sphere, therefore, and according to this view, it is not nearly enough to say that science exerts an influence on life; science itself is life perpetual in itself. Or, to connect this with a well-known expression, one sometimes hears the question put: What is the use of all knowledge, if one does not act in accordance with it? This remark implies that knowledge is regarded as a means to action, and the latter as the real end. One could put the question the other way round and ask: How can we possibly act well without knowing what the Good is? This way of expressing it would regard knowledge as conditioning action. But both expressions are one-sided, and the truth is that both, knowledge as well as action, are in the same way inseparable elements of rational life.

60. But science is life perpetual in itself, as we have