After the shattering of the universal redemption therapies, as they appear notably in religion with all its ramifications in art, philosophy and science, individual salvation for which the modern type strives, is to be found only in individual happiness, but this cannot be accepted because of the ethical guilt conflict of the individual. Love, whose failure as individual redemption therapy is now evident, was the last attempt to transform the individual possibility of happiness with the other into an individual salvation through the other. While happiness can only be found individually and then also means individual redemption, in its essence redemption is only to be found universally because it comes to a climax just in the abrogation of individuality. If individuation has advanced so far that the individual can no longer find salvation in the universal through the universal ideologies, but must seek them individually, then there remains no other possibility of salvation except the release from individual self consciousness in death. This destructive form of salvation as it is manifested in the growing tendency to suicide of the modern individual, represents indeed the greatest victory of the individual will over the life impulse and all ethical inhibitions, but no longer works therapeutically, not even when, as in psychoanalytic theory, it is presented in the scientific garb of a death instinct. For with men even the biological factors are placed in large measure under the control of will and thus certainly are also exposed to the danger of manifesting themselves destructively because of the guilt problem. We know just from psychoanalytic experiences that men can sicken and die when they will it, that, however, just as often in a miraculous fashion they can escape death—if they will it. It is just this conflict of the individual will with the biological compulsive forces that constitutes the essentially human problem, in its creative as in its destructive manifestations.
If the will is affirmed and not negated or denied, there results the life instinct, and happiness, like salvation, is found in life and experience, in the creation and acceptance of both without having to ask how, whither, what and why. Questions which originate from the division of will into guilt consciousness and self consciousness cannot be answered through any psychological or philosophic theory for the answer is the more disillusioning, the more correct it is. For happiness can only be found in reality, not in truth, and redemption never in reality and from reality, but only in itself and from itself.