f affairs, and in this
case the reality proves the possibility. "This primal phenomenon," he
says, "overflows all explanation. It has, as the fundamental condition
of all spiritual life, a universal axiomatic character." Again he says,
"The wonder of wonders is the human made divine, through God's superior
power." "The problem surpasses the capacity of the human reason." For
taking up this position, Eucken is sharply criticised by some writers.

When we approach the problem of the nature of the Absolute in itself,
the main difficulty that arises is whether God is a personal being. God,
says Eucken, is "an Absolute Spiritual Life in all its grandeur, above
all the limitations of man and the world of experience--a Spiritual Life
that has attained to a complete subsistence in itself, and at the same
time to an encompassing of all reality." The divine is for Eucken the
ultimate spirituality that inspires the work of all spiritual
personalities. When in our life of fight and action we need inspiration,
we find "in the very depths of our own nature a reawakening, which is
not a mere product of our activity, but a salvation straight from God."
God, then, is the ultimate spirituality which inspires the struggling
personality, and gives to it a sense of unity and confidence. Eucken
does not admit that God is a personality in the sense that we are, and
deprecates all anthropomorphic conceptions of God as a personal being.
Indeed, to avoid the tendency to such conceptions he would prefer the
term "Godhead" to "God." Further considerations of the nature of God can
only lead to intellectual speculations. For an activistic philosophy,
such as Eucken's philosophy is, it would seem sufficient for life and
action to know that all attempts at the ideal in life, originate in, and
are inspired by, the Absolute Spiritual Life, that is by God.

We cannot discuss fully the relation of human and divine without, too,
dealing with the ever urgent problem of religion. This is a problem in
which Eucken is deeply interested, and concerning which he has written
one of his greatest works--_The Truth of Religion_--a work that has been
described as one of the greatest apologies for religion ever written.

What is religion? Most people perhaps would apply the term to a system
of belief concerning the Eternal, usually resting upon a historical or
traditional basis. Others would include in the term the reverence felt
for the Absolute by the contemplative