on such lines into "sickly sentimentalism" and "watery wishes,"
and nothing great issues out of our activities on the surface of life.
History becomes no more than a succession of changes of which the later
are of no more value than the earlier. All this happens, because there
is no Eternal--no over-world of over-individual and over-historical
values--present. In a large measure our very religion grants us here but
little help. It is either a contemplation of certain events in the past
which were delivered for once and for all or an immersion in the social
environment. [p.86] We remain aliens to the truth that these events can
be repeated to-day. We are not convinced as to the possibilities of our
own nature and of the realisation of the Divine in the making of
history. Our age is an age of stripping things of their connections and
qualities and of finding their essence in what they _were_ and not in
what they _are_ and _ought to be_. Even history is brought back to its
origin from savagery; and its explanation is sought in its _beginnings_
and not in its _ends_; the aspirations of the soul are supposed to be
explained in their totality when biological and psychological names are
given them; enthusiasm and conviction, which leave the level of the
daily rut and the conventionalities of society, are branded as signs of
shallowness and even of insanity. We are in the midst of plenty, and
feed on husks. The situation will not be altered until we turn from
intellect to intuition--which is no other than a turn from the mere way
in which things are put together to what the things essentially are and
ought to be in their meaning and value. When this happens, a new meaning
will be given to history, and the events of the day will be illumined
and valued in the light of the standard of spiritual ideals. Can we then
doubt that there works in history a Divine element which is
over-historical, and which alone gives their meanings and values to the
events of history itself?

* * * * *

CHAPTER V [p.87]

RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY

It has been noticed in the two previous chapters how Eucken discovered
the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of knowing
any object in the physical world. And the presence of such a life
enables the percept to turn into a concept. Such a concept is something
far removed from the level of the sensuous object or of its mere
perception. We are in this ve