ial stages of knowing the world. Material of a kind other than the
physical has presented itself to it. Thus, in will-relations we find the
material itself belonging to a higher order of existence than the
material of the physical world. It is then what might be expected when
the spiritual life, within the domain of events of human history, forms
a Life-system higher in its nature than the natural process.

Eucken then concludes that Nature and History require for their
interpretation the presence of a spiritual life. Nature involves the
spiritual in the very power of mind in knowing external things. He would
not state that the physical course of things is enough in itself to
prove the existence of spiritual life. We are uncertain of any working
towards [p.90] definite ends in Nature. The whole matter belongs to the
region of speculation; and speculation based on something other than
observation and experiment has greatly retarded progress in connection
with the truest interpretation of the highest things. Eucken would
really agree here with the physical scientist pure and simple that,
however far back the investigations of the physical world are carried,
the scientist does not seem to come to anything at the furthest point
which bears more affinity to what is mental than was to be discovered at
the point from which he set out.

But in History it is different. We are here dealing with material which
is not in space, and which has not resulted through any mere succession
in time. The material, in fact, is timeless, because it is a synthesis
of factors which cannot be reckoned mechanically, and which requires a
great span of time in order to be constructed by the spirit of man. At
this level the spiritual life has gained a reality which is
over-personal as well as personal. It is true that this over-personal
reality is in the _mind_ of the individual; but that does not mean that
the reality is no more than a private experience. Its content is clearly
now higher and more significant than the individual's own life. That we
cannot locate in space this over-personal aspect of the ideal is
probably a disadvantage. But this cannot be helped; and [p.91] it cannot
possibly be otherwise, simply because the over-personal reality is not a
spatial thing. The same may be said of the content of individual
experience, even when it does not for the time being hold before itself
any ideal. But such over-personal elements mean more than wa