t the
_intermediate_ realities which presented themselves as over-individual
norms and ideals are realities of cosmic significance. The Godhead is
now _possessed_. As Jacob Boehme presents it: "From my youth up I have
sought only one thing: the salvation of my soul, the means of gaining
possession of the Kingdom of God." Here, as Professor Boutroux[33]
points out, "Jacob Boehme learnt from the mystics what it means to
possess God. One must take care, so these masters [p.106] teach, not to
liken the possession of God to the possession of anything material. God
is spirit, _i.e._ for the man who understands the meaning of the term, a
generating power previous to all essence, even the divine. God is spirit,
_i.e._ pure will, both infinite and free, with the realisation of its own
personality as its object. Henceforward, God cannot be accepted by any
passive operation. We possess Him only if He is created within us. To
possess God is to live the life of God." This is on lines precisely
those of Eucken, and something of this nature seems to be gaining ground
to-day in a strong idealistic school in Germany. We may soon discover
that a true mysticism is the flowering of the bud of knowledge; that
true knowledge constitutes a tributary which runs into the ocean of the
Infinite Love of the Divine and becomes the most precious possession of
the soul.[34]

Eucken touches on this subject in an extremely interesting chapter in
his _Truth of Religion_. "This is a question of fact, and not of
argument.... Because we convinced ourselves that things were so, we
gained the standpoint of spiritual experience over against a merely
psychological standpoint. For the [p.107] latter standpoint occupies
itself with purely psychic processes, and in the province of religion
especially it occupies itself with the conditions of the stimulations
of will and feeling, which are not able to prove anything beyond
themselves. The spiritual experience, on the contrary, has to do with
life's contents and with the construction of reality; it need not
trouble itself concerning the connections of the world except in a
subsidiary manner, because it stands in the midst of such connections,
and without these it cannot possibly exist. Man never succeeds in
reaching the Divine unless the Divine works and is acknowledged in his
own life; what is omitted here in the first step is never again
recovered and becomes more and more impossible as life proceeds on its
mere