uch
a new nature and its spiritual nucleus, and shelter it against all
perils and assaults, so that life as the bearer of life eternal can
never be wholly lost in the stream of time." We are here in a region
farthest removed from sense and understanding; but the remarkable thing
is that the conviction of immortality does not dawn on any lower level;
it is not on the lower levels a portion of spiritual experience. It
seems as if an element of immortality is only to be gained at a certain
height of the spiritual life. On all levels below, men seek for proofs
in the analogies of Nature, in the supposed return of the spirits of the
dead, and in the craving found in their own lives. All these proofs have
one thing in common: they [p.163] are all of a lower order of value than
the meaning which the content of experience gives to immortality on its
highest level. For at this highest level the proof is not something
happening outside the man; it is the deepest part of his own being which
now actually possesses a taste of life eternal. It seems, then, that
there is no answer to the problem outside ourselves, because it is not
something to be known, but something to be experienced after long toil
and a stirring of the nature to its lowest depths in the drift of all
that is highest and best.[59] It is sufficient for us to possess a life
which is spiritual and timeless in its nature: and when such a life is
possessed, empirical proofs are neither demanded nor desired. It is
within one's own new and spiritual world that proofs are now discovered,
and they are timeless and spaceless in their own intrinsic nature. "Do
this, and thou shalt live." If the man has to negate all concerning the
preservation of his natural individuality, the new world he has gained
for his soul will have abundant affirmation within itself, without the
support of any earthly props. It is his own highest life which testifies
to him that "death does not count" at all.

Eucken's whole plea is that spiritual life at the point of its highest
manifestation should not be interpreted by anything below itself.
[p.164] We have already noticed how, on lower levels, spiritual life was
even there interpreted by its _norms_, and not by its connections with
what was _below itself_. The disappearance of miracle in religion is an
indispensable stage which must be passed over. It is necessary only on a
mid-level of religion, and has really been far more of the nature of a
symb