such a decision. If the issue should
turn in favour of the vitalistic conception, great gains are bound to
accrue to religion; for thus a warrant for a belief in a reality higher
in nature than what is termed physical will be established and shown to
be at work in the origin and constant "becoming" of physical phenomena.
The main point for us to-day is to hold fast to the superiority of
spiritual life to all that we know concerning the physical universe.
Unless this is done, we shall lose the deeper inward connections of
life, and shall be in danger of sinking back to the level of
naturalism--a level from which the culture and religion of the Western
world have partially emerged. Further, the spiritual nucleus of
Christianity [p.194] must be preserved over against the changes of
history. Changes in human society threaten Christianity more directly
than even the changes of Nature. These changes, in so far as they are
judged by a spiritual standard to be good, can be accepted by
Christianity, but only on the presupposition that Christianity has
learned how to differentiate between its Eternal Substance and its
temporal form of existence. The mere flow of the events of Time is
insufficient to produce a religion of substance and duration, for here
we are dependent upon the content of the moment. This aspect has been
already dealt with in the chapter on Religion and History.[66] A similar
necessity for differentiating between the Eternal and the temporary
which Eucken enforced in regard to Christianity applies in his view to
all the movements of the world. Whatever form--scientific,
philosophical, social, theological--these movements may take, they have
all to find their meaning in a Standard which is Eternal. Whenever such
a Standard has been recognised, mankind was able to move in an upward
direction; whenever it was absent, the complexities of knowledge and
life increased and had no light to reflect upon themselves, and no power
to [p.195] raise themselves to a higher plane. When the Eternal and
Substantial is present at the governing centre of life, all of reality
that can possibly present itself to man is viewed in an entirely
different light. Great spiritual movements cannot possibly arise from
any shallower source. There must be present in all such movements a
consciousness of something of Eternal value, and a faith in the
possibility of attaining a higher grade of reality in the midst of all
the fragmentary factors w