olated
impressions mingling with a potency different in nature from themselves,
and transmuting them to its own nature in the forms of self-consciousness,
meanings, values. This potency--this Whole--although present from the
very beginning as the condition of becoming conscious of anything, yet
remains in constant change. Impressions pour in through the senses,
enter the Whole that is already present; they drop their content into
that Whole by means of the senses, and the miracle of transmutation,
entirely mysterious, takes place.

This point is not new. It is a fact well [p.30] known in the history of
psychology, and played a very prominent part in the psychology of Kant.
But Eucken has deepened the conception in such a way as to be able to
rid himself of the postulates of Kant concerning God, Freedom, and
Immortality. The germs of these, according to the meaning of Eucken,
are within the spiritual life itself, and not transcendent in the form
presented by Kant or external as presented by Hegel. There is, then,
within consciousness a process in many respects analogous to the natural
process. And as the meaning of the physical universe has become clearer
through the conception of evolution, so the meaning of consciousness,
originating in a higher world than Nature, will become clearer if viewed
in a similar manner. Let us then turn to one of the most important
aspects of Eucken's work, Evolution and Religion.

Eucken's deepest, and consequently the most difficult, account of the
meaning of religion is to be found in his _Truth of Religion_ and his
_Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt._ It is important to deal with
the concept of the spiritual life at this stage of our inquiry, for it
is the pivot around which the whole of Eucken's philosophy turns.

The essence of religion is conceived by him as the possession by man of
an eternal existence in the midst of time; of the presence of an
over-world in the midst of this world [p.31]--guiding man to the
revelation of a Divine Will.

This is Eucken's main thesis, and connected with this thesis is the fact
that religion can come to birth in the soul of man only through a
conquest of the ordinary, natural world which surrounds him. The world
which surrounds him hinders more than it helps the birth of religion in
the soul. The aim of religion is therefore not the perfecting of man in
a natural sense, but the bringing about of a union of human nature and
the Divine. Religion