m in regard to
the non-sensuous structure of mind: the _Thing and its relations_
monopolise them so completely that they are blind to every reality
non-sensuous in its nature, although they possess some amount of such
reality in their very knowledge and adoration of the _Thing_. Our
troubles will continue to accumulate, and the prospect of the future
will grow extremely dark, if the grip which physical things have on the
world to-day be not relaxed. The very physical powers which we have
helped to create, and which hitherto have proved of service to men, will
mean our destruction unless something of the _More_ which is beyond them
be found as a possession and an activity within the governing centre of
life. This is Eucken's [p.214] plea over against the various forms of
the Naturalism and Materalism of our day. These are not enough for man.
But man is so slow in recognising this fact. The appeal of Spiritual
Idealism is considered to be something which is vague and useless. Our
deepest reality and the source of all true energy have been robbed of
their efficacy by our absorption in scraping together physical elements
of chaff and dust. How often does Eucken show our dire poverty in the
midst of all this external plenty! The all-sufficiency of all forms of
Naturalism condemns itself through its failure to pass beyond itself.
Had there not been some who did pass beyond the _Thing and its
relations_ the spiritual values of the race would have been annihilated.
"As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine
knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that
what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a
totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself
which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise
if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is
rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is the
failure of certitude in regard to the presence of a spiritual existence;
it is the unclearness concerning the _inner_ conditions of all mental
and spiritual activity which a shallow and popular philosophy [p.215]
presents--it is all this which turns natural science into a
materialistic naturalism."[76] The strength of materialistic _monism_
does not lie in any proof of there being nothing but mechanism in this
wide universe, but in its energetic propaganda against certain
traditional theolog