ped the lives of individuals and nations in
varied degrees. These ideals are not to remain merely objects of
knowledge; they are to become portions of the inmost experiences of the
soul. This they cannot become without the [p.54] calling out of the
deepest energy of the individual. His fragmentary spiritual life--small
as it is--still calls for _more_ of its own nature, and this _more_ has
been seen in the distance as something of infinite value.[11] A
mountain, as it were, has to be climbed; dark ravines have to be gone
through; and rivers have to be swum across. The whole vision means no
less than an entrance into _a new kind of world_, the scaling to a new
kind of existence, and a conquest which will make the pilgrim a
participator in that which is Divine. A struggle has to take place,
because so much that belongs to the life, on the level where it now
stands, belongs to a world _below_ it. Impulses and passions, the narrow
outlook, the timidity and hollowness of the "small self"--all these,
which have previously remained at the centre of life, have to be thrust
to the periphery of existence. So that an entrance into the highest
spiritual world is not merely something to _know_, but far rather
something to _do_ and to _be_. This is the meaning of Eucken's activism.
It is not the busying of ourselves over trifles; there is no need of
encouragement in that direction. It is rather the inward glance on the
nature of the over-individual ideals; it is a deep and constant
concentration upon their value and significance, in order that the soul
may plant itself on the shores of the _over-world_. It is in granting a
[p.55] higher mode of existence to these ideals, and in preserving them
as the possession of the soul, that man finds the ever greater meaning
of that spiritual life which was present within him from the very
beginning of his enterprise. The process of forcing an entrance into
this over-world has to be repeated time after time. There are no enemies
in front, but the man is surrounded by them from around and behind him.
The indifference, in a large measure of the natural process, the rigid
instincts of mere self-preservation, the temptation to smugness and
ease, the cold conclusions of the understanding when satisfied with
explanations from the physical world, the hardness of the heart--these
and many other enemies fight for supremacy, and the soul is often torn
in the struggle. The struggle continues for a great leng