without
but within. This reality is now conceived as something which belongs to
a new kind of world, and this new world stands above the physical world.
Man, when he conceives of things in this manner, will be able to bear
the indifference of the physical course of existence towards the
spiritual potencies of his being. The natural process may seem to harass
and even destroy him; it matters not, for he has been led to a
conviction of the possession of qualities which have not come into
activity and power in any world _below_ him, and which have laws of
their own and goals spiritual in their nature. But all this will not
come about as a shower of rain descends. The spiritual life has to
insist on its superiority to the natural process, and to construct, with
the deepest energy of its being, ever richer moral and spiritual
contents for itself; for it is these contents which constitute the
growth of the meaning and value of the new world, as well as of its
indestructible reality beyond the process of Nature.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV [p.70]

RELIGION AND HISTORY

The subject of history has obtained a most prominent position in the
whole of Eucken's philosophy. All his books deal with the subject, and
in a manner resembling one another, whatever the particular subject
dealt with may be. But the most exhaustive treatment of history
presented in his volumes is to to be found in the chapter on history in
_Systematische Philosophie_("Kultur der Gegenwart," Teil I., Abteilung
VI.), and in the latter half of _The Truth of Religion_. In the former
volume Eucken deals with history in its relation to civilisation and
culture, and in the latter the place of history in the religions of the
world is strikingly expressed.

We have already noticed in the previous chapter how he set out to
discover the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of
knowing the physical world and in the constructions which form both the
basis and the apex of physical science. It was shown [p.71] here that a
life higher than the physical was present in order to be able to read
the meaning of the world. Such a life became a standpoint to view
Nature, and is the possession, more or less, of each individual. But
although the possession of individuals and _above_ Nature, the
consciousness that knows Nature is still carried beyond its own
individual life. The meaning of the physical world appears in
consciousn