climbed by the
personalities of the past, coupled with the consciousness of the same
spiritual power in the present, that will enable Christianity to be
lived on such a "grand scale" in the present and the future. The
spiritual experiences of the past have become over-individual and
over-historical norms for our lives; but such norms are no more than
ideas until the will enters into a relation with them. When this
happens, the individual does not only observe a goal in the distance but
also starts to move towards such [p.79] a goal with the whole spiritual
energy of his nature. And every individual who moves in the direction of
such norms brings some contribution of value from the present to be
added to the norms of the past. The spiritual life is thus individual
and over-individual, historical and over-historical, transcendent and
immanent.

Eucken has worked for many years at this difficult problem--a problem so
important in the life of civilisation and religion. It has already been
hinted that the conception bears striking resemblances to aspects of
Hegel's philosophy. But there are differences. One of these was pointed
out long ago by Eucken: "The gist of religion is with Hegel nothing but
the absorption of the individual in the universal intellectual process.
How such a conception can be identified with moral regeneration of the
Christian type, with purification of the heart, is unintelligible to
us."[23] Eucken's philosophy, on the other hand, is pre-eminently a
spiritual activism. The life-process is shaped by the collective
activity of individuals; and when this activity slackens the ideals of
the over-world suffer. Man is thus called to be what he _ought to be_;
and in the process he heightens something of the value of the Ought. An
Ought and a Will are involved in the creativeness of the individual life
and of the Life-process; so that it is a mistake to conceive [p.80] of
Eucken's activism as some stirring of the individual to realise merely
his own needs as these present themselves to him from moment to moment.
He is called and destined to do infinitely more; he is to be a creator
of the Life-process and a carrier in the making of a new world; but all
this can be done only from the standpoint of a vision of a spiritual
life superior to history and to the individual himself. Vision and
action are to be ever present. In the light of the vision man becomes
more than he now is; through action the vision increase