been implanted within human nature; the latter shows that more is in
existence than we have already possessed. Spiritual norms never decrease
but increase in splendour the nearer man is to their attainment.
Something is here discovered which is not found in the world; it is a
kind of transcendent summit, a mysterious sublimity. And an approach
towards this summit produces experiences never to be possessed in any
other kind of way. As Eucken himself puts it: "If this sublimity
superior to the world secures an abode in the soul, and, indeed, becomes
the inmost and most intimate part of our being, and enables us to
participate in the self-subsistence of infinity, it opens up within us a
fathomless depth, in which the existence that lies nearest to our hands
is swallowed up, and it makes us a problem to ourselves--a problem which
transforms the whole of life--whilst it enables us to understand and to
handle what at the outset appeared to be its whole life as a mere phase
and appearance. Thus it is the same religion which opens out from God to
man and which simultaneously opens itself out in man himself and becomes
a great mystery to him. Therefore, in the idea of God the intimate and
the ultimate must both be present if religion is to reach its full
development and to [p.162] avoid the dangers which everywhere threaten
it."[58] Both these aspects interlace in one Life-process; the unity is
present in the manifold, and the ultimate present in the intimate.

According to Eucken, it is out of such an experience as we have noticed
that the idea of immortality becomes a firm belief and faith within the
soul. The idea cannot be proved scientifically, simply because its
spiritual content is greater than anything which is _below_ it. The
whole proof lies within the experience itself at this, its highest
summit. "The Infinite Power and Love that has grounded a new spontaneous
nature in man, over against a dark and hostile world, will conserve such
a new nature and its spiritual nucleus, and shelter it against all