[p.28] In order to understand Eucken's conceptions concerning Spirit,
Whole, Totality, and other similar terms, this fact has to be borne in
mind. The capacity for _more_ is present in man's nature. It may remain
dormant in a large measure, but it is not entirely so, as witnessed by
the fact that men have scaled heights far above Nature and the ordinary
life of the day. And humanity, on the whole, has climbed to a height to
give some degree of meaning to the life of the day--a meaning superior
to physical impressions, and which is able to see somewhat behind,
around, and beyond itself. Wherever this happens, it comes about through
the presence and activity of the life of the spirit within man. The
spiritual life is, then, a possession of man, but it is a possession
only in so far as it is used. It is subject to helps and hindrances from
the world; it is not freed from its own content; it can never say,
"So far and no further according to the bond and the duty"; it has to
undergo a toilsome struggle before it can ever become the possessor of
the new kind of world to which it has a right.

In all this we notice something in the _new world of consciousness_
similar to what happens within the physical world. In the world of
nature no animate (and probably no inanimate) thing has received a
_donum_ which it may preserve as its own without effort. Everything that
has value has to be preserved through [p.29] struggles necessitated by
the changing conditions of the impinging environment as well as
struggles between contrary characteristics within the nature of the
thing itself. Otherwise nothing could maintain its identity and
individuality at all. There must be some core in everything which exists
as an individual thing. This individuality is seen more clearly as the
scale of existence is mounted. In the organic world each thing lives in
a more or less degree its own life, however much that life is