the concept of the spiritual life at this stage of our inquiry, for it
is the pivot around which the whole of Eucken's philosophy turns.

The essence of religion is conceived by him as the possession by man of
an eternal existence in the midst of time; of the presence of an
over-world in the midst of this world [p.31]--guiding man to the
revelation of a Divine Will.

This is Eucken's main thesis, and connected with this thesis is the fact
that religion can come to birth in the soul of man only through a
conquest of the ordinary, natural world which surrounds him. The world
which surrounds him hinders more than it helps the birth of religion in
the soul. The aim of religion is therefore not the perfecting of man in
a natural sense, but the bringing about of a union of human nature and
the Divine. Religion must therefore include a "world-denial and a
world-renewal." There is not enough for man's deeper nature either in
the physical world or in the ordinary life of the hour. The natural
world knows of no complete self-subsistence, for everything is connected
with its environment, and it is in this connection with its environment
that life below man largely obtains its existence. But in man we
discover a transition stage from the sensuous to the non-sensuous, and
it is in the latter that the meaning of the former can be obtained. The
history of civilisation and culture is a history of this all-important
fact. The meaning of man is, therefore, not to be found in his
relationship to the physical world, but in his own consciousness.
Although we may not be aware of it, consciousness is the power which, in
the long and slow progress of the ages, has overcome the sensuous and
made it subservient to the [p.32] meaning and value which its own
content of experience has presented. The necessity and proof of religion
are not then discovered in anything in the external world, but in the