experiencing what mankind has so often experienced, viz. that at the
very point where the negation reaches its climax and the danger reaches
the very brink of a precipice, the conviction dawns with axiomatic
certainty that there lives and stirs within us something which no
obstacle or enmity can ever destroy, and which signifies against all
opposition a kernel of our nature that can never get lost."[7]

The religio-philosophical problem is, then, a return to _the Whole of
Life_. It is here that any satisfactory answer can be found if found
[p.34] at all. It is necessary to investigate the final grounds as well
as the most complete structure of Life; it is further necessary to
discover whether the movement of Life necessarily leads to religion.
As Eucken invariably presents the truth of religion, the meaning and
significance of religion are to be found through self-consciousness.
This meaning of consciousness is twofold in nature. On the one hand,
it is something that may be _known_, and, on the other hand, it is
something that is _active_ through its own inherent energy. Here we find
a difference between what we may _know_ we are and what we _are_. Our
knowledge of what we are, the conditions of what we are, the history of
what we are--all these are a help for us to be what we are capable of
becoming. But all these are not the very movement of the becoming
itself. That movement is the resultant of the spiritual potency after
experiences in the form of cognition have marked out the path for
conation. This conation is an inheritance; it is present in the form of
dissatisfaction with the present situation; it moves in the direction of
a goal which is marked out by intellect. Now, however much this conation
may be analysed, it resists being decomposed into a number of elements
which make it up, for any such number, except in the very manner they
are united, could not produce the situation. In other words, whatever
the history of this conation may be, it is now a unity or whole. [p.35]