these occupy so much of the attention as to prevent man from knowing and
experiencing what _his own life_ is or what it is capable of becoming.
Man has penetrated into the secrets of Nature as well as into the past
of human society through close and constant attention to external
things. [p.38] He has been able to gather fragments together, piece them
into each other, and through this frame laws concerning them. It is thus
that the external world and society have come to mean more to a human
being than to an animal. The animal is probably almost entirely the
creature of its instincts and of the percepts which present themselves
to it from moment to moment, and which largely disappear. But man rises
above this situation. The external world and everything that has ever
happened on its face are not merely objects external to himself, which
contain all their qualities in themselves. Somebody has to experience
all this, and that somebody that experiences all this is _mental_ in his
nature, however much this nature has been conditioned by _physical_
things in the past or present.

Eucken emphasises this fundamental fact in all his books. Wherever a
being is capable of _experiencing_ impressions and of giving _meanings_
to these, we are bound to conclude that the power which does this is
something quite other than physical in its nature. It may be that such
a power has never been known except in connection with what is physical;
it may be that various chemical changes give the truer and clearer
explanation of its origin, as far as its origin can be known at all;
it may be that there was nothing of the _mental_ visible in the early
stages of its development; but all this is very different from stating
that [p.39] no potentiality for mental evolution was there. And it is
this potentiality which is the issue at stake. We have no warrant for
stating that it does not exist because it does not lend itself to be
verified by the senses. Where does _mind_ manifest itself to the senses?