as an idea and ideal; it is present to the individual, but it is not as
yet the possession of the individual except in a measure at the best. So
that the certainty includes within itself a _realisation_ and a further
_quest_. And the very nature of the quest involves a _struggle_ of the
whole nature. The certainty has gone so far as to show that the highest
good which presents itself to the soul is the "one thing needful," and
is possible of partial attainment. When all this burns within the soul,
something of the norm or ideal gets fixed within it, and the individual
starts to conquer more and more the new world into which he is now
landed. [p.104] Often the life is driven out of its course by alien
currents; a great deal of what the man has now left behind himself still
clings tenaciously to the new life, and the whole soul becomes an arena
often of a terrible conflict. The spiritual life and its content of a
new reality may be temporarily beaten in this warfare; but the battle is
finally won if ever the deepest within the soul has been touched by a
conviction of the eternal value and significance of the new life. The
conquest is followed by periods of calm and fruition. Here the deeper
energies gather themselves together; they grant a peace which the world
cannot give and cannot take away; they create new certainties, new
demands, and new attempts for the possession of a reality which is still
higher in its nature than anything that previously revealed itself.

Gradually the soul is forced more than ever to the conviction that the
whole matter is too serious to be of less than of _cosmic_ significance.
And it is out of this that the idea of the Godhead arises. It is not a
speculative dream but a conclusion forced upon the man by the actual
situation; the material for the conclusion is not anything which
descends into the soul with a ready-made content. Eucken states that
such a view of revelation belongs to the past history of the race. It is
now no less than a revelation springing from the very nature of the soul