is impossible to consider it as a mere addendum to the natural process,
however closely connected it may be with that process. Sufficient has
been said to prove the superiority of spiritual life over the whole
aspects and manifestations of Nature. The question, then, cannot be laid
aside concerning the nature of the life of the spirit in itself. What is
it now? What is it capable of becoming? Why should its evolution snap at
its highest point? Why cannot the power that has accomplished so much in
the history of our world, and has always done this the more efficiently
the more a remove from the realm of the sensuous took place--why cannot
such a power proceed farther on its course? And what limits can be set
to it? The pertinency of such and other questions cannot be doubted. The
spiritual life has ascended too high and accomplished too much to be
treated with indifference. And yet that is the way it is being treated
only too widely to-day. Men hesitate to grant to it a reality of its own
because of its close connection with mechanical and chemical elements.
They half affirm and half deny its reality. The question arises, What is
reality? Eucken agrees with the great idealists of the world that
reality in its highest manifestation is [p.130] something that pertains
to spirit and meaning rather than to matter and its behaviour.[44] Our
rigid clinging to a meaning of reality from the side of its physical
history is doubtless a remnant of a race--memory which may be largely
physical in its nature. We find a difficulty in conceiving as yet a
reality existing in itself--existing in itself though material elements
have helped it on its upward course. But even here it is not at all
certain that nothing but material elements have operated in this
fundamental process. Men have by now known enough of the connection of
mind with lower processes in order to be aware of a mystery present in
the whole operation--a mystery which does not yield itself to the
senses.