reality of their own, we have only just touched, here and there, [p.135]
upon their _cosmic_ significance. The matter thus reaches a further
point than we have yet touched. What justification is there for granting
spiritual life this cosmic significance?

Attention has already been called to the fact of a distinction between
nature and spirit. But attention has now to be directed to the necessity
of emphasising the reality of spirit. The nature of spirit is revealed
most clearly in the life and content of human consciousness. No
anthropomorphic standard from without can come to our aid to establish
the existence of spirit. The standard is to be found within the
consciousness itself. A distinction has to be made between _nature and
spirit_. However much they resemble each other in the beginnings of
life, spirit has travelled far beyond nature or matter. It has developed
for itself an essence which may be designated as _substance_. The chief
characteristic of matter is that it occupies space; but spirit, though
connected with, and largely conditioned by, matter as it exists in
space, is now something quite other--something which has to be granted
an existence of its own, and which forms the beginning of a _new kind of
world_ and unfolds a _new kind of reality_.

The reality of spiritual life is not discovered in anything which is
external to life; it is to be found in life itself. The reality is
revealed and, indeed, created by an act of the spirit of man. Such an
act must be the act of one's [p.136] own deepest being. But although
such a new reality is not to be found in anything external to life, yet
the very revelation points, as we have already observed, to something
which is over-individual. Even the meaning of the reality itself, from
its _immanent_ side, is something quite other than the natural life and
its contents. It is something revealed, but not as yet possessed; it is