to the steering of our social Ark
Over the barbarous waters unto land."[43]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII [p.128]

UNIVERSAL RELIGION

We have followed Eucken's system developing step by step from the stage
of knowing the world up through the evolution of spiritual life in
history, in the soul, in art, and in society. Everywhere the
investigation has revealed a progressive autonomy and duration of
spiritual life in the midst of all the kaleidoscopic aspects of the
objects which presented themselves to consciousness. Something spiritual
has persisted and evolved in the midst of all the changes, and the
changes have been utilised by this deeper potency of the soul. Through
the evolution of this spiritual potency changes have been brought about
in the external world, in human society, and in the individual soul.
This spiritual potency has bent things to subserve its own inherent
demands. The union of conation and cognition within the soul has brought
forth everything that has happened outside the natural process of the
physical world, and much even of that world [p.129] has been made
subservient to man. When the attention is turned to this "fact of facts"
concerning the work of spiritual life, individually and collectively, it
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