What is all this that has happened? What has brought it about? What is the individual potency that knows the world and passes beyond it? What are the ideals and norms which revealed themselves in the co-operative movements of humanity, and only revealed themselves when humanity was at its highest attainable level? Enough has been said to show that it is more than Nature, that characteristics are found within it entirely unknown in Nature. We are bound to take this more into account, for it has constructed all the gains of mankind. What can it be, in the individual efforts of the soul and in the ideal constructions of science and the higher ethical and religious constructions of life, but a reality higher than sense and outside the categories of space and time? What better name can be given to it than a Spiritual Life in contradistinction to the life of Nature?
When this life of the mind and spirit of man is acknowledged, it is seen to be the beginning of a new order of existence. There appears within it a new kind of reality. It is the standpoint from which natural science itself has arisen. Such an acknowledgment of life as a new kind of reality alters in an essential manner the whole view of the world. Nature now signifies not the whole of things, but only a step beyond which the cosmic process progresses. Two worlds, instead of one world, now appear—one growing out of the other, but keeping a connection still with the other. Nature consequently gains a deeper significance of meaning when we recognise that it gives birth to mind and spirit—characteristics which merge into consciousness, values, and ideals. Nature is not discarded in our new view, but it takes a secondary place. The primary place must be given to the spiritual life—the life which is active as an organisation in knowing and being and doing. And when this truth is realised, this life of mental and spiritual activity becomes the centre from which the new reality will obtain an ever greater content. The deepest aspect of reality is then discovered, not without but within. This reality is now conceived as something which belongs to a new kind of world, and this new world stands above the physical world. Man, when he conceives of things in this manner, will be able to bear the indifference of the physical course of existence towards the spiritual potencies of his being. The natural process may seem to harass and even destroy him; it matters not, for he has been led to a conviction of the possession of qualities which have not come into activity and power in any world below him, and which have laws of their own and goals spiritual in their nature. But all this will not come about as a shower of rain descends. The spiritual life has to insist on its superiority to the natural process, and to construct, with the deepest energy of its being, ever richer moral and spiritual contents for itself; for it is these contents which constitute the growth of the meaning and value of the new world, as well as of its indestructible reality beyond the process of Nature.
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION AND HISTORY
The subject of history has obtained a most prominent position in the whole of Eucken's philosophy. All his books deal with the subject, and in a manner resembling one another, whatever the particular subject dealt with may be. But the most exhaustive treatment of history presented in his volumes is to to be found in the chapter on history in Systematische Philosophie("Kultur der Gegenwart," Teil I., Abteilung VI.), and in the latter half of The Truth of Religion. In the former volume Eucken deals with history in its relation to civilisation and culture, and in the latter the place of history in the religions of the world is strikingly expressed.
We have already noticed in the previous chapter how he set out to discover the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of knowing the physical world and in the constructions which form both the basis and the apex of physical science. It was shown here that a life higher than the physical was present in order to be able to read the meaning of the world. Such a life became a standpoint to view Nature, and is the possession, more or less, of each individual. But although the possession of individuals and above Nature, the consciousness that knows Nature is still carried beyond its own individual life. The meaning of the physical world appears in consciousness, through the syntheses it forms, as objective, although it is not an object of sense but of thought; and, further, this very objectivity subsists in the form of generalisations and meanings which create standards for each individual in his relations with the physical world. Eucken then concludes that there is a trans-subjective aspect present in the conclusions of physical science itself.[19] And it is on this fact that he bases the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of knowing at all. But it is evident that the whole of man's potencies and relations are not confined to the knowing of Nature and framing interpretations concerning it. There are other provinces to which man is related—other objects besides physical ones to which his attention is called to frame interpretations concerning them also. History is one of these provinces. The subject-matter here is entirely different from the subject-matter of physical science. In the latter the objects are physical; in the former the objects are not things, but will-relations.[20] We are in history dealing with the effects of heredity and physical environment upon all organic life—man included. But it has been already shown that man, though rooted in the natural world and dependent upon it, is still the possessor of a world which is above the physical. Man's roots in Nature have been unearthed in a large measure; and his dependence on the world from which he has emerged is greater than was suspected, and probably it will be discovered in the future that he is still more dependent on what is below him. But however deep his connection with Nature may prove itself to be, he will still remain an unsolved problem if he is coolly stripped of all the qualities he has gained since he emerged from the bosom of Nature.
We are consequently led to the higher aspects of history where the centre of gravity of the matter lies in the relations of wills.
By will-relations is meant the impact of individuals upon one another from the side of meaning. It is through the expressions of the meaning of our concepts that we are able to construct an intelligible world. The individual's deeper reality does not consist in the percept we obtain of him, but in the mental attitude he has expressed towards a mental attitude of ours. The clothing of meaning is certainly physical; there is our friend's physical body in front of us, and his speech is audible in a physical sense to physical ears. But neither body nor speech is absolutely necessary for the expression of meaning to another. We have neither seen nor heard many of the individuals who have exercised great influence over our lives. Words have answered the purpose. By this is not meant that we have not lost something of great value in having to depend on print alone. Something of every individual reveals itself in his body and speech which is missed when we have to depend on paper and ink as mediums of meaning. But meaning is something other than its medium; it is a mental or spiritual content. This content has to be classified and interpreted. The interpretation forms here again, as on the level of natural science, syntheses and generalisations larger than any one individual. These are the resultants of mind with mind and will with will. When human beings come into contact with each other, there originates a state of things in which something is thought and done. What is thought and done deals with situations outside the situation of each individual. The interpretation of these situations is, therefore, an objective reality which becomes a norm for each individual. Mankind has thus created a reality which is beyond that of the content of each individual's experience as an individual.