But what is the relation of the natural to the spiritual life?  In the first place, the spiritual cannot be derived from the natural, inasmuch as the former is immensely superior to the latter, and that not merely in degree, but in its very essence.  The spiritual is entirely on a higher plane of reality, and there cannot be transition from the natural to the spiritual world.  The natural has its limitations, and beyond these cannot go.  So far as the natural world is concerned man can never rise above seeking for pleasure, and making expediency and social approbation the standards of life, hence there is little wonder that those ethical teachers who make nature their basis, deny the possibility of action that is unselfish and free.  “The Spiritual Life,” however, as Eucken says, “has an independent origin, and evolves new powers and standards.”

Neither do the two aspects run together in life in parallel lines.  On the contrary, the spiritual life cannot manifest itself at all until a certain stage of development is reached in nature.  It would seem impossible to conceive of the animal rising above its animal instincts and tendencies; its whole life is conditioned by its animal nature and its environment.  Man stands at the junction of the stages between the purely natural and the purely spiritual.  On the one hand, he is a member of the animal world, he has its instincts, its desires and its limitations; on the other hand, he has within him the germ of spirituality.  He belongs to both worlds, the natural and the spiritual.  He cannot shake off the natural and remain a man—­to separate the two means death to man as we know him.  But there is a great difference between his position in the natural world and his position in the spiritual world.  He seems to be the last word in the world of nature, he has reached heights far beyond those reached by any other flesh and blood.  He is, so far as we know, the culminating point of natural evolution—­the final possibility in the natural world.  But the stage of nature only represents the first stage in the development of the universe.

There is an infinitely higher stage of life, the spiritual life.  And if man is the final point of progress in the world of nature, he is, in his primitive state, only at the threshold of the spiritual world.  But he is not an entire stranger to the spiritual—­the germ is in him, and the spiritual is consequently not an alien world for him.  If the spiritual were something entirely foreign it would be vain to expect much progress through mere impulses from without.  On the contrary, it is the spiritual that makes man really great, and is the most fundamental part of his nature.

The two stages of life, then, are present in man—­the natural and the spiritual; the former highly developed, the latter, at first, in an undeveloped state.