the fact that we are in the presence of a power above the world; and the feeling of pain is changed into a feeling of strong optimism in regard to the possibilities of our own nature.  We feel that we, too, in spite of our limitations, can become the possessors of something of the very nature akin to that which our great teacher possesses.  Eucken works a change in every man and woman who remain with him for a length of time.  Many of us understand something of what Jesus Christ meant to his disciples; how he created an affection within their souls which all the obstacles of the world [p.234] could never obliterate.  Eucken has done something of the same kind, on a smaller scale, for hundreds of his old pupils.

These pupils are found to-day from Iceland in the North to New Zealand in the South, and from Japan in the East to Britain and America in the West.[85] Many of them have risen to eminence, and all of them have experienced something of a spiritual anchorage in the midst of the tempestuous sea of Time; all alike cherish an affection for their old [p.235] teacher—­an affection which is one of their dearest possessions.  They have helped to spread his spiritual teaching, and, along with his books, have made his name known in all the civilised countries of the world.  Some of Eucken’s most important works have already appeared in half a dozen languages.  The demand for them increases everywhere.  This receptivity is a good omen of better days.  The world is beginning to get tired of the mechanism and shallowness of our age, and is once more on the point of turning to the spiritual fountains of life.  Where can it find a better guide to lead it to the waters of life than in Rudolf Eucken?

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CHAPTER XIV [p.236]

CONCLUSION

It will probably prove helpful at the conclusion to indicate the main contents of Eucken’s greatest works in order that the reader who turns to them for the first time may be able somewhat to find his bearings.  The whole of Eucken’s works turn around the conception of the spiritual life.  This fact must be constantly borne in mind.  The term has been repeated so often in all the previous chapters that the reader may be inclined to think that some other expression might well have been exchanged for it.  But no other term serves Eucken’s meaning, and the recurrence of the term has to be endured in order that it may yield of its rich content.

It has been shown how Eucken establishes a new world with its own laws and values within the spiritual life.  The spiritual life possesses grades of reality:  it reveals itself from the level of connection of body and mind and of ordinary life right up to Infinite Love in [p.237] the Godhead.  Such a reality is created within the total activity of the soul; but it is not mere subjectivism by virtue