At present let us confine our attention to the intermediate reality which presents itself in a form that is over-individual.  It is only when we pass out of the psychology of the subject—­a matter that deals with the history of mental processes—­that we are able to view the meaning of the realities which are over-individual.  As already pointed out, these realities are not the creations of man’s fancy or imagination after reason has been switched off.  They are non-sensuous realities which have moulded and shaped the lives of individuals and nations in varied degrees.  These ideals are not to remain merely objects of knowledge; they are to become portions of the inmost experiences of the soul.  This they cannot become without the [p.54] calling out of the deepest energy of the individual.  His fragmentary spiritual life—­small as it is—­still calls for more of its own nature, and this more has been seen in the distance as something of infinite value.[11] A mountain, as it were, has to be climbed; dark ravines have to be gone through; and rivers have to be swum across.  The whole vision means no less than an entrance into a new kind of world, the scaling to a new kind of existence, and a conquest which will make the pilgrim a participator in that which is Divine.  A struggle has to take place, because so much that belongs to the life, on the level where it now stands, belongs to a world below it.  Impulses and passions, the narrow outlook, the timidity and hollowness of the “small self”—­all these, which have previously remained at the centre of life, have to be thrust to the periphery of existence.  So that an entrance into the highest spiritual world is not merely something to know, but far rather something to do and to be.  This is the meaning of Eucken’s activism.  It is not the busying of ourselves over trifles; there is no need of encouragement in that direction.  It is rather the inward glance on the nature of the over-individual ideals; it is a deep and constant concentration upon their value and significance, in order that the soul may plant itself on the shores of the over-world.  It is in granting a [p.55] higher mode of existence to these ideals, and in preserving them as the possession of the soul, that man finds the ever greater meaning of that spiritual life which was present within him from the very beginning of his enterprise.  The process of forcing an entrance into this over-world has to be repeated time after time.  There are no enemies in front, but the man is surrounded by them from around and behind him.  The indifference, in a large measure of the natural process, the rigid instincts of mere self-preservation, the temptation to smugness and ease, the cold conclusions of the understanding when satisfied with explanations from the physical world, the hardness of the heart—­these and many other enemies fight for supremacy, and the soul is often torn in the struggle.  The struggle continues for a great length of time; but the history of the world testifies to an innumerable host of individuals who scaled and fell, who started again and again, until at last their conceptions of the Highest Good became a permanent experience and possession of their deepest being.