We are led back to the point made so clear by Descartes—­to his insistence on the presence of a thinking subject as the starting-point for the knowledge of all existence.  This truth was elucidated later by Kant in a manner which the world can probably never get rid of.  Therefore, if so much happens in the mind in connection with the knowledge and interpretation of the world, our view of the world after this happens in the mind is entirely different from the view which exists before it happens.  Thought stands over against the sensuous object, transforms the object into a logical construction of meaning.  When one becomes aware of this, not only do the objects themselves become most problematic [p.66] in their relation to consciousness, but the very tools with which the scientist works—­e.g. space and time—­become so puzzling that only by a return to a metaphysic do they become partially explainable.  And thus we are landed in a region of idealism in the very midst of the work of natural science.  Naturalism has arisen only because the subject was forgotten in the enchantment of the object.  The attention has been turned so long on the object that the nature and the results of the attention itself are quite left out of account.  We can all believe in what naturalism has to say concerning organic and inorganic objects; but it has not said enough when it leaves the power that knows the meaning of what it says out of account.

The conclusion Eucken arrives at is, then, that we must ascribe reality to the quality that knows and interprets as well as to the thing that is known.  He ascribes reality to the physical world, but this is not the whole of reality.  This cannot be so, simply because we could not know that the physical world was real had it not been that there was implanted in us a mental organisation to know all this.  The other reality is that of consciousness and the meanings it formulates.  Thus natural science itself announces the presence of more than sensuous nature.  This more which knows the external world is the more which has constructed civilisation, culture, and [p.67] religion.  This more has formed an independent inner life over against the natural world.  Had it not been for this power of the more to construct its inner world, Life would have been no more than the life of sensuous nature—­shifting from point to point, and entirely at the mercy of a physical environment.  But the progress of mankind shows everywhere the growth of a life higher in nature than that of physical or animal existence.  Some kind of total-life has been formed in which the individual can participate; and in the participation of which he can be carried far beyond physical things and beyond his own individual interests.  Mankind has striven after truth, and has discovered something that is beyond the opinions of individuals, that does not serve his own petty interests, but overcomes them and reaches out after truths which are valid and good for all.