higher than the individual, and higher than the ordinary meaning of the [p.75] hour.  This becomes the standard by which everything has to be measured.  Of course, this norm does not remain static in regard to its own content.  But its growth of content depends upon the contributions made to it by individuals in their will-relations.  Something over-individual issues out of all these relations, and this enters into the still higher over-individual norms which are the heritage of society.  Eucken consequently shows that history itself is dependent upon something which works within it—­interpreting its events, and absorbing into itself something that is of value.  What other can this be but a spiritual life higher not only than physical things but even than the will-relations which accrue from moment to moment?  It has already been noticed that on these lower levels the spiritual life is ever present—­present as a potency and experience when viewed from the standpoint of the individual’s creativeness, and present as norms and values when viewed as an object of thought brought forth through general conclusions founded on situations beyond any single situation of the individual.  Thus, we get in Eucken’s teaching the over-historical as the power which operates within the events of history.  It is what philosophy has termed the Ideal, and what religion has termed the revelation of God.  It is not correct, then, to say that we are dependent upon the content of the moment apart from the presence of the [p.76] content of the past in that moment in order to grasp reality.  The Past does not mean a mere series of events which occurred some hundreds or thousands of years ago, and before which we bend and towards which we try to turn back the world, for that would mean what Eucken terms “mere historism.”  The Past has rolled its meaning down to the Present:  the Past mingled with the content of the Present is at each point of its course something other than it was before.[22] But in any case this aspect of the Past as presented by Eucken shows that human life requires a great span of time which has already run in order to create its ideals and to be raised from the triviality of the mere moment.  Goethe perceived the importance of the same truth:—­

    “Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss
       Rechenschaft zu geben,
    Bleib’ im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag
       Zu Tage leben!”

At certain epochs in the history of the world great events have happened.  Often such epochs are followed by epochs of inertia.  Men bask in the sunlight of the glory that was revealed to humanity; they receive help and strength from what had been.  But the greater the interval between the occurrence [p.77] of that greatness and the contemplation of it, the more difficult does it become to grasp and to possess something of the true meaning, value, and significance of such greatness.  The greatness, as the interval grows, becomes something to be known, something which