woe, a blind groping in the dark; we discover gloomy possibilities constantly sweeping as dark clouds over man and occasionally descending as a crashing tempest."[24] Hundreds of similar examples may be found in Eucken’s books, and all point to the insufficiency of the natural process for satisfying the deepest needs of our being.  But in spite of the fact that the natural process accompanies Life everywhere, man has built a world beyond the world of sense.

With the entrance of the spiritual life a new mode of history makes its appearance.  This fact is to be witnessed in the tools invented by man in order to overcome physical barriers.  The growth of technics in our own day is a proof of Nature yielding here and there to the demands of life and intellect.  This has all been brought about by mentality, and new modes of living are the result.

[p.82] And when we enter the domain of human society the superiority of the spiritual life becomes evident here as well.  It is true that we are as yet far from any ideals of human society which include the good of all, and which bind all together in spite of radical differences that will continue to persist.  Systems of various kinds are presented—­often at variance with one another; but even these are evidence of a spiritual life far above the achievements of any single individuals.  What must we do?  We must all work on in the direction of the highest:  and the higher we mount the nearer we are to a point of convergence of all the different syntheses; and out of the union there will be born a synthesis which will include the whole family of man.  We possess already such a synthesis partially realised here and there in the lives of the greatest personalities of history; but to the mass of mankind such a synthesis is little more than a name, even though that name be God or Infinite Love.  The content of the name has to be realised:  and this can never come about except through a deep stirring and longing, through enormous sacrifices, painful and recurring failures, to issue finally in a conquest—­a height attained by mankind on which the content of God and Infinite Love will be born in the soul as a living, personal, and durable experience.  When this comes to be—­and every genuine effort in the movement of our higher being brings us nearer to it—­there issues [p.83] an incomparably higher mode of life.  Thus a new history is framed through the spiritual activities of individuals; and something of its very nature and of the mode by which such a reality can be reached will become an atmosphere into which future generations will be born, as well a higher condition than has ever previously existed to hail the entrance of human souls into the world.