Eucken shows at the close of his remarkable article in Beitraege zur Weiterentwickelung der Religion that some form or other of the Eternal must enter into time and its changes, and become a norm towards which mankind will move.  When this happens, mankind will not be content to look merely beyond the grave for the redemption of the race and the annihilation of sin.  The very world in which we live is surrounded by an over-world of ideal truth and goodness.  Why should we live on “hope and tarrying” when there is so much to be done and gained?  The energies of men run on such lines into “sickly sentimentalism” and “watery wishes,” and nothing great issues out of our activities on the surface of life.  History becomes no more than a succession of changes of which the later are of no more value than the earlier.  All this happens, because there is no Eternal—­no over-world of over-individual and over-historical values—­present.  In a large measure our very religion grants us here but little help.  It is either a contemplation of certain events in the past which were delivered for once and for all or an immersion in the social environment. [p.86] We remain aliens to the truth that these events can be repeated to-day.  We are not convinced as to the possibilities of our own nature and of the realisation of the Divine in the making of history.  Our age is an age of stripping things of their connections and qualities and of finding their essence in what they were and not in what they are and ought to be.  Even history is brought back to its origin from savagery; and its explanation is sought in its beginnings and not in its ends; the aspirations of the soul are supposed to be explained in their totality when biological and psychological names are given them; enthusiasm and conviction, which leave the level of the daily rut and the conventionalities of society, are branded as signs of shallowness and even of insanity.  We are in the midst of plenty, and feed on husks.  The situation will not be altered until we turn from intellect to intuition—­which is no other than a turn from the mere way in which things are put together to what the things essentially are and ought to be in their meaning and value.  When this happens, a new meaning will be given to history, and the events of the day will be illumined and valued in the light of the standard of spiritual ideals.  Can we then doubt that there works in history a Divine element which is over-historical, and which alone gives their meanings and values to the events of history itself?

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CHAPTER V [p.87]

RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY