The root of the matter here seems to be the ready acknowledgment of the content of [p.101] spiritual life as well as of the fact that it possesses a higher grade of existence than anything in the world without or even within the psychic life.  This is granting the manifestation of spiritual life a foundation deeper than nature, culture, civilisation, and even morality; for it is the norms of the over-world uniting with the spiritual nature of man which have brought forth all these.  This willing acknowledgment becomes ever necessary, because something of two worlds is now present in the life of the man.  On the one hand, the natural world, with its material elements and its instincts and impulses, is present in the soul.  But, on the other hand, all these cannot be torn away from the life.  They constitute a great deal of the vitality and the pleasure which are the legitimate possessions of man.  How cold and soulless would life be without these!  But the danger arises when there is not present a Standard sufficiently high and powerful to govern these, and to make them serve the higher interests of the soul.  In other words, they must be melted in the contents and values of the over-individual ideals; they must be sanctified to subserve the higher, absolute ends and demands of the spirit.  What can we say, then, of Life when the natural assists the spiritual and when the individual passes out to the realm of the over-individual save that a real point of departure into a new kind of world has actually taken [p.102] place?  Even this interpretation is insufficient to explain what happens, although it happens within ourselves; far less, as we have seen, will any other interpretation which explains life in lowest terms suffice.  We are then, says Eucken, driven to the conclusion that such a state is either the breaking forth of a new kind of reality or the worst of all possible illusions.  And this great and inexorable Either—­Or presents itself in every decision taken towards what is higher than the level we are standing on.  The matter here does not belong to any speculative domain, and is not the result of fancy or imagination out of which reason has taken its flight.  The matter is concrete—­tangible through and through.  The history of mankind bears witness to the validity of it; the experience of each individual in the deepest moments of life echoes the experience of the race.  The superiority of this new beginning in the over-world has to be established over and over again by each individual on account of the danger of sinking back to a lower level where the main power of spiritual life is not in action.  A certainty is therefore requisite in the very beginning of the enterprise—­an enterprise which is absolute and eternal.  No limits are perceptible to the possibilities of spiritual life when the fullest conceivable content of the soul is seated at the centre of life, and when every outward is interpreted and