itself to verify the statement.  That such a higher spiritual life is a reality may be evidenced further through its effects.  It changes the whole relationship of the man [p.145] who has experienced it to everything he comes in contact with.  New convictions and new points of view have now actually occurred within his soul; man has become conscious of a spiritual inwardness, brought forth through the presence of an over-personal spiritual life coupled with his own spiritual needs.  With the possession of such spiritual elements, how is it possible for him any more to look upon the world and human life with the same eyes as before?  The dawning of a new reality has made him a new creature; he is now compelled by his own deeper nature to preserve and to reflect the light which is within him; and all this brings prominently forward the need of something other for the progress of the world than the first look of things is able to show.  It is in such manner as this that we must account for all the ideals which have moved mankind from the level of animalism and greed to the level of civilisation, culture, morals, and religion.  The work is far from being completed:  the world still clings to the old level of ordinary life, and is so slow to grasp the value of the life of spiritual ideals.  Still, something has been accomplished in the course of the ages; and although, probably, the progress has not been continuous, there has been a gain in the “long run.”  But the point to bear in mind is that it is the power of the over-individual ideal which has carried the race along.  Ideals have been perverted, it is true; they have been [p.146] drawn down and mixed with what was inferior in its nature, yet they have never been completely destroyed in this evil process.  They have still a marvellous power of disentangling themselves from human perversions, and of revealing themselves once more in their pristine power and glory.  “But the spiritual life declares its ability also positively within the human province through a persistent effort to move outside the ‘given’ situation, through a tracing out and a holding forth of ideals, through a longing after a more complete happiness and a more complete truth.  Why is not man satisfied with the relativity which so obstinately clings to his existence?  Why has he a longing for the Absolute in opposition to such relativity, and through this plunges himself into the deepest sorrows and distractions?  This has happened not only in special situations of individuals, but in the whole process of culture; indeed, the upward march of culture would have been impossible without a striving of man from a level above his ‘given’ position and even above himself.  Was not subjective satisfaction more easily reached by him in the semi-animal stages of his existence than in culture and civilisation with all their toils and tangles, and does the progress of culture and civilisation with all their mechanical appliances make him in the merely human sense happier?  What else could compel him to step into this perilous track but the necessity of his own nature [p.147] revealing to him the presence of a new order of things?"[51]