The whole of this movement is from within without.  Even the physical world has to enter into consciousness before it can be known and interpreted; even the over-individual norms have to be accepted and interpreted by the spiritual potency before the reality which they possess in themselves can become our own personal reality.  We receive from without on the plane of Nature and on the planes of mentality and spirituality.  The consciousness does not evolve its content on any level of its progress from itself alone.  Material from without has to enter into it.  But the whole of this material will become one’s own possession in the degree it is attended to after it has entered consciousness; something has to happen to the material within consciousness; it has to awaken a potency, and has to distil its own content within that potency.  But as this potency is not of the same nature entirely as what presents itself as possessing value, it is clear that the higher element which presents itself has to enter into a struggle for the throne of life with elements of a lower order.  As this all-important fact has been dealt with in a previous chapter, there is no need to dwell on it again; but it is well to bear in mind that the fact [p.148] constitutes an important element in Eucken’s conception of “universal” religion.

“Universal” and “Characteristic” religion do not constitute two different religions, but two grades of the one religion.  In “Universal” religion Eucken deals very largely with the intellectual grounds of religion.  He is aware that it is necessary for us to carry our whole potencies into religion.  Intellect is one of these, and we cannot afford to construct our religion on what comes into perpetual conflict with intellectual conceptions.  Eucken has shown that intellectual conclusions, if they are carried far enough and include the whole of their own meaning, lead us into religion.  We have already noticed how the presence of norms and standards were necessitated by the very theory of knowledge itself.  It is a great gain for man to know that this is so—­that in so far as knowledge testifies anything in regard to religion and spiritual life it affirms more than it negates.  It is of enormous advantage to be assured that knowledge is on our side in the quest for something that is deeper than itself.

Further, Eucken conceives it as the function of religion on this “Universal” level to present, on the other hand, the actual situation.  What but knowledge can reveal to us the difference between spiritual norms and ordinary life, between intellect working alone and intellect merged with the spiritual potency of one’s [p.149] being?  We are bound to know these and a hundred other things.  They all go to prove that there is justification for the movement of spiritual life in the direction of an over-world, and in its hope for the possession of a new grade of reality.  It is well and necessary to affirm all this before we enter on the “grand