Eucken accepts gladly the theory of descent in Darwinism, but insists that the theory of selection must be clearly distinguished from it.  He agrees with Edward von Hartmann that the doctrine of selection is inadequate to explain the phenomena of life.  But, as he points out, there is much which is true and helpful in the theory of selection even in regard to human life.  “In all quarters there is a widespread inclination to go back to the simplest possible beginnings, which exhibit man closely related to the animal world, to trace back the upward movement not to an inner impulse, but to a gradual forward thrust produced by outward necessities, and to understand it as a mere adaptation to environment and the conditions of life.  It seems to be a mere question of natural existence, of victory in the struggle against rivals."[5] But he is not satisfied that such an explanation covers the [p.27] phenomena of consciousness.  If there were no more than this at work in the higher forms of life, the things of value—­the things which have meant so much in the upward development of humanity—­would be reduced to mere adjuncts of physical existence.  If mental and moral values mean no more than this, they are simply annihilated.  But the values of life are something quite other than any physical manifestation; and however much they are conditioned by physical changes it is inconceivable that what is purely physical should be the sole cause of them.  Man would never have risen so far above Nature, and become able to be conscious of his own personality and of the meaning of the world, had there not been present from the very beginning some spiritual potency which could receive the impressions of the external world and bind them together into some kind of connected Whole.  This connected Whole may be no more in the beginning than a potency without any content, and its roots may be discerned in the world below man; but without such a potency, different in its nature from physical things, the whole meaning of the evolution of mind and spirit is utterly unintelligible.  But what can this potency mean but something which includes within itself the germ of that which later comes out in the form of the values which have been gained in the life of the individual and of the race?

[p.28] In order to understand Eucken’s conceptions concerning Spirit, Whole, Totality, and other similar terms, this fact has to be borne in mind.  The capacity for more is present in man’s nature.  It may remain dormant in a large measure, but it is not entirely so, as witnessed by the fact that men have scaled heights far above Nature and the ordinary life of the day.  And humanity, on the whole, has climbed to a height to give some degree of meaning to the life of the day—­a meaning superior to physical impressions, and which is able to see somewhat behind, around, and beyond itself.  Wherever this happens, it comes about through the presence and activity of the life of the spirit within man.  The spiritual life is, then, a possession of man, but it is a possession only in so far as it is used.  It is subject to helps and hindrances from the world; it is not freed from its own content; it can never say, “So far and no further according to the bond and the duty”; it has to undergo a toilsome struggle before it can ever become the possessor of the new kind of world to which it has a right.