the deeper spiritual potencies.  The vision at this higher stage constitutes not only the certainty of a path for man—­a path which leads to higher regions—­but brings forth hidden energies in order to start him on the enterprise.  The whole vision is now seen to be possible of realisation only through personal decisions of the whole nature in the direction of the over-personal values which present themselves.  These over-personal values increase as the soul passes along the upward path and as it grants a self-subsistence and unconditional significance to these values.  There follows here an increase of spiritual reflection; the content of the vision is loosened from sense and time; its self-subsistence becomes more and more real and more and more and more different from all that was experienced on any level below; knowledge steps into the background, and love and appreciation now guide the whole movement of [p.168] the soul.  As we have already seen, when this happens, the idea of God as Infinite Love presents itself, and the soul’s main task is to climb to the summits “where on the glimmering limits far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.”  Religion is at such a level more than an intellectual insistence upon its grounds; the soul looks now rather to its summits.  Hence the two stages of Universal and Characteristic religion become necessary.  And it is not always true that the Universal mode ceases once the Characteristic mode is partially realised.  The soul has to descend from the heights into the ordinary world below.  And as it now sees the world with new eyes, it sees much more to be condemned than was previously possible for it to see.  There comes the constant need of certifying the validity of its experience on the heights, and of getting others who have never attempted the experiment to do so.  The man possessed of something of the vision within his own soul proclaims his “gospel,” and conceives of all kinds of ways and means by which humanity can be drawn towards the same goal.

This is the meaning which Eucken attaches to the origin and development of the union of universal and specific religions as these have been revealed in human history.  The intellectual grounds of religion as well as something of the actual spiritual experiences are presented by the founders.  Every kind of [p.169] religion has originated in this manner.  They are all attempts at showing that a here and now and a beyond have united and become potencies of life, and can become actualities.  The here and now always points to a beyond, and the beyond, when it is realised, returns to the here and now and always transforms it.  Thus, we are in the midst of two worlds which are continuous with one another just as the valley is continuous with the base of the mountain.