enterprise.”  When an affirmation, based upon insight, is made, there will be present within the soul a greater power to resist hunting after shadows or slipping to a lower level when we are in the very midst of the quest.  And, indeed, on this very level of “Universal” religion something besides the mere knowledge of religion has taken place.  Values which are intellectually true are bound to exercise some influence on the life.  Thus, something of the nature of the higher reality has touched the soul and will of man.  We know in what we have believed.  This is a stage which must be passed through, for we can never feel certain upon a higher altitude unless we are certain of what had led to it.  And although, on the higher altitude, there is the merging of intellectual truth in something higher than itself, still what is discovered on this higher level is richer in content if we can call up at times intellectual affirmations for its support.

But “Universal” religion has its limitations, and has to pass into something more characteristic, specific, and personal.  The over-personal norms, which are spiritual in their very nature, [p.150] have not only to be interpreted, they have also to be appreciated and reverenced.  The How of their appearance, after it is settled, takes a secondary place, and the norms in their own value and subsistence are attended to.  Thus, they become not merely ideas having some kind of reality of their own, but also become revelations of the very nature of the world; they become the source of all creation; the one spring of all being.  In other words, they are made to mean the Godhead; they mean the creation and sustaining power of all life.  A communion with the Godhead now takes place, and man finds himself in possession of experiences brought about without the intervention of the world.  Thus “Universal” religion culminates in a “Characteristic” or personal religion.  And to this culmination, as it is presented by Eucken, we now turn.

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CHAPTER IX [p.151]

CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION

On the level of “Universal” religion great changes have taken place in life.  The consciousness and conviction of the reality of a new kind of world have arisen; the sensuous, and even partially the intellectual, domains have been relegated to a secondary place:  other values, higher in their nature and more universal in their scope, have attracted the attention of mind and soul.  In all this a change has taken place in the disposition as well as in the will.  Prior to this change the character had not become conscious of its own inwardness, but remained subservient to the norms of social and moral inheritance.  Some amount of morality and good will have issued forth in this manner, and, indeed, the gain cannot be overestimated.  But it is evident that something further has to happen if the movement of society is to proceed onward and