the sign of spiritual power and of a Divine message and greatness.”  The movement from signs and miracles is a movement from the outward to the inward, from percept to spirituality; and the essence of religion, as a reality in itself and as an experience of the soul, is to be found by taking such a step.  The centre of gravity of life has now been shifted from the outward to the inward.  To accomplish this means nothing less than a [p.165] struggle for the governing centre of life.  Unless we succeed in this struggle, the inner life will reach no independence and subsistence of its own.  Even when the struggle succeeds in gaining its longed-for depth, it has not removed for once and for all the contradictions from without and within.  Difficulties, from the lower side, will accompany the spiritual life in its higher evolution, but once it has become conscious of its own Divine nature and certainty it will gain sufficiently in content and power to relegate them all to the periphery.  Something has happened within the soul which can never be obliterated.  As Eucken says:  “The contradiction is now removed from the centre to the periphery of life; it can therefore only touch us from without, and is not able to overthrow what is within; it will not so much weaken as strengthen the certainty, because it calls life to a perpetual renewal and brings to fruition the greatness of the conquest."[60]

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CHAPTER X [p.166]

THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS

We have noticed in the two preceding chapters how Eucken distinguished the two stages of religion—­the “Universal” and the “Characteristic” —­and how he showed the necessity of both stages.  As man cannot escape from the conclusions of his intellect, it becomes necessary for him to come to an understanding with those conclusions; and although such conclusions do not form a complete account of life in its deepest aspects, still they are indispensable for him in order to know that he is on the path towards a further development of his spiritual nature.  Hence the grounds of religion have to be emphasised by the conclusions of the intellect.  But though intellectual conclusions, as we have already seen, warrant us in holding fast to the presence and reality of a life of the spirit and to the possibility of an evolution of such a life, all this does not mean that such an evolution is actually reached through the affirmations of [p.167] the intellect.  The road of spiritual development is marked out, but we have to travel over that road ourselves.  Something more than an intellectual acknowledgment of the existence of such a road is necessary before the actual movement takes place.  When the actual movement does take place, when the intellectual conclusions come in contact with a will arising from our deepest needs, the matter becomes personal—­it becomes something that has to be affirmed by the blending of intellect with