themselves.  To come to a decision, insisted on again and again, in regard to the reality of life and its content is not possible without the deepest act of the whole of the soul.  Such a conviction concerning the spiritual kernel of our being is not a mere matter either of thought or feeling or will.  The three make their contribution towards the great affirmation which takes place, but they are united at a depth in consciousness which has no psychological name; they come to a kind of focus within the blending of the over-individual norms and the need and capacity of the soul for such norms.  When this happens, the individual has created a cleft in his own nature which renders it forever impossible for him to be satisfied with the mere external aspect produced by the first impressions of things.  An inverted order of things has come about:  the sensuous world is relegated to the circumference, and a spiritual world [p.99] dawns within the content of the soul.  This is the deepest meaning of religion; and, as we shall see at a later stage, it constitutes the very nucleus of Christianity with its announcement of conversion, the regeneration of the soul, and the union and communion of man with the Divine.

Doubtless all this is difficult of apprehension, mainly on account of the fact that there is no proof for it in a manner that can be made intelligible.  But the question arises, What is the power that acts and brings forth proofs concerning anything?  It is evidently not the whole of the potentialities of man’s nature:  it is no more than the understanding dealing with the evidence of impressions.  But the understanding, when dealing with the content of the union of individual potency and over-individual norms, is dealing with a content infinitely larger and more complex than itself; the material is too great and intricate for the understanding to handle; it is a fruitless attempt of the Part to monopolise the meaning and value of the Whole.  The proof rather lies within the domain of the soul itself, and is not something which may be tacked on to any kind of external, spatial existence; it is the emergence of a new kind of existence or self-subsistence. The proof (if we designate it by such an insufficient term) is within the experience and not without; it is the spiritual experience itself and not merely an account, [p.100] in the form of even valid logical concepts, concerning such experience.[30]

The space devoted to this subject may be justified on account of the fact that Eucken’s meaning of the evolution of spiritual life towards higher levels cannot be understood without an understanding of the distinction between knowledge about experience and the content of experience itself, as this latter reveals itself in the ways mentioned.[31] Eucken has lately paid great attention to this matter in the new edition (1912) of Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart, especially in the chapter on the “Philosophy of Religion and the Psychology of Religion."[32]