their efficacy by our absorption in scraping together physical elements of chaff and dust. How often does Eucken show our dire poverty in the midst of all this external plenty! The all-sufficiency of all forms of Naturalism condemns itself through its failure to pass beyond itself. Had there not been some who did pass beyond the _Thing and its relations_ the spiritual values of the race would have been annihilated. "As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is the failure of certitude in regard to the presence of a spiritual existence; it is the unclearness concerning the _inner_ conditions of all mental and spiritual activity which a shallow and popular philosophy [p.215] presents--it is all this which turns natural science into a materialistic naturalism."[76] The strength of materialistic _monism_ does not lie in any proof of there being nothing but mechanism in this wide universe, but in its energetic propaganda against certain traditional theological forms of ecclesiastical religion--forms which are rapidly being disowned by the leaders of religious thought. Even monism concedes that "it is better being good than bad, better being sane than mad." This concession, and the attempt to live according to it, constitute a proof of the presence in some form of a non-sensuous reality and value in the constructions of materialistic monism itself. Hence, Eucken's conception of spiritual life cannot be got rid of after all. It will remain so long as men live above the animal level and strive to ascend to something higher still.