Rudolf Eucken's gospel is a proclamation of the necessity of religion and the possibility of its possession. This, according to him, is the final goal of all knowledge and life. If religion is not this, it is the most tragic deception conceivable. "Religion is either merely a sanctioned product of human wishes and pictorial ideas brought about by tradition and [p.226] the historical ordinance--and, if so, no art, power, or cunning can prevent the destruction of such a bungling work by the advance of the mental and spiritual movement of the world; or religion is founded upon a superhuman fact--and, if so, the hardest assaults cannot shatter it, but rather, it must finally prove of service in all the troubles and toils of man; it must reach the point of its true strength and develop purer and purer its Eternal Truth."[82] The fact that the influence of Rudolf Eucken's personality and teaching is spreading with such rapidity and power from west to east and from north to south is a proof that an increasing number of men and women are aspiring after a religion of spiritual life such as was presented by the Founder of our Christianity. All the Life-systems of our day must converge towards such a conception of religion. * * * * * CHAPTER XIII [p.227] EUCKENS PERSONALITY AND INFLUENCE In this chapter an attempt will be made to present in a brief form some of the most important aspects of Eucken's personality and influence. His training and the relation of his teaching to the German philosophical systems of the present have already been touched upon in some of the earlier chapters. But no account of Eucken's teaching is complete without a knowledge of his personality.