Against Pragmatism, with which Eucken's Activism has some superficial resemblance, he argues for the "independent character of reality over against our experience of it." He believes that our deepest nature can be called into action only by the recognition of an Ought, which has an existence and value of its own, regardless of the opinions of any group of individuals or of the whole human race. "When the good of the individual and of humanity becomes the highest aim and the guiding principle, truth sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opinion.... Truth can exist only as an end in itself. 'Instrumental' truth is no truth at all."[164] 164: "Main Currents of Modern Thought," p. 78. The method of the intellectualist as well as of the voluntarist is inadequate to reach the truth of religion. Religion should be a fact of the whole man, and of his own decision, and it should recognize by a unique experience, which cannot be called exclusively feeling or thought or will, an encompassing and basal whole. Thought "left simply to its own resources would never be able to get beyond empty forms and highly abstract conceptions."[165] No merely intellectual form of religion is able to overcome doubt. Thus "the transformation of the Spiritual Life into an impersonal thought-process destroys it to its very foundation." 165: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," p. 121; E. T., "The Truth of Religion," p. 176. 2. This effort, already in part described, to assert an independent spiritual world over against a natural world, this recognition of over-individual standards and of an absolute, self-subsistent Spiritual Life (_Geistesleben_), is called Universal Religion. The term Godhead to indicate this conception is in some ways preferable to that of God. A higher stage of religion is indicated by Eucken's term Characteristic Religion, by which is meant a deeper insight into the divine, a more personal experience of the divine energy of Spiritual Life. Universal Religion, it may be said, is the demand or the feeling after God; while Characteristic Religion is the supply or the finding of God. In the effort to conform to the over-individual standards and to attain harmony with the divine, there is an inevitable sense of weakness and failure. It becomes evident that man's own energy cannot save him from inner discord. "If a rescue is possible, Divine power and grace must do the work. That such power and grace really accomplish this, is the fundamental conviction of religion."[166] There originates a mutual intercourse with the soul and God as between an I and a Thou; and "consequently, there culminates here a movement away from the colourless conception of the Godhead to that of a living and personal God."[167] 166: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," p. 295; E. T., p. 425. 167: _Ibid._, p. 299; E. T., p. 430.