negation, the negative movement attains a positive significance; when
this stage is arrived at Eucken would apply the term conversion. He
would not limit the negative movement to one act or to one point in
time; the movement towards a higher world must be maintained--the
sustaining of the negative movement being a test of the reality of
conversion. The process of conversion is not a process to be passively
undergone, or to originate from without, but is a movement starting in
the depths of one's own being.

As already pointed out, Eucken believes in _redemption_. The past is
capable of reinterpretation and transformation, because we can view our
past actions in a new light and so change the whole, since the past is
not a closed thing, definite in itself, but a part of an incomplete
whole. He considers, however, that the Christian doctrine of redemption
makes it too much a matter of God's mercy, instead of placing stress
upon the part that man himself must play. The possibility of redemption
in his view follows from the presence and movement of the spiritual life
in man, not merely from an act of the founder of Christianity, and he
avers that while traditional Christianity emphasises the need for
redemption from evil, it does not emphasise sufficiently the necessary
elevation to the good life that must result.

Closely bound up with the Christian doctrine of redemption is that of
_mediation_. Eucken believes that the Christian conception of mediation
resulted from the feeling of worthlessness and impotence of man, and the
aspirations which yet burned within him after union with the Divine. The
idea of mediation bridges the gulf, "a mid-link is forged between the
Divine and the human, and half of it belongs to each side; both sides
are brought into a definite connection which could be found in no other
way." Eucken acknowledges that such a mediation seems to make access to