convinced that the effort is worth while, has been emphasised again and
again. "_Launch yourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as
possible_. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall
re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions
that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old;
take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your
resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning
such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon
as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is
postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all."[8]

"The Stoic and Butler also said, 'Follow God.' In each case you must
realise that, whatever you do, you take your life in your [p.44] hands;
you enter on a grand enterprise, a search for the Holy Grail, which will
bring you to strange lands and perilous seas. For you cannot say,
interpreting, 'Thus far and no further, merely according to the bond and
the duty.' In following God, you follow by what has been, what is ruled
and accomplished, but you follow after what is not yet. 'It may be that
the gulfs will wash us down'; it may be that the gods of the past will
rain upon us brimstone and horrible tempest. But he that is with us is
more than all that are against us. Whoever keeps his ear ever open to
duty, always forward, never attained, is not far from the kingdom. The
gods may be against him, the demi-gods may depart; but he, as said
Plotinus, 'if alone, is with the Alone.'"[9]

It is impossible for us, as Eucken constantly insists, to stop short of
this. Who can prescribe limits to the capability of consciousness when
it is focussed, in the form of a conviction, on the deepest problems
which press themselves upon it? There is only one objection that the
empiricist can bring forward, and that is that all such ideals can never