XII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul

The incorporation of the Spiritual Soul also brought about a disturbance throughout the whole of Europe in men's inner relation towards the articles of religious faith and the ritual of worship. This disturbance announces itself unmistakably, at the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, by the sudden appearance on the scene of Proofs of the Existence of god (in particular with Anselm of Canterbury). The existence of god was to be proved by arguments of reason. Such a desire could only arise when the old method of knowing God—by direct realization through the soul's inherent forces—was already passing away. What one knows by direct living experience, one does not prove by logic.