Its proper function is to liberate the human mind from the narrowly human, and to emphasise a total-life, the great Whole.
It fails, however, "because it turns this necessary portion of religion into the sole content.

To it, religion is nothing other than an absorption into the infinite and eternal Being--an extinguishing of all particularity, and the gaining of a complete calm through the suspension of all the wear and tear of life." Eucken's discussion of _faith and doubt_ is very illuminating.

He protests against the conception of faith which concerns itself merely with the intellectual acceptance of this or that doctrine.

This narrows and weakens its power, confining it to one department of life; whereas faith is concerned with the whole of life.
Faith is for Eucken "a conviction of an axiomatic character, which refuses to be analysed into reasons, and which, indeed, precedes all reasons ...

the recognition of the inner presence of an infinite energy." If faith concerns itself with, and proceeds from the whole of life, it will then take account of the work of thought, and will not set itself in opposition to reason.