Eucken does not minimise or ignore the existence of the natural world.

The question for him is not the independent existence of the worlds of nature and mind--this he admits; he is concerned rather with the superiority of the spiritual life over the merely material and mental.
The natural life of man has been variously viewed in different ages.

The writer of the Pentateuch described man as made in the image of God, and the natural man was exalted on this account.

Some of the old Greek philosophers, too, found much in nature that was divine.

Christianity took a different view of the matter--it exalted the spirit, and emphasised the baseness of the material.