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 RUDOLF EUCKEN. By W. TUDOR JONES, D. PHIL. 
 
 LONDON : CONSTABLE & CO. LTD. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF 
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 BY 
 
 W. TUDOR JONES 
 
 D.PHIL. JENA 
 
 LONDON 
 CONSTABLE < COMPANY LTD. 
 
 1914 
 
: 
 74: 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 IN the following pages an attempt is made to sketch 
 some of the fundamental aspects of the teaching of 
 one of the most remarkable men of our day. No- 
 thing more than an outline can be given in the 
 space at my disposal, but I believe it to be possible 
 to present in a brief and clear manner the most 
 important elements of Eucken's teaching without 
 mutilation. The reader must look upon this little 
 volume as a finger-post pointing to some of the 
 most weighty contributions which Eucken has made 
 in the domains of Metaphysics and of Religion. 
 The value of his teaching lies in the attempt which 
 he has made to liberate the spirit of man from the 
 bondage of Naturalism and Intellectualism in their 
 various forms, and to show that man's spirit 
 possesses a self -subsistence of its own. If the 
 
 325167 
 
vi PKEFACE 
 
 reader will bear in mind this fact he will obtain a 
 key to the Philosophy of Eudolf Eucken. 
 
 I wish to thank the Eev. W. G. Tarrant for his 
 kindness in reading the proofs and in making 
 several valuable suggestions. 
 
 The extracts from Eucken's works presented here 
 are from my own translations. 
 
 W. TUDOK JONES. 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 August 1, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. LIFE AND WORK 1 
 
 II. THE NATURE OF SPIRIT - 8 
 
 III. EUCKEN'S OWN LIFE - SYSTEM OF A PERSONAL- 
 
 COSMIC WORLD 26 
 
 IV. EELIGION 43 
 
 LIST OF EUCKEN'S WORKS - - 73 
 
 vii 
 
KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 LIFE AND WORK 
 
 KUDOLF EUCKEN was born at Aurich, in East Frisia, 
 on January 5, 1846. He was the elder of two 
 boys, the second of whom died when quite a child. 
 In the same year the father also died, leaving 
 behind the young mother with her only son. The 
 town of Aurich possessed a good High School, and 
 to one of the teachers Wilhelm Keuter Eucken 
 has on many occasions expressed his gratitude. 
 When eighteen years of age he proceeded to the 
 University of Gottingen, and attended the philo- 
 sophical lectures of Lotze and of Teichmuller. He 
 gained much in an intellectual sense from the 
 teaching of the former, but from the latter (a man 
 less known than Lotze) he was greatly influenced 
 in a region deeper than that of the understanding. 
 After remaining two years at Gottingen he pro- 
 ceeded to Berlin, and came under the influence of 
 Trendelenburg. This influence deepened what 
 
2 RUDOLF EUGKEN 
 
 had taken place with Beuter at the High School 
 and with Teichmiiller at Gb'ttingen. After having 
 remained one year in Berlin he returned to 
 Gottingen and took his Doctor's Degree. For the 
 next four years we find him serving as a High 
 School teacher ; and in 1871, at the age of twenty- 
 five, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy 
 and Pedagogic at the University of Basel. Here he 
 found much spare time for reading, and devoted 
 himself mainly to the study of the history of 
 philosophical thought. In 1874 he received a call 
 to succeed the late Kuno Fischer as Professor of 
 Philosophy in Jena. And in Jena he has remained, 
 in spite of several invitations to other Universities ; 
 for, indeed, it can be said of him, as of Schiller, 
 that he thinks it would be very difficult to find a 
 more congenial spot in which to brood over the 
 deep things of eternity. The little town is even yet 
 an old-world place. The University and the Market 
 Place are only about two hundred yards apart. In 
 stepping from the former to the latter one steps 
 from the twentieth century to the Middle Ages. 
 The Thiiringen folk have kept their national 
 characteristics and habits almost unimpaired, and 
 give one a real glimpse of the life of the past far 
 better than any text-book or picture can possibly 
 do. The blend of past and present in the life of 
 
LIFE AND WOEK 3 
 
 this little town has a wonderful attraction not only 
 for German thinkers and artists, but also for men 
 and women drawn from the various countries of 
 the world. 
 
 Eucken has found the place congenial for his 
 health and work. Indeed, it is doubted by several 
 people who have known him well for many years 
 whether he has ever been ill or can be ill, and also 
 whether for the past twenty years his table has 
 been for one day free from printers' proofs. Still, 
 he has time for all callers and for the minutest 
 details of life. 
 
 As a lecturer, Eucken is a personality of great 
 influence. He never reads his lecture, and most of 
 his quotations are from memory. The subjects he 
 generally deals with are the History of Ancient 
 and Modern Philosophy, Ethics, Metaphysics, and 
 the well-known Introduction to Philosophy a 
 class which he holds at 7 a.m. in summer and at 
 8 a.m. in winter, and which has for many years 
 been crowded with hearers from all the Faculties of 
 the University and from various parts of the world. 
 
 The reader will find at the close of this volume a 
 list of Eucken's works. It is not possible to deal 
 with them here in detail, but it may be stated that 
 they mark several stages of his intellectual and 
 religious life. His earlier treatises dealt with the 
 
4 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 Philosophy of Aristotle. This was the subject of 
 his dissertation at Gottingen, and his Aristotelian 
 studies were continued afterwards at the High 
 Schools where he taught. His main object here 
 seemed to have been this : to take up one of the 
 great thinkers of the world and spend a great deal 
 of time over his teaching. Such a thinker becomes 
 to anyone who sees deeply into his teaching not 
 merely an individual thinker, but also a type or 
 pattern of what mankind should be. It is im- 
 possible to dwell long upon a great personality 
 without discovering beneath his teaching the life 
 of the spirit of the man. And such an element is 
 afterwards looked for in the life of every other 
 great thinker. Further, when a great thinker is 
 studied seriously for a long time, one can see how 
 far one is able to accept his teaching ; and, though 
 much of the teaching may have to be rejected, the 
 spirit which moved the great thinker is seen to be 
 something of imperishable value. Thus in Aris- 
 totle Eucken found much that was helpful, and 
 although he had to reject much, he discovered the 
 presence of the life of the spirit in his great model 
 a life which was deeper than all the thinker was 
 able to say about it or about anything else. This 
 without a doubt gave Eucken the key to his great 
 book, Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker. In 
 
LIFE AND WOKK 5 
 
 this volume we are presented with the views of life 
 propounded by the great thinkers of the world. 
 These views vary: no two thinkers are alike in 
 their intellectual presentations and solutions of the 
 problems of the world and of life. But though 
 two separate islands rising in the sea have certainly 
 no connection above the surface of the water, still, 
 if we are able to plumb to the bottom, they are 
 there one. Eucken then saw that in every thinker 
 there was present a life of mind and spirit deeper 
 than anything that life was able to state about the 
 world or about itself. 
 
 At the next stage of Eucken's development we 
 find such a life of the spirit of man becoming the 
 core of his teaching. He now sees the message he 
 has to deliver to the world. It is the announce- 
 ment of the presence of a self-subsistent cosmic life 
 
 ^ within man a life that is only gradually realized 
 by human beings. 
 
 The first clear presentation of this is given in 
 
 - the Prolegomena zu Forschungen iiber die Einheit 
 des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und That der 
 Menschheit. This small book was published in 
 1885, when Eucken was thirty-nine years of age. 
 
 \The work is probably the most scientific of all his 
 books. It is a psychological analysis of conscious- 
 ness, and the difference between a psychological and 
 
6 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 a noological consideration of man is pointed out. 
 The ground is now prepared for Eucken's great 
 work a work which, in the opinion of several of 
 Eucken's pupils, surpasses all his works in impor- 
 tance. The present writer agrees with this verdict 
 concerning Die Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusst- 
 sein und That der Menschheit. This volume of 500 
 closely printed pages appeared in 1888, when 
 the author was forty-two years of age. Eucken's 
 whole system had now clearly formed itself in his 
 mind, and all his later works express and illum- 
 inate the central concept of the Spiritual Life from 
 various points of view. It is a great work and is 
 alone sufficient to establish the author's reputation 
 as having brought forward a new element into the 
 Philosophy of the nineteenth century. The later 
 works, noticed at the close, have passed through 
 many editions, and have been translated into 
 many languages. 
 
 Eucken's influence extended to the Scandinavian 
 countries at an earlier period than it did to any 
 other. The last edition of The Truth of Religion is 
 dedicated to the memory of the late King Oscar II. 
 of Sweden. In 1908 Eucken received the Nobel 
 Prize for Literature. It may be stated that his 
 influence has been widespread only during the past 
 twelve years. His pupils have always been greatly 
 
LIFE AND WOEK 7 
 
 influenced by his personality as well as by his 
 teaching, and have helped much to create Eucken's 
 reputation. He has been extremely fortunate in 
 having his gospel made known by many distin- 
 guished young men from Finland to New Zealand 
 and from Japan to America. 
 
 In the following pages some of the cardinal 
 points of his teaching will be presented in as clear 
 a manner as the subject-matter will allow. 
 
CHAPTEK II 
 
 THE NATURE OF SPIRIT 
 
 WE have thus noticed the gradual development 
 of Eucken's system, and enough has already been 
 said to show that this system is not a mere 
 emphasis of the small subjective self, but the 
 inauguration of a life other than the life of the 
 ' mere individual.' The great personalities of the 
 world always possessed a life deeper than the 
 ordinary life, or than the intellectual life. The 
 world is just beginning to see this once again. It 
 is now at the end of a period of Expansion a 
 period which has brought many values into the 
 world, but which has left the deepest soul of man 
 as poor as ever. The fact that man is capable of 
 feeling the need for something higher and nobler 
 in the midst of the material plenty which has 
 rained upon him for over a century is a proof 
 that his nature is greater than anything the 
 external world can offer him. "A Yea far over- 
 tops the Nay as soon as it is recognized that the 
 movement of universal history is not a mere web 
 
 8 
 
THE NATURE OF SPIRIT 9 
 
 of human opinions and interpretations, but that 
 real further development of life results by means 
 of it, that new aims and energies appear, and that, 
 indeed, a content of life becomes possible for the 
 first time a content which develops the life in a 
 manner essentially different from that of the 
 initial stages. Such a movement is not merely 
 of assistance to man, it makes something essentially 
 new out of him ; it gives for the first time value 
 to the idea of what human life and personality 
 ought to be. The working out of a self-existence 
 and self-subsistence for reality which happens in 
 this manner can happen, as we have already seen, 
 only by means of an inversion of the initial situa- 
 tion, and not in any way by means of a uniform 
 and calm progress. The Biblical words concerning 
 the builders with the trowel in one hand and the 
 sword in the other hold good in connection with 
 all the development of the life of the spirit as well 
 as in connection with the progressive freedom which 
 occurs within the soul. The fact that we ever 
 remain in the realm of quest and effort, and that, 
 indeed, all our developing conclusions reveal our 
 limitations and even our weakness, destroys in no 
 manner the truth-character of the whole. Though 
 the new movement of the soul, with its superiority 
 to the individual in his merely natural state, does 
 
10 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 not contain as yet the full possession of truth, still 
 it instils into the soul elements of truth, so that the 
 smallness of the individual becomes a testimony 
 to the greatness of the whole matter. When, how- 
 ever, a great movement takes place within human 
 life for granting Reality a self -subsistence, and when 
 this movement becomes a personal fact, there 
 results within the soul a new relation to Reality 
 and to Knowledge. Over against all anxiety and 
 doubt concerning any particular truths there is 
 signified here the fact of a movement towards 
 Truth a movement which is very far removed 
 from all subjective inclinations and human 
 opinions." * 
 
 This passage illustrates well Eucken's main 
 points with regard to the nature of spirit. We 
 now proceed to interpret briefly Eucken's concep- 
 tions of the nature of spirit on its active, historical, 
 cosmic, and personal sides. 
 
 Man is not a completed being. He is, in one 
 sense, a microcosm of the great macrocosm, but 
 this does not mean that all is mature apart from 
 his own conscious effort. It is certainly true that 
 potencies exist in man which cannot be reduced 
 either to mechanism or intellectualism, but such 
 potencies have to come into contact and even into 
 
 * Knowledge and Life, pp. 197 ff. 
 
THE NATUKE OF SPIRIT 11 
 
 conflict with a world of space and time. Man's 
 spirit in the past has done much in extracting the 
 secrets of such a world, and the secrets of the 
 world have become a part of his own spirit. Thus, 
 through contact with the physical universe and 
 with the nature of thought man has gained a life 
 which is more than his mere subjective inclinations 
 and wishes. Something of an ideal thus presents 
 itself to the individual life, and constitutes a reality 
 higher in its nature than the self in its ordinary 
 natural state. Life, though it lives in the midst 
 of realities greater than itself, does not obtain 
 them as its possession without perpetual battle. 
 In the world below man struggle has played a 
 most important part, and when the human level 
 is reached the fact is not otherwise. How, for 
 instance, could man have ever stepped from the 
 level of savagery to that of a gradually higher 
 civilization and culture ? There is no other 
 answer than that he placed potencies and needs 
 of his nature in operation without probably being 
 more than dimly aware of the nature of such 
 potencies and needs, or of any kind of definite end 
 in the future. But the ' end ' of the preservation 
 of his own life the will to live was at least 
 present, and this ' will to live ' could not exist 
 without taking into account the experiences of the 
 
12 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 relations which had come into existence by living 
 together as a number of individuals. Something 
 had to be done before the whole nature of what it 
 was could become known. Thus, man gains a 
 special kind of existence long before he is able to 
 interpret such an existence. He lives a reality for 
 which he has often blindly striven, although he 
 may be far from being able to account for it. It 
 is not sufficient to emphasize the physical and 
 social factors which operate in every act of life; 
 it is not enough to say that man acts in such and 
 such a manner because his physical security is at 
 stake. The physical security, when analyzed, is 
 seen to have been brought about by a need of the 
 spirit and by the incoming of an experience which 
 is more than subjective which, in fact, is over- 
 individual. It is strange that anyone should deny 
 the presence of such a spirit in man, or of the over- 
 individual elements which are always present when- 
 ever man takes, consciously or unconsciously, an 
 upward step. The whole movements of the world 
 are proofs of such a relation of man's spirit to an 
 over-individual material. The time never arrives in 
 a man's life when these should cease to operate. He 
 can never say : " So far, and no farther ; now every- 
 thing has been completed." It is true that the result 
 of effort means a preservation of his existence and 
 
THE NATUKE OF SPIKIT 18 
 
 an increase of happiness. This has entered into his 
 nature, and grants him temporary peace and rest. 
 But his nature once again discovers new and deeper 
 needs, which have to be satisfied, and the nature 
 once again is forced into activity in order that new 
 portions of reality may enter into his life. Man's 
 spirit is thus a deed. Such a deed is not devoid of 
 thought, but the thought is one imbedded in the 
 deed, and not a thought which surveys the deed 
 after the act is accomplished. And, as we shall 
 see, it is on account of this truth that Eucken parts 
 company with all speculative metaphysics. Such 
 speculative metaphysics, in the various forms it 
 has assumed during the nineteenth century, has in 
 a very large measure taken the nature and develop- 
 ment of thought into account apart from the deeds 
 of life. The struggle to understand the nature 
 of thought and its implications is doubtless a 
 severe one, but it can be accomplished without 
 taking into account at all the actual conflicts of 
 life, as these have developed in the course of the 
 centuries and as they have created civilization, 
 culture, art, morality, and religion. Consequently 
 we find Eucken, throughout his long career, plead- 
 ing for a Metaphysic not of the Schools but of Life. 
 It is ever so much more important to deal with 
 the over-individual implications of thought in its 
 
14 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 relation to deed than in its relation to nothing 
 outside its own divers forms. 
 
 Further, the Philosophy that views man's spirit 
 from its active side has many resemblances with 
 Pragmatism, as this has been presented by the 
 late Professor James, Professor Dewey, and Dr. 
 Schiller. Eucken says : " We are at one with 
 many of the Pragmatists with regard to the neces- 
 sity of making the assertion of the actual elevation 
 of life the touchstone of Truth, and, indeed, we are 
 at one with the main atmosphere of Pragmatism. 
 But we must bring the accusation against it that 
 it does not sufficiently distinguish between the 
 natural desires and the elevation of life, between the 
 decoration of a given world and the struggle of a 
 new one, between what is useful and what is good."* 
 Eucken's main divergence from Pragmatism, then, 
 consists in his announcement of a stage of life 
 higher than the 'merely human' stage. "We 
 have," he says, " outgrown the standard of a wel- 
 fare merely human, and all the values of such a 
 welfare cannot blind us to their narrowness and 
 emptiness. Nothing is so characteristic of man as 
 that he possesses a nature that must strive to get 
 beyond itself ; such a characteristic and effort may 
 often be ignored, but they can never be entirely 
 
 * Knowledge and Life, p. 94. 
 
THE NATURE OF SPIRIT 15 
 
 suppressed."* In so far as Pragmatism has real 
 value, this value has been obtained not by merely 
 emphasizing the natural activities of life and the 
 demands of the hour, but by idealizing the view of 
 human life. Whenever life ascends, there is present 
 some need and some end in which the need can be 
 satisfied. In other words, the potency of the spirit 
 of man and an over-individual ideal are present. 
 When man's spirit, in spite of struggles within and 
 without, climbs to its ideal, a new piece of reality 
 becomes the permanent possession of the soul. 
 
 When we take the next phase of the nature of 
 spirit, we discover that it carries us farther in the 
 direction of objective reality. This reality is the 
 movement of mankind by means of its civilization, 
 culture, art, science, and religion. These form 
 great complexes of life, and persist often for 
 generations as paths of life and progress, as well as 
 goals of human endeavour. These Life-systems 
 have shaped the destinies of the world. The 
 meaning of History, in its most real sense, is to be 
 found in the rise, growth, and decay of these Syn- 
 tagmas or Life-systems. These may only touch a 
 portion of man's nature, and may leave his deeper 
 part untouched. This is the case, according to 
 Eucken, in connection with the two great life-systems 
 
 * Knowledge and Life, p. 83. 
 
16 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 of our own generation viz., those of Naturalism 
 and Intellectualism. It will be well for us to deal 
 with these at the present juncture, for they represent, 
 in a large measure, Eucken's view of Spirit as 
 revealed in History. 
 
 There is a very important sense in which 
 Naturalism is justified. The transition of life 
 in modern times has been more and more in the 
 direction of the physical world. The adventures of 
 man on land and sea have yielded rich results. 
 Wealth undreamed of before has become the pos- 
 session of the Western World. The most distant 
 parts of the world have been brought nearer to us. 
 The inventions of the past fifty years in connec- 
 tion with the physical world are too numerous 
 to be mentioned. It is doubtless true that they 
 have exercised great influence upon the whole life 
 of man an influence, the magnitude of which 
 most men are unaware of. Our attention, as 
 Eucken notices in several of his books, has been 
 turned so much to things outside us that we are on 
 the verge of considering everything which cannot 
 be seen with the eyes, or heard with the ears, or 
 handled with the hands as shadowy and unreal. 
 Naturalism as a Life-system has been beneficial on 
 the external side, and could have been beneficial 
 on the side of the inner life had it not been that it 
 
THE NATUEE OF SPIKIT 17 
 
 is not conscious of its limitations, and that it ignores 
 the very power which has brought it into existence 
 and which has enabled it to live at all. It has 
 quite overlooked the fact that we must have mind or 
 spirit to know things at all ; mind or spirit is ever 
 present in describing, classifying, and interpreting 
 things ; mind or spirit has ever to give meaning, 
 value, and significance to the things which present 
 themselves to it in the external world. Is it a 
 wonder that man may be lamentably poor in the 
 midst of external plenty ! The good things of the 
 world would have destroyed man before now had it 
 not been that his spirit has refused to succumb 
 to the treatment meted out to it on the whole 
 during the last fifty years. And though in in- 
 dividual cases man's spirit may be buried under a 
 mass of external things, such a calamity can never 
 happen to mankind as a whole. " Mankind in our 
 day," says Eucken, " has discovered much of value 
 in sailing from pole to pole and in exploring the 
 bowels of the earth in the most distant lands, but 
 it has not discovered its own soul or added an iota 
 to that which constitutes the deeper happiness of 
 life." 
 
 The world is beginning to see this on all the 
 levels of knowledge and life. Even Natural 
 Science itself is seen to-day to be something quite 
 
 2 
 
18 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 different from a naive Naturalism. It is now seen 
 that no science could have originated and devel- 
 oped without the presence of the human mind, 
 which has to transform physical impressions into 
 mental conceptions, and which has to universalize 
 such conceptions and use them as mental models 
 into which every particular fact that presents itself 
 to the mind must enter and obtain its interpretation, 
 meaning, and value. A world of mind or spirit is 
 ever present and requisite if the physical world is 
 to mean more to us than it means to the animal. 
 We are consequently led to the inevitable conclusion 
 that alongside of the reality of the physical world 
 there is another kind of reality which knows and 
 uses the world. This reality is mental and spiritual ; 
 its origin and development lie in a large measure in 
 obscurity ; but we know that it exists because it 
 has turned the confusion of things into order and 
 utility; it has provided a secure abode for the 
 physical man, and has interpreted his world for him. 
 It is not a mere speculation but an actual fact 
 that man is more than the things he needs and 
 uses ; he is also more than the mental life which 
 interprets the things he needs and uses. Such a 
 mental life is a life of the spirit and in so far as it 
 is so constitutes a grade of reality higher than 
 physical things. This is the inevitable conclusion 
 
THE NATUEE OF SPIKIT 19 
 
 of natural science itself, but the world as yet has 
 not grasped the significance of such a conclusion. 
 When it is grasped, man will discover that 4 that 
 subtle thing termed spirit ' is a reality which is 
 meant to be filled with a content other than the 
 things of the world. Man's nature needs more, and 
 is capable of obtaining more than is offered by the 
 senses. Our deepest hope, then, does not proceed 
 from the physical universe, wonderful as such a 
 universe may appear to us. Man's spirit is greater 
 than matter and the life of the world, however 
 much that spirit is hidden under a load of custom 
 and conventionality. Eucken's call is for a recog- 
 nition of this all-important fact. " Another aspira- 
 tion of our day is that which looks for an emancipa- 
 tion from Life- systems of mere power and material 
 development. This is an aspiration after a self- 
 subsistent life. The ' turn ' towards these systems 
 had much to justify itself in many of the most 
 important situations of history. It was the strong 
 feeling of a new power and courage in mankind, 
 conscious of its own development, which, in the 
 beginning of modern times, succeeded in turning 
 men from the weak and shy inwardness of the 
 religious life as then conceived to a firmer grasp of 
 Eeality; a change which, on its external side, 
 worked for a subjugation of Nature, and, on its 
 
20 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 inner side, for the clarification and mastery, 
 through enlightened reason, of the various situa- 
 tions of life and of all human relations. How much 
 was accomplished in this respect towards the subju- 
 gation of Nature and the development of Reason, and 
 how much has been gained all this is known and 
 enjoyed by us all. But, with all this fully in view, 
 we are to-day convinced that all the heightening 
 of material power and the increase of such power 
 over the very soul itself have their limitations, 
 and that in no manner do they give life any 
 genuine content. Notwithstanding expansion and 
 prosperity unheard of before, we discover with pain 
 an inward emptiness. We aspire ever more deeply 
 towards a Goal or End, to which all increase of 
 material things shall become subservient a Goal 
 or End into which material things will be trans- 
 muted and thus acquire their proper valuation. 
 We are convinced that all toil and care which fail 
 to serve such an end will finally prove of no avail. 
 We feel this last more and more acutely. Indeed, 
 the more urgent and expansive modern life becomes, 
 the more anxiety it lays upon us, and the less fitted 
 it becomes to grant life true peace and joy. Either 
 there is something more imbedded in life, or life 
 passes quickly away into oblivion."* 
 
 * Knowledge and Life, pp. 292, 294. 
 
THE NATUKE OF SPIKIT 21 
 
 Eucken's sole point in all this is to show that 
 man's deepest spirit cannot for long feel satisfied 
 with a naturalistic conception of itself or of the 
 universe. It needs more, and is made for more. 
 
 It is on this account that Eucken turns to 
 examine the other great Life-system of Intel- 
 lectiwdism, which has played such an important part 
 in the thought and life of modern times. The 
 fullest account of the strength and weakness of 
 Intellectualism is presented in the Einheit des 
 Geisteslebens. In some of his later books this 
 system is referred to as Speculative Philosophy. In 
 the English-speaking countries the system is known 
 as Absolutism, and its most distinguished repre- 
 sentative is Mr. F. H. Bradley. Without a doubt 
 this Life-system has played too important a part in 
 the history of the world to be dismissed without 
 any more ado. And Eucken is aware of this fact, 
 and many aspects of his teaching have close 
 affinities to Intellectualism. Intellectualism has 
 from the time of Plato downwards recognized 
 the superiority of reason over the things of sense, 
 and, on the whole, throughout the centuries it has 
 considered man's spirit as being of a different 
 origin and nature from the organic life of his own 
 body and of the physical world. It has granted 
 man's spirit a kind of self-subsistence. This 
 
22 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 thread is clearly observed in the Metaphysics, 
 Logic, and Psychology of the centuries. The 
 strength of the System lies in its recognition of 
 the nature of Reason and in its belief in the power 
 of Reason. But its conclusions are, on the whole, 
 the results of logical conclusions framed from 
 premises which are far removed from man's 
 relation to the world. In fact, a mental world, 
 far removed from man's vocation in the physical 
 world and from the deepest needs of life, has been 
 created, and it is in this mental world that realit}' 
 is to be found. Before such a reality can be dis- 
 covered, a long and difficult training in the 
 subtleties of Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics 
 is needful. Indeed, some of the present-day advo- 
 cates of Absolutism state that a man cannot know 
 God unless he is a metaphysician. If this be so, 
 what is to happen to the millions who have no 
 opportunities or time or knowledge of the Absolute 
 of Speculative Philosophy? Are they to remain 
 outside the highest Reality? and have they to 
 continue to live on superstitions and illusions? 
 Eucken's answer is distinctly, 'No.' He shows 
 everywhere that, however valuable the conclusions 
 of Logic and Metaphysics may be in the direction of 
 enabling man to realize the nature of the real, 
 there is another road on which the ordinary man 
 
THE NATURE OF SPIRIT 23 
 
 may walk and obtain a Reality which is deeper in 
 its nature and more transforming in its power than 
 that of logical universals. Plenty of time and an 
 escape from the world are necessary to the enjoy- 
 ment of the conclusions of Speculative Philosophy, 
 and fortunate, doubtless, is he who is able to 
 ruminate in such a field. But men and women 
 have to live in a real factual world a world which 
 is full of confusions of all kinds, and which needs 
 bringing into some kind of order. This fact is no 
 doubt the cause why the late Professor James and 
 Dr. Schiller turned to a ' gospel ' more in accordance 
 with the actual development of life on its natural 
 sides during the nineteenth century. Eucken 
 seems to stand midway between Absolutism and 
 Pragmatism. His Personal Life-system has many 
 of the implications of Absolutism. He believes in 
 its insistence on the power of Reason as an instru- 
 ment for discovering a reality higher than the 
 physical world. In one of his latest volumes he 
 speaks of the importance of reason in the following 
 manner: "The modern world is now breaking 
 away from immediate existence and is developing a 
 process of life superior to such existence. This 
 is illustrated especially in the recognition and 
 development of a reason independent of the 
 individual and of his situation in life. This 
 
24 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 development has not only become the basis of 
 knowledge, but also the Standard of Life ; not only 
 has there resulted an elevation beyond the stand- 
 point of Psychology with its merely descriptive 
 methods, but also the aspiration after a thorough- 
 going elevation of human existence, as well as after 
 a complete dispersal of all darkness and misery 
 both of which are to be discovered in modern life 
 derives its rights and its driving-power simply out 
 of the belief in such a reason superior to man and 
 yet present in man. This belief has proceeded 
 into the world as a power of clarification and 
 orientation, as well as of a stimulation and further 
 development; it tolerates nothing which contra- 
 dicts its claims, but what it conceives as valid it 
 unifies the more closely and renders the more 
 effectual. Knowledge, however, receives here its 
 main task viz., to develop a connected sphere of 
 Thought and to illumine the whole of existence 
 from such a sphere."* 
 
 Eucken's contention is that what is specific in 
 the spiritual structure of human life consists not 
 in theories and learned discussions, but in an 
 actual turn of man to the inner tasks of spiritual 
 existence. Such a ' turn ' is not generally brought 
 about by means of reflection but of action. Thus 
 * Knowledge and Life, p. 163. 
 
THE NATURE OF SPIRIT 25 
 
 there seems to be a radical difference between 
 knowing and being. Even the best ideals, which 
 are no more than the results of intellectual thought, 
 cannot mean as much to the man as those ideals 
 which have been cemented into a whole by means 
 of the struggles of the deeper life with hostile 
 elements without and within. 
 
 We may thus pass to Eucken's own Life-system 
 that of a Personal and Cosmic World. He has 
 been obliged to part with the Life-system of 
 Intellectualism because its reality is formal, and 
 because it has been woven without the presence of 
 the deeper instincts, passions, longings, and as- 
 pirations of the deepest soul. 
 
CHAPTEK III 
 
 EUCKEN'S OWN LIFE-SYSTEM OF A PEBSONAL-COSMIC 
 WOBLD 
 
 THE two previous Life-systems were shown to be 
 insufficient to found a Keality which would take 
 into account the whole of man's nature. The 
 Life-system of Naturalism gives us no more than 
 things and their relations ; that of Intellectualism 
 gives only concepts and their relations. Eucken 
 states that he is driven by the demands of life to 
 seek for a more inclusive Life-system, which shall 
 not ignore the results of Naturalism and Intellec- 
 tualism, but which feels the need of other factors 
 of supreme importance. Such a new system of a 
 cosmic self-life is not a speculative metaphysic of 
 any kind, and it is not a mere subjective wish of the 
 individual. The important thing we have to bear 
 in mind is that it is abundantly clear that a move- 
 ment beyond the individual is taking place in the 
 world, and it is loyalty to such a movement, far 
 more than the interests of the individual in his 
 own particular welfare, that affects the most pro- 
 
 26 
 
A PEKSONAL-COSMIC WOULD 27 
 
 found change in the individual. There is such a 
 conception as the life of mankind. This life of 
 mankind has become a standard and norm for 
 each individual life. This life of mankind is to be 
 made our central conception ; and a spiritual world, 
 which becomes personal, is to be developed out of 
 such a conception. How does Eucken proceed in 
 verifying this statement ? 
 
 We have already hinted that Eeality possesses 
 the two characteristics of being personal and over- 
 personal, and it is on this fact that Eucken builds 
 his system of cosmic self-life. No more than a 
 mere outline of his mode of procedure can be pre- 
 sented here, and the reader who wishes to obtain 
 a full account of the matter is referred especially 
 to the Einheit des Geisteslebens. 
 
 Our attention must again be directed to the 
 nature of the spirit of man. This spirit is rooted in 
 Nature. Much in it is physical, and the past 
 quarter of a century has made clear that far more 
 is physical than had been previously suspected. 
 Eucken's system does not preclude the most 
 mechanical conceptions of the universe and of life 
 even including human life. It is a noteworthy 
 phase of his system that it will not be disturbed 
 by any further advance in the mechanical con- 
 ceptions of the universe and of life. Granting that 
 
28 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 man is rooted in the physical, nobody will see that 
 there is no other root in his nature. He is mind 
 and spirit now, however much we may fail to 
 follow such a root to its deepest soil. And even 
 mechanical science is more careful than it used to 
 be in not attributing a physical origin to the con- 
 tent of consciousness. My authority for stating 
 that the life of the soul is not the same as the life 
 of the body is Professor Schafer.* 
 
 Besides this, the turn which the new Biology has 
 taken during the past few years is something no 
 less than startling. Bergson, Driesch, McDougall, 
 Haldane, Thompson, T. H. Morgan, and others are 
 finding it increasingly difficult to account not only 
 for the phenomenon of consciousness, but also for 
 the phenomena of life below man, from purely 
 chemical, mechanical elements. And when we 
 turn to the Physics of our day we find scientists 
 like Oswald propounding theories of Energy which 
 interpret the universe and life in terms of some- 
 thing which is certainly more like mind than like 
 matter. 
 
 What we are certain of is that with the rise of 
 consciousness a new kind of reality makes its 
 appearance. It is only what might be expected 
 
 * Cf. his well-known address at the British Association, 
 1912. 
 
A PEESONAL-COSMIC WORLD 29 
 
 that such a reality of mind or spirit cannot exist 
 without a world of things in space. Of course 
 there is nothing new in this statement. Conscious- 
 ness has for many generations been considered as 
 something very different from matter, and cer- 
 tainly Eucken does not claim to have made any 
 discovery in pointing out the difference between 
 the two, But what he has done is to point out in 
 the most original manner that it is not enough to 
 acknowledge this difference between mind and 
 matter, and only half-believe in the reality of mind. 
 Much would have happened for good in the history 
 of mankind if it had believed in the past that mind 
 or soul, though its connection with the body be the 
 most intimate, still has a reality of its own a 
 reality not to be found, at least in the same degree, 
 in any world below man. The main question with 
 Eucken is : Are we willing to take this step of 
 acknowledging the reality of mind or spirit ? Cer- 
 tainly there are not enough proofs in the realm of 
 Biology either to prove or disprove the legitimacy 
 of such a step. It cannot possibly be known before- 
 hand whether such a step is justified or not. But 
 neither could Sir Ernest Shackleton say what was 
 the contour of the land at the South Pole until 
 he was there. Things are precisely similar in the 
 realm of mind or spirit. We know that man has 
 
30 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 emerged out of nature, but he is more than a 
 natural being now. The question for Eucken is, 
 Does man recognize that all the upward movement 
 of his life becomes possible by acknowledging fully 
 the presence of this More ? It cannot be said that 
 the world has not known this fact for many genera- 
 tions. But how astonishing it is that so few have 
 acted upon such a knowledge ! Eucken states that 
 we could have multiplied our men of genius and 
 power if the world had ' ruminated ' over the pre- 
 sence and significance of this More of mind or 
 spirit. Men must familiarize themselves with the 
 need of holding fast to the reality of this More in 
 the teeth of every opposition. And as we shall see 
 later there are oppositions on all sides to the 
 growth of this new More. To become aware of this 
 More is not a matter of theoretical speculation or 
 of biological research. In the former case we are 
 living on words, and the deeper spirit may starve 
 in the process, however successful the process may 
 be ; in the latter case we are living on our relations 
 to things outside us, and how can individuality and 
 personality grow where the attention is constantly 
 directed towards something other than ourselves, 
 and that generally being something which is below 
 ourselves in the scale of existence ? No, the whole 
 matter is that of a personal experience a personal 
 
A PEESONAL-COSMIC WORLD 31 
 
 experience of a new reality present in the spirit. 
 This experience is entirely different from every 
 manipulation of ideas by means of that fraction of 
 our being termed the understanding. When per- 
 sonal experience is able to become aware of this 
 Spiritual More it becomes aware of a totality or 
 whole in other words, it becomes aware of a living 
 synthesis or universal present within the soul. It 
 becomes aware of a microcosm of something most 
 intimate and ultimate at the same time. That is 
 the meaning which Eucken attaches to his system 
 of Personal-Cosmic Life and World. Such an ex- 
 perience cannot be subjective though it is personal, 
 for man is always aware of the ' given ' elements 
 present in it Indeed, in one sense everything is 
 * given.' * Nature has given, history has given 
 the whole environment, natural and social, is giving 
 from moment to moment. The experience is there- 
 fore objective, and it is cosmic in the sense of de- 
 pendency upon a natural and social cosmos that 
 has carried us on its breast all our days. It is no 
 wonder, as Eucken points out, that the experience 
 of Grace has played such an important part in the 
 higher religions of the world. But though every- 
 thing is * given,' it is not given in the lump. It 
 is given piecemeal, and the pieces enter into the 
 * Cf. Losskij's Intuitivismus on this. 
 
32 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 mind and spirit, and their whole nature is trans- 
 formed there. We have not the slightest idea how 
 the miracle is done, but done it is in the life of the 
 humblest spirit. Things become thoughts, and 
 thoughts come to a focus and blend with all the 
 a priori elements present in man's spirit. This, in 
 a way, is the teaching of the ordinary Psychology 
 of our day. But no one is ' converted ' to the 
 great totalities and wholes and unities of life by 
 Psychology. Psychology performs a very useful 
 function in telling us a little about how the thing 
 is done, but it tells us nothing what the thing, after 
 it has been done, is. Eucken shows that the rela- 
 tions of mind and body presented by Psychology 
 are no more than abstractions of the deeper unity 
 present within experience. He gives the name 
 ' Noology ' to the experience itself as distinguished 
 from the psychological bits of information we 
 possess concerning the history of the soul and its 
 relations to its own material body and to the sur- 
 rounding world. 
 
 Though, therefore, all is ' given,' all has to be 
 reacted upon by the mind. We have to become 
 aware of all that is given, for otherwise it will 
 remain dormant in the mind. We thus see that 
 the consciousness of this More is intensely personal 
 it is something to be preserved and to be further 
 
A PEKSONAL-COSMIC WOKLD 33 
 
 developed. It is cosmic in the further sense that, 
 though it has landed man in a new ivorld, that does 
 not mean that it has made the whole of that world 
 its own. The soul certainly sees that what is 
 present within itself is infinite and eternal. That 
 means in the beginning that the new life belongs to 
 a new order of existence which, though it exists in 
 space and time, still is spaceless and timeless. 
 There arises now on the horizon of life, once the 
 reality of the new spiritual More has been empha- 
 sized again and again and has been made the 
 foundation of all true human existence, the pos- 
 sibility of attaining still more content for the 
 life. Moments of calm and contemplation on our 
 spiritual existence (little enough though such an 
 existence be in the beginning) bring forth startling, 
 new, and unique experiences. The content seems, 
 after the whole soul has made it its foundation and 
 has determined to test it, to acquire a deep need 
 and aspiration for more still of the deeper quality 
 that has now filtered into the soul as a unity or 
 whole. Consequently a break has for ever taken 
 place with natural existence, and the soul knows 
 that a new reality has begun to take root within it. 
 Such a reality cannot for long feed on what is 
 already in the soul, and there is not enough in 
 Nature or Society for it to feed upon. Where can 
 
 3 
 
34 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 it turn for a new content ? It may turn in several 
 directions. It may turn to the projecting and 
 magnifying of the little More that is already a 
 reality within it upon the canvas of infinity and 
 eternity ; in other words, it multiplies its possession 
 in imagination and holds it out as an object of 
 thought and a requisite of life. " What strange 
 world- whispers, mystic pain or joy, that used to 
 haunt me when a boy, far, far away " these are 
 revived with startling suddenness ; and such ideals, 
 too great to be reduced to definite logical concepts, 
 help to change in a most fundamental manner the 
 nature of the soul and to claim it for once and for 
 all to the things of eternity. This is no other than 
 the * regeneration ' of the soul as it is presented 
 in the nucleus of the Christian religion. Some 
 reader may answer again : " There is nothing new 
 in that ; it is in the Gospels ; it is in Paul ; it is 
 found throughout the whole history of the Christian 
 Church." No, there is nothing new in it as Eucken 
 is so fond of pointing out. But perhaps it is new 
 to preach it from a University chair as part and 
 parcel of the deeper implications of Philosophy. 
 We are glad to find that such a change is rapidly 
 coming over the philosophic world. It is no longer 
 able to write books on Metaphysics and other 
 branches of Philosophy without taking Religion and 
 
A PERSONAL-COSMIC WORLD 35 
 
 the deepest soul of man into account. Until lately, 
 most of our philosophical teachers had banished 
 the soul and its needs in order to deify the concept 
 and the syllogism, and to show the marvellous con- 
 juries they were able to perform. All this is passing 
 away. The spirit of man has been waiting all the time 
 for some one to come forward to present its claims 
 and to show that it is more than a mere useless trim- 
 ming of the natural life which starts in the cradle 
 and ends in the tomb. Eucken has come forth as 
 a champion of this life of the spirit. He challenges 
 the sciences and the philosophies of the day to 
 reduce man's spirit into a mere flowering of the 
 material processes of nature, or into a bundle of 
 physical movements within the brain. No answer 
 either to the needs or the aspirations of the spirit 
 of man is to be found in such teachings. It is not 
 an hypothesis but a fact that a cleavage has been 
 made between man's spirit and nature. By nature 
 here Eucken means not only the physical world, 
 but also the psychic life as well as the ordinary life 
 of man. A Deed which is entire has now taken 
 place within the spirit, and such a Deed has relegated 
 the whole world of matter, of psychic life, of 
 ordinary life, and even of the intellectual life to a 
 secondary place. This does not mean that these 
 are to be ignored. The real spiritual world is 
 
36 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 within, but things infra-spiritual have their rights 
 and uses, and will continue to have these as long 
 as we are obliged to live in a physical world of 
 space and time. Indeed, many of these infra- 
 spiritual elements actually contribute their quota 
 to the spiritual life within the soul. The nature 
 which nourishes us, the houses we live in, the 
 vocations we fill, the clothes we wear, the friends 
 we meet, the state of which we are subjects they 
 all help us. But they often also all injure us, and 
 threaten to bring our spiritual life to nought. 
 This double aspect is delineated by Eucken with 
 great power in his Truth of Religion. Whether 
 helpful or harmful, the world of existence has to be 
 differentiated in a decisive manner from the world 
 of deed. The whole triumph of the spiritual life 
 within the soul depends upon accomplishing this 
 cleavage. " What leads the struggle against the 
 narrowness of a life ' merely human and personal ' 
 is in the last resort a specific aspiration of life 
 itself a quest for a deeper and richer self-existence 
 and self -subsistence. If this process does not find 
 its home in such qualities as these if it does 
 not hold together a superior unity and transform 
 it into a result the whole movement will dissipate 
 itself in the sand. All this cannot come to pass if 
 the ivorld of deed does not first of all stand out in 
 
A PERSONAL-COSMIC WORLD 37 
 
 strong relief from the world of existence, and if 
 this world of deed is not comprehended purely in 
 its self-existence and self -subsistence. Without this 
 there is no binding into a whole and no distinctive 
 marks of character. But we have already seen 
 that the division between the two worlds is in- 
 hibited from being an entire cleavage that the 
 deed-world, in order to find its own consummation, 
 has to return to the world of existence ; and this 
 can only be done if, first of all, the world of exist- 
 ence is viewed (by a process of abstraction) as 
 entirely independent of the world of deed. . . . 
 There must be, on the one side, a serious wrestling 
 with the deed-world, and, on the other, with the 
 world of existence, if the spiritual world of man is to 
 develop and express its full characteristics. But 
 the co-operation of both worlds must not be under- 
 stood as a kind of combination of two different 
 things as something to which the deed world gives 
 the form and the world of existence gives the material. 
 Such a combination can never engender a living 
 whole indeed, the two elements can never come 
 together in an inner manner. For if the life of the 
 spirit is to progress, the conditions and circumstances 
 of the external world are rather to be placed upon the 
 ground of the deed-world, and are here to be trans- 
 formed into an antithesis furnishing motives for the 
 
38 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 further development of the life of the spirit. The 
 deed-world is not a mere side of life, but constitutes 
 the whole or totality of life a whole that can 
 submit to nothing outside itself ; but it is a whole 
 or totality that is as yet incomplete, and which can 
 perfect itself by means of contact and collision with 
 external existence"* 
 
 As the spiritual life proceeds on its course it has 
 often to battle with stubborn elements. Bergson 
 speaks of the stubbornness of matter and of the 
 difficulty of life to overcome it. Eucken speaks of 
 the stubbornness of much that is in the world out- 
 side, and in our own inner world. In the world 
 outside, the spiritual life finds itself hemmed in by 
 alien, hostile elements; the injustice and hardness 
 of the world, the huge ' baggage train ' of super- 
 stition and indifference and ignorance, are not 
 things which vanish in a day, and never vanish 
 without battling ever anew with them. In the 
 world within, where the spiritual life has taken 
 root, deadly enemies are to be encountered. The 
 racial instincts, the impulses and passions, the oft- 
 repeated tendencies to obey the ' call of the wild,' 
 the drifting along the long-trodden ' dead level ' 
 life these and other elements arise and fight with 
 all their fury against the eternal and immortal 
 * Knowledge and Life, pp. 243 f. 
 
A PEESONAL-COSMIC WORLD 39 
 
 power which has been planted in the soul. It is 
 no wonder, as Eucken says, that the conception of 
 a devil is not very far away from the highest 
 religions of the world, or from the deepest experi- 
 ences of him who has seen through his own soul. 
 The opposition appears so serious in the initial 
 stages of the spiritual life, that help must come to 
 the soul to overcome in such a struggle as this. 
 It is no less than a struggle between two worlds 
 the world from which we have emerged and the 
 world into which we have just been spiritually 
 born. We have to go back, according to Eucken, 
 time after time and insist that the foundation of 
 our life is now spiritual, immortal, and eternal. 
 We are born into another world ; we must insist 
 on this. Often we are partially beaten in this 
 battle, but if we have once experienced the deepest 
 unity and substance within ourselves something 
 cosmic and spiritual has for ever made its abode 
 within the soul, and all the forces of the enemy can 
 never utterly obliterate it. As Eucken puts it, 
 something essential, substantial, and cosmic, has 
 become ours, and this can never be entirely lost. 
 For the soul here sees not only its content already 
 attained, but also the content that ought to be 
 attained. Out of its own content there arise 
 norms and standards of a state of existence pos- 
 
40 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 sible for man a state which he as yet has not 
 attained. 
 
 These norms and standards are seen by the soul 
 to be elements of cosmic significance, for it is only 
 when it clings to these in the day of battle that 
 the victory becomes a certitude. ' The spiritually 
 New and More ' is lost when it loosens its hold 
 upon such norms and ideals. But when it tightens 
 its grip something further, new, more, and cosmic, 
 is added to the experience, and it is this which 
 conquers in the day of battle. This is no specu- 
 lative truth, but a fact exemplified in one way or 
 another in the lives of the great religious person- 
 alities of the world. " The affirmation [the New 
 and the More] has brought forth far too much 
 spiritual movement and newness of life to allow 
 itself to be swept aside as a mere illusion. There- 
 fore there must be present in such a need of the 
 life of man something deeper, for man, through 
 some kind of energy, will hold fast to his life with 
 a confident hope and trust, although these cannot 
 be justified by any view of things as seen on the 
 mere surface. No great thinker has more truly 
 seen the urgency of these problems and brought 
 them more powerfully to expression than Augustine. 
 Before his eyes the old world sank before a new 
 one had yet emerged ; he found himself haunted 
 
A PEKSONAL-COSMIC WORLD 41 
 
 by the dread of a wholly empty world, and felt all 
 the desolation and contradiction of human exist- 
 ence with the most painful intensity. And yet he 
 held fast to life and withstood the total destruction 
 of his soul. But why? Because the hindrance 
 itself brought him to the consciousness that some- 
 thing greater than it is imbedded in it; because 
 all menace and intimidation made him absolutely 
 certain of something in his nature which could 
 never be lost. This something is of an axiomatic 
 kind something at first mysterious; but out of 
 the mystery a powerful energy originates and gives 
 birth to a new and higher need of life which, over 
 against the energy of nature, may be termed 
 metaphysical. . . . The experience of Augustine 
 is not singular, but is an experience of mankind, 
 an experience of all individuals to whom these 
 problems have come to signify their life and 
 destiny."* 
 
 The man of science or the psychologist may smile 
 at all this, and say that all this is not Philosophy 
 but Religion. If such a man will turn to the 
 deeper implications of all the great philosophical 
 thinkers of the world he will not fail to find that 
 they were all searching for a reality deeper than 
 the interpretation of the physical universe or the 
 
 * Truth of Religion, p. 402 (second English edition). 
 
42 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 relations and combinations of intellectual concep- 
 tion. There is no wall of partition between natural 
 science, philosophy, and religion. Start in the 
 field of science and walk far enough you will come 
 to a narrow gate which leads into the field of 
 philosophy. After sitting on this for a while, 
 repeat your experiment in the philosophical field. 
 Walk on, though there is a good deal of mist 
 around the path ; still, if you walk far enough, you 
 are bound to reach a Metaphysic. And forgetting 
 for a little while where you have come from, and 
 remembering where you are, and noticing what is 
 around you, and trying to follow the path farther, 
 because it does not end where you are when you 
 have done this you will be on an altitude high 
 enough to see things as Mathew Arnold so suggest- 
 ively remarked you will ' see life steadily and see 
 it whole.' It is something like this which Eucken 
 means when he insists on the need of a metaphysic 
 of life and of religion. We shall now turn to his 
 view of religion. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 HITHERTO we have observed how the life of the 
 spirit has created a cleft within the soul itself. We 
 have further seen that physical and psychical 
 elements were relegated to a secondary place. 
 Real these certainly are, but they belong to a lower 
 grade of reality than the life of the spirit. So far 
 as we have already gone the life of the spirit is 
 aware of its new existence and of its entrance into 
 a new world, but the first experience is soon damped 
 by storms and blasts from without and within. 
 And it is in this fact that Eucken takes note of the 
 great antinomy in human existence. On the one 
 hand, as we have already noticed, the life of the spirit 
 felt itself to be a self-subsistent life ; it was fully 
 convinced in certain moments of its experience of its 
 spiritual autonomy. The life is posited between the 
 antinomy and the autonomy , and its tragedy consists 
 in this. The spiritual life in its battle for autonomy 
 is assailed by Nature, by much in civilization and 
 culture, and by much within itself. It is assailed 
 
 48 
 
44 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 by the natural process. " As nature itself with its 
 order and mechanism enters into the very soul of 
 man, the awakened spiritual life must verify its 
 independence and superiority over against this ; it 
 must rule our actions more and more, and must 
 link all effort to its own career. How could it 
 otherwise affect a revolution of the total reality ?" 
 
 "Do the facts of experience show such a * becom- 
 ing ' superiority of the spiritual life ? They show 
 quite the reverse. The spiritual development of 
 man as well as the natural life of the soul remain 
 attached to the order of nature ; they become and 
 grow with the body. The spiritual life, too, waxes 
 and wanes within us. That the body is more to 
 man than a mere tool is clearly proved by so- 
 called mental pathology which is really brain 
 pathology which contracts most powerfully the 
 psychic activity and drives man to perverted 
 paths. Death, again, with its extinguishing of the 
 whole existence, appears as a great evil proceed- 
 ing from the province of nature. For the spiritual 
 life sets aims within the individual being which far 
 outrun the short span of existence ; activities are 
 initiated and relationships of man to man formed 
 which involve a longing after a permanency of 
 duration; the man works with incessant toil for 
 his own cultivation, and attains by his labours a 
 
RELIGION 45 
 
 personal standing and a spiritual individuality only 
 to witness all his results so cruelly destroyed. 
 Over against this, there awakens an ardent longing 
 to burst such limits asunder, and to participate in 
 some way in eternity ; thus religion has become in 
 the main the promise of individual immortality. 
 But not only does experience fail to give the least 
 clue to this, it also refuses to affirm that what 
 appears on the one hand as indispensable is on the 
 other hand superfluous. And, further, how often 
 does all spiritual emotion fade in the soul ; the 
 spirituality becomes numb and dull, and by gradual 
 stages it almost wholly dies in the lifetime of man. 
 What has immortality to do with such a spent-out 
 life? . . . Earthquakes and floods as in a play 
 destroy the blossoming spiritual life; pestilence and 
 famine produce their effects without any concern 
 for human welfare and spiritual values. ... A 
 mysterious sphinx stands in front of us, incessantly 
 bringing to birth and bringing to death, patiently 
 preparing and rashly destroying, benevolent and 
 pitiless at the same time, its objects quickly be- 
 friending one another and quite as quickly pursuing 
 one another in a relentless struggle ; all this verifies 
 the saying that nature is less of a mother than of 
 a step-mother to her children. . . . Further, the 
 most appalling destruction of life, the occasions of 
 
46 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 dreadful malformations, the inheritance of painful 
 diseases, follow throughout in accordance with the 
 laws of nature and with the causal order. Of what 
 help to reason, it may be asked, is that which 
 places so much power in the hands of unreason?"* 
 
 We see from this wonderful passage that Eucken 
 does not shut his eyes to the catastrophes of the 
 world ; he faces them all, and still finds a refuge 
 for the soul within its new world of eternal values. 
 When we view civilization and culture the case 
 is similar. Here, again, the spiritual life finds 
 much to harass it and drive it out of its course. 
 What are the oppositions, the wars, the jealousies, 
 and the savageries of the world in the past and 
 in the present but deadly weeds which have often 
 nearly choked the ideals of the Kingdom of God ? 
 
 The same is true with regard to the opposition 
 within the particular province of the spiritual life 
 itself. How often does the individual become no 
 more than the tool of the environment : " The 
 individual appears as a child of his age ; the waves 
 of his age play with him and carry him far out 
 until he becomes without a will of his own, and 
 merely floats on the current of external circum- 
 stances." " Civilized life heightens these entangle- 
 ments through its multiplication and refinement of 
 
 * Truth of Religion, pp. 291^. (second English edition). 
 
RELIGION 47 
 
 wants and needs, through its manifold complica- 
 tions and the narrow concentration of men, through 
 its fierce blaze of ambition and lust for gain all 
 which are deemed necessary for our self-preservation 
 . . . and thus the thing that really matters appears 
 as a painful inversion, and comes in for unfriendly 
 criticism."* It is no wonder that Eucken asks : 
 " How shall we disengage ourselves from such a 
 confusion ? And what becomes of the presence of 
 the Divine through such an upheaval of morality ? 
 In so far as the actual situation has been acknow- 
 ledged, it has to all appearance less strengthened 
 the reason of our existence than brought the un- 
 reason of it to clear consciousness. "t 
 
 The situation is dark ; shall we abandon our- 
 selves to what restrains the spiritual life-process, 
 and which expects safety only through death and 
 annihilation ? Eucken answers that the individual 
 could do this if the movement of life were his own 
 concern his own private fact. But he cannot do 
 this " if within him a Life-process not capable of 
 being exactly defined the opening out of a higher 
 order of things is acknowledged. Thus, there is 
 something in him which he dare not rob himself 
 of ; he now deals with a problem which he himself 
 has not set, but which, as from a sublime energy, 
 
 * Truth of Beligion, p. 325. f Ibid., p. 325. 
 
48 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 rises within him and refuses to be abandoned. 
 However much of all this is concerned with the 
 renunciation of his own happiness man is not able 
 to disown his spiritual nature and its tasks. In 
 his nature and its tasks a fact seems committed to 
 him which is of value not only for himself but for 
 the whole ; for the vindication of a higher order of 
 things does not seem possible without his activity. 
 Therefore, beyond all the physical oppression of 
 life something metaphysical seems to govern and 
 forbid a simple abandonment." As we shall see, a 
 superior power can come to man's assistance. 
 
 It is on account of this need in man's nature a 
 need which always occurs in the drift of his higher 
 development that Eucken sees the main justifica- 
 tion of Religion. We have already noticed how the 
 spiritual seemed to have gained a certain autonomy 
 and self-subsistence ; its nature and content seemed, 
 without a doubt, to belong to another order of being 
 and existence. Such a nature and content were far 
 removed from objects of sense, and they seemed to 
 point to a ' world ' even beyond the ' world ' of 
 intellectual conclusions, although such a * beyond ' 
 may be no other than a 'beyond that is within.' 
 That ' beyond ' included within itself the whole 
 spirit of man ; it was the final conviction and final 
 word of man's knowledge and life after having come 
 
KELIGION 49 
 
 to a coalescence. This experience is the most 
 weighty fact in human experience. Man, once he 
 has experienced the presence and power of such a 
 fact, cannot withdraw from it except at the peril of 
 losing the qualities which are the most precious in 
 his life. What is he to do ? It is certainly true 
 that he has here committed himself to an experience 
 which is extremely difficult, and probably impossible, 
 to grasp as intellectual facts are grasped. But 
 surely this is no reason for withdrawing from the 
 experience or for considering it a delusion. The 
 alternative the great Either-Or of Eucken's has 
 vital and momentous consequences : on the one 
 hand are certitudes and future possibilities which 
 mean a new kind of life and a new order of being, 
 and, on the other, a death which is brought about 
 by reducing life to the impressions and results of 
 natural and intellectual impressions and conclusions. 
 Life must take one of the two alternatives no third 
 path is possible. Now, it has been already shown 
 that it is the necessity of life as well as the presence 
 of over-individual norms and values which make 
 life move further towards this unexplored region. 
 There is therefore no way of showing the validity 
 of the enterprise except by taking into account the 
 nature and the implications of the content and 
 value of the deepest experience. It is certainly 
 
 4 
 
50 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 true that natural and intellectual elements have 
 filtered their contributions into such an experience, 
 but that does not mean that the experience is either 
 natural or intellectual now. This fact is so often 
 forgotten by empirical philosophers that attention 
 should be called to it. The fallacy is committed 
 because the philosopher overlooks the fact that the 
 objects of the physical world have somehow to 
 come into contact with man's consciousness and the 
 contact has to change into concepts before the world 
 becomes intelligible at all. However much we may 
 try, we can never obliterate man's mental potency 
 in the act of perceiving and knowing the world out- 
 side himself. The very possibility of any kind of 
 progress in the sciences rests upon the acceptation 
 of such a fact for fact it is, however far we are 
 from explaining all the constituents of its history 
 and formation. Even on this level of dealing with 
 the principles of science and of logic, for instance, 
 we are actually employing relations and conclusions 
 which are far removed from any sense data. Sense 
 data have entered into the formation of these prin- 
 ciples, but, as already stated, they cease to be data 
 of sense when the spirit of man, by means of its own 
 power, has reacted on them and has melted them 
 in the totality or wholeness of its power in order 
 that they may form a larger totality or wholeness. 
 
KELIGION 51 
 
 We do not dispute the justice of handling material 
 which has no direct relation to life in such a fashion 
 as this. We see that the very preservation and 
 enhancement of all our sciences depend upon the 
 use of such a method in our dealing with the 
 external world. Why should we dispute the legiti- 
 macy of the method when we are dealing with 
 ourselves when we are trying to ' read our own 
 breasts clear.' The norms and values which have 
 issued as the final implications of Knowledge and 
 Life always seem to ring true, and we should 
 never doubt their reality and validity had it not 
 been that existence in space has been for so long 
 one of our main tests of the reality of anything. 
 But surely such a test is not worthy of Philosophy 
 after all that has been said on this point by the 
 thinkers of the centuries ! To cling to such a test is 
 to fail to appreciate, and to attempt to undo the 
 works of such thinkers as Plato, Kant, Hegel, and 
 many others in ancient and modern times. 
 
 Eucken then takes his standpoint on the fact of 
 a self-subsistent life pressed by its own demands to 
 seek for a further content. He takes it that every- 
 thing tells us to go forward, except the lethargy arid 
 the spiritual ebb of our lives. Suppose we are deter- 
 mined to follow the inklings of the self-subsistent 
 life, where are we to get our material ? It must not 
 
52 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 be material which is entirely alien to the content 
 that is already present in the life. If that were the 
 case, we should never have either the wish or the 
 will to push forward and upward. In seeking for 
 more we are not seeking for some kind of more 
 which lies beyond the boundary of our life ; we are, 
 in fact, seeking for ourselves ; we are seeking for 
 a greater depth of our own nature ; we are seeking 
 to preserve and to deepen the values already 
 present in the life and to increase them. 
 
 In Eucken's teaching there are three paths 
 which open out in front of us, and which help the 
 different sides of our nature. These are the paths 
 of Universal Eeligion, the Historical Religions, and 
 Specific or Personal Religion. 
 
 With regard to Universal Religion, it may be 
 stated that Eucken means by it the intellectual 
 warrants which may be obtained from the history 
 of mankind in connection with our own personal 
 undertaking and quest for this More for our spiritual 
 life. The history of the progress of mankind is 
 far more a history and progress of over-individual 
 efforts and their resultant complexes and syntagmas 
 than of independent, individual efforts. The 
 relations of men in the family, the tribe, the com- 
 munity, society, science, the state, and the church 
 have, as is quite clear, formed complexes of life 
 
KELIGION 53 
 
 larger than can possibly be the experiences of any 
 one individual that forms any of these groups. 
 The common efforts and relations have brought 
 forth individual activity, and such individual 
 activity was something that was common to all the 
 group, and good and true for all. Many of the 
 individual inclinations and wants of life had to be 
 pushed into the background before such an over- 
 individual truth and reality could become possible. 
 These over-individual complexes are not the facts 
 and events which once appeared in our world, but 
 the interpretation and meaning of these facts and 
 events. Thus, they do not depend upon place and 
 time. They have persisted as norms and standards 
 for all the facts and events which make their 
 appearance. Such complexes could not have come 
 into existence without the facts and events. This 
 is simply a treatment of the history of mankind in 
 a manner similar to that of the scientist's when he 
 deals with the facts and events which present 
 themselves to him in the external world from 
 moment to moment. We have already dealt with 
 this work of science, and here wish to emphasize 
 that the relations of mankind and the complexes 
 issuing out of such relations have to be treated in 
 a similar manner. The subject-matters of science 
 and of history are, of course, different; what is 
 
54 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 emphasized here is that in science and history the 
 quest for universals has been a condition absolutely 
 necessary for all development in both sciences. It 
 is not here denied, either, that the particular is 
 valueless. It will be shown later that it has great 
 value. What, then, are the norms and ideals 
 present in the life of the spirit of man save over- 
 individual realities which have persisted in the 
 history of the world and which ever grow by the 
 individual and collective contributions of men and 
 communities? When man reflects upon them in 
 this manner he cannot excape from the conclusion 
 that they constitute a reality entirely different from 
 his individual life a reality which is objective in 
 man's ideal world and not in a spatial world. 
 Eucken in several of his books therefore dis- 
 tinguishes between substance and existence. Over- 
 individual ideals and values exist for the self. That 
 is the world in which they have their reality. In 
 other words, they exist in a world of spirit. Man 
 must then give up the idea of ever hoping to prove 
 that they exist elsewhere. The true infinity is not 
 an endlessness of space, but a consciousness that 
 within the particular life something not found in 
 space has begun to happen as an experience within 
 the soul. The true eternity is not an endless flow of 
 successive moments, but the meaning of many 
 
KELIGION 55 
 
 moments gathered into a unity or whole, and thus 
 constituting, in the midst of the factual events 
 of time, another kind of reality which follows 
 time and gathers its fragments into itself. Some- 
 thing of this nature is ever present in religious 
 experience, although that experience is not able to 
 give a logical account of it. It is present as an 
 experience in the lives of people who have not the 
 slightest notion of the methods and results of 
 science and philosophy. Such people cannot 
 account for the Hoiv of the experience, but they 
 are absolutely certain of its substantiality its 
 Noology and of its cosmic value and significance. 
 It means all to them. They cannot, as already 
 stated, withdraw from the experience ; it has 
 created too great a change in the whole experience 
 and outlook of life giving such strength and calm 
 in the darkest hours to exchange it for that 
 which flows on the surface of the moment or which 
 can be packed within the confines of the human 
 understanding. This cosmic value is, in the 
 language of Philosophy, termed the Absolute; in 
 the language of religion it is termed God. But we 
 must not forget the immanence and the transcend- 
 ence of this conception of God. We have already 
 shown that God cannot be altogether quite different 
 from man's experience at this level. He is that 
 
56 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 experience, but that experience is conscious of its 
 own cosmic significance and of perpetual need for 
 more. Thus God is different from the experience 
 in the sense that there is now implanted within the 
 soul the steadfast faith that more is to enter as its 
 possession. What has already entered which is of 
 priceless value is the earnest of the soul for the 
 more that will surely come. Thus&spiritualuniversal, 
 according to Eucken, is growing in the soul along 
 with the particular, and these two sides of life must 
 continue to grow as long as we live in this world. 
 
 But we must pass to Eucken's conception of the 
 Historical Religions and see briefly what is to be 
 gained in this path. In the first place, these 
 religions are evidently spiritual complexes which 
 have persisted in the history of the world, and 
 consequently they may be treated under the 
 heading of universal religion. But they are some- 
 thing else as well. They deal with what actually 
 happened in the world : they present experimental 
 proofs of the claims made by universal religion. What 
 are the lives of the spiritual heroes of history but 
 proofs of the presence and efficacy of an over- 
 individual reality having been realized as a factual 
 experience? Taking as our example the life of 
 Jesus, what is it but an actual proof of an over- 
 world reality dwelling in the life of man? This 
 
RELIGION 57 
 
 experience of the individual hero has become like 
 the religious complex to which he gave rise, also a 
 religious complex of its own a complex which has 
 become the norm and standard of so many millions 
 of human beings for nearly twenty centuries. 
 " That great * turn ' of religion is the raising up of 
 new demands to the level of the spiritual life, and a 
 blotting out of what had hitherto satisfied man. 
 Thus we find it most of all in the personality and 
 life-work of Jesus. Here we find a human life of 
 the most homely and simple kind passed in a 
 remote corner of the world, little heeded by his 
 contemporaries, and, after a brief period of blossom- 
 ing, cruelly put to death. And yet, this life had 
 an energy of spirit which filled it to the brim ; it 
 had a standard which has transformed human 
 existence to its very root ; it has made inadequate 
 what hitherto seemed to bring entire happiness ; it 
 has set limits to all petty natural culture ; it has 
 not only stamped as frivolity all absorption in the 
 mere pleasures of life, but has also reduced the 
 whole prior circle of man to the mere world of sense. 
 Such a valuation holds us fast and refuses to be 
 weakened by us even when all the dogmas and 
 usages of the Church are detected as merely 
 human institutions. That life of Jesus occupies 
 evermore a tribunal over the world ; and the 
 
58 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 majesty of such an effective bar of judgment 
 supersedes all the development of external power. "* 
 
 This paragraph represents in a vivid manner 
 what Eucken means by the value of the Historical 
 Religions. They include within themselves the 
 universal and the unique. 
 
 But what has to be borne in mind is that much 
 of all this can be known without being experienced 
 as a portion of one's own inner life. There is no 
 space for me to unfold the meaning of the differ- 
 ence between knowing something and being the 
 thing we know. The fact of this fundamental 
 difference is what makes Eucken pass through 
 universal religion, the historical religions and 
 their founders to a Characteristic or Specific 
 religion. In other words, man has to become the 
 thing he knows to be of eternal value. Thus 
 personal religion is not merely intelligence, but a 
 deed that is the ground and impregnation of the 
 world and the source of all true activity. " The 
 conception of personality, though only a symbol, 
 yet offers us the best symbol for all this. Not 
 only are we able to, but we must, maintain a union 
 of such a penetrating deed with the human soul 
 awakened to spirituality. We have seen why a 
 clear consciousness of the insufficiency of all con- 
 
 * Truth of Religion, p. 360. 
 
RELIGION 59 
 
 ceptual delineations need not in any way lessen 
 the energy and truth of such experiences ; it need 
 not prevent a mutual intercourse, as of an I with 
 a Thou."* This passage is sufficient to establish 
 Eucken's belief in prayer. It seems to have 
 become a belief amongst some who have written 
 on Eucken that because the word ' Prayer ' is not 
 found in any index to any one of his books that 
 he has no belief in what is meant by ' Prayer ' in 
 the deepest sense. The point to be remembered 
 is that Eucken's final conclusion is to establish a 
 relation between the individual and an over- 
 individual ideal and world ; and, indeed, to use the 
 symbol of personality as one of the chief symbols 
 for depicting the Highest Reality, or God. The 
 effects of personal religion have already been touched 
 on in the previous chapter, which pointed out how 
 the individual had obtained a footing in a spiritual 
 world. Personal religion means carrying ever 
 farther the implications of the life of the spirit. 
 Each step climbed in the direction of the summits 
 will bring a greater depth of reality within the 
 soul on the one hand, and will, on the other, point 
 to a more glorious summit still to be scaled. The 
 spiritual life is thus a life of ever new quest and 
 fruition. 
 
 * Truth of Religion, p. 489. 
 
60 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 But Eucken shows that not only must a great 
 struggle issue in order to gain a footing into our 
 new world ; incessant efforts must be made to push 
 farther into the unexplored land in order to increase 
 our spiritual possessions. When men will become 
 willing to do this, we shall get a new man and a 
 new ivorld. It is in the light of mankind accom- 
 plishing something of this nature that Eucken 
 sees a solution for our entangled situation to-day 
 in the realms of the state, of society, of morality, 
 and of religion. All other work does not go to 
 the bottom of the evil. Keligion has accomplished 
 a fundamental change in the lives of individuals. 
 Why cannot it do the same in the life of the race 
 if the race will try it ? We require no new truth 
 in order to establish the efficacy of religion. We 
 have already truths enough and to spare, but the 
 truth can only come when a great longing will 
 arise once again within the human soul to experi- 
 ence the depths of reality and the heights of bliss. 
 .Religion is able to accomplish this. It is waiting 
 for the world to lay hold on its power. "It is 
 necessary to raise life to the height of an essentially 
 self-subsisting spirituality, and to gain a new 
 domain a new place for spiritual experience ; it 
 is here necessary to experience the Nay and the 
 Yea and to bring them to a right relationship, and 
 
KELIGION 61 
 
 finally raise all to an undivided and encompassing 
 life. The main proof of religion lies always in the 
 whole of life developed out of religion. This whole 
 must draw to itself the entire area of existence ; 
 it must sift and winnow, connect and raise ; it 
 must conduct things to their truth ; it must initiate 
 a powerful movement which, through its own con- 
 tent and its progressive victorious superiority, de- 
 monstrates its own truth. Here it is not a doctrine 
 which man has merely to accept and follow that 
 leads to religion, but a life held in front of him 
 and brought near to him ; it is for this he is called, 
 for it is this alone which grants him the right 
 relationship to reality, and enables him to dive 
 into the depth of his own nature. Through this 
 the idea of reality is transformed, extended, and 
 deepened. The elevation of the level of reality, 
 the inner ascent of life in a manner superior to all 
 capacity of the mere individual, the growth and 
 creativeness all these are the main proof which 
 religion is able to bring forth. The fact that 
 religion, with its willing and creating, stands in 
 no isolation, but finds itself in the centre of life, 
 that it furthers the whole, and not merely isolated 
 sides, and that it leads to its own truth all this 
 belongs essentially to this main proof. As with all 
 things original and axiomatic, this new life is 
 
62 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 positively demonstrated through its own develop- 
 ment, and not through a deduction from some other 
 premises : it carries its most effective energy of 
 conviction in the strength and clearness of its own 
 development; it never allows itself to be forced 
 from without, but only to be stimulated from 
 within, and it cannot possibly convince and gain 
 us where such a stimulation finds no kind of 
 responsive spirit." " The decision finally lies in 
 the question whether for man the external world 
 or a spring of life within himself is the main fact, 
 whether the centre of gravity of reality is found 
 without or within. It is a struggle jor the governing 
 centre of life. If the inner life attains to no 
 independence and is not led as a whole, the contra- 
 dictions of the environing world appear insur- 
 mountable, and man must decline religion as an 
 impossibility. But if the inner life reaches such 
 an independence, and if man finds within the 
 spiritual life simultaneously a new world and his 
 own genuine self, the gravest misgivings will not 
 be able to overthrow the certainty of this funda- 
 mental fact. Thus, this fundamental fact remains 
 as the first and foremost, and uplifts itself far 
 above the contradictions of the whole external 
 world, so that the aspect of the world has to accom- 
 modate itself to this fact, and not this fact to that 
 
KELIGION 63 
 
 aspect. True, even after such a decision, the con- 
 tradiction does not simply vanish, but as holiness 
 retains the background of suffering, so certainty 
 will preserve its ' one thing needful ' as the back- 
 ground of doubt. But the contradiction is now 
 removed from the centre to the periphery of life ; 
 it can therefore only touch us from without, and 
 is not able to overthrow what is within; it will 
 now not so much weaken as strengthen the cer- 
 tainty, because it calls life to a perpetual renewal 
 and brings to fruition the greatness of the con- 
 quest."* 
 
 This is the conclusion which Eucken arrives at 
 in his great work, The Truth of Religion, con- 
 cerning the real meaning, value, and significance 
 of spiritual religion; and it is this which he 
 designates as the essence of the Christian Religion. 
 
 Eucken's presentation of religion, especially from 
 the Christian standpoint, does not go further back 
 than the appearance of the first edition of The 
 Truth of Religion in the year 1901. Previous 
 to this he had made several contributions to the 
 significance of the life of the Founder of Chris- 
 tianity. Since 1901 Eucken's interest seems to have 
 deepened as to the necessity of pointing out that the 
 new Metaphysic of Life which he has announced is in 
 
 * Cf. Truth of Religion, close of chapter xii. 
 
64 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 complete accord with the substance of Christianity. 
 The need of a religious organization in the form 
 of a Church is emphasized in several of his later 
 works. This is so because the over-individual 
 truths and values stand the chance of increasing in 
 power when people collectively direct their atten- 
 tion to them. There is not enough spirituality in 
 culture, in ordinary social life, or in the State, to 
 bring about a radical transformation in the lives 
 of the people. The Church offers the best vehicle 
 for this fundamental work. It keeps alive atten- 
 tion to spiritual values and calls the individual to 
 a participation in these as well as to membership 
 in a religious community. 
 
 But, though Eucken sees the value of the 
 Church, still he is aware of grave dangers into 
 which it has stepped. For many centuries the 
 Church has mixed up the substance of the Christian 
 religion with its form of existence. The time has 
 arrived to differentiate the two in a fundamental 
 manner. The substance is the spiritual element in 
 religion ; it deals with over-individual ideals and 
 values (or, in the language of religion, with the 
 revelation of the Divine); it deals also with the 
 needs and aspirations of the human soul. Certainly 
 some amount of thought is present in every such 
 experience, but it is thought united with the needs 
 
KELIGION 65 
 
 and the aspirations of man, in a way that all the 
 individual elements of man's nature work from a 
 basis which is a totality or whole of his nature. 
 The work accomplished here is done, according to 
 Eucken, by means of an entire deed of man. When 
 that entire deed is at work it constitutes its own 
 reality, and works for the elevation of life to a 
 higher spiritual world. Too much of the nature is at 
 work to ask the question as to what earthly use is 
 all this effort, or how does the ideal which is present 
 differ from intellectual theories which have clung 
 for centuries around the substance of the Christian 
 religion. In cool reflective moments there arises 
 doubtless some kind of need for attending to the 
 intellectual truth of Christianity, for unless this 
 is done the substance itself may be seriously in- 
 jured. It is evident that this intellectual clothing 
 of Christianity being, as it is, knowledge must 
 change. And Eucken claims that a radical change 
 is imperative in this direction to-day. Such a 
 change must never be undertaken without pre- 
 serving the substance. If the substance is pre- 
 served, the intellectual elements of a past mode of 
 thought, found in Christianity, can be left on one 
 side, and new forms adopted without the least 
 injury, but, indeed, with a gain which cannot be 
 over-estimated. 
 
 5 
 
66 KUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 The substance constitutes the eternal in Chris- 
 tianity. It is no other than the announcement of 
 the union of the Divine and the human. Such a 
 union was not brought about in the life of the 
 Founder by means of any sensuous miracle, but by 
 means of a consciousness within the soul of a 
 quality within it transcending space and time, tran- 
 scending the ordinary social life and also all the 
 intellectual conclusions of science and philosophy. 
 A consciousness of this constitutes the nucleus of 
 Christianity. Such a nucleus was present in the 
 life of the Founder. He is an experimental proof 
 to us of the presence of the Divine within the soul 
 a presence which is man's own spiritual nature, 
 but which grows more and more by means of 
 constant entire deeds in the direction of over- 
 individual values which have cosmic significance, 
 and which constitute the God of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 We thus see that Eucken's Metaphysic of Life 
 is, in the last resort, the same as the Christian 
 Metaphysic whose seeds can be gathered from the 
 actual lives of the Founder and the great religious 
 heroes of the first century of the Christian era. 
 Our work to-day lies in emphasizing this spiritual 
 element of Christianity and to carry it further. 
 There are many obstacles in the way within and 
 
KELIGION 67 
 
 without the Christian Church. But Eucken states 
 that he sees a cloud on the horizon, probably as yet 
 ' no bigger than a man's hand,' but which con- 
 tains the promise and potency of ' showers of 
 blessings,' which are in store for us if we observe 
 the deepest needs and aspirations of our nature. 
 These blessings will constitute the culmination of 
 knowledge and the social movements of mankind. 
 Proofs for all these things are impossible in the 
 initial stages, and, indeed, intellectual proofs based 
 upon sensuous aspects of nature or of the life of the 
 body are also excluded from us, as well they must 
 because they all belong to a stage of reality lower 
 than that upon which the spiritual man stands. 
 The spiritual man will not discover the meaning 
 and immortality of his soul in any sensuous or 
 psychical realm either of Physics, Biology, or 
 Psychology. He will discover infinity and eternity 
 in the experiences which are happening within his 
 deepest soul, when entire deeds come to an awaken- 
 ing and put forth their whole spiritual energy in 
 order to reach ends which belong to a higher world 
 of being and existence than either our physical or 
 mental world, although both these have not only 
 opposed us but have also helped us to attain such 
 a spiritual summit. 
 
68 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 Many important aspects of Eucken's teaching 
 cannot be more than touched upon in this little 
 book, but it is hoped that enough has been made clear 
 to give us all encouragement to work for the great 
 consummation of the creation of a new man and a 
 new world. Eucken closes his great work, The 
 Truth of Religion, with words to this effect words 
 which are the result of a spiritual optimism that 
 has been reached by facing all the contradictions of 
 life and the world, and finally finding the final con- 
 viction of things leading to an autonomous personal 
 life, cosmic in its nature and infinite in its duration. 
 This is to be found in the final chapter of The 
 Truth of Religion : 
 
 " The possibilities of life are not exhausted : 
 new avenues and tasks open out whenever we dis- 
 cover the courage of creativeness and the right 
 point of attack, but it is imperative that we should 
 possess the conviction, and that the conviction 
 should possess us, that Eeality has a depth beyond 
 the natural man, and that we can gain entrance to 
 such a depth. 
 
 " But a movement towards a more essential soul- 
 stirring culture to a progressive superiority of a 
 complete life beyond all individual activities 
 cannot arise without bringing the problem of 
 religion once more to the foreground. Our life is 
 
KELIGION 69 
 
 not able to find its bearings within this deep, or to 
 gather its treasures into a Whole, unless it realizes 
 how many acute opposites it carries within itself. 
 Either Life will be torn in pieces by these opposites, 
 or it must somehow be raised above them all. It 
 is the latter alone that can bring about a funda- 
 mental transformation of our first and shallow view 
 of the universe, as well as the inauguration of a new 
 reality. It is this which religion announces to man 
 and promises to bring to his soul in its dire need. 
 Man has emerged out of the darkness of nature and 
 remains afflicted with the afflictions of nature, 
 yet at the same time, with his appearance upon 
 the earth, the darkness begins to illumine, 
 and ' nature kindles within him a light '* ; he 
 who is a mere speck on the face of a boundless 
 expanse can yet aspire to a participation in the 
 whole of Infinity ; he who stands in the midst of 
 the flux of time yet possesses an aspiration after 
 infinite truth ; he who forms but a mere piece of 
 nature, at the same time constructs a new world 
 within the Spiritual Life over against nature ; he 
 who finds himself hemmed in by contradictions of 
 all kinds, which immediate existence in no way can 
 solve, yet struggles after a further depth of reality 
 and after the 'narrow gate,' which opens into 
 
 * Schopenhauer. 
 
70 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 religion. Through and beyond all the particular 
 problems of life and the world, it behoves us to 
 raise the Spiritual Life to a level of full independ- 
 ence, to make it at the same time superior to 
 man as an individual, and to bring it back into 
 his soul. When this comes to be, there is also 
 transformation of his inmost being, and for the * 
 first time he becomes capable of genuine great- 
 ness. 
 
 " The aspiration after a new civilization and cul- 
 ture carries thus within itself, in an immediate and 
 intimate manner, the aspiration after a rejuvenation 
 of religion. Eeligion, civilization, and culture will 
 thus instruct one another. Without religion the 
 inwardness cannot become a self-reliant province 
 and cannot rise above the external world ; without 
 a connection with the whole of life and also with 
 civilization and culture, religion loses its specific 
 spiritual content and threatens to sink into a 
 merely subjective disposition. Consequently the 
 deficiency or curtailment of one is also an injury 
 to the other. 
 
 " These final conclusions strengthen the aspira- 
 tion after a religion of the Spiritual Life, which 
 has run through the whole of our investigation. 
 Such a religion is in no way new, and Christianity 
 has proclaimed it and clung to it from the very 
 
RELIGION 71 
 
 beginning. But it has been interwoven with the 
 traditional forms which are now so commonly 
 detected as pictorial ideas of epochs and times. 
 Earlier times could allow the essence and the 
 form to flow inseparably together without dis- 
 covering any incongruity in the fusion. But the 
 time for this has irrevocably passed away. The 
 human, which once seemed to bring the Spiritual 
 and Divine so near to man, has now become a 
 burden and a hindrance to him. A keener analysis, 
 a more independent development of the Spiritual 
 and Divine, and along with this, the truth of 
 religion, fail to obtain their full effects if religion is 
 looked upon as merely something to protect indivi- 
 duals, instead of as that which furthers the whole 
 of mankind as that which is not merely a succour 
 in times of trouble and sorrow, but also as that 
 which guarantees an enhancement in work and 
 creativeness. The situation is difficult and full of 
 dangers, and few in the meantime is the number 
 of those who grasp it in a deep and free sense, and 
 yet who are determined to penetrate victoriously 
 into it, so that the inner necessities of the Spiritual 
 Life may awaken within the soul of man. What- 
 ever new tasks and difficulties lie in the lap of the 
 future, to-day it behoves us before all else to pro- 
 ceed a step upward in the direction of the 'summits,' 
 
72 BUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 and to draw new energies and depths of the Spiritual 
 Life into the domain of man ; for it is effort of this 
 kind which will prevent the coming of an * old age ' 
 upon humanity and will breathe into its soul the 
 gift of Eternal Youth." 
 
LIST OF EUCKEN'S WORKS 
 
 1866. "De Aristotelis docendi ratione." Pars I. De par- 
 ticularis. This was the Doctor's Dissertation at Got- 
 tingen University. 
 
 1868. " Uber den Gebrauch der Prapositioneni bei Aristo- 
 teles." 
 
 1870. " tiber die Methode und die Grundlagen der Aristo- 
 telischen Ethik " (Separatabdruck aus dem Programm 
 des Frankfurter Gymnasiums von 1870). 
 
 1871. " Uber die Bedeutung der Aristotelischen Philosophic 
 fiir die Gegenwart " (Akademische Antrittsrede gehalten 
 am 21 November, 1871). This was in Basel. 
 
 1872. " Die Methode per Aristotelischen Forschung in ihrem 
 Zusammenhang mit den philosophischen Grundprin- 
 cipien des Aristoteles." 
 
 1874. "Uber den Wert der Geschichte der Philosophie" 
 (Antrittsrede, Jena, 1874). 
 
 1878. " Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart." This was trans- 
 lated by Stuart Phelps in 1880, and published by Apple- 
 ton of New York. The fourth edition has been translated 
 by M. Booth, and has been published by T. Fisher 
 Unwin in 1912. 
 
 1879. " Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie." 
 
 1880. "Uber Bilder und Gleichnisse in der Philosophie": 
 Eine Festschrift. 
 
 1881. " Zur Erinnerung an K. Ch. F. Krausse " (Festrede, 
 gehalten zu Eisenberg am 100 Geburtstage des Philo- 
 sophen). 
 
 73 
 
74 EUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 1884. "Aristoteles Anschauung von Freundschaft und von 
 Lebensglitern." 
 
 1885. " Prolegomena zu Forschungen iiber die Einheit des 
 Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der Menschheit." 
 A translation of this by W. Tudor Jones is in prepara- 
 tion, and will be published by Williams and Norgate. 
 
 1886. "Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino und die 
 Kultur der Neuzeit." 
 
 1886. "Beitrage zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie." 
 (Second edition, 1906, under the title "Beitrage zur 
 Einfiihrung in die Geschichte der Philosophie ".) 
 1888. " Die Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und 
 Tat der Menschheit." This will be published by Williams 
 and Norgate, and translated by W. Tudor Jones. 
 
 ] 890. " Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker.'' The 
 ninth edition appeared in 1911. Changes and additions 
 have been made in each succeeding edition. English 
 translation (1909) by W. S. Hough and W. K. Boyce 
 Gibson under the title " The Problem of Human Life, as 
 viewed by the Great Thinkers from Plato to the Present 
 Time." (Published by Charles Scribners' Sons, New 
 York ; and T. Fisher Unwin, London.) 
 
 1896. " Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt." 
 (Second edition, with many changes, 1907.) A transla- 
 tion of this volume will be published by Williams and 
 Norgate in the spring of 1915. 
 
 1901. "Das Wesen der Eeligion." (First and second 
 editions.) This essay was translated by W. Tudor 
 Jones in 1904, and was published for private circulation. 
 It is now out of print, but will soon reappear, together 
 with another essay, " Wissenschaft und Eeligion." 
 
 1901. "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Eeligion," 1901. (Second 
 edition, with numerous changes, 1905 ; third edition, 
 
LIST OF EFCKEF8 iWOBB3\ ! /;,75 
 
 with changes, 1912.) The second edition was trans- 
 lated by W. Tudor Jones, and published by Williams and 
 Norgate in 1911. A translation of the third German 
 edition was published at the close of 1912. 
 
 1901. " Thomas von Aquino und Kant: Ein Kampf zweier 
 Welten." 
 
 1903. "Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philosophie und Lebens- 
 anschauung." Several of these essays have been trans- 
 lated by M. Booth, and published by T. Fisher Unwin 
 (1914). 
 
 1905. "Was konnen wir heute aus Schiller gewinnen ?" 
 (Kantstudien : Sonderdruck). 
 
 1905. " Wissenschaft und Keligion." This comprises a 
 chapter in the collection of essays entitled " Beitrage 
 zur Weiterentwickelung der Christlichen Beligion." 
 
 1907. " Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung." This 
 volume was translated by Alban G. Widgery, and pub- 
 lished by A. and C. Black in 1911 under the title of 
 " Life's Basis and Life's Ideal." 
 
 1907. " Hauptprobleme der Beligionsphilosophie der Gegen- 
 wart." (First edition, 1907; fourth and fifth editions, 
 with additions, 1912.) The first edition was translated 
 by W. B. Boyce Gibson and Lucy Gibson under the 
 title " Christianity and the New Idealism : a Study 
 in the Beligious Philosophy of To-day." (Publishers : 
 Harper and Brothers.) 
 
 1907. " Philosophie der Geschichte." This is an essay in the 
 volume entitled " Systematische Philosophie " in the 
 series " Kultur der Gegenwart." 
 
 1908. " Sinn und Wert des Lebens." (Third edition, with 
 many additions, 1911.) The first edition was translated 
 by W. B. Boyce Gibson and Lucy Gibson under the 
 title of " The Meaning and Value of Life." (Publishers : 
 A. and C. Black.) 
 
76 tttTOQLF EUCKEN 
 
 1908. " Einfiihrung in eine Philosophie des Geisteslebens." 
 Translated by F. L. Pogson under the title of " The Life 
 of the Spirit " (third edition, 1911), and published by 
 Williams and Norgate. 
 
 1911. " Eeligion and Life " (the Essex Hall Lecture for 
 1911, published by the Lindsey Press). 
 
 1911. "Konnenwir noch Christen sein?" A translation of 
 this by Lucy Boyce Gibson appeared in 1914, and was 
 published by A. and C. Black. 
 
 1912. " Naturalism or Idealism ?" (the Nobel Lecture, trans- 
 lated by Alban G. Widgery, and published by W. Heffer 
 and Sons). 
 
 1912. " Erkennen und Leben." A translation of this work, 
 by W. Tudor Jones, was published by Williams and 
 Norgate in the spring of 1913 under the title of " Know- 
 ledge and Life: An Introduction to the Theory of 
 Knowledge." 
 
 1913. " Zur Sammlung der Geister." The translation of this 
 volume, by W. Tudor Jones, under the title of " Unity 
 of Spirit : A Eeligious Message to the English and the 
 German People," is now in the press, and will be pub- 
 lished by Williams and Norgate in the spring of 1915. 
 
 1914. "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity." 
 This address was translated by W. Tudor Jones, and 
 published by the Lindsey Press. 
 
 1915. "Die Philosophie des Geisteslebens." This is the 
 author's great work on the Theory of Knowledge. It 
 will be published in English by Williams and Norgate. 
 
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