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AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 OF RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 OF RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 W. TUDOR JONES, PH.D. (JENA) 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
 1912 
 
"Apa ovv, d8eA<oi', o^eiXerat eoy/,i>, ov rr} (rapid TOV Kara 
 crdpKo, ,fjv, i yap Kara, <rap/ca ^TC /xeAXere a7ro^i/7;(7Ktv, et Sc 
 7rvv/xaTt ras 7rpa^i5 TOV <roo/*aTO9 ^avarovTC tyo-co-Of. oaot 
 yap irvcv/xaTi ^cov ayovroLL, OVTOL viol Ocov etcrtV. St Paul 
 (Romans, viii. 12-14). 
 
 392178 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE personality and works of Professor Rudolf 
 Eucken are at the present day exercising such 
 a deep influence the world over that a volume 
 by one of his old pupils, which attempts to 
 interpret his teaching, should prove of assist- 
 ance. It is hoped that the essentials of 
 Eucken's teaching are presented in this book, 
 in a form which is as simple as the subject- 
 matter allows, and which will not necessi- 
 tate the reader unlearning anything when he 
 comes to the author's most important works. 
 The whole of the work is expository ; and an 
 attempt has been made in the foot-notes to 
 point out aspects similar to those of Eucken's 
 in English and German Philosophy. 
 
 It is encouraging to find at the present day 
 so much interest in religious idealism, and it is 
 proved by Eucken beyond the possibility of 
 doubt that without some form of such idealism 
 no individual or nation can realise its deepest 
 potencies. But with the presence of such 
 idealism as a conviction in the mind and life, 
 history teaches us that the seemingly impossible 
 
8 EtfCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 is partially realised, and that a new depth of life 
 is reached. All this does not mean that the 
 individual is to slacken his interests or to lose 
 his affection for the material aspects of life ; 
 but it does mean that the things which 
 appertain to life have different values, and 
 that it is of the utmost importance to judge 
 them all from the highest conceivable stand- 
 point the standpoint of spiritual life. This 
 is Eucken's distinctive message to-day. The 
 message shows that an actual evolution of 
 spirit is taking place in the life of the in- 
 dividual and of human society ; and that this 
 evolution can be guided by means of the 
 concentration of the whole being upon the 
 reality of the norms and standards which 
 present themselves in the lives of individuals 
 and of nations. No one particular science or 
 philosophy is able to grant us this central 
 standpoint for viewing the field of knowledge 
 and the meaning of life. The answer to the 
 complexity of the problem of existence is to 
 be found in something which gathers up under 
 a larger and more significant meaning the 
 results of knowledge and life. This volume 
 will attempt to elucidate this all-important 
 point of view a point of view which is so 
 needful in our days of specialisation and 
 of material interests. It may be, and Eucken 
 and his followers believe it is, that the destiny 
 of the nations of the world depends in the last 
 resort upon a conception and conviction of 
 
PREFACE 9 
 
 the reality of a life deeper than that of sense 
 or intellect, although both these may become 
 tributaries (and not hindrances) to such a 
 spiritual life. 
 
 I have to thank Professor Eucken himself 
 for allowing me access to material hitherto 
 unpublished, and for encouraging me in the 
 work. I am bold enough to be confident that 
 could I say half of what our revered teacher 
 has meant for me and for hundreds of others 
 of his old pupils, this volume would be the 
 means of helping many who are drifting from 
 their old moorings to find an anchorage in a 
 spiritual world. 
 
 W. TUDOR JONES. 
 
 HIGHBURY, LONDON, N., 
 
 November 1, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAOB 
 
 PREFACE ........ 7 
 
 1. INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 2. RELIGION AND EVOLUTION .... 26 
 
 3. RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE . . -57 
 
 4. RELIGION AND HISTORY ..... 70 
 
 5. RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY . . . .87 
 
 6. RELIGION AND SOCIETY 108 
 
 7. RELIGION AND ART . . . . . .119 
 
 8. UNIVERSAL RELIGION . . . . . .128 
 
 9. CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 151 
 
 10. THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS . . . .166 
 
 11. CHRISTIANITY 180 
 
 12. PRESENT-DAY ASPECTS OF PHILOSOPHY AND 
 
 RELIGION ....... 206 
 
 13. EUCKEN'S PERSONALITY AND INFLUENCE . 227 
 
 14. CONCLUSION ....... 236 
 
 LIST OF EUCKEN'S WORKS 245 
 
 INDEX ......... 249 
 
 ii 
 
AN INTERPRETATION OF 
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN was born at Aurich, East 
 Frisia, on the 5th of January 1846. He lost 
 his father when quite a child. His mother, 
 the daughter of a Liberal clergyman, was 
 a woman of deep religious experience and 
 of rich intellectual gifts. When quite a boy 
 he came at school under the influence of the 
 theologian Reuter, a man of wonderful fasci- 
 nation to young men. The questions of 
 religion and the need of religious experience 
 interested Eucken early, and these have never 
 parted from him during the long years which 
 have since passed away. 
 
 At an early age he entered the University 
 of Gottingen and attended the philosophical 
 classes of Hermann Lotze. Lotze interested 
 him in philosophical problems, but did not 
 
 13 
 
14 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 satisfy the burning desire for religious experi- 
 ence which was in the young man's soul. 
 Lotze looked at religion and all else from the 
 intellectual point of view. His main business 
 was to discover proofs for the things of the 
 spirit, and the value of his work in this 
 direction cannot be overestimated. Hermann 
 Lotze's works are with us to-day ; and he has 
 probably made more important contributions 
 to philosophy and religion from the scientific 
 side than any other writer of the latter half 
 of the nineteenth century. But he seems to 
 have been a man who was inclined to conceive 
 of reality as something which had value only 
 in so far as it was known, and left very largely 
 out of account the inchoate stirrings and 
 aspirations which are found at a deeper level 
 within the human soul than the knowing level. 
 Life is larger and deeper than logic, and is 
 something, despite all our efforts, which resists 
 being reduced to logical propositions. It is 
 quite easy to understand how a young man 
 of Eucken's temperament and training should 
 acquiesce in all the logical treatment of Lotze's 
 philosophy, and still find that more was to 
 be obtained from other sources which had 
 quenched the thirst of the great men of the 
 past. 
 
 When Eucken entered the University of 
 Berlin he came into contact with a teacher who 
 helped him immensely in the quest for religion, 
 and in the interpretation of religion as the 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 issue of that quest. Adolf Trendelenburg was 
 a great teacher as well as a noble idealist, 
 and his influence upon young Eucken was 
 very great. Indeed, it seems that Trendelen- 
 burg's influence was great on the life of every 
 young man who was fortunate enough to come 
 into contact with him. The late Professor 
 Paulsen, in his beautiful autobiography, A us 
 meinem Leben (1909), presents us with a 
 vivid picture of Trendelenburg and his work. 
 Under him the pupils came into close touch 
 not only with the meaning but also with the 
 spirit of Plato and Aristotle. The pupils 
 were made to see the ideal life in all its charm 
 and glory. The great Professor had all his 
 lifetime lived and meditated in this pure 
 atmosphere, and possessed the gift of infusing 
 something of his own enthusiasm into the 
 minds and spirits of his hearers. Eucken has 
 stated on several occasions his indebtedness to 
 Trendelenburg. The young student entered 
 the temple of philosophy through the gate- 
 ways of philology and history. This was a 
 great gain, for the barricading of these two 
 gateways against philosophy has produced 
 untold mischief in the past. At present men 
 are beginning to see this mistake, and we 
 are witnessing to-day the phenomenon of 
 the indissoluble connection of language and 
 history with philosophy. In fact, the new 
 leanings given to language and history are 
 meanings of things which happened in the 
 
16 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 culture and civilisations of individuals and 
 of nations, and such a material casts light on 
 the processes, meaning, and significance of the 
 human mind and spirit. 
 
 Eucken learnt this truth in Berlin at a very 
 early age, and his life and teaching ever since 
 have been a further development of it. This 
 fact has to be borne in mind in order that 
 we may understand the prominence he gives 
 to religion, religious idealism, spiritual life, and 
 other similar concepts concepts which are 
 largely foreign to ordinary philosophy and 
 which are only to be found in that mysterious, 
 all-important borderland of philosophy and 
 religion. 
 
 After graduating as Doctor of Philosophy in 
 the University of Gdttingen, we find him pre- 
 paring himself as a High School teacher, in 
 which position he remained for five years. 
 
 In 1871 he was appointed Professor of Philo- 
 sophy in the University of Basel. In 1874 he 
 receiveda "call"to succeed thelateKuno Fischer 
 as Professor of Philosophy in the renowned Uni- 
 versity of Jena. It is here, in the " little nest " 
 of Goethe and Schiller, that Eucken has re- 
 mained in spite of "calls" to universities 
 situated in larger towns and carrying with 
 them larger salaries. It is fortunate for Jena 
 that Eucken has thus decided. He, along with 
 his late colleague Otto Liebmann, has kept up 
 the philosophical tradition of Jena. In spite 
 of modern developments and the presence of 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 new university buildings, Jena still remains an 
 old-world place. To read the tablets on the 
 walls of the old houses has a fascination, and 
 brings home the fact that in this small out-of- 
 the-way town large numbers of the most 
 creative minds of Europe have studied and 
 taught. The traditions of Goethe and Schiller 
 still linger around the old buildings and in the 
 historical consciousness of the people. Here 
 Fichte taught his great idealism an idealism 
 which has meant so much in the evolution of 
 the Germany of the nineteenth century ; here 
 Hegel was engaged on his great Phenomeno- 
 logy of Spirit when Napoleon's army entered 
 the town ; here Schopenhauer sent his great 
 dissertation and received his doctor's degree 
 in absentia ; here too, the Kantian philosophy 
 found friends who started it on its " grand 
 triumphant march " a philosophy which raised 
 new problems which have been with us ever 
 since, and which gave a new method of ap- 
 proaching philosophical questions ; here Schel- 
 ling revived modern mysticism and attempted 
 the construction of a great Weltanschauung. 
 But only a small portion of the greatness of 
 Jena can be touched on. Eucken has nobly 
 upheld the great traditions of the place, not 
 only as a philosophical thinker but also as a 
 personality. 
 
 What is the secret of Eucken's influence? 
 It is due greatly, it is true, to his writings and 
 their original contents, for it is not possible for 
 
18 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 a man to hide his inner being when he writes 
 on the deepest questions concerning life and 
 death. A great deal of Eucken's personality 
 may be discovered in his writings. Opening 
 any page of his books, one sees something 
 unique, passionate, and somehow always deeper 
 than what may be confined within the limits of 
 the understanding, and something which has to 
 be lived in order to be understood. And to 
 know the man is to realise this in a fuller 
 measure than his writings can ever show. He 
 has to be seen and heard before the real signi- 
 ficance of his message becomes clear. His 
 personality attracts men and women of all 
 schools of thought, from all parts of the world, 
 and they all feel that his message of a reality 
 which is beyond knowledge though knowledge 
 forms an integral part of it is a new revela- 
 tion of the meaning of life and existence. Pro- 
 fessor Windelband, in his History of Philosophy 
 and elsewhere, describes Eucken as the creator 
 of a new Metaphysic a metaphysic not of the 
 Schools but of Life. This aspect will be dis- 
 cussed at fuller length in later pages, so that it 
 may be passed over for the present. 
 
 Eucken believes in the reality and necessity 
 of his message. He is aware that that message 
 is contrary to the current terminology and 
 meaning of the philosophy of our day. Some 
 of his great constructive books were written as 
 far back as 1888, and have remained, almost 
 until our own day, in a large measure unnoticed. 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 The Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein 
 und Tat der Menschheit is a case in point. It 
 is one of his greatest books, and its value was 
 not seen until the last few years. But the 
 philosophy of the present day in Germany is 
 tending more and more in the direction of 
 Eucken's. Writers such as the late Class and 
 Dilthey, Siebeck, Windelband, Miinsterberg, 
 Rickert, Volkelt, Troeltsch naming but a 
 small number of the idealistic thinkers of the 
 present are tending in the direction of the 
 new Metaphysic presented by Eucken in the 
 book already referred to as well as in the 
 Kampfum einen geistigen Lebensinhalt. 
 
 The philosophy of Germany at the present 
 day is making several attempts at a metaphysic 
 of the universe. Much critical and con- 
 structive work has been done during the past 
 quarter of a century and is being done to-day. 
 The attempts to construct systems of meta- 
 physics may be witnessed on the sides of 
 natural science and of philosophy. Haeckel, 
 Ostwald, and Mach have each given the 
 world a constructive system of thought. But 
 these three systems have not, except in 
 a secondary way, attempted a metaphysic 
 of human life. Haeckel's system is mainly 
 poetico-mythical, chiefly on the lines of some 
 of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Ostwald's 
 attempt is to show the unity of nature and 
 life through his principle of Energetics ; and 
 Mach's may be described as an inverted kind 
 
20 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of Kantianism in regard to the problem of 
 subject and object. 
 
 None of these has attempted a reconstruc- 
 tion of philosophy from the side of the content 
 of consciousness ; in fact, they all find their 
 explanation of consciousness in connection 
 with physical and organic phenomena observed 
 on planes below those of the mental and ideal 
 life of man. Such work is necessary ; but if 
 it comes forward as a complete explanation of 
 man, it is, as Eucken points out again and 
 again, a wretched caricature of life. To know 
 the connection of consciousness with the or- 
 ganic and inorganic world is not to know con- 
 sciousness in anything more than its history. 
 It may have been similar to, or even identical 
 with, physical manifestations of life, but it is 
 not so now. Eucken admits entirely this fact 
 of the history of mind ; but the meaning of 
 mind is to be discovered not so much in its 
 Whence as in its present potency and its 
 Whither. 1 A philosophy of science is bound 
 to recognise this difference, or else all its con- 
 structions can represent no more than a torso. 
 Physical impressions enter into consciousness, 
 
 1 It is not only in Germany, but also in England, that 
 natural scientists forget this important fact. The Pre- 
 sidential Address of Professor Schafer at the British 
 Association (September 1912) is an instance of attempting 
 to explain life in terms of its history and of its lowest 
 common denominator. And huge assumptions have to be 
 made in order to explain as little as this. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 and doubtless in important ways condition it, 
 but they are not physical once man becomes 
 conscious of them. A union of subject and 
 object has now taken place, and consequently 
 a new beginning a beginning which cannot 
 be interpreted in terms of the things of sense- 
 starts on its course. This is Eucken's stand- 
 point, and it is no other than the carrying 
 farther of some of the important results Kant 
 arrived at. 
 
 This difference between the natural and 
 the mental sciences has been emphasised, at 
 various times, since the time of Plato. But 
 the difference tended to become obliterated 
 through the discoveries of natural science and 
 its great influence during the latter half of the 
 nineteenth century. The key of evolution 
 had come at last into the hands of men, and 
 it fitted so many closed doors ; it provided an 
 entrance to a new kind of world, and gave 
 new methods for knowing that world. But, 
 as already stated, evolution is capable of deal- 
 ing with what is in the light of what was, and 
 the Is and the Was are the physical character- 
 istics of things. In all this, mind and morals, 
 as they are in their own intrinsic nature operat- 
 ing in the world, are left out of account. A 
 striking example of this is found in the late 
 Professor Huxley's Romanes Lecture Evolu- 
 tion and Ethics. In this remarkable lecture 
 it is shown that the cosmic order does not 
 answer all our questions, and is indifferent 
 
22 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and even antagonistic to our ethical needs 
 and ideals. Huxley's conclusion may be justly 
 designated as a failure of science to interpret 
 the greatest things of life. Before culture, 
 civilisation, and morality become possible, a 
 new point of departure has to take place within 
 human consciousness, and the attempt to move 
 in an ethical direction is as much hindered as 
 helped by the natural course of the physical uni- 
 verse. This lecture of Huxley's runs parallel 
 in many ways with Eucken's differentiation of 
 Nature and Spirit, and Huxley's " ethical life " 
 has practically the same meaning as Eucken's 
 " spiritual life" on its lower levels. 
 
 Numerous instances are to be found in the 
 present-day philosophy of Germany of the 
 need of a Metaphysic of Life, and of the 
 impossibility of constructing such from the 
 standpoint of the results of the natural sciences 
 either singly or combined. 
 
 Professor Rickert's investigations are having 
 important effects in this respect. In his works 
 he has made abundantly clear the difference 
 between the methods and results of the sciences 
 of Nature and the sciences of Mind. And 
 even amongst the mental sciences themselves, 
 all-important aspects of different subject- 
 matters present themselves, and render them- 
 selves as of different values. 
 
 Professor Miinsterberg has worked on a 
 similar path, and has insisted once more on 
 the nature of reality as this expresses itself in 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 a meaning which is over-individual. Professor 
 Windelband's writings (cf. Praludien, Die 
 Philosophic im XX. Jahrhundert, etc.) have 
 emphasised very clearly the need of the presence 
 and acknowledgment of norms in life, and of 
 the meaning of life realising itself in the fulfil- 
 ment of these norms. 1 
 
 When we turn to the great neo- Kantian 
 movement, we find alongside of discussions 
 concerning psychological questions important 
 ethical aspects presenting themselves. The 
 works of the late Professor Otto Liebmann 
 of Jena (cf. the last part of his Analysis der 
 Wirklichkeit] and of the late Professor Dirt hey 
 and Dr. G. Simmel point in the same direc- 
 tion. Professors Husserl, Lipps, and Vaihinger, 
 as their most recent important books show, 
 work on lines which insist on bringing life as it 
 is and as it ought to be into their systems. The 
 same may be said of Professor Wundt's works 
 in so far as they present a constructive system. 
 
 But the ground was fallow twenty-five years 
 ago when some of Eucken's important works 
 made their appearance. Even as late as 1896 
 he complains of this in the preface of his 
 Kainpf urn einen geistigen Lebensinhalt : " I 
 am aware that the explanations offered in this 
 
 1 A fuller treatment of this subject will be found in my 
 forthcoming volume. Pathways to Religion. It is incorrect 
 to state with Professor Sorley (Recent Tendencies in 
 Ethics, p. 30) that " her [Germany's] philosophy betrays the 
 dominance of material interests." 
 
24 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 volume will prove themselves to be in direct 
 antagonism to the mental currents which pre- 
 vail to-day." * He states that his standpoint is 
 different from that of the conventional and 
 official idealism then in vogue. By this he 
 means, on the one hand, the " absolute ideal- 
 ism " which constructed systems entirely un- 
 connected with science or experience systems 
 whose Absolute had no direct relationship with 
 man, or which made no appeal to anything of 
 a similar nature to itself in the deeper ex- 
 perience of the soul ; and, on the other hand, 
 the degeneration of the neo-Kantian move- 
 ment to a mere description of the relations 
 of bodily and mental processes. 
 
 Probably enough has been said to show that 
 the idealistic systems of Germany are tending 
 more and more in the direction of a philosophy 
 which attempts to take into account not only 
 the results of the physical sciences and psycho- 
 logy, but also those of the norms of history and 
 of the over-individual contents of consciousness. 
 
 It has been stated by several critics in 
 England, Germany, and America, that Eucken 
 has ignored the results of physical science and 
 psychology. This was partially true in the 
 past, when his main object was to present his 
 
 1 An important article on this book appeared in Mind 
 during 1 896, and, as far as I can trace, this seems to be the 
 first serious attention which was given to Eueken's writings 
 in England. A translation of the volume will appear 
 shortly by Messrs Williams & Norgate. 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 own metaphysic of life. The problems of 
 science and psychology had to take a secondary 
 place, but it is incorrect to state that these 
 problems were ignored. It is remarkable how 
 Eucken has kept himself abreast of these 
 results which are outside his own province. 1 
 But he has been all along conscious of the 
 limitations of these results of natural science 
 and psychology. The results fail to connote 
 the phenomena of consciousness and its mean- 
 ing. While Eucken has accepted these results, 
 I have not seen any evidence that any of his 
 conceptions concerning the main core of his 
 teaching the spiritual life are disproved by 
 any of them. He shows us, as will be elucidated 
 later, that as sensations point in the direction 
 of percepts, and percepts in the direction of 
 concepts, so concepts point in the direction of 
 something which is beyond themselves. And 
 as the meaning of reality reveals itself the 
 more we pass along the mysterious transition 
 from sensation to concept, so a further meaning 
 of reality is revealed when concepts search 
 for a depth beyond themselves. This is the 
 clue to Eucken's teaching in regard to spiritual 
 life. It is a further development of the nature 
 of man a development beyond the empirical 
 and the mental. And the object of the follow- 
 ing chapters will be to show this from various 
 points of view. 
 
 1 Cf. Main Currents of Modern Thought, translated by 
 Dr M. Booth (1912). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 
 
 EUCKEN accepts gladly the theory of descent 
 in Darwinism, but insists that the theory of 
 selection must be clearly distinguished from it. 
 He agrees with Edward von Hartmann that 
 the doctrine of selection is inadequate to 
 explain the phenomena of life. But, as he 
 points out, there is much which is true and 
 helpful in the theory of selection even in 
 regard to human life. " In all quarters there 
 is a widespread inclination to go back to the 
 simplest possible beginnings, which exhibit 
 man closely related to the animal world, to 
 trace back the upward movement not to an 
 inner impulse, but to a gradual forward thrust 
 produced by outward necessities, and to under- 
 stand it as a mere adaptation to environment 
 and the conditions of life. It seems to be a 
 mere question of natural existence, of victory 
 in the struggle against rivals." 1 But he is not 
 satisfied that such an explanation covers the 
 
 1 Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 259- 
 26 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 27 
 
 phenomena of consciousness. If there were no 
 more than this at work in the higher forms of 
 life, the things of value the things which have 
 meant so much in the upward development of 
 humanity would be reduced to mere adjuncts 
 of physical existence. If mental and moral 
 values mean no more than this, they are simply 
 annihilated. But the values of life are some- 
 thing quite other than any physical manifestion ; 
 and however much they are conditioned by 
 physical changes it is inconceivable that what 
 is purely physical should be the sole cause 
 of them. Man would never have risen so far 
 above Nature, and become able to be conscious 
 of his own personality and of the meaning of 
 the world, had there not been present from the 
 very beginning some spiritual potency which 
 could receive the impressions of the external 
 world and bind them together into some kind 
 of connected Whole. This connected Whole 
 may be no more in the beginning than a 
 potency without any content, and its roots 
 may be discerned in the world below man ; 
 but without such a potency, different in its 
 nature from physical things, the whole meaning 
 of the evolution of mind and spirit is utterly 
 unintelligible. But what can this potency 
 mean but something which includes within 
 itself the germ of that which later comes out 
 in the form of the values which have been 
 gained in the life of the individual and of the 
 race? 
 
28 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 In order to understand Eucken's concep- 
 tions concerning Spirit, Whole, Totality, and 
 other similar terms, this fact has to be borne 
 in mind. The capacity for more is present in 
 man's nature. It may remain dormant in a 
 large measure, but it is not entirely so, as 
 witnessed by the fact that men have scaled 
 heights far above Nature and the ordinary life 
 of the day. And humanity, on the whole, has 
 climbed to a height to give some degree of 
 meaning to the life of the day a meaning 
 superior to physical impressions, and which is 
 able to see somewhat behind, around, and 
 beyond itself. Wherever this happens, it 
 comes about through the presence and activity 
 of the life of the spirit within man. The 
 spiritual life is, then, a possession of man, but 
 it is a possession only in so far as it is used. 
 It is subject to helps and hindrances from the 
 world ; it is not freed from its own content ; 
 it can never say, " So far and no further accord- 
 ing to the bond and the duty " ; it has to 
 undergo a toilsome struggle before it can ever 
 become the possessor of the new kind of world 
 to which it has a right. 
 
 In all this we notice something in the new 
 world of consciousness similar to what happens 
 within the physical world. In the world of 
 nature no animate (and probably no inanimate) 
 thing has received a donum which it may pre- 
 serve as its own without effort. Everything 
 that has value has to be preserved through 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 29 
 
 struggles necessitated by the changing condi- 
 tions of the impinging environment as well 
 as struggles between contrary characteristics 
 within the nature of the thing itself. Other- 
 wise nothing could maintain its identity and 
 individuality at all. There must be some core 
 in everything which exists as an individual 
 thing. This individuality is seen more clearly 
 as the scale of existence is mounted. In the 
 organic world each thing lives in a more or 
 less degree its own life, however much that 
 life is conditioned and even hindered by the 
 environment. What is it, then, that keeps 
 the thing together? It is some point of 
 union of elements otherwise scattered. When 
 we come to man we see this more clearly than 
 in the world below him. This core is a kind 
 of Whole made up of isolated impressions 
 mingling with a potency different in nature 
 from themselves, and transmuting them to 
 its own nature in the forms of self-con- 
 sciousness, meanings, values. This potency 
 this Whole although present from the very 
 beginning as the condition of becoming con- 
 scious of anything, yet remains in constant 
 change. Impressions pour in through the 
 senses, enter the Whole that is already 
 present; they drop their content into that 
 Whole by means of the senses, and the 
 miracle of transmutation, entirely mysterious, 
 takes place. 
 
 This point is not new. It is a fact well 
 
30 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 known in the history of psychology, and 
 played a very prominent part in the psychology 
 of Kant. But Eucken has deepened the 
 conception in such a way as to be able to rid 
 himself of the postulates of Kant concerning 
 God, Freedom, and Immortality. The germs 
 of these, according to the meaning of Eucken, 
 are within the spiritual life itself, and not 
 transcendent in the form presented by Kant or 
 external as presented by Hegel. There is, 
 then, within consciousness a process in many 
 respects analogous to the natural process. 
 And as the meaning of the physical universe 
 has become clearer through the conception of 
 evolution, so the meaning of consciousness, 
 originating in a higher world than Nature, will 
 become clearer if viewed in a similar manner. 
 Let us then turn to one of the most important 
 aspects of Eucken's work, Evolution and 
 Religion. 
 
 Eucken's deepest, and consequently the 
 most difficult, account of the meaning of 
 religion is to be found in his Truth of Religion 
 and his Kampf um einen geistigen Lebens- 
 inhalt. It is important to deal with the 
 concept of the spiritual life at this stage of 
 our inquiry, for it is the pivot around which 
 the whole of Eucken's philosophy turns. 
 
 The essence of religion is conceived by him 
 as the possession by man of an eternal ex- 
 istence in the midst of time ; of the presence 
 of an over-world in the midst of this world 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 31 
 
 guiding man to the revelation of a Divine 
 Will. 
 
 This is Eucken's main thesis, and connected 
 with this thesis is the fact that religion can 
 come to birth in the soul of man only through 
 a conquest of the ordinary, natural world which 
 surrounds him. The world which surrounds him 
 hinders more than it helps the birth of religion 
 in the soul. The aim of religion is therefore 
 not the perfecting of man in a natural sense, 
 but the bringing about of a union of human 
 nature and the Divine. Religion must there- 
 fore include a "world-denial and a world- 
 renewal." There is not enough for man's 
 deeper nature either in the physical world or 
 in the ordinary life of the hour. The natural 
 world knows of no complete self-subsistence, 
 for everything is connected with its environ- 
 ment, and it is in this connection with its 
 environment that life below man largely ob- 
 tains its existence. But in man we discover 
 a transition stage from the sensuous to the 
 non-sensuous, and it is in the latter that the 
 meaning of the former can be obtained. The 
 history of civilisation and culture is a history of 
 this all-important fact. The meaning of man 
 is, therefore, not to be found in his relationship 
 to the physical world, but in his own conscious- 
 ness. Although we may not be aware of it, 
 consciousness is the power which, in the long 
 and slow progress of the ages, has overcome 
 the sensuous and made it subservient to the 
 
32 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 meaning and value which its own content of 
 experience has presented. The necessity and 
 proof of religion are not then discovered in any- 
 thing in the external world, but in the realisa- 
 tion of the fact that we are meant to be citizens 
 of a world higher in its nature, the birthright 
 of which is to be found within our own nature. 
 The conquest of nature and the growth of 
 culture are proofs to man of his superiority to 
 the world of sense impressions. This denial 
 of the sufficiency of the world of sense in the 
 evolution of the human soul, on the one hand, 
 and the affirmation of the potentiality of a 
 higher world of spirit on the other hand, 
 constitute the nucleus of the Christian religion. 
 Its superiority consists in giving their rights to 
 both worlds, and also in showing that they do 
 not possess the same value. This essential 
 nature of Christianity will be demonstrated 
 later. 
 
 We must return, then, to consciousness 
 itself and see what may be discovered within 
 it concerning the meaning of religion. The 
 great thinkers of the ages have all been agreed 
 as to the impossibility of finding sufficient 
 proofs and meanings of religion either from 
 Nature or from some supernatural source 
 flowing in a miraculous manner towards our 
 earth. The growth and interpretation of 
 natural science in modern times have rendered 
 it impossible to find proofs of religion in any 
 external mode. Yet the problems of man's 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 33 
 
 Whence and Whither raise themselves with 
 energy and even tragedy in our own day. 
 These, as Eucken points out, are "problems 
 concerning our Whence and Whither, our 
 dependence upon strange powers, the painful 
 antitheses within our own soul, the stubborn 
 barriers to our spiritual potencies, the flaws in 
 love and righteousness, in Nature and in human 
 nature ; in a word, the apparent total loss of 
 what we dare not renounce our best and 
 most real treasures." 1 The loss takes place 
 because we have been looking outward instead 
 of inward for support, and prop after prop has 
 given way. This is the situation to-day, and 
 it has been brought about by no evil power, 
 but by the gradual dawning of the meaning 
 of things. Still, it is not the whole meaning 
 of things, for, as Eucken points out : " But we 
 are now experiencing what mankind has so 
 often experienced, viz. that at the very point 
 where the negation reaches its climax and the 
 danger reaches the very brink of a precipice, 
 the conviction dawns with axiomatic certainty 
 that there lives and stirs within us something 
 which no obstacle or enmity can ever destroy, 
 and which signifies against all opposition a 
 kernel of our nature that can never get lost/' 1 
 The religio-philosophical problem is, then, a 
 return to the Whole of Life. It is here that 
 any satisfactory answer can be found if found 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 6l. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 62. % 
 
 3 
 
34 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 at all. It is necessary to investigate the final 
 grounds as well as the most complete structure 
 of Life ; it is further necessary to discover 
 whether the movement of Life necessarily leads 
 to religion. As Eucken invariably presents 
 the truth of religion, the meaning and signi- 
 ficance of religion are to be found through 
 self-consciousness. This meaning of conscious- 
 ness is twofold in nature. On the one hand, 
 it is something that may be known, and, on the 
 other hand, it is something that is active 
 through its own inherent energy. Here we find 
 a difference between what we may know we are 
 and what we are. Our knowledge of what we 
 are, the conditions of what we are, the history of 
 what we are all these are a help for us to be 
 what we are capable of becoming. But all these 
 are not the very movement of the becoming 
 itself. That movement is the resultant of the 
 spiritual potency after experiences in the form 
 of cognition have marked out the path for 
 conation. This conation is an inheritance ; it 
 is present in the form of dissatisfaction with the 
 present situation ; it moves in the direction of 
 a goal which is marked out by intellect. Now, 
 however much this conation may be analysed, 
 it resists being decomposed into a number of 
 elements which make it up, for any such 
 number, except in the very manner they are 
 united, could not produce the situation. In 
 other words, whatever the history of this 
 conation may be, it is now a unity or whole. 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 35 
 
 Conditioned as it is by the surrounding world 
 and by its own history, in so far as it is this, 
 it is determined-, but it is still free in so far as 
 it is capable of becoming a new point of 
 departure for life and of proceeding on its way 
 in a w r orld of spirit. Unless man's nature 
 contained within itself some unity or whole of 
 the kind already referred to, it would mean 
 no more than a receptacle of momentary im- 
 pressions which would vanish as soon as their 
 physical effects had passed away. But man is 
 in reality more than all this. In the form of 
 memory and experience he is able to hold 
 together in a core of his being the meaning of 
 these impressions after they have filtered into 
 his consciousness. That is what we find, in 
 however obscure a way, as the very beginning 
 of every human life. This unity or whole, as 
 already stated, may be no more than a potency 
 in the beginning of life, but it gains in content 
 and depth as it passes from impression to im- 
 pression, and from experience to experience. 
 And all further impressions and experiences 
 have to be referred to this nucleus of the 
 nature in order that they may be used and 
 may prove themselves helpful. It is in this 
 nucleus of the nature that everything obtains 
 its meaning and value. 
 
 The Whole consequently grows, and gradually 
 man becomes conscious of his personality as 
 over against the environing world and even 
 his own body. This consciousness of inward- 
 
36 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ness is of slow growth, because the natural 
 tendency of life is to give a primary place to 
 the world from which we have emerged the 
 world of physical existence, and also because 
 much of that physical world reigns powerfully 
 within our nature. But when reflection turns 
 into itself, it becomes aware that the inward- 
 ness constitutes the kernel of a reality higher 
 in its nature than anything either in the 
 physical world or in the physical life which the 
 man has to lead. 
 
 Two modes of reality now present them- 
 selves to the life, neither of which allows itself 
 to be conceived of as an illusion. On the one 
 hand, we find the physical world and our own 
 physical nature. We discover that we cannot 
 jump out of these without destroying all we 
 possess ; we have to come to some kind of 
 understanding with the physical world and our 
 own physical existence. Yet, on the other 
 hand, the consciousness of a kernel of our 
 being, non-sensuous and spiritual in its nature, 
 has for ever broken our satisfaction with the 
 physical world and our own physical existence. 
 There are only two alternatives on which we 
 can act. Either we are to conceive of our 
 spiritual personality as something secondary 
 and subsidiary to the natural world, or we are 
 to insist on its independence, and acknowledge 
 it as the beginning of a new mode of existence. 
 If the former alternative is chosen, the person- 
 ality can never pass to a state of self-subsistence, 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 37 
 
 but will conceive of reality as something which 
 is mainly physical. The consequence is that 
 the personality will suffer seriously in its 
 evolution, for such an evolution is brought 
 about through the recognition and willing 
 acknowledgment of the breaking forth of 
 a new kind of reality within the spiritual 
 nucleus of life. If the latter alternative is 
 chosen, this nucleus of life is now seen as 
 something quite other than a quality entirely 
 dependent upon the physical or than a mere 
 flowering of the physical ; it is seen as a 
 reality higher in its nature than the physical 
 or even than the ordinary life of the individual. 
 Such a situation is forced on man when 
 once he reflects upon the inward meaning of 
 the content of his consciousness. It is true 
 that such questions may be thrust into the 
 background, and consequently inhibited from 
 presenting us with their full value and signifi- 
 cance. And it is this which happens only 
 too often in daily life. The constant need of 
 attention to external things, the absorption of 
 the mind in conventionality and custom as 
 these present themselves in the form of a 
 ready-made inheritance all these occupy so 
 much of the attention as to prevent man from 
 knowing and experiencing what his own life 
 is or what it is capable of becoming. Man 
 has penetrated into the secrets of Nature as 
 well as into the past of human society through 
 close and constant attention to external things. 
 
38 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 He has been able to gather fragments together, 
 piece them into each other, and through this 
 frame laws concerning them. It is thus that 
 the external world and society have come to 
 mean more to a human being than to an 
 animal. The animal is probably almost 
 entirely the creature of its instincts and of 
 the percepts which present themselves to it 
 from moment to moment, and which largely 
 disappear. But man rises above this situation. 
 The external world and everything that has 
 ever happened on its face are not merely 
 objects external to himself, which contain all 
 their qualities in themselves. Somebody has 
 to experience all this, and that somebody that 
 experiences all this is mental in his nature, 
 however much this nature has been conditioned 
 by physical things in the past or present. 
 
 Eucken emphasises this fundamental fact in 
 all his books. Wherever a being is capable of 
 experiencing impressions and of giving mean- 
 ings to these, we are bound to conclude that 
 the power which does this is something quite 
 other than physical in its nature. It may be 
 that such a power has never been known 
 except in connection with what is physical ; 
 it may be that various chemical changes give 
 the truer and clearer explanation of its origin, 
 as far as its origin can be known at all ; it 
 may be that there was nothing of the mental 
 visible in the early stages of its development ; 
 but all this is very different from stating that 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 39 
 
 no potentiality for mental evolution was there. 
 And it is this potentiality which is the issue at 
 stake. We have no warrant for stating that 
 it does not exist because it does not lend 
 itself to be verified by the senses. Where 
 does mind manifest itself to the senses ? It is 
 something which does not exist in space as a 
 horse or a tree. It may be that consciousness 
 has emanated from simple chemical beginnings 
 and combinations, but it is not a simple or a 
 chemical thing now. We divide worlds into 
 inorganic and organic. The main principle of 
 division is necessitated on account of the fact 
 that some characteristics are present in the 
 former which are absent in the latter. It is 
 precisely the same between Body and Mind, 
 with one difference. Body and Mind are 
 indissolubly connected, but one cannot be 
 reduced into the other. However much the 
 connection on one side may influence the 
 other side, the difference between a meaning 
 and a thing remains. And it is this funda- 
 mental difference which makes it absolutely 
 necessary to acknowledge a world of conscious- 
 ness in contradistinction to a world of matter 
 and its behaviour, whether such matter is to 
 be found in the human body with its mechani- 
 cal and chemical changes and transformations 
 or in the physical universe outside our body. 
 
 It is only when the mind becomes aware 
 of its own existence an existence not to be 
 established as being in Space (or entirely in 
 
40 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Time) but as a reality subsisting in itself and 
 in will-relations that the efforts and fruitions 
 of the spirit of man become intelligible at all. 
 But such an awareness has become a permanent 
 possession in a greater or less degree within 
 the life of man. Whenever he becomes con- 
 scious of the fact that in his own soul a new 
 phenomenon has made its appearance, he 
 begins, after the willing acknowledgment of 
 the reality of such a phenomenon, to exercise 
 its potency over against the external world 
 and over against much that is present in his 
 own psychical life. A Higher and a Lower 
 present themselves to him. The two alterna- 
 tives force themselves, and there is no third : 
 either this deeper kernel of his life must mean 
 the possibility and, in a measure, the presence 
 of a new kind of reality ; or, on the other hand, 
 it means no more than a mere epiphenomenon 
 and blossoming of the merely natural life. If 
 the latter view is adopted, the spiritual 
 nucleus of man's nature obtains but slight 
 attention except on the side of its connection 
 with the surrounding organic world, and con- 
 sequently what this nucleus is in itself as an 
 experience recedes into the background, and 
 descriptions and explanations in scientific or 
 philosophical form step into the foreground. 
 But a contradiction is imbedded in this very 
 account. Some kind of experience of life, 
 apart from, and higher in its nature than, the 
 connection of the spiritual nucleus with its 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 41 
 
 physical history, persists in the life. The man 
 of science is generally a good and worthy man. 
 He believes in the moral life, and he does not 
 throw the values of the centuries overboard. 
 Such belief and valuation are not made up 
 of the content of the explanation of life from 
 its physical side, but are an unconscious 
 acknowledgment of the presence of truths 
 and values as experiences and as now subsisting 
 in themselves, however much they are caused 
 by physical things. 
 
 If, on the other hand, an acknowledgment 
 of the reality of this spiritual life is made, new 
 questions immediately arise. And the most 
 fundamental of these questions have always 
 been those farther removed from any sensuous 
 or physical domain. They are questions con- 
 cerning the value and meaning of life. It is 
 a deep conviction of the reality of the deeper 
 kernel of our being that alone constitutes the 
 entrance to a new kind of world. But to 
 acknowledge the presence of such a new world 
 does not signify the possession of it simultane- 
 ously with the acknowledgment. The new 
 world is discovered, but it is not yet possessed. 
 There are terrible obstacles in the way ; there 
 are enemies without and within to be conquered. 
 It is of little use entering into this struggle 
 without an acknowledgment born of an in- 
 ward necessity of the spiritual nucleus of our 
 nature. Unless man has accustomed himself 
 to hold fast to this " subtle thing termed spirit " 
 
42 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 he will soon be swamped in the region of 
 the natural life once more; and when this 
 happens the spiritual nucleus loses the con- 
 sciousness of its own real subsistence as some- 
 thing higher in its nature than physical things 
 or than the body and the ordinary life of the 
 day. If the enterprise is to issue in anything 
 that is great and good into a spiritual world 
 with an ever-growing content here and now 
 an insistence upon the reality of this deeper life 
 coupled with the highest end which presents 
 itself to the life must be made. Something is 
 now seen in the distance as the meaning and 
 value of life something which our deeper 
 nature longs for, and which has created a cleft 
 within the soul between the ordinary things of 
 sense and time and that which " never was on 
 sea or land." It is something of this nature 
 which Eucken discovers as the germ of all the 
 spiritual ideas of religion as well as of the 
 essence of religion itself. The Godhead, 
 Eternity, Immortality, are concepts which 
 arise within the soul through a consciousness 
 of the inadequacy of all natural things and of 
 even mental descriptions and explanations to 
 answer and to satisfy the potency and longing 
 of human nature. 
 
 Most of the great thinkers of the ages have 
 insisted on the necessity of the recognition and 
 acknowledgment of this deeper life which is 
 in dire need of a content. If man is not to 
 be swamped by the external and become the 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 43 
 
 mere sport of the " wind and wave " of the 
 environment, he has to enter somehow into 
 the very centre of his being and become con- 
 vinced that the dictates which proceed from 
 that centre are the most fundamental things 
 in life. This has always formed the kernel 
 of religion, however often men, failing to 
 reach that kernel, have lived on the husks. 
 But even this very sham notifies some small 
 attempt in the right direction. In modern 
 times in the various forms of Idealism and 
 Pragmatism such a need of getting at the 
 core of being and of being convinced that the 
 effort is worth while, has been emphasised again 
 and again. " Launch yourselves with as strong 
 and decided an initiative as possible. Accumu- 
 late all the possible circumstances which shall 
 re-enforce the right motives ; put yourself 
 assiduously in conditions that encourage the 
 new way ; make engagements incompatible 
 with the old ; take a public pledge, if the case 
 allows ; in short, envelop your resolution with 
 every aid you know. This will give your new 
 beginning such a momentum that the tempta- 
 tion to break down will not occur as soon as 
 it otherwise might ; and every day during 
 which a breakdown is postponed adds to the 
 chances of its not occurring at all." 1 
 
 " The Stoic and Butler also said, Follow 
 God.' In each case you must realise that, 
 whatever you do, you take your life in your 
 
 1 W. James's Text-Book of Psychology, p. 145. 
 
44 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 hands ; you enter on a grand enterprise, a 
 search for the Holy Grail, which will bring you 
 to strange lands and perilous seas. For you 
 cannot say, interpreting, * Thus far and no 
 further, merely according to the bond and the 
 duty.' In following God, you follow by what 
 has been, what is ruled and accomplished, but 
 you follow after what is not yet. 6 It may be 
 that the gulfs will wash us down ' ; it may be 
 that the gods of the past will rain upon us 
 brimstone and horrible tempest. But he that 
 is with us is more than all that are against us. 
 Whoever keeps his ear ever open to duty, 
 always forward, never attained, is not far from 
 the kingdom. The gods may be against him, 
 the demi-gods may depart ; but he, as said 
 Plotinus, ' if alone, is with the Alone.' " l 
 
 It is impossible for us, as Eucken constantly 
 insists, to stop short of this. Who can pre- 
 scribe limits to the capability of consciousness 
 when it is focussed, in the form of a conviction, 
 on the deepest problems which press them- 
 selves upon it? There is only one objection 
 that the empiricist can bring forward, and that 
 is that all such ideals can never be proved to 
 exist as things exist in space. But, as already 
 hinted, is existence in space the only form of 
 existence ? Is it not necessary for something 
 which is not in space to make us aware of what 
 is in space ? "If not as men of science, yet as 
 
 1 William Wallace's Lectures and Essays on Natural 
 Theology and Ethics, p. 210. 
 

 RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 45 
 
 men, as human beings, we have to put things 
 together, to form some total estimate of the 
 drift of development, of the unity of nature." 1 
 
 If the deepest core of consciousness is 
 acknowledged and the vague ideals and ends 
 which present themselves are attended to, 
 something new happens in the life. Life now 
 starts on the great enterprise referred to by 
 William Wallace. It finds its highest reality 
 in an experience born within itself and differ- 
 entiated for ever from the natural and even the 
 intellectual life. To such a conclusion man is 
 forced ; and if the situation is evaded, some- 
 thing within his soul never comes to birth. It 
 is seen at once that in order to know the 
 content of this new world, it is necessary for 
 a long series of struggles to take place. And 
 to this point we now turn. 
 
 The deeper consciousness has relegated the 
 natural world to a secondary place, and has 
 further shown man that the main object of life 
 includes not only finding a footing against the 
 dangers of natural things, but to plant oneself 
 within a spiritual world of meanings and values. 
 This cannot be done without an independent 
 and decisive act of the soul. A meaning of life 
 has now revealed itself beyond that of the 
 "small self." This meaning can be reached 
 only through this decisive act of the soul. 
 This meaning is over-individual in its nature ; 
 
 1 Edward Caird's Introduction to William Wallace's 
 Gifford Lectures, pp. xxx, xxxi. 
 
46 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 it is a truth, goodness, or beauty, which pre- 
 sents itself as an idea and ideal formed by the 
 experiences of many individuals, at different 
 epochs and in different circumstances. Thus 
 the individual, in order to realise his own life, 
 must work with material presented in the 
 community. Such material has been found 
 helpful in the life of the community. It 
 consists of collective results made up of large 
 numbers of single factors. These have been 
 tied together in the form of various syntheses. 
 Such various syntheses comprise a larger 
 meaning than what ordinarily happens from 
 moment to moment in connection with the 
 relation of the individual to the external world 
 or, indeed, within the individual's own ordinary 
 life. Many of the isolated, fragmentary experi- 
 ences of the individual have to give way when 
 tested in the light of any larger synthesis. If 
 this were not so, no commercial, social, civilised 
 life would be possible at all. The more real 
 life is now perceived to be that of the larger 
 meaning and value. The individual, solitary 
 experiences may be legitimate, for they often 
 express wants and needs of the individual 
 which have a certain right to obtain satis- 
 faction. But the extent and limits of these 
 rights have to be measured by some norm or 
 standard other than themselves, or else each 
 individual will proceed on his own course 
 regardless of the rights of others. It is the 
 presence of various syntheses which express the 
 

 RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 47 
 
 collective life of the whole of each and every 
 individual that makes civilisation possible. 
 Thus, in the very process of civilisation itself, 
 as Eucken points out, there is present a factor 
 which is termed Spiritual, and which is not 
 to be mistaken for a mere flow of cause and 
 effect, or for one mere event following another. 
 Eucken emphasises this all-important element 
 of the over -individual qualities present in 
 human history. There is here much which 
 resembles Hegel's Absolute. But there is a 
 great difference between the two in the sense 
 that Eucken shows the constant need of 
 spiritual activism on the part of individuals 
 in order to realise and keep alive the norms 
 and standards which have carried our world so 
 far ; and there is also the need of contributing 
 something to the values of these through the 
 creation of new qualities within the souls of 
 the individuals themselves. 
 
 But the problems of civilisation and morality 
 are not the only, or the highest, problems which 
 present themselves. But even such problems 
 have partially been the means of drawing man 
 outside himself, and of enabling him to see that 
 his self can only be realised in connection with 
 the common good and demands of the com- 
 munity. He now feels the necessity of living 
 up to that standard. This is an important step 
 in the direction of the moral and religious life. 
 It reveals the presence of a spiritual nucleus of 
 our being obtaining a content beyond the needs 
 
48 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of the moment ; it shows life as realising itself in 
 wide connections ; and the individual becomes 
 the possessor of a certain degree of spiritual 
 inwardness in the process. Even as far as this 
 level we find the deeper life the spiritual life- 
 insisting on the validity of its mental and moral 
 conclusions over against the objects of sense. 
 Without this insistence no knowledge would 
 progress and be valid. The macrocosm is 
 mirrored and coloured in a mental and moral 
 microcosm. A replica of the external world has 
 a reality in consciousness, and this reality is not 
 a mere photograph of the external, but it is 
 the external as it appears to the meaning it has 
 obtained in consciousness. The meaning of 
 the world is thus something beyond the world 
 itself; it is more than appears at any one 
 moment. If the world were less than this, if the 
 percept could not somehow become a concept, 
 all progress would come to a standstill, and we 
 should be no more than creatures of sensations 
 and percepts which vanished as soon as they 
 appeared. But these do not vanish ; they 
 persist in various ways, as after-images, con- 
 cepts, memory. Thus, in the very act of 
 knowing anything at all, something greater 
 than the physical object known is present. 
 And Eucken would insist, therefore, that the 
 mental and spiritual are present from the very 
 beginning and bring to a mental focus the 
 impressions of the senses. In the interpreta- 
 tion of Eucken's philosophy several writers 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 49 
 
 have missed the author's meaning here. They 
 have, through the ambiguity of the term 
 " spiritual " in English, conceived of " spiritual 
 life " as something entirely different from the 
 mental life. 1 1 is different, but only in the same 
 way as the bud is different from the blossom ; it 
 means at the religious level a greater unfolding 
 of a life which has been present at every stage 
 in the history of civilisation and culture. 
 
 But, as already noticed, the mental life is 
 passed when we enter the life of a community. 
 The norms and standards, already referred to, 
 make their appearance and persist in demand- 
 ing obedience to themselves even at the ex- 
 pense of much within consciousness that points 
 in another direction. 
 
 But even such a stage as this does not give 
 satisfaction to man. Much effort and sacrifice 
 are needed to live up to the life of the com- 
 munity. And such effort and sacrifice are 
 often the best means of calling into activity a 
 still deeper, reserved energy of the soul. The 
 soul now recognises a value beyond the values 
 of culture and civilisation. The Good, the 
 True, and the Beautiful appear as the sole 
 realities by the side of which everything that 
 preceded, if taken as complete in itself, appears 
 as a great shadow or illusion. Here we are 
 reminded of Eucken's affinity with Plato's 
 Doctrine of Ideas, as well as of his attachment 
 to the revival of Platonism by Plotinus. Values 
 for life, subsisting in themselves, become objects 
 
 4 
 
50 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of meditation, of " browsing," and of the deepest 
 activity of the soul. Life is now viewed as 
 consisting in a great and constant quest after 
 these religious ideals. It sees its meaning 
 beyond and above the range of mentality or 
 even morality, though it is well that it should 
 pass as often as possible through the gate 
 of the former, and is bound to pass always 
 through the gate of the latter. A break takes 
 place with the " natural self" ; the mental life 
 of concepts, though necessary, is now seen as 
 insufficient ; and life is now viewed as having 
 a "pearl of great price" before its gaze. 
 Here the stirb und werde of Paul and Goethe 
 becomes necessary. The real education of man 
 now begins. His life becomes guided and 
 governed by norms whose limits cannot be 
 discovered, and which have never been realised 
 in their wholeness on the face of our earth. 
 What can these mean? They cannot be 
 delusions or illusions, for they answer too 
 deep a need of the soul to be reduced to that 
 level. If we blot them out of our existence, 
 we sink back to a mere natural or mechanical 
 stage. When the soul concentrates its deepest 
 attention on these norms or ideals they fascinate 
 it, they draw hidden energies into activity, 
 they give inklings of immortality. Is it not 
 far more conceivable that such a vision of 
 meaning, of beauty, and of enchantment is 
 a new kind of reality cosmic in its nature 
 and eternal in its duration ? Man has to 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 51 
 
 come to a decision concerning this. There is 
 no half-way house here possible without the 
 deepest potencies of human nature suffering 
 and failing to transform themselves from bud 
 to blossom and fruit. 
 
 At a later stage in our inquiry this question 
 will recur in connection with the conception of 
 the Godhead. But here it may be observed 
 that to decide on the affirmative side that 
 somehow such norms and ideals which mean 
 so much are cosmic realities, is simply to state 
 no more than that an evolutionary process is 
 taking place towards a new kind of world as 
 well as a new kind of existence. No outsider 
 is competent to pronounce judgment on the 
 validity of the proofs possessed within this 
 spiritual realm. The qualifications here are 
 beyond the range of knowledge, although 
 knowledge does not cease to act within such 
 a realm. The experiences here cannot be 
 measured or weighed ; and that a certain ob- 
 scurity is present in them is only what may be 
 expected, considering that the spiritual nature 
 is farther removed from the region of nature 
 with its physical existence than when it deals 
 with problems on the intellectual level. But 
 such spiritual proofs are found in the fact that 
 these realities present themselves only at the 
 height of spiritual development, and in the fact 
 that they produce an inversion of the nature 
 of man, and change the centre of gravity of 
 his life to a more inward recess of his being 
 
52 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 than is open on the natural or intellectual 
 side. 
 
 Thus, once more, the soul is driven forward 
 by its own necessities to a religious reality. 
 What can it do but grant cosmic origin and 
 validity to such ideals ? If these ideals are not 
 this, then, as Eucken points out, they are the 
 most tragic illusions conceivable. 
 
 When they are acknowledged as cosmic 
 realities, man is in the midst of a religion of 
 a universal kind. But the acknowledgment of 
 these as cosmic realities is something more than 
 a concept. The men who have come to this 
 conclusion required something more than logical 
 arguments in order to establish this truth. The 
 conclusions were based upon a specific (char- 
 acteristic] religious experience of their own. 
 And such a religious experience was larger and 
 more real than anything that could be estab- 
 lished in the form of concepts concerning it. 
 As we shall notice in a later chapter, it is 
 somewhat on this account that Eucken differ- 
 entiates between universal and specific (char- 
 acteristic] religion. 
 
 It becomes evident that such contents of the 
 new spiritual world cannot be utilised by man 
 without effort. These realities have to pass 
 from the region of ideas to the region of actual 
 experiences. In other words, they must be- 
 come man's own religion. Man has now 
 become convinced of the reality of a universal 
 spiritual life as constituting, in a measure, the 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 53 
 
 foundation of the evolution of the soul, and as 
 the goal towards which he must for ever move. 
 Eucken is unwilling to speculate as to the origin 
 or the goal of this. The centre of gravity of 
 life must be laid in what may be known and 
 experienced between these two poles. There is 
 a certainty which is intermediate between man 
 and the Godhead. It is when this certainty is 
 realised as an actual portion of the soul that 
 man becomes competent to carry farther- 
 backward and forward the implications of 
 this certainty. And implications of a new 
 kind of Weltanschauung result from the spirit- 
 ual experiences of the Lebensanschauung of the 
 spiritual life. On this matter we shall touch 
 at a later stage in the inquiry. 
 
 At present let us confine our attention to the 
 intermediate reality which presents itself in a 
 form that is over-individual. It is only when 
 we pass out of the psychology of the subject 
 a matter that deals with the history of mental 
 processes that we are able to view the mean- 
 ing of the realities which are over-individual. 
 As already pointed out, these realities are not 
 the creations of man's fancy or imagination 
 after reason has been switched off. They are 
 non-sensuous realities which have moulded and 
 shaped the lives of individuals and nations in 
 varied degrees. These ideals are not to remain 
 merely objects of knowledge ; they are to be- 
 come portions of the inmost experiences of the 
 soul. This they cannot become without the 
 
54 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 calling out of the deepest energy of the individ- 
 ual. His fragmentary spiritual life small as 
 it is still calls for more of its own nature, and 
 this more has been seen in the distance as some- 
 thing of infinite value. 1 A mountain, as it 
 were, has to be climbed ; dark ravines have to 
 be gone through ; and rivers have to be swum 
 across. The whole vision means no less than 
 an entrance into a new kind of world, the scal- 
 ing to a new kind of existence, and a conquest 
 which will make the pilgrim a participator in 
 that which is Divine. A struggle has to take 
 place, because so much that belongs to the life, 
 on the level where it now stands, belongs to a 
 world below it. Impulses and passions, the nar- 
 row outlook, the timidity and hollowness of the 
 "small self" all these, which have previously 
 remained at the centre of life, have to be thrust 
 to the periphery of existence. So that an en- 
 trance into the highest spiritual world is not 
 merely something to know, but far rather some- 
 thing to do and to be. This is the meaning of 
 Eucken's activism. It is not the busying of 
 ourselves over trifles ; there is no need of en- 
 couragement in that direction. It is rather 
 the inward glance on the nature of the over- 
 individual ideals ; it is a deep and constant 
 concentration upon their value and significance, 
 in order that the soul may plant itself on the 
 shores of the over-world. It is in granting a 
 
 1 On this conception of the spiritual as More, cf. 
 Bosanquet's Psychology of the Moral Self. 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 55 
 
 higher mode of existence to these ideals, and 
 in preserving them as the possession of the soul, 
 that man finds the ever greater meaning of 
 that spiritual life which was present within him 
 from the very beginning of his enterprise. The 
 process of forcing an entrance into this over- 
 world has to be repeated time after time. 
 There are no enemies in front, but the man is 
 surrounded by them from around and behind 
 him. The indifference, in a large measure of 
 the natural process, the rigid instincts of mere 
 self-preservation, the temptation to smugness 
 and ease, the cold conclusions of the under- 
 standing when satisfied with explanations from 
 the physical world, the hardness of the heart 
 these and many other enemies fight for supre- 
 macy, and the soul is often torn in the struggle. 
 The struggle continues for a great length of 
 time ; but the history of the world testifies to 
 an innumerable host of individuals who scaled 
 and fell, who started again and again, until at 
 last their conceptions of the Highest Good 
 became a permanent experience and possession 
 of their deepest being. 
 
 And when the spiritual life creates an entrance 
 into this over-world something happens which 
 makes a fundamental difference in the life. 
 The life may again and again sink back to its 
 old level, but what has happened will never 
 allow it to remain satisfied on that level. 
 " We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 sleep to wake" (Browning). Life now be- 
 
56 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 comes alternately a quest and a fruition. 1 The 
 individual has to gather his whole energies 
 together because something great is at stake. 
 This is nothing less than the possession of a 
 new kind of reality. The struggle has yielded 
 a conquest for the time being. He tastes and 
 "eats his pot of honey on the grave" of 
 enemies within and without. This fruition 
 means no less than a taste of " eternal life in 
 the midst of time " (Harnack), and the relegat- 
 ing of the whole world of phenomena to a 
 subsidiary place. 
 
 This is the kernel of Eucken's Truth of 
 Religion. The book deals with the most 
 subtle psychological problems of the soul, and 
 reaches the conclusion of an entrance by man 
 into a divine world. All this is far removed 
 from the ordinary traditional conception either 
 of God or of religion. Perhaps the majority 
 of mankind is not as yet ready for such a pre- 
 sentation of religion. But I think it may be 
 safely said that it is through some such mode 
 of conceiving religion as this that the " great 
 and good ones " of the world found an entrance 
 into a divine world and grasped the conception 
 of the evolution of the soul as a process which 
 begins where organic evolution ends. 
 
 1 Cf. Wicksteed's The Religion of Time and the Religion 
 of Eternity, in Carpenter and Wicksteed's Studies in Theology. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 
 
 IN the previous chapter we have noticed how 
 man is able to reach an over-world which will 
 grant him a new kind of reality over against 
 the whole remaining domain of existence. 
 But the evidence hitherto brought forth has 
 been that of the nature of man himself. We 
 have in this chapter to inquire whether there 
 is a warrant for such a conclusion within the 
 realm of natural science. Does science give 
 any hint of the presence of spiritual life any- 
 where in the universe ? Eucken answers 
 distinctly in the affirmative. 1 
 
 The conclusions of natural science have, 
 in modern times, come into direct conflict 
 with religion. Traditional religion has grown 
 up on a view of the universe which has been 
 
 1 Eucken's best account of this subject is found in Parts 
 I., II., and V. of his Truth of Religion and in Beitrdge zur 
 Weiterentwickelung der Religion, pp. 24-0-281. This latter 
 is a volume of ten essays by well-known German religious 
 teachers. 
 
 57 
 
58 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 utterly discarded by modern knowledge. 
 Religious leaders have often had to be dragged 
 to see the truth of this statement, and, as 
 Eucken points out, many are still far from 
 realising the seriousness of the cleft between 
 knowledge and religion. The theology of the 
 Middle Ages has not yet disappeared, although 
 fortunately there are some signs of a great 
 reconstruction going on in our midst. Fortun- 
 ately, this naive view of the universe is a 
 theology and not a religion ; but doubtless 
 even the religion of the soul suffers when its 
 knowing aspect is perpetually contradicted by 
 scientific knowledge. There is such a close 
 connection between " head " and " heart "- 
 even closer than between body and mind- 
 that the use of discarded theories of the universe 
 and of life cannot but prove injurious to the 
 deepest source of life. 
 
 The mental conceptions of religion have, 
 in the course of the ages, undergone many 
 transformations, and there is no reason why 
 another transformation should gradually not 
 come about in the present. In Hebrew and 
 Greek times we discover a polytheism, after a 
 long course of development, emerging into heno- 
 theism, and finally, here and there, into mono- 
 theism. The old conceptions of gods and spirits 
 present in trees and wells, mountains and air, are 
 overcome. They are not so much destroyed as 
 supplanted by higher conceptions. In pre- 
 Socratic philosophy we find the gods and 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 59 
 
 spirits relegated to a secondary place, and 
 Nature is conceived as a system of inner 
 energies and strivings. In these conceptions 
 Man is drawn closer to Nature, and the con- 
 nection of his life is shown to be closely inter- 
 woven with the life of Nature. But the 
 empirical aspect of this teaching was pushed 
 into the background through the teachings of 
 Socrates and Plato. The " myth " regained 
 some of its pristine power in a new kind of 
 way ; and " God transcendent of the world 
 and immanent in the world " came prominently 
 forward as a doctrine of the universe and of 
 life. This is the kernel of the Christian 
 theology, constructed through the blending 
 of Hebrew and Greek philosophies. Such a 
 conception remained very largely the philo- 
 sophy as well as the theology of the Christian 
 Church until the seventeenth century. During 
 this long interval hardly any progress was made 
 in the investigation of Nature, so that such a 
 theology proved rather a help than a hindrance 
 to the religion of those who understood it. 
 But such a theology has been destroyed, how- 
 ever unwilling many people are to acknowledge 
 the fact. But until this fact is acknowledged, 
 there is very little hope, in Eucken's opinion, of 
 the Christian religion gaining many adherents 
 from the side of those who understand the 
 modern meaning and significance of natural 
 science. The physical universe has become a 
 problem ; and the old solution was a matter 
 
60 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of speculation based upon scarcely any 
 observation and experiment. Eucken marks 
 the stages which have brought about a revolu- 
 tion in our conceptions of the universe as 
 consisting of the change brought about in the 
 science of astronomy through Copernicus in the 
 sixteenth century, the founding of exact science 
 through Galileo in the seventeenth century, and 
 the theory of evolution propounded by Darwin 
 and his followers in the nineteenth century. 
 The whole tendency has been to describe and 
 explain Nature in terms of mechanism, and to 
 extend such mechanism into the life of man. 
 Proof after proof has poured upon us, and 
 has been the means, on the whole, of establish- 
 ing a kingdom of mechanism within the realm 
 of Nature and of human nature. Theology 
 and speculative philosophy went on their 
 courses unheedful of these developments of 
 physical science, until in our day both have 
 had to reconsider the tenableness of their 
 position, and to see that Nature and its 
 physical manifestations have to enter as all- 
 important factors into their reconstructions. 
 Miracle is now relegated to a secondary place 
 in theology, and it has disappeared altogether 
 from science ; a Supreme Being transcendent 
 of, and immanent in, the world is not known 
 to science, however far it reaches into the secrets 
 of Nature. Doubtless the loss to religion has 
 been here incalculable; for although the natural 
 scientist was able to destroy the old building, 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 61 
 
 he was unable to construct a new one. And 
 Eucken shows that the natural scientist will 
 remain unable to accomplish this, because the 
 material with which he deals is physical in its 
 nature and constitutes no more than a part 
 a secondary part of what is found in the 
 world. 
 
 The old mode of conceiving the universe, 
 when driven from its citadel by the new con- 
 ceptions of physics and astronomy, turned for 
 refuge to the mystery of Life itself. Here it 
 supposed itself to be safe. But the develop- 
 ment of modern chemistry and biology shows 
 how dangerous it is to base a theological and 
 religious superstructure on the unfilled clefts 
 of natural science. The lesson here during 
 the past hundred years ought to be a grave 
 warning against its repetition in the future. 
 These clefts have been filled more and more 
 by the investigations and results of modern 
 chemistry and biology, so that the theologian 
 is constantly kept in a state of panic, and has 
 to shift his camp and run away when the tide 
 of knowledge sweeps in with its newly dis- 
 covered results. The whole situation seems 
 serious, but it is not so disastrous as it appears 
 at first sight. Doubtless the gains of science 
 have been numerous, and have shaken and 
 practically ruined the old theological and 
 metaphysical foundations; but a halt has now 
 been called on science itself, and its limitations 
 have become perceptible even to its own 
 
62 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 leaders. It is not quite so certain that the 
 problem of organic life can be settled in terms 
 of chemical combinations and mechanism. 
 Many scientists 1 are agreed on this point, 
 although they repudiate the claims of neo- 
 vitalists such as Driesch and Reinke. 2 No 
 judgment can be pronounced on this subject 
 at the present day, and probably the problem 
 will take a long time before any important 
 results will accrue. And even these results 
 will not solve the problem of organic life, for 
 the manifestations of life, the higher we mount 
 the scale of being, are not things visible to the 
 senses but express themselves in the forms of 
 meanings and will-relations. 
 
 The limits of natural science become clearly 
 perceptible when we enter into the complex 
 problem of the relation of subject and object, 
 
 1 The President of the British Association (1912) states 
 in his address that it is not within his province to touch 
 the question concerning the nature of the soul. I take the 
 report of his address from Nature } 5th September. Dr 
 Haldane goes much further in the direction of Vitalism 
 (discussion at British Association on the subject). 
 
 2 Cf. Driesch : Philosophy of the Organism ; Vitalismus als 
 Geschichte und Lekre; his article in Lebensanschauung (a 
 collection of essays by twenty German thinkers, 1911); 
 Reinke's Philosophie der Botanik; M'Dougall's Body and 
 Mind; Thomson's Heredity, Evolution, and Introduction to 
 Science (the two latter in the Home University Library). 
 Bergson's Creative Evolution deals with the subject, but 
 the value of this book is greater in other directions. 
 T. H. Morgan's Regeneration is a weighty contribution 
 to the subject. 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 63 
 
 or of mind and body. The final tribunal in 
 regard to the great questions of life and religion 
 is not natural science. This is not a matter 
 of a mere wish that it should be so on the part 
 of religious teachers who ignore the findings 
 of science, but is a conviction of the scientists 
 themselves. 
 
 Natural science has been so busy with the 
 investigation of the physical world that it has 
 had time to remember but little besides objects 
 in the external world. And yet what are 
 objects in the external world without a sub- 
 ject to know them? 1 And what are the 
 hypotheses which science frames in order to 
 explain phenomena but syntheses of factors 
 framed in consciousness ? 2 What are laws of 
 Nature but mental constructions framed con- 
 cerning similar ways of behaviour on the part 
 of a large number of objects ? What are the 
 fundamental conceptions which serve as the 
 very groundwork of the whole of science but 
 concepts which are explanations of phenomena 
 and not themselves phenomena ? 3 
 
 Wherever we look, we find that our view 
 
 1 A revival of the study of Kant's first Critique would be 
 of great value to our natural scientists. Green, in his 
 Prolegomena to Ethics, has interpreted this aspect in a 
 manner that ought not to be forgotten. Of. further 
 Edward Caird's Evolution of Religion, vol. i. 
 
 2 Ward's Nattiralism and Agnosticism, vol. i., is a reply to 
 this important question. 
 
 8 Cf. Miinsterberg's Psychology and Education, and his 
 Eternal Values ; also Royce's The World and the Individual. 
 
64 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of Nature is in the first place a result as well 
 as a conviction of the content of conscious- 
 ness ; that we do not perceive things and their 
 qualities in a form of immediacy, but only 
 after they have entered into consciousness are 
 we able to know what external objects really 
 are. The constructions of science in the form 
 of hypotheses and laws are a proof that the 
 reality of the physical world and its meaning 
 are known only in so far as they are known 
 by mind, and in so far as the universal (which 
 is a mental content) explains the particular 
 (which may or may not be an object in the 
 external world). 
 
 Eucken emphasises this truth in several of 
 his books, and whenever the truth is borne 
 in mind the scientist becomes aware of the 
 existence of a reality beyond that of the 
 objects of sense. And even when the 
 scientist is unaware of the mental qualities 
 which operate in perceiving external objects 
 and of the generalisations formed as the result 
 of the impressions left by the objects in the 
 mind, he uses these all the same. Professor 
 Haeckel (one of Professor Eucken's colleagues 
 in Jena) starts out in The Riddle of the 
 Universe with the strong hope of reducing 
 the whole universe (including God) into a 
 state of material substance, and ends with a 
 kind of peroration on the virtues of the 
 new goddesses, the True, the Good, and the 
 Beautiful. 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 65 
 
 But an increasing number of scientists to- 
 day are aware of the limits of science. They 
 know that the mental models which they have 
 to frame in order to interpret phenomena are 
 not material things, and exist nowhere except 
 in a world of mind and meaning. Eucken's 
 conclusion then is that what knows and 
 interprets is a mental quality. He would 
 rather call it the life of the spirit of man, or 
 the spiritual life. A non-sensuous power has 
 to operate in order that the physical world 
 may be known at all ; that power has, further, 
 in a manner unknown, to gather the frag- 
 mentary impressions of the senses, turn them 
 into that which is mental, combine them into 
 what is termed meaning. 
 
 We are led back to the point made so 
 clear by Descartes to his insistence on the 
 presence of a thinking subject as the start- 
 ing-point for the knowledge of all existence. 
 This truth was elucidated later by Kant in 
 a manner which the world can probably never 
 get rid of. Therefore, if so much happens in 
 the mind in connection with the knowledge 
 and interpretation of the world, our view of 
 the world after this happens in the mind is 
 entirely different from the view which exists 
 before it happens. Thought stands over 
 against the sensuous object, transforms the 
 object into a logical construction of meaning. 
 When one becomes aware of this, not only 
 do the objects themselves become most pro- 
 
 5 
 
66 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 blematic in their relation to consciousness, 
 but the very tools with which the scientist 
 works e.g. space and time become so 
 puzzling that only by a return to a metaphysic 
 do they become partially explainable. And 
 thus we are landed in a region of idealism in 
 the very midst of the work of natural science. 
 Naturalism has arisen only because the sub- 
 ject was forgotten in the enchantment of the 
 object. The attention has been turned so long 
 on the object that the nature and the results of 
 the attention itself are quite left out of account. 
 We can all believe in what naturalism has to 
 say concerning organic and inorganic objects ; 
 but it has not said enough when it leaves the 
 power that knows the meaning of what it says 
 out of account. 
 
 The conclusion Eucken arrives at is, then, 
 that we must ascribe reality to the quality that 
 knows and interprets as well as to the thing 
 that is known. He ascribes reality to the 
 physical world, but this is not the whole of 
 reality. This cannot be so, simply because 
 we could not know that the physical world 
 was real had it not been that there was 
 implanted in us a mental organisation to know 
 all this. The other reality is that of conscious- 
 ness and the meanings it formulates. Thus 
 natural science itself announces the presence 
 of more than sensuous nature. This more 
 which knows the external world is the more 
 which has constructed civilisation, culture, and 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 67 
 
 religion. This more has formed an indepen- 
 dent inner life over against the natural world. 
 Had it not been for this power of the more to 
 construct its inner world, Life would have been 
 no more than the life of sensuous nature 
 shifting from point to point, and entirely at 
 the mercy of a physical environment. But 
 the progress of mankind shows everywhere the 
 growth of a life higher in nature than that of 
 physical or animal existence. Some kind of 
 total-life has been formed in which the in- 
 dividual can participate ; and in the participa- 
 tion of which he can be carried far beyond 
 physical things and beyond his own individual 
 interests. Mankind has striven after truth, 
 and has discovered something that is beyond 
 the opinions of individuals, that does not serve 
 his own petty interests, but overcomes them 
 and reaches out after truths which are valid 
 and good for all. 
 
 What is all this that has happened ? What 
 has brought it about ? What is the individual 
 potency that knows the world and passes 
 beyond it? What are the ideals and norms 
 which revealed themselves in the co-operative 
 movements of humanity, and only revealed 
 themselves when humanity was at its highest 
 attainable level? Enough has been said to show 
 that it is more than Nature, that characteristics 
 are found within it entirely unknown in Nature. 
 We are bound to take this more into account, 
 for it has constructed all the gains of mankind. 
 
68 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 What can it be, in the individual efforts of the 
 soul and in the ideal constructions of science 
 and the higher ethical and religious construc- 
 tions of life, but a reality higher than sense 
 and outside the categories of space and time ? 
 What better name can be given to it than a 
 Spiritual Life in contradistinction to the life of 
 Nature ? 
 
 When this life of the mind and spirit of 
 man is acknowledged, it is seen to be the 
 beginning of a new order of existence. There 
 appears within it a new kind of reality. It is 
 the standpoint from which natural science 
 itself has arisen. Such an acknowledgment 
 of life as a new kind of reality alters in an 
 essential manner the whole view of the world. 
 Nature now signifies not the whole of things, 
 but only a step beyond which the cosmic 
 process progresses. Two worlds, instead of 
 one world, now appear one growing out of 
 the other, but keeping a connection still with 
 the other. Nature consequently gains a deeper 
 significance of meaning when we recognise 
 that it gives birth to mind and spirit- 
 characteristics which merge into consciousness, 
 values, and ideals. Nature is not discarded in 
 our new view, but it takes a secondary place. 
 The primary place must be given to the 
 spiritual life the life which is active as an 
 organisation in knowing and being and doing. 
 And when this truth is realised, this life of 
 mental and spiritual activity becomes the 
 
RELIGION AND NATURAL SCIENCE 69 
 
 centre from which the new reality will obtain 
 an ever greater content. The deepest aspect 
 of reality is then discovered, not without but 
 within. This reality is now conceived as 
 something which belongs to a new kind of 
 world, and this new world stands above the 
 physical world. Man, when he conceives of 
 things in this manner, will be able to bear the 
 indifference of the physical course of existence 
 towards the spiritual potencies of his being. 
 The natural process may seem to harass and 
 even destroy him ; it matters not, for he has 
 been led to a conviction of the possession of 
 qualities which have not come into activity 
 and power in any world below him, and which 
 have laws of their own and goals spiritual in 
 their nature. But all this will not come about 
 as a shower of rain descends. The spiritual 
 life has to insist on its superiority to the 
 natural process, and to construct, with the 
 deepest energy of its being, ever richer moral 
 and spiritual contents for itself; for it is these 
 contents which constitute the growth of the 
 meaning and value of the new world, as well 
 as of its indestructible reality beyond the 
 process of Nature. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELIGION AND HISTORY 
 
 THE subject of history has obtained a most 
 prominent position in the whole of Eucken's 
 philosophy. All his books deal with the 
 subject, and in a manner resembling one 
 another, whatever the particular subject dealt 
 with may be. But the most exhaustive treat- 
 ment of history presented in his volumes is to 
 to be found in the chapter on history in 
 Systematische Philosophic (" Kultur der Gegen- 
 wart," Teil I., Abteilung VI.), and in the latter 
 half of The Truth of Religion. In the 
 former volume Eucken deals with history in 
 its relation to civilisation and culture, and in 
 the latter the place of history in the religions 
 of the world is strikingly expressed. 
 
 We have already noticed in the previous 
 chapter how he set out to discover the 
 presence of a mental or spiritual life in the 
 very act of knowing the physical world and in 
 the constructions which form both the basis and 
 the apex of physical science. It was shown 
 
 70 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 71 
 
 here that a life higher than the physical was 
 present in order to be able to read the meaning 
 of the world. Such a life became a standpoint 
 to view Nature, and is the possession, more 
 or less, of each individual. But although the 
 possession of individuals and above Nature, 
 the consciousness that knows Nature is still 
 carried beyond its own individual life. The 
 meaning of the physical world appears in 
 consciousness, through the syntheses it forms, 
 as objective, although it is not an object of 
 sense but of thought ; and, further, this very 
 objectivity subsists in the form of generalisa- 
 tions and meanings which create standards 
 for each individual in his relations with the 
 physical world. Eucken then concludes that 
 there is a trans-subjective aspect present in the 
 conclusions of physical science itself. 1 And it 
 is on this fact that he bases the presence of a 
 mental or spiritual life in the very act of 
 knowing at all. But it is evident that the 
 whole of man's potencies and relations are not 
 confined to the knowing of Nature and 
 framing interpretations concerning it. There 
 are other provinces to which man is related- 
 other objects besides physical ones to which 
 his attention is called to frame interpretations 
 concerning them also. History is one of these 
 provinces. The subject-matter here is entirely 
 
 1 This trans-subjective aspect has been worked out in an 
 original way by Volkelt in his Quellen der menschlichen 
 Gewissheit. 
 
72 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 different from the subject-matter of physical 
 science. In the latter the objects are physical ; 
 in the former the objects are not things, but 
 will-relations. 1 We are in history dealing 
 with the effects of heredity and physical 
 environment upon all organic life man 
 included. But it has been already shown that 
 man, though rooted in the natural world and 
 dependent upon it, is still the possessor of a 
 world which is above the physical. Man's 
 roots in Nature have been unearthed in a large 
 measure ; and his dependence on the world 
 from which he has emerged is greater than 
 was suspected, and probably it will be dis- 
 covered in the future that he is still more 
 dependent on what is below him. But how- 
 ever deep his connection with Nature may 
 prove itself to be, he will still remain an 
 unsolved problem if he is coolly stripped of 
 all the qualities he has gained since he emerged 
 from the bosom of Nature. 
 
 We are consequently led to the higher 
 aspects of history where the centre of gravity 
 of the matter lies in the relations of wills. 
 
 By will-relations is meant the impact of in- 
 dividuals upon one another from the side of 
 meaning. It is through the expressions of the 
 meaning of our concepts that we are able to 
 construct an intelligible world. The indi- 
 
 1 The works of Miinsterberg and Rickert deal with 
 great clearness on this difference of subject-matter in 
 science and history. 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 73 
 
 vidual's deeper reality does not consist in the 
 percept we obtain of him, but in the mental 
 attitude he has expressed towards a mental 
 attitude of ours. The clothing of meaning is 
 certainly physical ; there is our friend's physical 
 body in front of us, and his speech is audible in 
 a physical sense to physical ears. But neither 
 body nor speech is absolutely necessary for the 
 expression of meaning to another. We have 
 neither seen nor heard many of the individuals 
 who have exercised great influence over our 
 lives. Words have answered the purpose. 
 By this is not meant that we have not lost 
 something of great value in having to depend 
 on print alone. Something of every individual 
 reveals itself in his body and speech which is 
 missed when we have to depend on paper and 
 ink as mediums of meaning. But meaning 
 is something other than its medium ; it is a 
 mental or spiritual content. This content has 
 to be classified and interpreted. The interpreta- 
 tion forms here again, as on the level of natural 
 science, syntheses and generalisations larger 
 than any one individual. These are the 
 resultants of mind with mind and will with 
 will. When human beings come into contact 
 with each other, there originates a state of 
 things in which something is thought and done. 
 What is thought and done deals with situa- 
 tions outside the situation of each individual. 
 The interpretation of these situations is, there- 
 fore, an objective reality which becomes a 
 
74 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 norm for each individual. Mankind has thus 
 created a reality which is beyond that of the 
 content of each individual's experience as an 
 individual. 
 
 We thus see that there are presented in such 
 norms two aspects of a very different nature. 
 On the one hand, we discover the contribution 
 of each individual, and witness events dealing 
 with situations which succeed one another with 
 greater or less rapidity. This aspect is in 
 constant flux. It constitutes the capability of 
 meeting the needs of the moment. All this 
 works well so long as the needs of the moment 
 involve no great complexities. But immedi- 
 ately the situation becomes complex there is 
 a turn to something besides this mere flow of 
 things. 1 To what ? It is a turn to something 
 whose nucleus of meaning and value has 
 persisted in the midst of all the flow. This 
 is no other than one or other of the highest of 
 the ideal constructions which formed the basis 
 of the life of the community. The community 
 had been unconsciously garnering something 
 over-individual and over-historical for its future 
 use. Thus, in history itself there is the 
 presence of a reality higher than the individual, 
 and higher than the ordinary meaning of the 
 
 1 The main weakness of Bergson's philosophy seems to 
 be in not recognising this problem. Bosanquet, in his 
 Principle of Individuality and Falue, has very clearly 
 recognised and interpreted it upon similar lines to 
 Eucken. 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 75 
 
 hour. This becomes the standard by which 
 everything has to be measured. Of course, 
 this norm does not remain static in regard to 
 its own content. But its growth of content 
 depends upon the contributions made to it by 
 individuals in their will-relations. Something 
 over-individual issues out of all these relations, 
 and this enters into the still higher over- 
 individual norms which are the heritage of 
 society. Eucken consequently shows that 
 history itself is dependent upon something 
 which works within it interpreting its events, 
 and absorbing into itself something that is of 
 value. What other can this be but a spiritual 
 life higher not only than physical things but 
 even than the will-relations which accrue from 
 moment to moment ? It has already been 
 noticed that on these lower levels the spiritual 
 life is ever present present as a potency and 
 experience when viewed from the standpoint 
 of the individual's creativeness, and present 
 as norms and values when viewed as an object 
 of thought brought forth through general con- 
 clusions founded on situations beyond any 
 single situation of the individual. Thus, we 
 get in Eucken's teaching the over-historical 
 as the power which operates within the events 
 of history. It is what philosophy has termed 
 the Ideal, and what religion has termed the 
 revelation of God. It is not correct, then, to 
 say that we are dependent upon the content 
 of the moment apart from the presence of the 
 
76 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 content of the past in that moment in order 
 to grasp reality. The Past does not mean a 
 mere series of events which occurred some 
 hundreds or thousands of years ago, and before 
 which we bend and towards which we try to 
 turn back the world, for that would mean 
 what Eucken terms "mere historism." The 
 Past has rolled its meaning down to the 
 Present : the Past mingled with the content 
 of the Present is at each point of its course 
 something other than it was before. 1 But in 
 any case this aspect of the Past as presented 
 by Eucken shows that human life requires a 
 great span of time which has already run in 
 order to create its ideals and to be raised from 
 the triviality of the mere moment. Goethe 
 perceived the importance of the same truth : 
 
 " Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss 
 
 Rechenschaft zu geben, 
 
 Bleib' im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag 
 Zu Tage leben ! " 
 
 At certain epochs in the history of the world 
 great events have happened. Often such 
 epochs are followed by epochs of inertia. 
 Men bask in the sunlight of the glory that 
 was revealed to humanity ; they receive help 
 and strength from what had been. But the 
 greater the interval between the occurrence 
 
 1 In this respect Eucken and Bergson seem to agree, 
 although it is difficult to reconcile this aspect of Bergson's 
 with his statements concerning the grasping of reality in 
 the perceptions of the moment. 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 77 
 
 of that greatness and the contemplation of it, 
 the more difficult does it become to grasp and 
 to possess something of the true meaning, 
 value, and significance of such greatness. The 
 greatness, as the interval grows, becomes some- 
 thing to be known, something which is believed 
 to fall upon us in an external, miraculous 
 manner ; and finally it often becomes an object 
 of wordy dispute and strife. Certain periods 
 in the history of the Christian Church give 
 abundant evidence of the truth of this state- 
 ment. Eucken points out in his Problem of 
 Human Life how barren in creative power, 
 for instance, was the fourth century. Why ? 
 An interval of nearly three centuries had 
 passed away since the Master and his followers 
 had proclaimed truths and experiences which 
 were the burning convictions of their deepest 
 being. Gradually, and often unconsciously, 
 men glided down an inclined plane, until at 
 last the spiritual nucleus of Christianity had 
 largely disappeared and little more than the 
 husks remained. At the close of such intervals 
 religion becomes a number of conflicting in- 
 tellectual theories, and the worst passions are 
 called to its support. Dogmatism and intoler- 
 ance prevail, and a blight comes over the 
 choicest potencies of the soul. All this 
 happens because certain great events and ex- 
 periences of the past are conceived of as 
 marking a terminus in the history of the moral 
 and spiritual evolution of the world. The 
 
78 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 soul is not stirred to its depth to preserve such 
 experiences and, if possible, enhance them. 
 Thus the world leaves such a rich spiritual 
 content largely behind itself; and when this 
 happens, it becomes a matter of the greatest 
 difficulty to recover it. And even when it is 
 recovered, something of infinite value has been 
 for ever lost. The present moment of the 
 soul has to live on itself; and such a life 
 remains alien to depths of reality which have 
 been plumbed by the great personalities of 
 history in the past. It is a want of convic- 
 tion in truth and reality that makes us seek 
 finality in the past. It may be that the 
 highest personalities of our day are not able to 
 scale such spiritual heights as were scaled by the 
 Christians of the primitive Church ; but unless 
 they believe that the same power is present in 
 their souls they will never have courage even 
 to make the attempt. It is a vision of the 
 nature of the reality which was climbed by the 
 personalities of the past, coupled with the 
 consciousness of the same spiritual power in 
 the present, that will enable Christianity to 
 be lived on such a " grand scale " in the present 
 and the future. The spiritual experiences of 
 the past have become over-individual and over- 
 historical norms for our lives ; but such norms 
 are no more than ideas until the will enters into 
 a relation with them. When this happens, the 
 individual does not only observe a goal in the 
 distance but also starts to move towards such 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 79 
 
 a goal with the whole spiritual energy of his 
 nature. And every individual who moves in 
 the direction of such norms brings some con- 
 tribution of value from the present to be 
 added to the norms of the past. The spiritual 
 life is thus individual and over - individual, 
 historical and over-historical, transcendent and 
 immanent. 
 
 Eucken has worked for many years at this 
 difficult problem a problem so important in 
 the life of civilisation and religion. It has 
 already been hinted that the conception bears 
 striking resemblances to aspects of Hegel's 
 philosophy. But there are differences. One 
 of these was pointed out long ago by Eucken : 
 " The gist of religion is with Hegel nothing 
 but the absorption of the individual in the 
 universal intellectual process. How such a 
 conception can be identified with moral re- 
 generation of the Christian type, with purifica- 
 tion of the heart, is unintelligible to us." 1 
 Eucken's philosophy, on the other hand, is 
 pre-eminently a spiritual activism. The life- 
 process is shaped by the collective activity of 
 individuals ; and when this activity slackens the 
 ideals of the over- world suffer. Man is thus 
 called to be what he ought to be ; and in the 
 process he heightens something of the value of 
 the Ought. An Ought and a Will are involved 
 in the creativeness of the individual life and of 
 the Life-process ; so that it is a mistake to con- 
 
 1 "Hegel To-day," The Monist, April 1897. 
 
80 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ceive of Eucken's activism as some stirring of 
 the individual to realise merely his own needs 
 as these present themselves to him from 
 moment to moment. He is called and de- 
 stined to do infinitely more ; he is to be a 
 creator of the Life-process and a carrier in the 
 making of a new world ; but all this can be 
 done only from the standpoint of a vision of a 
 spiritual life superior to history and to the 
 individual himself. Vision and action are to 
 be ever present. In the light of the vision 
 man becomes more than he now is ; through 
 action the vision increases in depth and value. 
 
 What relation this has to the conception of 
 the Godhead will be dealt with in a later 
 chapter. It is enough at present to bear in 
 mind that, as far as we have gone, a reality 
 above sense, time, history, and the content of 
 the individual life has become evident. And 
 it is such a reality which gives meaning to the 
 events of history. 
 
 It has to be borne in mind that much which 
 is natural and of the earth enters into history. 
 Such effects have become clearly discernible in 
 modern times. Physical conditions do exer- 
 cise an influence, and hem the course of the 
 spiritual life. The indifference of the physical 
 order of things to the ethical values of history 
 is a problem which constantly perplexes every 
 thinking mind. No solution to the puzzles of 
 life is to be found in Nature. What do we 
 discover there ? " We discover enchainments 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 81 
 
 of phenomena which seem to conduct to the 
 creation of great misery and which, with un- 
 merciful callousness, drive man over the brink 
 of an abyss. The faintest hint would have 
 sufficed to hold him back from such a cata- 
 strophe ; but this is not given, and consequently 
 destruction takes its course. Petty accidents 
 destroy life and happiness ; a moment annihi- 
 lates the most toilsome work. Often, also, we 
 discover a chaotic medley, a sudden overthrow 
 of all potency, a seeming indifference towards 
 all human weal and woe, a blind groping in the 
 dark ; we discover gloomy possibilities con- 
 stantly sweeping as dark clouds over man and 
 occasionally descending as a crashing tempest." l 
 Hundreds of similar examples may be found in 
 Eucken's books, and all point to the insufficiency 
 of the natural process for satisfying the deepest 
 needs of our being. But in spite of the fact 
 that the natural process accompanies Life 
 everywhere, man has built a world beyond the 
 world of sense. 
 
 With the entrance of the spiritual life a new 
 mode of history makes its appearance. This 
 fact is to be witnessed in the tools invented by 
 man in order to overcome physical barriers. 
 The growth of technics in our own day is a 
 proof of Nature yielding here and there to the 
 demands of life and intellect. This has all 
 been brought about by mentality, and new 
 modes of living are the result. 
 
 1 Truth of Religion, p. 328. 
 
 6 
 
82 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 And when we enter the domain of human 
 society the superiority of the spiritual life be- 
 comes evident here as well. It is true that we 
 are as yet far from any ideals of human society 
 which include the good of all, and which bind 
 all together in spite of radical differences that 
 will continue to persist. Systems of various 
 kinds are presented often at variance with one 
 another ; but even these are evidence of a spirit- 
 ual life far above the achievements of any single 
 individuals. What must we do ? We must 
 all work on in the direction of the highest : and 
 the higher we mount the nearer we are to a 
 point of convergence of all the different syn- 
 theses ; and out of the union there will be born 
 a synthesis which will include the whole family 
 of man. We possess already such a synthesis 
 partially realised here and there in the lives of 
 the greatest personalities of history ; but to the 
 mass of mankind such a synthesis is little more 
 than a name, even though that name be God 
 or Infinite Love. The content of the name 
 has to be realised: and this can never come 
 about except through a deep stirring and long- 
 ing, through enormous sacrifices, painful and 
 recurring failures, to issue finally in a conquest 
 a height attained by mankind on which the 
 content of God and Infinite Love will be born 
 in the soul as a living, personal, and durable 
 experience. When this comes to be and 
 every genuine effort in the movement of our 
 higher being brings us nearer to it there issues 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 83 
 
 an incomparably higher mode of life. Thus a 
 new history is framed through the spiritual 
 activities of individuals ; and something of its 
 very nature and of the mode by which such a 
 reality can be reached will become an atmo- 
 sphere into which future generations will be 
 born, as well a higher condition than has ever 
 previously existed to hail the entrance of 
 human souls into the world. 
 
 Eucken insists that it is not the movement 
 of democracy towards better social conditions 
 that will be effective in bringing about such a 
 change. Much, of course, can be effected by 
 better social conditions. There are needs 
 to-day in connection with labour which ought 
 to be met. But at the best they can do 
 no more than touch the periphery of human 
 existence. A poverty in the " inward parts " 
 will still exist in the midst of external plenty. 
 But if men and women could be brought to 
 the consciousness of spiritual ideals and their 
 efficacy, a disposition of soul and character 
 would be created which would rapidly change 
 the evil conditions of life and the perplex- 
 ing problems of capital and labour. Several 
 writers have gone astray when they have 
 imagined that Eucken has but scant sympathy 
 with the social needs of our times. It would 
 be difficult to find anywhere a man of a more 
 tender heart. But he sees deeper than the 
 level of material and social needs and their 
 fulfilment. He sees that it is only by a change 
 
84 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of disposition and attitude of the soul that per- 
 manent changes in the material well-being of 
 the world can come about. For it is in the 
 soul's relation with its over-individual and 
 over-historical ideals that permanent qualities 
 can be created and preserved : it is in our own 
 deepest being, through a conviction of the 
 values of sympathy, sacrifice, and love that 
 any genuine history can find its birth and 
 nurture. We require to pay no less attention 
 to the things of the body ; but the things of 
 the spirit must step into the foreground of life 
 once again. Then we are working at the 
 heart of the Life-process a Life-process 
 which is the beginning of a new cosmic 
 process ; and what will issue out of such a 
 result will probably be greater and better than 
 anything we can dream of. Men are called to 
 this work to-day. They understand but little 
 its significance and its trend ; they must be 
 willing to learn from those who have lived 
 through these problems, and who see ramifica- 
 tions of the problems into a soil deeper than is 
 perceptible by the masses. The masses must 
 be willing to be taught in the things of the 
 spirit. Hence we see the need of great 
 personalities who will combine in their own 
 souls a penetrating knowledge and an intense 
 enthusiasm for the real welfare of mankind. 
 A true history can never be born outside this 
 region ; the world, without such a conviction, 
 can only wander out of one morass into 
 
RELIGION AND HISTORY 85 
 
 another ; and failure after failure will be the 
 inevitable result of all the attempts. Move- 
 ments will have value and duration only in 
 so far as they are the outcome of a need of 
 a spiritual life which includes demands of 
 intellect, morality, and religious idealism. 
 
 Eucken shows at the close of his remarkable 
 article in Beitrcige zur Weiterentwickelung 
 der Religion that some form or other of 
 the Eternal must enter into time and its 
 changes, and become a norm towards which 
 mankind will move. When this happens, 
 mankind will not be content to look merely 
 beyond the grave for the redemption of the 
 race and the annihilation of sin. The very 
 world in which we live is surrounded by an 
 over- world of ideal truth and goodness. Why 
 should we live on " hope and tarrying " when 
 there is so much to be done and gained ? The 
 energies of men run on such lines into " sickly 
 sentimentalism " and " watery wishes," and 
 nothing great issues out of our activities on 
 the surface of life. History becomes no more 
 than a succession of changes of which the 
 later are of no more value than the earlier. 
 All this happens, because there is no Eternal 
 no over-world of over-individual and over- 
 historical values present. In a large measure 
 our very religion grants us here but little help. 
 It is either a contemplation of certain events in 
 the past which were delivered for once and for 
 all or an immersion in the social environment. 
 
86 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 We remain aliens to the truth that these 
 events can be repeated to-day. We are not 
 convinced as to the possibilities of our own 
 nature and of the realisation of the Divine in 
 the making of history. Our age is an age of 
 stripping things of their connections and 
 qualities and of finding their essence in what 
 they were and not in what they are and ought 
 to be. Even history is brought back to its 
 origin from savagery ; and its explanation is 
 sought in its beginnings and not in its ends ; 
 the aspirations of the soul are supposed to be 
 explained in their totality when biological and 
 psychological names are given them ; en- 
 thusiasm and conviction, which leave the level 
 of the daily rut and the conventionalities of 
 society, are branded as signs of shallowness 
 and even of insanity. We are in the midst 
 of plenty, and feed on husks. The situation 
 will not be altered until we turn from 
 intellect to intuition which is no other than a 
 turn from the mere way in which things are put 
 together to what the things essentially are and 
 ought to be in their meaning and value. 
 When this happens, a new meaning will be 
 given to history, and the events of the day 
 will be illumined and valued in the light of 
 the standard of spiritual ideals. Can we then 
 doubt that there works in history a Divine 
 element which is over-historical, and which 
 alone gives their meanings and values to the 
 events of history itself ? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 IT has been noticed in the two previous 
 chapters how Eucken discovered the presence 
 of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of 
 knowing any object in the physical world. 
 And the presence of such a life enables the 
 percept to turn into a concept. Such a con- 
 cept is something far removed from the level 
 of the sensuous object or of its mere percep- 
 tion. We are in this very act in a world of 
 meaning. When such a meaning comes to be 
 acknowledged, it forms a kind of standard 
 which interprets any future facts that enter 
 into it. The further the progress of the know- 
 ledge of physical objects advances the more 
 the concepts become removed from the level 
 of the sensuous ; as is witnessed, for instance, 
 in the forms of laws and hypotheses, which 
 constitute the very groundwork of physical 
 science. The physical scientist, whether he is 
 conscious of it or riot, has constructed an ideal 
 world of meaning which constitutes the ex- 
 
 87 
 
88 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 planation of the external world. This is a 
 fact so familiar that it needs no further elucida- 
 tion here. But there is great need for calling 
 attention to the power which does all this as well 
 as to the reality of the interpretation which that 
 power, in its contact with physical phenomena, 
 has brought forth. That such a power of the 
 mind is connected with physical existence 
 does not in the least explain its nature. It is 
 not physical now ; it is meaning and value, 
 and there is no such thing as meaning or value 
 in the nature of physical objects in themselves. 
 Their meaning and value come into being 
 when they serve a purpose which the mind 
 has framed concerning them. Eucken insists 
 that a reality must be ascribed to so much as 
 all this to that which knows and interprets 
 Nature. However much Nature and Spirit 
 resemble one another, however much the 
 latter is dependent on the former, Nature 
 must be conceived as exhibiting a lower grade 
 of reality than mind. Indeed, Nature could 
 not exist for mind unless there were a mind to 
 know it ; and this fact inevitably leads us to 
 ask the question, whether Nature could exist 
 at all. 1 
 
 Eucken maintains that the insufficient atten- 
 tion paid to this priority of the subject is the 
 
 1 Green has dealt with this aspect in the first part of 
 his Prolegomena to Ethics in practically the same way as 
 Eucken. Cf. also Nettleship's Life of Green and his 
 (Nettleship's) Philosophical Remains. 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 89 
 
 defect of all the systems which have reduced life 
 and all its values to their lowest denominator. 
 A naive realism is a relic of past ancestry ; it is 
 a failure to conceive anything as reality unless 
 it lends itself to the senses. Had men not 
 grasped a higher order of reality than that of 
 the external object, none of the mental and 
 moral gains of the world would ever have 
 been realised. Hence, man has to insist that 
 the mental or spiritual life is the possessor 
 of a reality of its own, although much of the 
 material comprising that reality has been 
 drawn from the physical world through the 
 senses. But the spiritual life has proceeded far 
 beyond these initial stages of knowing the 
 world. Material of a kind other than the 
 physical has presented itself to it. Thus, in 
 will-relations we find the material itself be- 
 longing to a higher order of existence than 
 the material of the physical world. It is then 
 what might be expected when the spiritual 
 life, within the domain of events of human 
 history, forms a Life-system higher in its 
 nature than the natural process. 
 
 Eucken then concludes that Nature and 
 History require for their interpretation the 
 presence of a spiritual life. Nature involves 
 the spiritual in the very power of mind in 
 knowing external things. He would not state 
 that the physical course of things is enough in 
 itself to prove the existence of spiritual life. 
 We are uncertain of any working towards 
 
90 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 definite ends in Nature. The whole matter 
 belongs to the region of speculation; and 
 speculation based on something other than ob- 
 servation and experiment has greatly retarded 
 progress in connection with the truest inter- 
 pretation of the highest things. Eucken 
 would really agree here with the physical 
 scientist pure and simple that, however far 
 back the investigations of the physical world 
 are carried, the scientist does not seem to come 
 to anything at the furthest point which bears 
 more affinity to what is mental than was to 
 be discovered at the point from which he set 
 out. 
 
 But in History it is different. We are here 
 dealing with material which is not in space, 
 and which has not resulted through any mere 
 succession in time. The material, in fact, is 
 timeless, because it is a synthesis of factors 
 which cannot be reckoned mechanically, and 
 which requires a great span of time in order 
 to be constructed by the spirit of man. At 
 this level the spiritual life has gained a reality 
 which is over-personal as well as personal. It 
 is true that this over-personal reality is in the 
 mind of the individual ; but that does not 
 mean that the reality is no more than a private 
 experience. Its content is clearly now higher 
 and more significant than the individual's own 
 life. That we cannot locate in space this over- 
 personal aspect of the ideal is probably a dis- 
 advantage. But this cannot be helped ; and 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 91 
 
 it cannot possibly be otherwise, simply because 
 the over-personal reality is not a spatial thing. 
 The same may be said of the content of 
 individual experience, even when it does not 
 for the time being hold before itself any ideal. 
 But such over-personal elements mean more 
 than was to be found on the level of knowing 
 the world. A further development of spiritual 
 life has taken place ; and reality has become 
 objective in its nature and subjective in its 
 apprehension and appropriation by the in- 
 dividual. Reality has, through the over- 
 personal which has evolved in history, obtained 
 a cosmic significance ; and it is out of this region 
 that a Lebensanschauung as well as a true 
 Weltanschauung have developed. 
 
 This digression from the subject of this 
 chapter has probably prepared us to see that 
 the potentiality of consciousness and the pre- 
 sence of over-personal elements presenting 
 themselves to consciousness are the two main 
 elements in the construction of the several 
 grades of reality which present themselves on 
 the lower level of Nature and on the higher 
 level of History. 
 
 But our question now is, Does the nature of 
 man himself confirm such statements as have 
 already been made ? And it is to man's own 
 nature and its content we now turn, as these 
 are presented in Eucken's teaching. 
 
 It is probable that Eucken has done less 
 justice to psychology from the side of the 
 
92 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 connection of consciousness with the external 
 world. He is aware, and points out the fact 
 in several of his books, of the close connection 
 between mind and body ; but seems to think 
 that the fact is sufficiently brought out by 
 text-books on psychology that some kind of 
 dualism or parallelism is absolutely necessary 
 to be held in order to account for the content 
 of consciousness. What exact meaning and 
 province should be assigned to psychology 
 is to-day a matter of serious dispute. Text- 
 books of the nature of William James's Prin- 
 ciples of Psychology present a double aspect of 
 the subject-matter as well as of its mode of 
 treatment. It is often difficult to differentiate 
 in James's works where one aspect ends and 
 another begins. Psychology is presented by 
 him as a natural science on one page, and on 
 the opposite page we discover ourselves in the 
 region of ethics and even of metaphysics and 
 religion. On the one side, we find the connec- 
 tion of consciousness and its mode of operation 
 with the physical organism presented in terms 
 which emphasise the mechanical and chemical 
 sides. On the other side, the content of con- 
 sciousness itself, after the connection has 
 taken place, is presented as a psychology as 
 well. So that several important writers on 
 psychology have emphasised the need of 
 differentiating one aspect from the other, and 
 of confining the meaning of psychology to 
 the description and explanation of the connec- 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 93 
 
 tion of mind and body. 1 But when we pass 
 to the content of consciousness, something more 
 than a mere connection of mind and body is 
 discovered. The content of consciousness in- 
 cludes the Will the unrest of consciousness 
 in its actual situation, a dissatisfaction with 
 its state of inertia, and a movement towards 
 some End. When the Will operates with 
 the content of consciousness we are in a realm 
 which is beyond the physical a realm, too, 
 which is other than a passive, descriptive 
 attitude of a spectator of things. The realm of 
 values has now been reached ; and a content, 
 different in its nature from any account it is 
 able to give of itself or of its connection with 
 the physical, starts on its own independent 
 course. The psychologist is " right in insisting 
 that the atoms do not build up the whole 
 universe of science. There are contents in 
 consciousness, sensations and perceptions, feel- 
 ings and impulses, which the scientist must 
 describe and explain too. But if the psycholo- 
 gist is the real natural scientist of the soul, 
 this whole interplay of ideas and emotions and 
 volitions appears to him as a world of causally 
 connected processes which he watches and 
 studies as a spectator. However rich the 
 manifold of the inner experience, everything, 
 seen from a strictly psychological standpoint, 
 
 1 This need of differentiation has been presented by 
 Miinsterberg in a powerful manner in his Psychology and 
 Life, Eternal Values, and Science and Idealism. 
 
94 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 remains just as indifferent and valueless as the 
 movement of the atoms in the outer experi- 
 ence. Pleasures are coming and going ; but 
 the onlooking subject of consciousness has 
 simply to become aware of them, and has no 
 right to say that they are better or more 
 valuable than pain, or that the emotions of 
 enjoyment or the ideas of wisdom or the 
 impulses of virtue are, psychologically con- 
 sidered, more valuable than grief or vice or 
 foolishness. In the system of physical and 
 psychical objects, there is thus no room for 
 any possible value ; and even in the thought 
 and idea of value there is nothing but an 
 indifferent mental state produced by certain 
 brain excitement. For as soon as we illum- 
 inate and shade and colour the world of the 
 scientist in reference to man's life and death, 
 or to his happiness and pain, we have care- 
 lessly destroyed the pure system of science, 
 and given up the presupposition of the strictly 
 naturalistic work." 1 Wundt presents a stand- 
 point not quite so pronounced, but which 
 looks in the same direction. 2 
 
 This fundamental difference has been recog- 
 nised by Eucken, and forms an important 
 contribution on his part towards elucidating 
 
 1 Miinsterberg's Science and Idealism, p. 10; cf. also his 
 Grundmige der Psychologic, Bd. i., 1900. 
 
 2 Wundt's Grundriss der Psychologic and the article 
 "Psychologic " in Philosophic im beginn des Zwanzigsten Jahr- 
 hunderts (Festschrift fur Kuno Fischer, art. 1). 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 95 
 
 the meaning of spiritual life not only in the 
 process of knowing but in its new beginning 
 in its creation of an "inner world of values." 
 The content present in the construction of this 
 " new world " is other than a mental content 
 expressing connection of psychical and physical. 
 Eucken differentiates between the two aspects 
 already referred to, and designates the differ- 
 ence by the terms Noological and Psychological 
 Methods. These methods are most clearly 
 presented in The Truth of Religion. He 
 says : "To explain noologically means to 
 arrange the whole of spiritual life [including 
 mental life] as a special spiritual activity, to 
 ascertain its position and problem, and through 
 such an adaptation to illumine the whole and 
 raise its potencies. To explain psychologically, 
 on the contrary, means to investigate how man 
 arrives at the apprehension and appropriation 
 of a spiritual content and especially of a spiritual 
 life, with what psychic aids is the spiritual 
 content worked out, how the interest of man 
 for all this is to be raised, and how his energy 
 for the enterprise is to be won. Here one has 
 to proceed from an initial point hardly dis- 
 cernible, and step by step, discover the way 
 of ascent ; thus the psychological method be- 
 comes at the same time a psychogenetic method. 
 The main condition is that both methods be 
 held sufficiently apart in order that the con- 
 clusions of both may not flow together, and 
 yet may form a fruitful completion." 
 
96 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 " Such separation and union of both methods 
 and their corresponding realities make it possible 
 to understand how to overcome inwardly the 
 old antithesis between Idealism and Realism. 
 The fundamental truth of Idealism is that the 
 spiritual contents establish an independence 
 and self- value over against the individual, that 
 they train him with superior energy, and that 
 they are not material for his purely human 
 welfare. In the noological method this truth 
 obtains a full recognition. Realism, however, 
 has its rights in the forward sweep of the 
 specifically human side of life with all its 
 diversions, its constraints, and its preponder- 
 antly natural character. Viewed from this 
 standpoint, the main fact is that life is raised 
 out of the idle calm of its initial stages, and 
 is brought into a current; in order to bring 
 this about, much is urgently needful by man, 
 which cannot originate, prior to the appearance 
 of the spiritual estimation of values, but which 
 becomes his when he is set in a strong current ; 
 then, on the one hand, anxiety for external 
 existence, division into parties, ambition, etc., 
 and, on the other hand, the mechanism of the 
 psychic life with its association, reproduction, 
 etc., are all seen in a new light. These motive 
 powers would certainly never produce a spiritual 
 content out of man's own ability ; such a con- 
 tent is only reachable if the movement of life 
 raises man out of and above the initial per- 
 formances and the initial motives. No mechan- 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 97 
 
 ism, either of soul or of society, is able to 
 accomplish this ; it can be accomplished alone 
 by an inward spirituality in man. Through 
 such a conception, Realism and Idealism are 
 no longer irreconcilable opponents, but two 
 sides of one encompassing life ; one may grow 
 alongside the other, but not at the expense of 
 the other. Indeed, the more the content of the 
 spiritual life grows, the more becomes necessary 
 on the side of psychic existence ; the more we 
 submerge ourselves in this psychic existence, 
 the greater appears the superiority of the 
 spiritual life." 1 This difference between no- 
 ology and psychology is pointed out by Eucken 
 in his delineation of spiritual life along the 
 whole course of its development. The insist- 
 ence on the reality of life within the region of 
 values, brought forth through the activity of 
 the Will, is shown to be absolutely necessary 
 in order that life may not sink into the level 
 of the mere physical object on the one hand, 
 and into mere subjectivity and momentary 
 changes of consciousness on the other hand. 
 It is a decision at this point which constitutes 
 the great turn to a life of the spirit and to the 
 granting to it of a self-subsistence as real as 
 objects in the external world ; it is a turn 
 which includes, further, a new beginning of a 
 remove from the content of the moment and 
 from the impinging of the environment upon 
 the subject ; it is a realisation by the mind and 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 178/. 
 
 7 
 
98 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 soul that its own content is now on a path 
 which has to be carved out, step by step, by 
 its own spiritual potency. It is in the light 
 of what is attempted and accomplished in this 
 respect that the external world and all its 
 ramifications into the soul are in the last resort 
 to be interpreted. When the foundation of 
 life is thus placed upon a spiritual content of 
 meaning and value, norm and end, the first 
 impressions of things are seen as nothing 
 more than preparatory stages and conditions 
 to a life beyond themselves. To come to a 
 decision, insisted on again and again, in regard 
 to the reality of life and its content is 
 not possible without the deepest act of the 
 whole of the soul. Such a conviction con- 
 cerning the spiritual kernel of our being is 
 not a mere matter either of thought or feeling 
 or will. The three make their contribution 
 towards the great affirmation which takes 
 place, but they are united at a depth in con- 
 sciousness which has no psychological name; 
 they come to a kind of focus within the blend- 
 ing of the over-individual norms and the need 
 and capacity of the soul for such norms. When 
 this happens, the individual has created a cleft 
 in his own nature which renders it forever 
 impossible for him to be satisfied with the mere 
 external aspect produced by the first impres- 
 sions of things. An inverted order of things 
 has come about : the sensuous world is rele- 
 gated to the circumference, and a spiritual world 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 99 
 
 dawns within the content of the soul. This is 
 the deepest meaning of religion ; and, as we 
 shall see at a later stage, it constitutes the 
 very nucleus of Christianity with its announce- 
 ment of conversion, the regeneration of the 
 soul, and the union and communion of man 
 with the Divine. 
 
 Doubtless all this is difficult of apprehension, 
 mainly on account of the fact that there is no 
 proof for it in a manner that can be made 
 intelligible. But the question arises, What is 
 the power that acts and brings forth proofs 
 concerning anything ? It is evidently not the 
 whole of the potentialities of man's nature : 
 it is no more than the understanding dealing 
 with the evidence of impressions. But the 
 understanding, when dealing with the content 
 of the union of individual potency and over- 
 individual norms, is dealing with a content 
 infinitely larger and more complex than itself; 
 the material is too great and intricate for the 
 understanding to handle ; it is a fruitless 
 attempt of the Part to monopolise the mean- 
 ing and value of the Whole. The proof rather 
 lies within the domain of the soul itself, and is 
 not something which may be tacked on to any 
 kind of external, spatial existence ; it is the 
 emergence of a new kind of existence or self- 
 subsistence. The proof (if we designate it 
 by such an insufficient term) is within the 
 experience and not without ; it is the spiritual 
 experience itself and not merely an account, 
 
100 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in the form of even valid logical concepts, 
 concerning such experience. 1 
 
 The space devoted to this subject may be 
 justified on account of the fact that Eucken's 
 meaning of the evolution of spiritual life 
 towards higher levels cannot be understood 
 without an understanding of the distinction 
 between knowledge about experience and the 
 content of experience itself, as this latter reveals 
 itself in the ways mentioned. 2 Eucken has 
 lately paid great attention to this matter in 
 the new edition (1912) of Hauptprobleme der 
 Religiomphilosophie der Gegenwart, especially 
 in the chapter on the " Philosophy of Religion 
 and the Psychology of Religion." 3 
 
 The root of the matter here seems to be 
 the ready acknowledgment of the content of 
 
 1 It is a great merit of Bergson, too, to have perceived 
 this fundamental difference. The difference between 
 intellect and intuition, in his larger volumes, is more 
 illuminating on the side of intellect. The relation of 
 both is expressed by him more clearly in his short Intro- 
 duction to Metaphysics (soon to appear in English). 
 
 2 Troeltsch, in his Psychologic und Erkenntnistheorie, has 
 perceived the difference very clearly, but in a manner quite 
 different from Bergson. Troeltsch has dealt with the 
 presence of the content of the over-empirical as something 
 which is higher than any psychology of the soul, and which 
 is at the farthest remove from the percept. 
 
 3 Richard Kade, in his new book, Rudolf Euckens noolo- 
 gische Methode, points out very clearly Eucken's contribu- 
 tions on this point from 1885 downwards. Kade further 
 deals with the later developments of Windelband, Rickert, 
 Troeltsch, and Wobbermin in the same direction. 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 101 
 
 spiritual life as well as of the fact that it 
 possesses a higher grade of existence than any- 
 thing in the world without or even within the 
 psychic life. This is granting the manifesta- 
 tion of spiritual life a foundation deeper than 
 nature, culture, civilisation, and even morality ; 
 for it is the norms of the over- world uniting 
 with the spiritual nature of man which have 
 brought forth all these. This willing acknow- 
 ledgment becomes ever necessary, because 
 something of two worlds is now present in the 
 life of the man. On the one hand, the natural 
 world, with its material elements and its in- 
 stincts and impulses, is present in the soul. 
 But, on the other hand, all these cannot be 
 torn away from the life. They constitute a 
 great deal of the vitality and the pleasure which 
 are the legitimate possessions of man. How 
 cold and soulless would life be without these ! 
 But the danger arises when there is not 
 present a Standard sufficiently high and 
 powerful to govern these, and to make them 
 serve the higher interests of the soul. In 
 other words, they must be melted in the 
 contents and values of the over-individual 
 ideals ; they must be sanctified to subserve the 
 higher, absolute ends and demands of the 
 spirit. What can we say, then, of Life when 
 the natural assists the spiritual and when the 
 individual passes out to the realm of the over- 
 individual save that a real point of departure 
 into a new kind of world has actually taken 
 
103 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 place ? Even this interpretation is insufficient 
 to explain what happens, although it happens 
 within ourselves; far less, as we have seen, 
 will any other interpretation which explains 
 life in lowest terms suffice. We are then, says 
 Eucken, driven to the conclusion that such a 
 state is either the breaking forth of a new kind 
 of reality or the worst of all possible illusions. 
 And this great and inexorable Either Or 
 presents itself in every decision taken towards 
 what is higher than the level we are standing 
 on. The matter here does not belong to any 
 speculative domain, and is not the result of 
 fancy or imagination out of which reason has 
 taken its flight. The matter is concrete- 
 tangible through and through. The history 
 of mankind bears witness to the validity of 
 it ; the experience of each individual in the 
 deepest moments of life echoes the experience 
 of the race. The superiority of this new 
 beginning in the over-world has to be estab- 
 lished over and over again by each individual on 
 account of the danger of sinking back to a lower 
 level where the main power of spiritual life is 
 not in action. A certainty is therefore requisite 
 in the very beginning of the enterprise 
 an enterprise which is absolute and eternal. 
 No limits are perceptible to the possibilities of 
 spiritual life when the fullest conceivable con- 
 tent of the soul is seated at the centre of life, 
 and when every outward is interpreted and 
 governed by an inward. This experience is 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 103 
 
 far removed from all attempts to found 
 religion on speculation drawn either from the 
 physical world or from the generalisations of 
 logic. These have their value they point 
 to the presence of some degree of spiritual life 
 when the human mind has worked upon the 
 material presented to it. But the matter at 
 this highest level does not deal with the 
 relations of life but with life itself in the light 
 of an over- world. 
 
 Eucken is nowhere finer than when he 
 detects the necessity for the acknowledgment 
 of such a spiritual foundation of life. It is 
 not a mere individual need, but the union of 
 an individual need with a reality objective to 
 the need. If the reality were already the 
 possession of man, no such need could arise. 
 Still, the reality is present in his mind as an 
 idea and ideal ; it is present to the individual, 
 but it is not as yet the possession of the in- 
 dividual except in a measure at the best. So 
 that the certainty includes within itself a 
 realisation and a further quest. And the very 
 nature of the quest involves a struggle of the 
 whole nature. The certainty has gone so far 
 as to show that the highest good which presents 
 itself to the soul is the " one thing needful," 
 and is possible of partial attainment. When 
 all this burns within the soul, something of the 
 norm or ideal gets fixed within it, and the 
 individual starts to conquer more and more 
 the new world into which he is now landed. 
 
104 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Often the life is driven out of its course by 
 alien currents ; a great deal of what the man 
 has now left behind himself still clings 
 tenaciously to the new life, and the whole 
 soul becomes an arena often of a terrible con- 
 flict. The spiritual life and its content of a 
 new reality may be temporarily beaten in this 
 warfare ; but the battle is finally won if ever 
 the deepest within the soul has been touched 
 by a conviction of the eternal value and signi- 
 ficance of the new life. The conquest is 
 followed by periods of calm and fruition. 
 Here the deeper energies gather themselves 
 together ; they grant a peace which the world 
 cannot give and cannot take away ; they 
 create new certainties, new demands, and new 
 attempts for the possession of a reality which 
 is still higher in its nature than anything that 
 previously revealed itself. 
 
 Gradually the soul is forced more than ever 
 to the conviction that the whole matter is too 
 serious to be of less than of cosmic significance. 
 And it is out of this that the idea of the God- 
 head arises. It is not a speculative dream 
 but a conclusion forced upon the man by the 
 actual situation ; the material for the con- 
 clusion is not anything which descends into 
 the soul with a ready-made content. Eucken 
 states that such a view of revelation belongs 
 to the past history of the race. It is now no 
 less than a revelation springing from the very 
 nature of the soul at its highest possible level. 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 105 
 
 It occurs only when a foundation, a struggle, 
 and a conquest have been worked out by the 
 soul in the manner already depicted. No 
 close determinations, as we shall see later, are 
 made concerning the meaning and nature of 
 the Godhead. The man is here at an altitude 
 so rare and pure that it forbids any logical or 
 psychological analysis. God is not something 
 to be explained, but to be possessed. When 
 the attempt is made to explain Him, He is 
 very soon explained away ; when he is pos- 
 sessed, He becomes not something other than 
 was present before, but more than was present 
 before; a cosmic significance is given to the 
 universe and to man's struggle to scale the 
 heights of the over-world with all its mo- 
 mentous values. 
 
 Here, again, the spiritual life has landed us 
 out of psychology into the deepest experiences 
 of religion and into the consciousness that the 
 intermediate realities which presented them- 
 selves as over-individual norms and ideals are 
 realities of cosmic significance. The God- 
 head is now possessed. As Jacob Boehme 
 presents it : " From my youth up I have 
 sought only one thing : the salvation of my 
 soul, the means of gaining possession of the 
 Kingdom of God." Here, as Professor 
 Boutroux l points out, " Jacob Boehme learnt 
 from the mystics what it means to possess 
 God. One must take care, so these masters 
 
 1 Historical Studies in Philosophy, 1912, p. 176. 
 
106 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 teach, not to liken the possession of God to 
 the possession of anything material. God is 
 spirit, i.e. for the man who understands the 
 meaning of the term, a generating power 
 previous to all essence, even the divine. God 
 is spirit, i.e. pure will, both infinite and free, 
 with the realisation of its own personality as 
 its object. Henceforward, God cannot be 
 accepted by any passive operation. We 
 possess Him only if He is created within us. 
 To possess God is to live the life of God." 
 This is on lines precisely those of Eucken, and 
 something of this nature seems to be gaining 
 ground to-day in a strong idealistic school in 
 Germany. We may soon discover that a true 
 mysticism is the flowering of the bud of 
 knowledge ; that true knowledge constitutes 
 a tributary which runs into the ocean of the 
 Infinite Love of the Divine and becomes the 
 most precious possession of the soul. 1 
 
 Eucken touches on this subject in an ex- 
 tremely interesting chapter in his Truth of 
 Religion. " This is a question of fact, and not 
 of argument. . . . Because we convinced our- 
 selves that things were so, we gained the 
 standpoint of spiritual experience over against 
 a merely psychological standpoint. For the 
 
 1 Cf. the two remarkable volumes of Baron von Hiigel, 
 The Mystical Elements of Religion, 1908, and especially 
 vol. ii. These books are a mine of rich things, but I have 
 not observed that many in our country have as yet 
 realised this fact. 
 
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY 107 
 
 latter standpoint occupies itself with purely 
 psychic processes, and in the province of re- 
 ligion especially it occupies itself with the 
 conditions of the stimulations of will and feel- 
 ing, which are not able to prove anything 
 beyond themselves. The spiritual experience, 
 on the contrary, has to do with life's contents 
 and with the construction of reality ; it need 
 not trouble itself concerning the connections 
 of the world except in a subsidiary manner, 
 because it stands in the midst of such con- 
 nections, and without these it cannot possibly 
 exist. Man never succeeds in reaching the 
 Divine unless the Divine works and is ac- 
 knowledged in his own life ; what is omitted 
 here in the first step is never again recovered 
 and becomes more and more impossible as life 
 proceeds on its merely natural course. If, 
 however, the standpoint of spiritual experience 
 is gained, then religion succeeds in attaining 
 entire certainty and immediacy; then the 
 struggles in which it was involved turn into 
 a similar result, and its own inner movements 
 become a testimony to the reality of the new 
 world which it represents." l 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 456. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 EUCKEN shows that the problems of history 
 are closely allied with those of society. The 
 best accounts of the meaning he attaches to 
 human society are to be found in The Main 
 Currents of Modern Thought, Der Kampf urn 
 einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, and Life Basis 
 and Life Ideal. The conclusions reached in 
 these three books are the same they are an 
 insistence on the need of spiritual life as a 
 creative power in the utilisation of norms and 
 ideals as well as in the creation of further 
 norms and ideals. He points out the devious 
 paths which human society has travelled over : 
 all these, in the case of society and of the 
 individual, are shown to lead to disaster when 
 they depend merely upon the environment or 
 upon the ideals of a utilitarian mode of a 
 a historico-social construction. 
 
 Society has gained much through the 
 necessity of emphasising some aspects of a 
 Whole of thinking and acting collectively 
 
 1 08 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY 109 
 
 instead of emphasising merely the Parts. The 
 history of human society, in a very large 
 measure, is the history of shifting the centre 
 of gravity of life alternately from the Whole to 
 the Parts and vice versa. When the centre 
 of gravity remains in some kind of Whole, a 
 number of individuals move towards the same 
 goal, and much that is subjective has to be 
 shifted to the background of life. Now, this 
 is a gain, and it is the only path on which a 
 corporate life becomes possible. Men (and 
 women too) stand shoulder to shoulder when 
 some kind of Whole or Ideal seems to them to 
 be a necessity of their nature. But progress 
 is brought about not only through cementing 
 human beings together in order to move 
 towards any kind of ideal. The energy is in the 
 right place, but the question has to arise as to 
 the nature of the over-personal ideal itself. 
 All over-personal ideals cannot connote the 
 good of all, but the good of all must be 
 present as possessing a validity of its own 
 before any lower over-personal ideal can 
 prevent landing men in disaster. The over- 
 personal ideals which do not include the good 
 of all often represent the good of a section 
 alone, and all other sections have to become 
 convinced that this is a good. Thus many 
 Life-systems present themselves. Each of 
 these includes a good. The problem is, How 
 is each section to realise that there is a good 
 present in what each other section presents ? 
 
110 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 There must be some common standard by 
 which the ideal of each section of the com- 
 munity can be measured, for it is in the light 
 of such a standard alone that the lower good 
 receives its true place, meaning, and value. 
 There are, beyond all sectional over-personal 
 ideals, values which connote the highest 
 welfare of everyone "who carries a human 
 face." These values are the results of the 
 partially collective experiences of the deepest in 
 life, and have been gained in the history of the 
 race. They are the values which are the needs 
 and rights of all. Justice, Sympathy, Love 
 these and others are the highest syntheses. 
 They have, as yet, been only partially reached ; 
 and this partial realisation is the possession of 
 a few, and has not yet succeeded in becoming 
 the necessary standard which shall pass judg- 
 ment on all lower ideals. " Rights are rights," 
 we are told. This may be true, but something 
 higher has to interpret them, or else one set 
 of rights comes into conflict with other sets 
 and stands but little chance of realisation. 
 And even if realised, a whole series of com- 
 plexities immediately arises. This has been, 
 in the main, the history of human society. 
 And are we able to say that society has 
 progressed much during the past century in 
 this direction of illuminating lower needs in 
 the light of higher ones which include the 
 good of all ? Eucken doubts whether the 
 progress has been great. And here once more, 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY 111 
 
 in connection with the deepest meaning of 
 society and the individual, he sees the need of 
 ideals which are universally true and univers- 
 ally valid. This means that the spiritual life 
 as it presents itself in the universally true, 
 good, and beautiful, must become the sun 
 which will shine upon all that is below it ; it is 
 the Whole in which the Parts must find their 
 function and meaning. If the life of society 
 relates itself to anything lower than this, the 
 best within it cannot come to flower and fruit. 
 In other words, society will have to return to 
 a conception and utilisation of an absolute 
 spiritual life before it can gain any new terri- 
 tory of eternal value. Probably quite as much 
 attention will have to be devoted to the Parts 
 to the environment, the needs of the hour, 
 the material comforts and happiness of life. 
 But granting that the possession of all these 
 will come about, what then? We are still 
 wretchedly poor in the " inward parts." What 
 we have won has not within itself sufficient 
 spirituality to touch the deepest recesses of 
 the soul. Material plenty and pleasure are a 
 good when they are used as they ought to be 
 used. Where is that "something" that 
 teaches us this ? Where is the Ought ? The 
 Ought is something outside and infinitely 
 higher than all the gains which the environ- 
 ment or the group is ever able to bring forth. 
 " Life," says Eucken, 1 " cannot be made simply 
 
 1 Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 353. 
 
EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 a question of relationship to environment and 
 of the development of mutual relationships (as 
 this tendency would have it) without the 
 independence of the isolated factor [spiritual 
 life] being most seriously reduced. And it 
 must not be forgotten that the individual is 
 the sole source of original spiritual life ; 
 corporate social life can do no more than unite 
 and utilise. The maintenance of the strength 
 and freedom of this original life would be less 
 important, and its limitation would be more 
 easily endurable, if human life stood upon a 
 firm foundation and needed only to follow 
 quietly in a naturally appointed direction. In 
 reality, life is not only full of separate 
 problems, but being situated (as it is) between 
 the realm of mere Nature and the spiritual 
 world, must begin by systematically direct- 
 ing itself aright and ascending from the 
 semi-spiritual to the truly spiritual construc- 
 tion of life. It is hence called upon to 
 perform great tasks, which cannot be carried 
 out without serious efforts and the mobilisation 
 of all our spiritual forces. This necessarily 
 leads us back to the original sources of 
 strength, and hence to the individual." 
 
 This passage represents well Eucken's main 
 teaching in regard to our social problems. 
 We shall ever fail in the highest sense if the 
 spiritual content of life is no more than a 
 means to reach material ends, however 
 necessary such ends may be. For in such a 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY 113 
 
 manner spiritual life the universally true and 
 valid is reduced to a lower plane ; it becomes 
 entangled in lower stages, and thus ceases to 
 be a " light on the hill " illumining the steep 
 upward path. Convictions of a spiritual 
 nature the very forces which have moulded 
 society are absent from such a system of life 
 which has no more than the day or the hour 
 to look forward to. Individual and society 
 become the creatures of mere impulses and 
 passions, stimulated to activity by a "dead- 
 level " environment. Something of value is 
 gained when even this kind of environment is 
 a good ; but the response is quite as readily 
 given to that which is injurious, simply 
 because the " universally true and good " is 
 absent as an inwardness and conviction in the 
 soul. 
 
 Without such an inwardness and its content 
 the deeper energy of life is not touched, and 
 men drift with the tide of the environment. 
 Without the ideals or syntheses which are, 
 in their very nature, universal and absolute, 
 progress comes to a standstill, and degeneration 
 soon sets in. The ordinary situation, apart 
 from the presence of the content of the over- 
 world within the life of the soul, swings like a 
 pendulum between a shallow optimism and a 
 blind pessimism. There is no power present 
 in the soul to come to any fundamental 
 decision, but life drifts on a river between Yea 
 and Nay; a failure to penetrate beneath the 
 
 8 
 
114 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 crust of chance and circumstance becomes 
 evident, and the deeper values and meanings 
 of life disappear. 
 
 Eucken's only solution for our present-day 
 troubles is a return to our own deeper nature 
 as this was depicted in previous chapters. 
 The signs of the times, he tells us, are 
 encouraging ; the utilitarian mode of life is 
 wearing itself out ; the tastes of material 
 comforts have been with us long enough to 
 experience the poverty of their quality ; and 
 the mad gamble for the " things which perish " 
 is gradually weeding out its devotees. 
 Eucken's solution to the problems of society 
 is a religious one. Where is the conception 
 of religion as the solution of the momentous 
 and intricate problems of our day to be found 
 in the teachings and writings of our economists? 
 It is not to be found. These deal either 
 with petty details or with laws which have no 
 spiritual content whatever in them. Society 
 may proceed with various Life- systems - 
 individualism, socialism, or any other, but 
 until it gets into touch with its deepest soul, 
 each such system of life is hastening towards 
 its own destruction and towards the injury of 
 progress. 
 
 The conception of the State is presented by 
 Eucken in a similar manner. He points out 
 how we stop short in our politics of dealing 
 with the universally true and good. Party 
 strives against party, and nation against nation. 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY 115 
 
 Groups of all hues and cries propound their 
 own particular ideals as the all-important ones. 
 Higher ideals are left out of account, so that 
 we find the world to-day spending its energies 
 in warfare concerning many things of minor 
 importance. How can we expect fruition and 
 bliss to follow on such lines ? 
 
 Eucken presents in a convincing manner the 
 danger of resting upon the external in Society 
 and State. " We are experiencing to-day a 
 remarkable entanglement. The older forms 
 of Life, which had hitherto governed history 
 and its meaning, have become too narrow, 
 petty, and subjective for human nature. 
 Through emancipation from an easy-going 
 subjectivity and through the positing of life 
 upon external things and, indeed, upon the 
 whole of the great universe, Life, it was 
 believed, would gain more breadth and truth ; 
 and in a noteworthy manner man undertook 
 a struggle against the pettiness of his own 
 nature and for the drawing out of all that was 
 merely human and trivial. A great deal has 
 been gained through such a change and new 
 tendency of life. In fact we have discovered 
 far more than we had hoped for. But, at the 
 same time, we have lost something a loss 
 which at the outset occasions no anxiety, but 
 which, however, through painful experience, 
 proves itself to have been the * one thing 
 needful/ Through its own development the 
 work has destroyed its own vehicles ; it has 
 
116 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 undermined the very ground upon which it 
 stood ; it has failed, notwithstanding its infinite 
 expansion, through its loss of a fundamental 
 and unifying Life-process ; and in the entire 
 immersion of man into activity his deepest 
 being has been sacrificed. Indeed, the more 
 exclusively Life transforms itself into external 
 work, the more it ceases to be an inner 
 personal experience, and the more alien we 
 become to ourselves. And yet the fact that 
 we can be conscious of such an alienation an 
 alienation that we cannot accept indifferently 
 
 is a proof that more is firmly implanted in 
 us than the modern direction of life is able to 
 develop and satisfy. We acknowledge simul- 
 taneously that we have gained much, but that 
 the loss is a painful one. We have gained the 
 world, but we have lost the soul ; and, along 
 with this, the world threatens to bring us to 
 nought, and to take away our one secure 
 foothold in the midst of the roaring torrent of 
 material work." 1 
 
 Eucken shows that the individual will obtain 
 his true place in Society and the State only 
 when spiritual ideals have become fixed norms 
 
 norms which form the highest synthesis to 
 be conceived of. And Society and the State 
 will discover their vocations in precisely the 
 same manner. It is impossible to shut our 
 eyes to the fact that things are not well with 
 the world to-day. The growth of the material 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 59- 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY 117 
 
 interests of the world and of life has become a 
 menace on a scale unknown in the previous 
 history of civilisation. There is only one 
 refuge in the midst of all this welter and 
 chaos. That indestructible refuge is "an 
 inner synthesis and spiritual elevation of life." 
 It is this alone which can prevent the dis- 
 integration that is bound to follow in its 
 absence. The petty human element cannot 
 be eliminated from this ; and the mere life of 
 the hour the life that has no substance of 
 duration within itself cannot be stopped on 
 its reckless career without the presence of 
 spiritual ideals within and without. If the 
 world proceeds in its denial of the reality and 
 need of spiritual life and its over-world, the 
 negation, when it reaches its climax of disaster 
 and despair, will "turn again home"- to the 
 necessity of spiritual values and out of the 
 ruins a new humanity will emerge. 
 
 Thus, once more we are landed into the 
 province of a religion of spiritual life as a 
 necessity in the affairs of the world and of the 
 State. Eucken's great plea is that the civilised 
 nations of the world should become aware of 
 all this before it is too late to turn back before 
 the boat has reached too near the rapids to 
 avoid disaster. The remedy is in our own 
 hands. How to create the consciousness of 
 the situation is the problem of problems, and 
 all individuals are called to bring the whole of 
 their energies to its solution. 
 
118 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 It is evident that some kind of uneasiness 
 has to take place in the deepest recess of the 
 human soul, but the best ways and means of 
 doing this are not yet quite evident. 1 We 
 know what we need and what prevents decad- 
 ence of individuals and nations. " If ye know 
 these things, blessed are ye if ye do them" 
 (Gospel of John). The bridge between a 
 knowledge of the Ought and its possession is 
 difficult to construct, but its importance is 
 necessary to be brought constantly before the 
 people. The majority of the people have 
 thought fit to leave almost the only place 
 where such an obligation was presented i.e. 
 the Christian Church. Until they return, or 
 some other institution higher than the Church 
 is brought into existence, the peril will remain. 
 No individual conviction, based on anything 
 less than spiritual ideals, will suffice. What 
 we are looking for is in our midst ; it is and 
 has been from the very beginning, in spite of 
 an " existential form," largely archaic, present 
 in the spiritual nucleus of the Christian religion. 
 
 1 Cf. Decadence^ Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, 
 by the Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour, M.P., 1908. Mr 
 Balfour has perceived the problem in a more optimistic 
 manner than Professor Eucken ; but he, too, is conscious 
 that much is required of the people. " Some kind of wide- 
 spread exhilaration or excitement is required in order to 
 enable any community to extract the best results from the 
 raw material transmitted to it by natural inheritance " 
 (p. 62). 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 RELIGION AND ART 
 
 EUCKEN has written less on this subject than 
 on any of those which constitute the head- 
 ings of the chapters of this book. But he 
 has treated art in precisely the same manner 
 as he has treated all other important problems : 
 he has shown that no great art is possible 
 unless it is rooted in a creativeness which is 
 spiritual. In his Main Currents of Modern 
 Thought we get an instructive account of art 
 and its relation to morality. His account of 
 the development of art in modern times, from 
 the Renaissance to the present day, shows the 
 ebb and flow of the conception of the Beautiful. 
 The check which the Renaissance received 
 through the Reformation in relation to art 
 had its good as well as its evil side. Intense 
 scorn arose in the Protestant world for every 
 kind of image and decoration, because these 
 were supposed to posit life on what was 
 purely sensuous and natural, and so bar the 
 way to the Divine. Still, the obstruction 
 
 119 
 
120 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 created by Protestantism in this direction 
 opened a door in quite another direction. Art 
 of a higher kind than picture or statue arose, 
 which was far removed from the sensuous level 
 and which emerged from a deeper soil within 
 the soul. The whole series of musical com- 
 posers produced by Germany is a proof of this. 
 The period of the Aufkldrung viewed art with 
 scant favour, but with the rise of the New 
 Humanism a change in favour of art took 
 place. 
 
 The origin of this change is to be found 
 where one might least expect it in the soul 
 of the sage of Konigsberg. Kant's Critique of 
 Judgment is unanimously allowed to be the 
 greatest book ever produced on the subject. 
 Goethe and Schiller were influenced by it 
 the latter in a remarkable manner. We find 
 in these writers an effort to unite the Good and 
 the Beautiful. It is impossible to read the 
 poetry of Goethe without finding that great 
 moral problems are imbedded in his concep- 
 tions of the Beautiful. His poetry is an 
 attempt to bridge the chasm between the 
 external world and the soul. His nature was 
 too deep to remain satisfied with the mere 
 impressions of the senses. The union of the 
 world without with the world within gave him 
 a view of the universe and of human life full 
 of originality and suggest! veness. 
 
 Schiller worked in practically the same 
 direction. A moral standpoint of a high order 
 
RELIGION AND ART 121 
 
 is to be discovered in his writings, and he be- 
 lieved this standard to be possible of preserva- 
 tion alongside of a legitimate " freedom granted 
 in the phenomenon." " Then the two tenden- 
 cies again became divided. Romanticism gave 
 a peculiar definite and self-conscious expression 
 to the priority of art and the sesthetical view 
 of life, while Fichte and the other leaders of 
 the national movement exerted a powerful in- 
 fluence in the direction of strengthening 
 morality. The social and industrial type of 
 civilisation, which became more and more 
 powerful during the course of the nineteenth 
 century, was inclined, with its tendency to- 
 wards social welfare and utility, to assign a 
 subordinate part to art. Modern art arises 
 in protest against this and is ambitious to 
 influence the whole of life ; in opposition to 
 morality it holds up an aesthetic view of life as 
 being alone justifiable. Hence at the present 
 time the two spheres stand wide apart." l 
 
 Eucken shows how such an antithesis be- 
 tween morality and art has partially existed for 
 thousands of years. But whenever a cleavage 
 takes place both morality and art suffer. On 
 the one hand, morality tends to become a 
 system of rules for the performance of which 
 a reward is promised either in this world or in 
 the world to come. On the other hand, art 
 is stripped of the distinction between the 
 values of sensuous things as these express 
 
 1 Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 398. 
 
EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 themselves in their relation to human life. In 
 the former case, insistence on morality (even 
 on morality alone) has deepened human life ; 
 it has given it a more strenuous tone ; and it 
 has created a scale of values which alters the 
 whole meaning of life. But morality conceived 
 as a system of regulations and laws has always 
 the tendency to harden and narrow the life, 
 and to posit the individual too much upon 
 himself. Any justification from without 
 from the physical side consequently fails to 
 give any help or satisfaction. And man needs 
 this help. As it is impossible for him to fly 
 out of the world to some region where mind or 
 spirit alone reigns, he has to do the best he can 
 with the physical world in the midst of which 
 he exists. It is within such a world that he 
 has to cultivate the spiritual potencies of his own 
 being. It is true that the spiritual potencies 
 of his own being are higher and of more value 
 than anything in Nature. Still, that does not 
 mean that Nature has to be discarded or con- 
 demned before the potencies of his own being 
 can develop. Nature is not a mere blind 
 machine ; it has produced all including man 
 and his potencies that is to be found on the 
 face of it. It is therefore not entirely meaning- 
 less, and the meaning it possesses is a necessary 
 element in the evolution of personal spiritual life. 
 Man must enter into some relation with Nature. 
 But such a relation produces even more than 
 all this. When viewed in a friendly mood, 
 
RELIGION AND ART 
 
 Nature herself wears an aspect higher than a 
 materialistic or intellectual one. It calls forth 
 the best in imagination ; it enables us to feel 
 that something of the power that dwells within 
 the soul dwells also in all the manifestations 
 of phenomena. 1 This fact is evident in all the 
 poetry of the world, and without the perpetual 
 presence of Nature to the soul in the form of 
 wonder, reverence, and admiration, no poetry 
 worthy of the name is possible. Nature thus 
 is of value in the fact that when its phenomena 
 present themselves to a consciousness aware 
 not only of its knowing aspect but also of its 
 feeling aspect, the union of Nature and soul 
 produces a feeling of reality which creates an 
 ideal nature. "The light that never was on 
 sea or land " becomes now on sea and land ; it 
 illuminates the whole scene with a " halo and 
 glory " which was concealed before. But there 
 must be present " an eye of the soul " united 
 with the physical impressions before all this is 
 possible. Indeed, the effect of all this is noth- 
 ing less than an ideal creation of a world con- 
 sisting of Nature and the spiritual potencies 
 of man. It is evident that if the internal 
 
 1 This aspect has been developed in modern times by 
 Schopenhauer, Ed. von Hartmann, and others. Bergson 
 seems to me to be greatly indebted to Schopenhauer. 
 Schopenhauer's Will and Bergson's elan vital are practically 
 the same (cf. Schopenhauer's Vber den Willen in der Natur, 
 and Bergson's Creative Evolution). Edward Carpenter, in 
 his Art of Creation, has worked out a similar point of view 
 independently of Bergson. 
 
EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 factor, which represents itself in the form of 
 morality or value, is absent, the picture of 
 Nature is quite different. And this is Eucken's 
 complaint in regard to much of the art of the 
 present day : the internal factor is absent. 
 Seriousness is not blended with freedom in it ; 
 or, in other words, the inward has no power to 
 pass its quality into the outward. But when 
 the inward is present in the form of morality 
 or value, then art becomes joyous, serious, 
 helpful, and disinterested. This last aspect 
 of the disinterestedness of art was perceived 
 clearly by Kant, and has formed an important 
 contribution to the philosophy and even to 
 the religion of the nineteenth century. When 
 a potency of the soul, gained in a province out- 
 side art (as is the case with morality or value), 
 operates, there is no danger of art degenerat- 
 ing into mere subjectivism ; otherwise there is 
 a very grave danger. Loosened from morality 
 it becomes a mere play of decoration and fancy 
 a mere superficial embroidery of an empty 
 life ; it can look on the human world and all 
 its struggles with an indifferent and often 
 cynical mood. Why has all this happened ? 
 Because the inward factor of the " strenuous 
 mood" has been replaced by a sentimental 
 factor based on nothing deeper than the satis- 
 faction of the senses ; and the result of this 
 is found in feelings which are more psychical 
 than spiritual in their nature. 
 
 But that art is necessary for any completion 
 
RELIGION AND ART 125 
 
 of life is seen by the fact that its contribution 
 to the soul is more than a thought contribution. 
 For the deeper life of the spirit of man is more 
 than thought, although thought forms an es- 
 sential element of it ; this deeper life has wider 
 demands than can be expressed in the form of 
 logical propositions. Eucken shows how true 
 art is therefore indissolubly connected with 
 spiritual life. " Without the presence of a 
 spiritual world [the resultant of the union of 
 the spiritual potencies and external objects], art 
 has no soul and no secure fundamental relation- 
 ship to reality, and in no way can it develop a 
 fixed style. We hear to-day of a * new style/ 
 and are in the saddle after such a conception. 
 But shall we find it so long as the whole of 
 life does not fasten itself upon simple funda- 
 mental lines and does not follow the main path 
 in the midst of all the tangle of effort ? How 
 is it possible to attain to a unity of interpreta- 
 tion where our life itself fails in the possession 
 of a governing unity ? We discover ourselves 
 in the midst of the most fundamental trans- 
 formations of life ; old ideals are vanishing, and 
 new ones are dawning on the horizon. But as 
 yet they are all full of unrest and unreadiness ; 
 and the situation of man in the All of things is 
 so full of uncertainty that he has to struggle 
 anew for the meaning and value of his life. If 
 art has nothing to say to him and no help to 
 offer if it relegates these questions far from 
 itself then art itself must sink to the level of a 
 
126 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 subsidiary play the more these problems win the 
 mind and spirit of man. But if art is capable 
 of bringing a furtherance of values to man in 
 his needs and sorrows, it will have to recognise 
 and acknowledge the problems of spiritual life 
 as well as participate in the struggle for the 
 vindication and formation of a spiritual world. 
 When art does this, these questions which 
 engage our attention are also its questions." 1 
 
 In spite of the contradictions of life, in spite 
 of much which seems indifferent to human 
 weal and woe within the physical universe, the 
 contradictions may be surmounted by the union 
 of man's spirit with other aspects of existence 
 which look in an opposite direction. The 
 ideal world of art is not to be discovered by 
 ignoring these contradictions, but by acknow- 
 ledging them to the full, and by seeing that 
 Nature is supplemented by man and his soul. 
 Such a union, as has already been pointed out, 
 will create an earnestness and joyousness of 
 life ; it will enable man, when any teleology of 
 Nature herself fails to give him satisfaction, to 
 realise a teleology within the substance of his 
 own life spiritual in its essence, infinite in its 
 duration, and the flowering of a bud which has 
 grown with the help of the natural cosmos. 
 When Nature is thus viewed as a preparatory 
 stage for spirit, it will wear an aspect very 
 different from the mechanical one. Its real tele- 
 
 1 Der Kampf urn einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, Zweite 
 Auflage, 1907,S. 331. 
 
RELIGION AND ART 127 
 
 ology will be seen : there can be no dispute about 
 it ; it has actually produced man, and man has 
 now to carry farther the evolutionary process. 
 Eucken has presented this aspect in a fine 
 manner in his article on Schiller in Kantstudien 1 
 (Band X., Heft 3), Festschrift zu Schillers 
 hundertstem Todestage. No one in modern 
 times discovered the contradictions of the 
 world in regard to the needs of man more than 
 Schiller. And yet no one led a more joyous 
 life than this "half-poet, half-thinker." Pressed 
 from within and without by many alien ele- 
 ments, he overcame them all and found, despite 
 his physical weakness, what a gift life is. It is 
 in the direction of a great synthesis of spiritual 
 life and natural phenomena that true art will 
 discover the qualities for a permanent duration. 
 Such a synthesis will enrich the spiritual life, 
 and will grant it something of higher con- 
 struction concerning the meaning and value of 
 the union of Nature and Man. So Eucken 
 has once more landed us into the spiritual life 
 as the source and goal of all true Art. 
 
 " Only the rooted knowledge to high sense 
 Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur 
 For fruitfullest achievement, eye a mark 
 
 Beyond the path with grain on either hand, 
 Help to the steering of our social Ark 
 
 Over the barbarous waters unto land." 2 
 
 1 Sonderdruck, 1905. 
 
 2 George Meredith, The Sage Enamoured and the Honest 
 Lady. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 UNIVERSAL RELIGION 
 
 WE have followed Eucken's system develop- 
 ing step by step from the stage of knowing the 
 world up through the evolution of spiritual 
 life in history, in the soul, in art, and in society. 
 Everywhere the investigation has revealed a 
 progressive autonomy and duration of spiritual 
 life in the midst of all the kaleidoscopic aspects 
 of the objects which presented themselves to 
 consciousness. Something spiritual has per- 
 sisted and evolved in the midst of all the 
 changes, and the changes have been utilised 
 by this deeper potency of the soul. Through 
 the evolution of this spiritual potency changes 
 have been brought about in the external world, 
 in human society, and in the individual soul. 
 This spiritual potency has bent things to 
 subserve its own inherent demands. The 
 union of conation and cognition within the 
 soul has brought forth everything that has 
 happened outside the natural process of the 
 physical world, and much even of that world 
 
 128 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 129 
 
 has been made subservient to man. When 
 the attention is turned to this " fact of facts " 
 concerning the work of spiritual life, indivi- 
 dually and collectively, it is impossible to 
 consider it as a mere addendum to the natural 
 process, however closely connected it may be 
 with that process. Sufficient has been said to 
 prove the superiority of spiritual life over the 
 whole aspects and manifestations of Nature. 
 The question, then, cannot be laid aside 
 concerning the nature of the life of the spirit 
 in itself. What is it now ? What is it 
 capable of becoming ? Why should its evolu- 
 tion snap at its highest point ? Why cannot 
 the power that has accomplished so much in 
 the history of our world, and has always done 
 this the more efficiently the more a remove 
 from the realm of the sensuous took place- 
 why cannot such a power proceed farther on 
 its course ? And what limits can be set to it ? 
 The pertinency of such and other questions 
 cannot be doubted. The spiritual life has as- 
 cended too high and accomplished too much 
 to be treated with indifference. And yet that 
 is the way it is being treated only too widely 
 to-day. Men hesitate to grant to it a reality 
 of its own because of its close connection with 
 mechanical and chemical elements. They 
 half affirm and half deny its reality. The 
 question arises, What is reality? Eucken 
 agrees with the great idealists of the world 
 that reality in its highest manifestation is 
 
 9 
 
130 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 something that pertains to spirit and meaning 
 rather than to matter and its behaviour. 1 Our 
 rigid clinging to a meaning of reality from the 
 side of its physical history is doubtless a remnant 
 of a race - memory which may be largely 
 physical in its nature. We find a difficulty 
 in conceiving as yet a reality existing in itself 
 existing in itself though material elements 
 have helped it on its upward course. But 
 even here it is not at all certain that nothing 
 but material elements have operated in this 
 fundamental process. Men have by now known 
 enough of the connection of mind with lower 
 processes in order to be aware of a mystery 
 present in the whole operation a mystery 
 which does not yield itself to the senses. 
 
 But even such a past history of the spiritual 
 life is not all that can be said concerning it. 
 It is now in process of evolution, and its 
 greatest work is always accomplished not by 
 looking backward but forward. The whole 
 universe has operated in bringing spiritual life 
 into existence. Are there any reasons what- 
 ever for concluding that the whole universe is 
 not co-operating now in its further develop- 
 ment? Life, civilisation, culture, morality, 
 and religion are proofs that this life of the 
 spirit is moving onward and upward. It does 
 not move without checks and entanglements 
 
 1 Cf. the closing passages of Bradley's Appearance and 
 Reality for a similar view ; also the latter part of Ward's 
 Realm of Ends. 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 131 
 
 from without and within, but in every " long 
 run " it is gaining some new ground and tilling 
 it as its own. It dare not turn back ; it dare 
 not throw away the pack of the Sollen (the 
 Ought) off its shoulders. The over-individual 
 norms have planted themselves too strongly in 
 the heart of humanity to be ever uprooted. 
 The meaning and value of life now lie in a 
 beyond. It is not a beyond within any physical 
 region that was ; neither is it, so far as we 
 know, a beyond in any physical region that 
 is to be. It is a beyond of the spirit ; and as it 
 is the most real and most requisite possession 
 of man, how can it have anything less than a 
 cosmic significance ? The future of spiritual 
 life is therefore governed not by something 
 that is to be in the cosmos, but by something 
 that is now present in it by the acknowledg- 
 ment, assimilation, and appropriation by man 
 and humanity of spiritual norms which are far 
 beyond their present actual situation. 
 
 The whole meaning here is that something 
 sub specie ceternitatis has to take the foremost 
 place in life. We are beings who perpetually 
 move. Eucken and Bergson are both emphasis- 
 ing this to-day. But the latter deals with the 
 movement alone ; he has no notion whither we 
 are going, nor can he possibly have until he 
 revises very largely his conception of the 
 function and meaning of intellect in life. 1 But 
 
 1 This weakness of Bergson's philosophy is shown in 
 the whole of Bosanquet's Principle of Individuality and Value. 
 
132 EUCKEN ; S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Eucken states that we do know whither we are 
 going. What are the over-personal spiritual 
 norms and standards but stars by which to steer 
 the direction of our course over the tempestuous 
 sea of time ? Everyone who guides his life in 
 connection with reason guides it by means of 
 some norm or other. Even the daily avocation 
 requires this in order to be fulfilled. And 
 the norms which furnish guidance to the 
 spiritual life have originated and are utilised 
 in precisely the same manner as those of the 
 daily avocation. The only difference is that 
 there is more meaning and value in the former 
 than in the latter. But each is a Sollen and 
 constitutes a beyond. This Sollen is a cer- 
 tainty ; it exists, and its existence is in itself. 
 It is the star for the Woollen. 1 The Will is 
 our own ; the Ought is not our own ; the fact 
 that we possess it as an idea is no proof that it 
 has become a possession of the whole of life. 
 In this sense the Ought has an objectivity and 
 a subsistence of its own. The Will has to 
 travel in the direction of the Ought, and its 
 course is mapped out by this Ought at every 
 step of its progress. Hence, in order to reach 
 towards the Sollen the nature of the Sollen 
 must become known. As noticed in previous 
 chapters, such a movement towards so high 
 
 1 It is a great merit of Windelband to have brought 
 this aspect of the Ought prominently forward in contra- 
 distinction to the over-importance attached to the Will 
 alone by the Pragmatists. Cf. his Prdludien. 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 133 
 
 a goal becomes a difficult task a task 
 which demands the activity of the whole 
 spiritual nature. Man's dependency and the 
 meaning of his life are thus set before his 
 eyes, and the aspects of momentary existence 
 are valued as of secondary importance. Unless 
 this meaning of the norm becomes clear, life 
 will revolve around the reality nearest-at-hand, 
 and will consequently fail to unfold the deeper 
 spirituality of its nature. " And if all depended 
 on the brief flash of the moment, which endures 
 but the twinkling of an eye, only to vanish 
 into the dark of nothingness, then all life 
 would mean a mere exit into death. Thus, 
 without eternity there is no spirituality, and 
 without connection there is no content of life. 
 But what is enthroned in itself above Time 
 becomes for the man who wins such a spiritu- 
 ality, first of all, an immense task which allows 
 itself to be grasped on the field of Time alone ; 
 and, also, the Eternal which works within us 
 and which hovers before us on the horizon of 
 Eternity can become our full possession only 
 through the movement of Time. To wish to 
 check the course of Time means not to serve 
 Eternity, but to ascribe to Time what belongs 
 to Eternity." x 
 
 It is not said by Eucken anywhere in his 
 writings that the natural sources at which Life 
 drinks must be abandoned. These remain with 
 us as long as we are in this world of space and 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 175. 
 
134 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 time. But these are not found in the same 
 place, neither is the same importance attached 
 to them, once the meaning and value of the 
 over-personal norms and the potency of spiritual 
 creativeness have come into union with one 
 another. 
 
 What Eucken means by universal religion 
 is the establishment of this independency and 
 supremacy of spiritual life over all else in 
 the world. We have already dealt with this 
 aspect in former chapters ; the conclusion was 
 reached that everywhere the presence of a life 
 of the spirit made itself felt, and gave a mean- 
 ing and interpretation to all life and existence. 
 That is the conclusion Eucken arrives at in 
 his Kampf urn einen geistigen Lebensinhalt. 
 The problem of religion qua religion is hardly 
 touched. But, indeed, what other than re- 
 ligion can all these conclusions mean ? Norm 
 and potency are emphasised. An elevation 
 above the world and above the "small self" 
 has taken place. But something still has to 
 be done before we have entered into the very 
 heart of the matter. The problems which 
 arise after all the conclusions previously arrived 
 at are acknowledged must be taken into account. 
 Having come so far in regard to the value and 
 meaning of spiritual life, we are bound to go 
 farther. No point occurs where we can find 
 a terminus. Though we have already been con- 
 strained to grant the norms a reality of their 
 own, we have only just touched, here and there, 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 135 
 
 upon their cosmic significance. The matter 
 thus reaches a further point than we have yet 
 touched. What justification is there for grant- 
 ing spiritual life this cosmic significance ? 
 
 Attention has already been called to the 
 fact of a distinction between nature and 
 spirit. But attention has now to be directed 
 to the necessity of emphasising the reality of 
 spirit. The nature of spirit is revealed most 
 clearly in the life and content of human con- 
 sciousness. No anthropomorphic standard from 
 without can come to our aid to establish the 
 existence of spirit. The standard is to be 
 found within the consciousness itself. A dis- 
 tinction has to be made between nature and 
 spirit. However much they resemble each 
 other in the beginnings of life, spirit has 
 travelled far beyond nature or matter. It 
 has developed for itself an essence which may 
 be designated as substance. The chief char- 
 acteristic of matter is that it occupies space ; 
 but spirit, though connected with, and largely 
 conditioned by, matter as it exists in space, is 
 now something quite other something which 
 has to be granted an existence of its own, and 
 which forms the beginning of a new kind of 
 world and unfolds a new kind of reality. 
 
 The reality of spiritual life is not discovered 
 in anything which is external to life ; it is to 
 be found in life itself. The reality is revealed 
 and, indeed, created by an act of the spirit of 
 man. Such an act must be the act of one's 
 
136 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 own deepest being. But although such a new 
 reality is not to be found in anything external 
 to life, yet the very revelation points, as 
 we have already observed, to something which 
 is over-individual. Even the meaning of the 
 reality itself, from its immanent side, is some- 
 thing quite other than the natural life and its 
 contents. It is something revealed, but not as 
 yet possessed ; it is hard to be reached ; and 
 even within the man's own nature obstacles 
 and hindrances of various kinds are to be 
 found. But the new reality persists in the 
 midst of the hindrances ; the man discovers 
 himself as the possessor of a deeper kind of 
 truth than was present and operative in the 
 ordinary life. A cleavage is therefore made 
 between the " small self" and the spiritual life. 
 In the degree the former wins through the 
 calling forth of the deepest activities of the 
 soul, in that degree does the transcendent 
 aspect of the new reality urge itself upon man. 
 And when the two aspects immanent and 
 transcendent of the reality are firmly grasped 
 by the soul, the soul moves upward in the 
 exploration and possession of its new world. 
 
 The failure to enter into this region of 
 religion is due to the fact that men often 
 attempt to construct religion on certain so- 
 called faculties of the soul. Some attempt to 
 discoverandestablishreligion through the power 
 and conclusions of the intellect. It is evident 
 that when the knowing aspect of consciousness 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 137 
 
 takes such a leading part, and deliberately ig- 
 nores the affective and active aspects, no more 
 than a segment of the reality can be discovered, 
 and such a segment leaves out of account im- 
 portant elements of human nature. If the 
 affective aspect takes the lead at the expense 
 of the other two aspects, we are here again in 
 a region where only certain fragments of our 
 nature are touched. If the active aspect busies 
 itself without carrying along with itself the 
 content of meaning and value to be discovered 
 in consciousness, the true element of the great- 
 ness of the reality is missing. Eucken shows 
 in his Truth of Religion that there must be a 
 point in the soul, at some deeper level than 
 any of the three, where the three are working 
 conjointly. 1 It must be so, because what is 
 now at stake is more than knowing a thing ; 
 it is to be the thing we know we ought to be. 
 It is unfamiliarity with such a truth that brings 
 a difficulty into the mind when face to face 
 
 1 Modern psychology would agree with such a view, but 
 probably not with the implications given to it by Eucken. 
 The "faculty " psychology as it was presented by Kant has 
 now disappeared, and consciousness is conceived as a unity 
 in which the three aspects referred to are present, and even 
 the single aspect that is in the foreground of consciousness 
 is influenced by the others which are in the background. 
 Another point made clear by Hoffding (cf. his Psychology) 
 and others is the difference between the activity of con- 
 sciousness in the " drifting" process of association of ideas 
 and its power to stem the association current, and to turn 
 it into new directions by means of the reflective power of 
 consciousness itself. 
 
138 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 with the problem of religion. The mind has 
 not learned how to attend to the truth in its 
 own self-subsistence, but posits this truth in 
 its relation to the conditions in the external 
 world which brought it forth. 1 Thus the con- 
 ception of truth is made up very largely of its 
 history on its physical side, and this history of 
 the truth comes to possess the entire meaning 
 of the truth itself! The road to religion, in 
 its deepest sense, is barred to everyone who 
 fails or refuses to grant the deeper reality 
 which presents itself within the soul a self -sub- 
 sistence. The only existence of such a reality 
 can be its own self-subsistence. The reality is 
 now conceived as something quite other than 
 an existence in space ; it exists for conscious- 
 ness and can persist within consciousness. 
 
 When reality is conceived as a substance 
 subsisting in itself, the passage to the Absolute 
 is opened. This Absolute is the most universal 
 and complete meaning and value which the soul 
 is capable of possessing ; its very nature forces 
 itself upon man as being true ; and its value 
 has revealed itself in its being the only power 
 which will carry farther the spiritual evolution 
 of the soul. If such an Absolute is left out of 
 account, it is evident that the most universal 
 
 1 It is a great merit of Bergson's philosophy to have 
 pointed this out. It is a conception presented several times 
 in the history of philosophy, but there is great need of 
 re-emphasising it to-day, especially as things in space have 
 gripped the soul with such power and disastrous results. 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 139 
 
 truth which presents itself to life as absolutely 
 necessary cannot enter into the deepest recesses 
 of the soul ; it cannot be more than a sub- 
 sidiary element accompanying lower intellect- 
 ual elements of life, which are more closely 
 allied on such a lower level with physical 
 processes of the body and with the physical 
 world. And when truth is treated in this 
 manner, it cannot possibly make its abode and 
 become a power in the soul. Consciousness 
 hesitates to create a further cleft within itself 
 because the evidence of truth at such a height 
 as this does not lend itself to the senses. The 
 result is that the full power of the truth fails to 
 produce effects on the consciousness, and thus 
 keeps it on practically the same level as that on 
 which it has been accustomed to work. The 
 higher truth the higher spiritual life has not 
 become anything more than a fact of knowledge 
 or a probability. It has not become one's own 
 life. It is only when this higher aspect of spiritual 
 life becomes one's own life, and is acknow- 
 ledged and used, that it is ever possible for man 
 to become the possessor of an original energy, 
 of an independent governing centre, and so to 
 realise himself as a co-carrier of a cosmic move- 
 ment. This is the presupposition of religion : 
 it testifies that within man's soul there appears 
 something higher than sense or intellect, but 
 which remains surrounded by alien elements 
 which impose checks to its further development. 
 It is quite evident that the appearance of 
 
140 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 truths which are absolute and complete within 
 the life is in direct antagonism to much that 
 was previously present within it. This funda- 
 mental fact, however, is not evident without a 
 great deal of attention paid to the nature of 
 the higher elements which present themselves. 
 Without comparing the values of the higher 
 and the lower elements, how is it ever possible 
 to know what they are and what they mean ? 
 When the whole being attends to both elements 
 higher and lower there is no possibility of 
 making a mistake concerning the different 
 values of what are presented. A higher grade 
 of reality reveals itself over against all that had 
 been previously gained. The soul is forced to 
 admit that something of a higher nature than 
 it hitherto possessed seeks admission. And 
 this Higher, if it enters into the whole of life, 
 so far from revealing itself as a continuation 
 of what had already happened, reveals itself 
 as something which is discontinuous with 
 the ordinary life, and superior even to the 
 highest attainments of the intellectual life. 
 And it is this aspect which produces the con- 
 viction of such a revelation as being objective 
 in its very nature. It belongs to something 
 or somebody outside our own individual ex- 
 perience or achievement. That there is much 
 which is mysterious in all this, is only what 
 might be expected. But the very fact that 
 the Higher comes with such power when the 
 soul expects, assimilates, and appropriates it 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 141 
 
 is a proof of its existence somewhere at the 
 core of the universe. It cannot mean an il- 
 lusion ; it brings changes of too fundamental 
 a nature to be no more than that. Its very 
 value and the enormous difficulty of turning it 
 from being an idea into being a possession 
 demand too much energy of the soul to allow 
 of its being dismissed without any more ado. 
 It contains elements so different in their nature 
 from the ordinary life of the hour as to render 
 it impossible to be considered of no more than 
 of subsidiary importance. For it has to be 
 borne in mind that the values and norms 
 farthest removed from the regions of sense 
 and intellect appear only when man follows 
 the drift of his own higher being ; it is not 
 when he remains effortless and satisfied with 
 the life of the hour that such values and norms 
 appear. They appear when the ordinary life is 
 seen through as no more than a stage for the 
 further evolution of the soul through the 
 grasping of a higher kind of reality than has 
 as yet presented itself to it. As Eucken says : 
 " Religion proves itself a kingdom of opposites. 
 When it steps out of such opposites, it destroys 
 without a doubt the turbidity and evanescence 
 of ordinary commonplace life, and separates 
 clearly the lights and shadows from one 
 another. It sets our life between the sharpest 
 contrasts, and engenders the most powerful 
 feelings and the most mighty movements ; it 
 shows the dark abyss in our nature, but also 
 
142 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 shows illumined peaks ; it opens out infinite 
 tasks, and brings ever to an awakening a new 
 life in its movement against the ordinary self. 
 It does not render our existence lighter, but it 
 makes it richer, more eventful, and greater; 
 it enables man to experience cosmic problems 
 within his own soul in order to struggle for a 
 new world, and, indeed, in order to gain such 
 a genuine world as its own proper life." 1 
 
 All this is not a matter of speculation, but 
 of fact. And it is in the recognition of this 
 fact that Eucken's philosophy of religion con- 
 stitutes a new kind of idealistic movement 
 a movement tending more and more in the 
 direction of Christianity. But he differs here 
 again from the absolute idealists and the 
 pragmatists. The former base their Absolute 
 upon the demands of logic, whilst Eucken 
 bases all upon the demands and potencies of 
 life ; the pragmatists emphasise the primary 
 place of the will in the development of the 
 inner life, but they have certainly ignored the 
 presence of over-individual norms, as the goal 
 of volition, whilst Eucken holds to the 
 necessity of both. With the absolutists the 
 relation of the Absolute with the will is not 
 clearly perceived, and consequently the Ab- 
 solute becomes merely an object of thought 
 and contemplation; and in all this the in- 
 dividual does not become aware of a burning 
 desire to move in the direction of the goal. 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 243. 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 143 
 
 The pragmatist leaves the individual at the 
 mercy of the momentary content of conscious- 
 ness ; this content is quite as likely to be trivial 
 as to be great ; and hence there is no absolute 
 standard present to determine the nature and 
 value of this content of the moment, and con- 
 sequently no more than a life of effortless 
 drifting can issue out of all this. 
 
 This blend of absolutism and pragmatism 
 is richer in its content than either of the two. 
 Each has missed something of importance, 
 and it is here supplied by Eucken. 
 
 Norms and potency become two indissoluble 
 factors in the evolution of the higher life. As 
 already stated, the norms have an objectivity 
 of their own, and consequently when they 
 enter into life, life becomes conscious of their 
 being something given and not brought into 
 existence by its own potency. It is out of 
 this conclusion to which life is forced that the 
 doctrine of Grace, found in some way or other 
 in all religions, is to be accounted for. And 
 it is out of the consciousness of the interval 
 between norm and achievement that the 
 sense of guilt follows man whenever he 
 penetrates deeply into the deeper experiences 
 of the soul. Grace and guilt naming only 
 two experiences of the soul are not remnants 
 of a traditional theology, but essential elements 
 which accompany the deepest experience of 
 the soul. When they are wanting, it is most 
 probable that the soul has not plumbed its own 
 
144 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 existence to its very depths, but has rather 
 chosen to be satisfied with what lies but a 
 little way beneath the surface with what 
 does not cause too much uneasiness, but is 
 sufficient for a life to persist as a good member 
 of the society by which it is surrounded. 
 Only half a religion can become the possession 
 of any individual who does not at least pay as 
 much attention to the nature and value of 
 over-individual norms as he pays to the nature 
 of the environment and of the ordinary life. 
 It is always a sign that humanity is drifting 
 to the shallows of life when it looks upon 
 religion as the flowering of the mere natural 
 life of good custom, earthly happiness, and 
 ease. Whenever the tragedy born in the 
 conflict between norms and ordinary life is 
 absent, the very elements which constitute 
 greatness and the " taste of eternity" are 
 also absent. It is on account of this fact that 
 Eucken insists that no individual or nation 
 that loses its own deeper religious experience 
 can be really great or true; for the purest 
 spring of human life and conduct is wanting, 
 and the whole life issues from a shallower 
 stream. It is impossible here to enter into 
 the truth of this matter ; but our individual 
 observation concerning men and communities is 
 almost enough of itself to verify the statement. 
 That such a higher spiritual life is a reality 
 may be evidenced further through its effects. 
 It changes the whole relationship of the man 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 145 
 
 who has experienced it to everything he comes 
 in contact with. New convictions and new 
 points of view have now actually occurred 
 within his soul ; man has become conscious of 
 a spiritual inwardness, brought forth through 
 the presence of an over-personal spiritual life 
 coupled with his own spiritual needs. With 
 the possession of such spiritual elements, how 
 is it possible for him any more to look upon 
 the world and human life with the same eyes 
 as before ? The dawning of a new reality has 
 made him a new creature ; he is now compelled 
 by his own deeper nature to preserve and to 
 reflect the light which is within him ; and all this 
 brings prominently forward the need of some- 
 thing other for the progress of the world than 
 the first look of things is able to show. It is 
 in such manner as this that we must account 
 for all the ideals which have moved mankind 
 from the level of animalism and greed to the 
 level of civilisation, culture, morals, and re- 
 ligion. The work is far from being completed : 
 the world still clings to the old level of ordin- 
 ary life, and is so slow to grasp the value of 
 the life of spiritual ideals. Still, something 
 has been accomplished in the course of the 
 ages ; and although, probably, the progress has 
 not been continuous, there has been a gain in 
 the " long run." But the point to bear in mind 
 is that it is the power of the over-individual 
 ideal which has carried the race along. Ideals 
 have been perverted, it is true ; they have been 
 
 10 
 
146 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 drawn down and mixed with what was inferior 
 in its nature, yet they have never been com- 
 pletely destroyed in this evil process. They 
 have still a marvellous power of disentangling 
 themselves from human perversions, and of re- 
 vealing themselves once more in their pristine 
 power and glory. "But the spiritual life declares 
 its ability also positively within the human pro- 
 vince through a persistent effort to move out- 
 side the * given ' situation, through a tracing out 
 and a holding forth of ideals, through a longing 
 after a more complete happiness and a more 
 complete truth. Why is not man satisfied with 
 the relativity which so obstinately clings to 
 his existence ? Why has he a longing for the 
 Absolute in opposition to such relativity, and 
 through this plunges himself into the deepest 
 sorrows and distractions ? This has happened 
 not only in special situations of individuals, 
 but in the whole process of culture ; indeed, 
 the upward march of culture would have been 
 impossible without a striving of man from a 
 level above his 'given' position and even 
 above himself. Was not subjective satisfaction 
 more easily reached by him in the semi-animal 
 stages of his existence than in culture and 
 civilisation with all their toils and tangles, and 
 does the progress of culture and civilisation with 
 all their mechanical appliances make him in 
 the merely human sense happier ? What else 
 could compel him to step into this perilous 
 track but the necessity of his own nature 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 147 
 
 revealing to him the presence of a new order 
 of things?" 1 
 
 The whole of this movement is from within 
 without. Even the physical world has to 
 enter into consciousness before it can be 
 known and interpreted ; even the over-indi- 
 vidual norms have to be accepted and inter- 
 preted by the spiritual potency before the 
 reality which they possess in themselves can 
 become our own personal reality. We receive 
 from without on the plane of Nature and on 
 the planes of mentality and spirituality. The 
 consciousness does not evolve its content on 
 any level of its progress from itself alone. 
 Material from without has to enter into it. 
 But the whole of this material will become 
 one's own possession in the degree it is at- 
 tended to after it has entered consciousness ; 
 something has to happen to the material within 
 consciousness ; it has to awaken a potency, 
 and has to distil its own content within that 
 potency. But as this potency is not of the 
 same nature entirely as what presents 
 itself as possessing value, it is clear that the 
 higher element which presents itself has to 
 enter into a struggle for the throne of life with 
 elements of a lower order. As this all-im- 
 portant fact has been dealt with in a previous 
 chapter, there is no need to dwell on it again ; 
 but it is well to bear in mind that the fact 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 200. Cf. also Konnen nrir nock 
 Christen sein? pp. 91-141. 
 
148 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 constitutes an important element in Eucken's 
 conception of " universal " religion. 
 
 " Universal " and " Characteristic " religion 
 do not constitute two different religions, but 
 two grades of the one religion. In "Universal" 
 religion Eucken deals very largely with the 
 intellectual grounds of religion. He is aware 
 that it is necessary for us to carry our 
 whole potencies into religion. Intellect is one 
 of these, and we cannot afford to construct 
 our religion on what comes into perpetual 
 conflict with intellectual conceptions. Eucken 
 has shown that intellectual conclusions, if they 
 are carried far enough and include the whole 
 of their own meaning, lead us into religion. 
 We have already noticed how the presence of 
 norms and standards were necessitated by the 
 very theory of knowledge itself. It is a great 
 gain for man to know that this is so that in 
 so far as knowledge testifies anything in regard 
 to religion and spiritual life it affirms more 
 than it negates. It is of enormous advantage 
 to be assured that knowledge is on our side in 
 the quest for something that is deeper than 
 itself. 
 
 Further, Eucken conceives it as the function 
 of religion on this " Universal " level to present, 
 on the other hand, the actual situation. What 
 but knowledge can reveal to us the difference 
 between spiritual norms and ordinary life, 
 between intellect working alone and intellect 
 merged with the spiritual potency of one's 
 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION 149 
 
 being ? We are bound to know these and a 
 hundred other things. They all go to prove 
 that there is justification for the movement of 
 spiritual life in the direction of an over-world, 
 and in its hope for the possession of a new 
 grade of reality. It is well and necessary to 
 affirm all this before we enter on the " grand 
 enterprise." When an affirmation, based upon 
 insight, is made, there will be present within 
 the soul a greater power to resist hunting after 
 shadows or slipping to a lower level when we 
 are in the very midst of the quest. And, in- 
 deed, on this very level of "Universal" religion 
 something besides the mere knowledge of 
 religion has taken place. Values which are 
 intellectually true are bound to exercise some 
 influence on the life. Thus, something of the 
 nature of the higher reality has touched the 
 soul and will of man. We know in what we 
 have believed. This is a stage which must 
 be passed through, for we can never feel 
 certain upon a higher altitude unless we are 
 certain of what had led to it. And although, 
 on the higher altitude, there is the merging of 
 intellectual truth in something higher than 
 itself, still what is discovered on this higher 
 level is richer in content if we can call up at 
 times intellectual affirmations for its support. 
 
 But " Universal " religion has its limitations, 
 and has to pass into something more character- 
 istic, specific, and personal. The over-personal 
 norms, which are spiritual in their very nature, 
 
150 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 have not only to be interpreted, they have 
 also to be appreciated and reverenced. The 
 Row of their appearance, after it is settled, 
 takes a secondary place, and the norms in 
 their own value and subsistence are attended 
 to. Thus, they become not merely ideas 
 having some kind of reality of their own, 
 but also become revelations of the very nature 
 of the world ; they become the source of all 
 creation ; the one spring of all being. In 
 other words, they are made to mean the God- 
 head ; they mean the creation and sustaining 
 power of all life. A communion with the 
 Godhead now takes place, and man finds him- 
 self in possession of experiences brought about 
 without the intervention of the world. Thus 
 " Universal " religion culminates in a " Charac- 
 teristic " or personal religion. And to this 
 culmination, as it is presented by Eucken, we 
 now turn. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 
 
 ON the level of " Universal " religion great 
 changes have taken place in life. The consci- 
 ousness and conviction of the reality of a new 
 kind of world have arisen ; the sensuous, and 
 even partially the intellectual, domains havebeen 
 relegated to a secondary place : other values, 
 higher in their nature and more universal in 
 their scope, have attracted the attention of 
 mind and soul. In all this a change has taken 
 place in the disposition as well as in the will. 
 Prior to this change the character had not be- 
 come conscious of its own inwardness, but re- 
 mained subservient to the norms of social and 
 moral inheritance. Some amount of morality 
 and good will have issued forth in this manner, 
 and, indeed, the gain cannot be overestimated. 
 But it is evident that something further has 
 to happen if the movement of society is to 
 proceed onward and upward, and if the energy 
 for such a movement is to be discovered within 
 the soul. The whole material which enters 
 into consciousness has to obtain a deeper mean- 
 
152 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ing than it hitherto possessed. And this 
 happens on the level of " Universal " religion. 
 The spiritual is now recognised as the highest 
 manifestation of life ; and this spiritual is seen 
 to be something which has to be gained through 
 a struggle which calls the whole nature into 
 activity. Such a movement from the less to 
 the more spiritual proceeds side by side with 
 the freedom of the individual. Freedom has 
 now taken a new meaning. Hitherto it meant 
 little more than the consciousness of the indi- 
 vidual moving along the line of least resist- 
 ance. The effort to move in such a direction 
 is generally pleasurable ; and when it tends to 
 become painful the individual gives up the 
 effort. The highest norms were not present 
 with a categorical affirmation of their reality 
 and value. But when they are present, the 
 will is turned from the direction of ordinary 
 life and its ease to the conception of the mean- 
 ing and value of the highest norms. Some- 
 thing, appearing as of intrinsic value, now 
 makes itself felt, and stirs the whole 
 nature. Thus, a new movement begins ; the 
 passive attitude of the soul gives way to an 
 autonomous attitude and movement. The will, 
 consequently, is conscious of a deeper need than 
 any hitherto experienced, and therefore calls 
 into being some deeper elements of its own in 
 order to reach its goal. The whole nature has 
 now affirmed the idea of the good, which had 
 dawned upon it as an imperative. It is in 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 153 
 
 such a moment that the real nature becomes 
 free it becomes conscious, through and 
 through, of the possibility of leaving its old 
 world and of ascending into a new one. This 
 is, in Eucken's words, the real spiritual evolu- 
 tion (Wesensbildung) of human nature. This 
 evolution, which, prior to this, was considered 
 very largely as a kind of gift of the environ- 
 ment, is now perceived as capable of realisation 
 only in so far as the spiritual norms are willed. 
 When we examine the progress of humanity, 
 we discover that it has taken place in this 
 manner ; a task had to be set and* the whole 
 nature had to be called forth to realise it. 
 The result is that a new creation takes place 
 in the history of the world. Such a creation 
 becomes a new norm in the moral world, as 
 well as a possession in the life of the individual 
 who has struggled to realise it. 
 
 Such a spiritual process, after something of 
 its nature has been realised, finds necessities 
 laid upon it on all hands. Once we have 
 stepped into the very centre of spiritual norms 
 and ideals they begin to reveal with a wonder- 
 ful rapidity and impressiveness their own 
 intrinsic content and value. " Universal " 
 religion has enabled us to realise that we are 
 dealing with "grounds" which are a demand 
 of the deepest nature, and with convictions 
 which seem, without a doubt, " to ring true." 
 The man has found a shelter in the midst of 
 all the chaos and welter of the natural process, 
 
154 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and his deepest reason has not failed to come 
 to the assistance of his spiritual need. He 
 now becomes conscious of security and even 
 of victory in the enterprise before the battle 
 has really begun on an arena outside his own 
 nature ; a conviction is being brought into 
 being within his deepest soul that the best and 
 strongest elements in the universe are on his 
 side. Although hindrances and entanglements 
 of all kinds increase in number, the increase 
 in spiritual certainty, and faith in the final 
 issue of his life, have grown at a greater ratio. 
 Such a man has settled his destiny ; he has 
 come to the great spiritual affirmation of life 
 an affirmation which has to be repeated so 
 often, and which each time distils something 
 of a higher order within the soul. 
 
 It is evident that such an affirmation of the 
 reality of spiritual ideals, which have now an 
 existence of their own, should lead us farther. 
 If they mean so much, why cannot they mean 
 more? If they subsist in themselves, they 
 must be what they are. They are to us mean- 
 ing and value of infinite significance. But 
 such and other spiritual characteristics are not 
 things, and, as we have seen, not mere pro- 
 jections of our own individual selves. There 
 'is nothing short of personality and over- 
 personality by which they can be even partially 
 designated and determined. We are forced 
 to this conclusion if they are to be objects of 
 communion and union; and we are forced 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 155 
 
 further to gather the Many into the One. 
 That was what was done on all lower planes. 
 Why stop short here, because infinitely much 
 happens when the Many find their points of 
 union and meaning in the One ? l We have 
 said that infinitely much happens when the 
 Many find their meaning in the One. A 
 need of the nature has arisen which demands 
 this, and it has arisen at its highest possible 
 level alone. Such a nature will never become 
 absolutely certain of the meaning and value of. 
 all that has led up to this until the One obtains 
 a self-subsistence. If this effort fails, the whole 
 effort of development towards unity and in- 
 wardness fails. And when such a chain of effort 
 snaps at its highest link of spiritual develop- 
 ment, everything that had entered into the 
 process at all the levels below it snaps along 
 with it in so far as it had any validity what- 
 ever in the light of what is higher than itself. 
 
 But the fact that this conception of the 
 One, conceived as Absolute Spiritual Life, has 
 produced so many effects of the highest kind 
 is a proof of its existence. Qualities come 
 into being which can never come with such 
 power in any other way. The spiritual ex- 
 periences, revealed at such a level, have some- 
 thing to say on this matter. These experiences, 
 
 1 Cf. Ward's The Realm of Ends, chapters ii. and 
 xx. ; also Caird's Evolution of Religion has many valuable 
 hints throughout the two volumes pointing in the same 
 direction. 
 
156 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 although aware of the meaning of universal 
 concepts, have become aware of something 
 higher still : Knowledge has given place to 
 Love; a region has been reached beyond all 
 the contradictions of the world and beyond all 
 the dialectics of knowledge. It is a region 
 which includes the good of all without injuring 
 the good of any ; and all the meaning of the 
 world and of life is interpreted from this high- 
 est standpoint. This is the essence of " charac- 
 teristic " or specific religion. On the level of 
 " universal " religion, God was seen from the 
 standpoint of the world ; in " characteristic " 
 religion the world is seen from the standpoint 
 of God. The appearance of the world is 
 consequently different from each standpoint. 
 All must now be viewed and valued from the 
 standpoint of "characteristic" religion, from 
 the standpoint of the One the Godhead ; and 
 if humanity is ever to be brought to this 
 standpoint, the nature and the meaning of 
 the One have to be presented to it. And it 
 is this, as Eucken shows, which has been 
 partially accomplished by the religions of the 
 world. Their founders were personalities who 
 had scaled the heights towards the "holy of 
 holies " of the One ; they descended into the 
 plains to reveal what they had seen and heard 
 and experienced on the heights. They had 
 been able to commune with the Alone, and 
 their natures had been completely transformed. 
 In passing thus from the stage of " universal " 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 157 
 
 religion to the higher stage of " characteristic," 
 men have discovered a further security and 
 spiritual evolution of their whole being. Their 
 views of man and the world have become 
 changed ; they now long to make mankind 
 the possessor of the " vision splendid " which 
 has meant all for them. Communion with 
 the One as Infinite Love has revealed to them 
 a peace and a power which are far beyond all 
 the lower unities. 
 
 It is of value, in the midst of all the com- 
 plexities of life, of the partial interpretations 
 of the various branches of knowledge, to have 
 passed through the several stages below the 
 One. Some must guard the highest citadel of 
 religion and keep open the avenues to Infinity, 
 Eternity, and Immortality. And the greater 
 the number who are able to do this, the better 
 for the world and for the individual. But a 
 taste of this Infinite Love can be obtained 
 without all this. Just as some of us are able 
 to walk without a knowledge of the bodily 
 mechanism and to eat and digest without a 
 knowledge of the history of our bread, so the 
 deeper spiritual potencies inherent in man are 
 able to find a vast amount of satisfaction by 
 resting upon and trusting in a Love Absolute, 
 Eternal, and Infinite. Here, man is in a 
 region of infinite calm beyond the distractions 
 of the world and of knowledge. He cannot 
 remain here for any great length of time ; he 
 has to return to the world, but he is never 
 
158 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 again the same being after having scaled the 
 " mount of transfiguration." "Religion holds 
 as certain and conclusive that this new inner 
 foundation is the greatest thing of all and the 
 wonder of wonders, because it carries within 
 itself the power and certainty of the overcom- 
 ing of the old world and the creation of a new 
 one ; it is on account of this that religion longs 
 for the conviction of the whole man, and 
 brands the denial of this as pettiness and 
 unbelief. The world may therefore remain to 
 the external view as it appeared before a 
 kingdom of opposition and darkness ; its 
 hindrances within and without may seem to 
 nullify everything else; they may contract 
 and even seemingly destroy man and his 
 spiritual potencies ; all his acts may seem 
 fruitless and vain, and his whole existence 
 may seem to sink into nothingness and worth- 
 lessness. Yet, through the entrance of the 
 new life and a new world, everything is 
 transformed from within, and the clearness of 
 the light appears all the more by contrast with 
 all the depth of the darkness. Indeed, in the 
 midst of all the mysteries of existence, hope 
 and conviction and certainty will consolidate 
 our experience, so that ultimately evil itself 
 must serve the development of the good." 1 
 Or in the words of Luther : " This is the 
 spiritual power which reigns and rules in the 
 midst of enemies, and is powerful in the midst 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 436. 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 159 
 
 of all oppression. And this is nothing other 
 than that strength is perfected in weakness, 
 and that in all things 1 can gain life eternal, 
 so that cross and crown are compelled to serve 
 and to contribute towards my salvation." 1 
 
 Eucken shows how this idea of God comes 
 from the Life-process itself. The Godhead is 
 present, not as an external revelation but as 
 the ever fuller meaning and experience which 
 have been carried along in the soul in its 
 passage from the natural level to the highest 
 spiritual plane. At its summit the develop- 
 ment unfolds its true spiritual content of Love. 
 The Highest Power however much there 
 still remains dark concerning it has had 
 communication with man, is present within 
 his soul, has become his own life and nature, 
 as well as his self-subsistence over against the 
 order of the world. Here Love is raised up 
 into an image of the Godhead Love as a self- 
 communication and as an essential elevation 
 of the nature, and as an expression of inmost 
 fellowship. 2 " There originates a mutual inter- 
 course of the soul and God as between an I 
 and a Thou." It has already been stated that 
 Eucken insists that no close determination, in 
 an intellectual form, should be given to this 
 conception and experience of God. The idea of 
 a personality of God is not an intellectual idea 
 presented in any doctrinal form ; it is an idea 
 
 1 Quoted in The Truth of Religion, p. 436. 
 
 2 Cf. The Truth of Religion, pp. 429 ff. 
 
160 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 born within the Life-process on its highest levels. 
 On such levels it becomes obvious and indis- 
 pensable. Man may be clearly conscious of 
 the symbolism of the idea, and yet, at the 
 same time, grasp in it an incontestable intrinsic 
 truth which he knows to be far above all mere 
 anthropomorphism. Eucken shows that it is 
 not merely a human greatness that has been 
 transferred to the Divine, but that the whole 
 meaning here is a return to the source of a 
 Divine Life and its mutual communication 
 with man ; and therefore the whole process is 
 not an argument of man concerning the Divine, 
 because the Divine has to be apprehended 
 through the Divine within us. " All opposi- 
 tion to the idea of the Divine personality is 
 ultimately explained by the fact that an 
 energetic Life-process is wanting a Life- 
 process which entertains the question not so 
 much from without as from within. When- 
 ever such a Life-process is found, there is 
 simultaneously found, often in overt contra- 
 diction to the formal doctrinal statement, an 
 element of such a personal character of God." 
 But this immanent aspect of the idea of God 
 is accompanied by a transcendent aspect. We 
 have noticed already that the very nature of the 
 Ought included a transcendent and objective 
 aspect. 2 The same fact becomes evident in 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 430. 
 
 2 This fact is very clearly interpreted by Rickert in his 
 Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 161 
 
 religious experience. The two poles imman- 
 ence and transcendence are complementary. 
 The former shows that something of the 
 Divine nature has been implanted within 
 human nature ; the latter shows that more 
 is in existence than we have already possessed. 
 Spiritual norms never decrease but increase in 
 splendour the nearer man is to their attain- 
 ment. Something is here discovered which is 
 not found in the world ; it is a kind of trans- 
 cendent summit, a mysterious sublimity. And 
 an approach towards this summit produces ex- 
 periences never to be possessed in any other 
 kind of way. As Eucken himself puts it : " If 
 this sublimity superior to the world secures an 
 abode in the soul, and, indeed, becomes the in- 
 most and most intimate part of our being, and 
 enables us to participate in the self-subsistence 
 of infinity, it opens up within us a fathomless 
 depth, in which the existence that lies nearest 
 to our hands is swallowed up, and it makes 
 us a problem to ourselves a problem which 
 transforms the whole of life whilst it enables 
 us to understand and to handle what at the 
 outset appeared to be its whole life as a mere 
 phase and appearance. Thus it is the same 
 religion which opens out from God to man 
 and which simultaneously opens itself out in 
 man himself and becomes a great mystery to 
 him. Therefore, in the idea of God the inti- 
 mate and the ultimate must both be present if 
 religion is to reach its full development and to 
 
162 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 avoid the dangers which everywhere threaten 
 it." 1 Both these aspects interlace in one Life- 
 process ; the unity is present in the manifold, 
 and the ultimate present in the intimate. 
 
 According to Eucken, it is out of such an 
 experience as we have noticed that the idea of 
 immortality becomes a firm belief and faith 
 within the soul. The idea cannot be proved 
 scientifically, simply because its spiritual con- 
 tent is greater than anything which is below it. 
 The whole proof lies within the experience 
 itself at this, its highest summit. " The In- 
 finite Power and Love that has grounded a 
 new spontaneous nature in man, over against 
 a dark and hostile world, will conserve such a 
 new nature and its spiritual nucleus, and 
 shelter it against all perils and assaults, so that 
 life as the bearer of life eternal can never be 
 wholly lost in the stream of time." We are 
 here in a region farthest removed from sense 
 and understanding ; but the remarkable thing 
 is that the conviction of immortality does not 
 dawn on any lower level ; it is not on the 
 lower levels a portion of spiritual experience. 
 It seems as if an element of immortality is 
 only to be gained at a certain height of the 
 spiritual life. On all levels below, men seek 
 for proofs in the analogies of Nature, in the 
 supposed return of the spirits of the dead, and 
 in the craving found in their own lives. All 
 these proofs have one thing in common : they 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 431. 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 163 
 
 are all of a lower order of value than the mean- 
 ing which the content of experience gives to 
 immortality on its highest level. For at this 
 highest level the proof is not something hap- 
 pening outside the man ; it is the deepest part 
 of his own being which now actually possesses 
 a taste of life eternal. It seems, then, that there 
 is no answer to the problem outside ourselves, 
 because it is not something to be known, but 
 something to be experienced after long toil and 
 a stirring of the nature to its lowest depths in 
 the drift of all that is highest and best. 1 It is 
 sufficient for us to possess a life which is spirit- 
 ual and timeless in its nature : and when such 
 a life is possessed, empirical proofs are neither 
 demanded nor desired. It is within one's own 
 new and spiritual world that proofs are now 
 discovered, and they are timeless and spaceless 
 in their own intrinsic nature. " Do this, and 
 thou shalt live." If the man has to negate all 
 concerning the preservation of his natural in- 
 dividuality, the new world he has gained for 
 his soul will have abundant affirmation within 
 itself, without the support of any earthly props. 
 It is his own highest life which testifies to him 
 that " death does not count" at all. 
 
 Eucken's whole plea is that spiritual life at 
 the point of its highest manifestation should 
 not be interpreted by anything below itself. 
 
 1 I cannot but believe that the supposed proofs brought 
 forward by Sir Oliver Lodge and others are so empirical as 
 to be of very little value to religion. 
 
164 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 We have already noticed how, on lower levels, 
 spiritual life was even there interpreted by its 
 norms, and not by its connections with what 
 was below itself. The disappearance of miracle 
 in religion is an indispensable stage which 
 must be passed over. It is necessary only on 
 a mid-level of religion, and has really been far 
 more of the nature of a symbol than of a fact. 
 It is at our peril that in religion we give up such 
 a symbol until a more " inward wonder " has 
 happened within our own soul. When the self- 
 subsistence of the spiritual life and the reality 
 of the norms of the over-world, now all united 
 in God, are experienced, all miraculous mani- 
 festations of the Divine, imaginary or real, are 
 relegated to a secondary place. They all be- 
 long to a point which the man has passed ; 
 they are milestones to which he can never 
 return. "An evil and adulterous generation 
 seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no sign 
 be given to it but the sign of Jonah the 
 prophet." As Eucken points out, " This is no 
 other than the sign of spiritual power and of 
 a Divine message and greatness." The move- 
 ment from signs and miracles is a movement 
 from the outward to the inward, from percept 
 to spirituality ; and the essence of religion, as 
 a reality in itself and as an experience of the 
 soul, is to be found by taking such a step. 
 The centre of gravity of life has now been 
 shifted from the outward to the inward. To 
 accomplish this means nothing less than a 
 
 
CHARACTERISTIC RELIGION 165 
 
 struggle for the governing centre of life. Un- 
 less we succeed in this struggle, the inner life 
 will reach no independence and subsistence 
 of its own. Even when the struggle succeeds 
 in gaining its longed-for depth, it has not re- 
 moved for once and for all the contradictions 
 from without and within. Difficulties, from 
 the lower side, will accompany the spiritual life 
 in its higher evolution, but once it has be- 
 come conscious of its own Divine nature and 
 certainty it will gain sufficiently in content 
 and power to relegate them all to the periphery. 
 Something has happened within the soul which 
 can never be obliterated. As Eucken says : 
 " 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 not so much 
 weaken as strengthen the certainty, because it 
 calls life to a perpetual renewal and brings to 
 fruition the greatness of the conquest." 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 533. 
 
 " i 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 
 
 WE have noticed in the two preceding chapters 
 how Eucken distinguished the two stages of 
 religion the " Universal " and the " Character- 
 istic" and how he showed the necessity of both 
 stages. As man cannot escape from the con- 
 clusions of his intellect, it becomes necessary 
 for him to come to an understanding with 
 those conclusions ; and although such con- 
 clusions do not form a complete account of 
 life in its deepest aspects, still they are in- 
 dispensable for him in order to know that he 
 is on the path towards a further development 
 of his spiritual nature. Hence the grounds of 
 religion have to be emphasised by the con- 
 clusions of the intellect. But though intel- 
 lectual conclusions, as we have already seen, 
 warrant us in holding fast to the presence and 
 reality of a life of the spirit and to the possi- 
 bility of an evolution of such a life, all this 
 does not mean that such an evolution is 
 actually reached through the affirmations of 
 
 166 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 167 
 
 the intellect. The road of spiritual develop- 
 ment is marked out, but we have to travel 
 over that road ourselves. Something more 
 than an intellectual acknowledgment of the 
 existence of such a road is necessary before 
 the actual movement takes place. When the 
 actual movement does take place, when the 
 intellectual conclusions come in contact with 
 a will arising from our deepest needs, the 
 matter becomes personal it becomes some- 
 thing that has to be affirmed by the blending 
 of intellect with the deeper spiritual potencies. 
 The vision at this higher stage constitutes not 
 only the certainty of a path for man a path 
 which leads to higher regions but brings 
 forth hidden energies in order to start him on 
 the enterprise. The whole vision is now seen 
 to be possible of realisation only through 
 personal decisions of the whole nature in 
 the direction of the over-personal values 
 which present themselves. These over-personal 
 values increase as the soul passes along the 
 upward path and as it grants a self-subsistence 
 and unconditional significance to these values. 
 There follows here an increase of spiritual re- 
 flection ; the content of the vision is loosened 
 from sense and time ; its self-subsistence 
 becomes more and more real and more and 
 more and more different from all that was 
 experienced on any level below ; knowledge 
 steps into the background, and love and ap- 
 preciation now guide the whole movement of 
 
168 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the soul. As we have already seen, when this 
 happens, the idea of God as Infinite Love 
 presents itself, and the soul's main task is to 
 climb to the summits " where on the glimmer- 
 ing limits far withdrawn God made Himself an 
 awful rose of dawn." Religion is at such a 
 level more than an intellectual insistence upon 
 its grounds ; the soul looks now rather to its 
 summits. Hence the two stages of Universal 
 and Characteristic religion become necessary. 
 And it is not always true that the Universal 
 mode ceases once the Characteristic mode is 
 partially realised. The soul has to descend 
 from the heights into the ordinary world 
 below. And as it now sees the world with 
 new eyes, it sees much more to be condemned 
 than was previously possible for it to see. 
 There comes the constant need of certifying 
 the validity of its experience on the heights, 
 and of getting others who have never attempted 
 the experiment to do so. The man possessed 
 of something of the vision within his own soul 
 proclaims his "gospel,," and conceives of all 
 kinds of ways and means by which humanity 
 can be drawn towards the same goal. 
 
 This is the meaning which Eucken attaches 
 to the origin and development of the union 
 of universal and specific religions as these 
 have been revealed in human history. The 
 intellectual grounds of religion as well as 
 something of the actual spiritual experiences 
 are presented by the founders. Every kind of 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 169 
 
 religion has originated in this manner. They 
 are all attempts at showing that a here and 
 now and a beyond have united and become 
 potencies of life, and can become actualities. 
 The here and now always points to a beyond, 
 and the beyond, when it is realised, returns to 
 the here and now and always transforms it. 
 Thus, we are in the midst of two worlds which 
 are continuous with one another just as the 
 valley is continuous with the base of the 
 mountain. 
 
 Such historical religions do not, then, 
 originate in the collective experiences of 
 humanity, but in what has actually happened 
 in the life of unique personalities. These 
 personalities have become, as it were, mediators 
 between God and man. Such religions adopt 
 the most diverse forms, because the person- 
 alities have given of the content of their own 
 personal experiences, and no two experiences 
 view anything from standpoints precisely 
 identical. The historical religions may con- 
 sequently be narrow in their outlook. The 
 personalities are dependent upon their race, 
 place, training, and inheritance for the 
 particular intellectual presentation of their 
 religion. Thus, each historical religion has its 
 own view of the universe and its own morality. 
 But the value of no historical religion is to be 
 judged from this standpoint alone. Such 
 views of the universe and such morality must 
 have appeared to them somehow as a good as 
 
170 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ways and means to what lay beyond. We may 
 have outgrown such ways and means ; other 
 ways and means higher in their nature may have 
 become our inheritance. But these higher 
 ways and means could not have evolved out of 
 their lower stages had not some element of the 
 beyond instilled itself into them. The historical 
 religions could never have flourished on im- 
 morality and superstition, however much of 
 these we may discover in them. It is the 
 beyond, over-personal element which has kept 
 them alive, and this element has always had a 
 hard struggle to overcome and transform the 
 here-and-now elements. Whenever the his- 
 torical religions are traced back to their 
 sources, there is discovered an element above 
 the world in the souls of their founders and of 
 their immediate followers. As Eucken puts 
 it : " To these founders the new kingdom was 
 no vague outline and no feeble hope, but all 
 stood clear in front of them ; the kingdom 
 was so real to their souls and filled them so 
 exclusively that the whole sensuous world was 
 reduced by them to a semblance and a shadow 
 if they could not otherwise gain a new value 
 from a superior power. The new world could 
 attain to such immediacy and impressiveness 
 only because a regal imagination wrestled for 
 a unique picture in the tangled heap of life, 
 and because it invested this picture with the 
 clearest outlines and the most vivid colours. 
 Thus the new world dawns on humanity with 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 171 
 
 fascinating power, rousing it out of the slug- 
 gishness of daily routine, binding it through a 
 corporate aim, raising inspiring ardour through 
 radiant promises and terrible threats, and 
 creating achievements otherwise impossible. 
 This prepared road into the kingdom of the 
 invisible, this creation of a new reality which 
 is no merely serene kind of play but a deep 
 seriousness, this inversion of worlds which 
 pushes sensuous existence down into a distance 
 and which prepares a home for man within 
 the kingdom of faith all this is the greatest 
 achievement that has ever been undertaken 
 and that has ever worked upon human soil. 
 .... Their works seemed to carry within 
 them Divine energies ; wonders surrounded 
 their paths; their life and being bridged 
 securely the gulf between heaven and earth." 1 
 Now, Eucken shows that it is of great 
 importance to acknowledge these personalities 
 in order that life may be brought into a safe 
 track. Enough, has already been said of the 
 impossibity of finding a sufficiency for life and 
 death within the span of ordinary existence. 
 And as this is so, a whole span of past and 
 present has to be taken into account. The 
 world cannot move a step towards the heights 
 of the future without this. The real future 
 is the blend of what was and is forming the 
 standard and the receptacle for what is to be. 
 We have already noticed how such a standard 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 367, 368. 
 
172 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 evolves ; and how, when it is followed to its 
 utmost limits, it merges into the conception of 
 God. But as all this is a conception spiritual 
 in its nature devoid of flesh and blood as its 
 clothing it becomes extremely difficult for 
 the majority of mankind to hold fast to its 
 reality in a world where flesh and blood mean 
 so much. Something more tangible is craved 
 for by man as a proof of an over- world and 
 of an over-personal life. Such proof men 
 are able to obtain in the great religious 
 personalities of the world without having to 
 go through the intellectual processes of dis- 
 covering the grounds of religion. Men are 
 able to view this spiritual truth as they view a 
 picture. It becomes easy to understand how 
 such personalities have been raised beyond all 
 human valuations to a likeness to God and 
 even to an equality with God. Such per- 
 sonalities were the highest conceptions which 
 men could possess of the Godhead. This 
 seems to have been a necessary stage in the 
 evolution of the religious life as well as of 
 religious conceptions. And even to - day 
 attention is not to be diverted from such 
 personalities. The question whether they 
 were or were not gods has become meaningless. 
 What psychology is able to fathom the soul of 
 any individual ? Every attempt at doctrinal 
 formulation states less than was present 
 within the souls of such personalities. But, on 
 the other hand, it does seem necessary, 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 173 
 
 according to Eucken's teaching, to avoid con- 
 fusing such personalities with the All. They 
 were great ; they possessed elements above the 
 world ; but none of them possessed the whole 
 that is in existence. 
 
 The truth concerning these founders of 
 religion seems to lie in the fact that they 
 realised a depth of life beyond the world, the 
 intellect, and the span of ordinary life. It is 
 this fact that needs to be brought prominently 
 forward in our day. And such a fact becomes 
 an experimental proof of the presence and 
 efficacy of the Divine within the soul and 
 points to an upward direction the total- 
 movement of the world. If such a fact does 
 not succeed in holding for itself a primary 
 place, other subsidiary facts will colour and 
 weaken its true spiritual content and value. 
 This is the road on which speculative and 
 superstitious ideas have found an entrance 
 into the historical religions. When such is 
 the case, the spiritual reality is gradually 
 weakened, is lowered to the level of intel- 
 lectualistic dogma, until it ultimately becomes, 
 though in the guise of religion, the worst 
 enemy which spiritual religion has to en- 
 counter. All hard and fixed dogmatic settings 
 of religion usurp the supremacy of the spiritual 
 life itself. 
 
 Eucken shows this in connection with re- 
 ligious institutions institutions which were 
 meant by their founders to be essential but 
 
174 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 still subservient to the needs and aspirations 
 of spiritual life. Thus, genuine religion is 
 measured by a doctrinal standard or by a sacra- 
 ment. These may possess an incalculable 
 value in religion, when used as means and not 
 as ends ; but they may, and often do, issue 
 in its degradation to a stage which is hardly 
 a spiritual one. Every historical religion 
 possesses some absolute truth, but does not 
 possess the whole truth ; and also each 
 historical religion possesses some elements 
 which have to pass away. But this matter 
 will be dealt with in a later chapter. 
 
 The main service of the historical religions is 
 to bring home to us the fact that in the course 
 of human history a spiritual life above the 
 world has again and again dawned on mankind 
 through the experiences and works of great 
 personalities. To realise intensely such a fact 
 is to realise the fact that all this can happen 
 again in a more concentrated form than is 
 actually presented in the slow and toilsome 
 effects of the results of the collective life of 
 the community. 
 
 It may be well to refer here to Eucken's 
 classification of the religions of the world. 
 This classifications consists of the Religions of 
 Law and the Religions of Redemption. The 
 Religions of Law maintain that the kernel of 
 religion lies in "the announcement and advocacy 
 of a moral order which governs the world from 
 on high." God has revealed His will to man ; 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 175 
 
 if man obeys, rich rewards await him in a future 
 life ; if he disobeys, painful punishment is sure 
 to follow. Man himself has to select one of 
 the two alternatives, and he believes himself 
 able to choose. The Religions of Redemption 
 consider such a view false and superficial. 
 Now, there is no doubt that the Religions of 
 Law are stages which are of value when men 
 are incapable of grasping the difficulties and 
 complexities of religion. The whole of religion 
 on this level of Law is a replica of the rela- 
 tions which obtain on a smaller scale between 
 a sovereign and his subjects, or between 
 a master and his slave. Authority is some- 
 thing purely external. The two Religions of 
 Redemption the Indian and the Christian 
 seek the meaning of religion in a very 
 different manner. They both agree that 
 human capability, which seems so evident to 
 the Religions of Law, is the most difficult and 
 important of all questions. They agree further 
 that the essence of religion does not consist in 
 guiding life for the sake of something that life 
 is to participate in or to avoid in the future ; 
 they agree that a change must happen within 
 the soul in this world, and that this change 
 only comes about through the aid of a super- 
 natural power. But these two religions differ 
 fundamentally in their different ways of looking 
 at the world. To the Indian religions, the ex- 
 istence of the world is an evil; the world is itself 
 a kingdom of illusions. " All in it is transient 
 
176 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and unreal ; nothing in it has duration ; happi- 
 ness and love are merely momentary, and men 
 are as two pieces of wood floating on the face 
 of an infinite ocean which pass by one another, 
 never to meet again. Fruitless agitation and 
 painful deception have fallen upon him who 
 mistakes such a transient semblance for a 
 reality and who hangs his heart upon it. 
 Therefore it behoves man to free himself from 
 such an unholy arena. This emancipation will 
 take place when the semblance is seen through 
 as semblance, and when the soul has gained an 
 insight right into the foundation of things. 
 Then the world loses its power over man ; the 
 whole kingdom of deception with its evanescent 
 values goes to the bottom, all the excited affec- 
 tions caused by the world are extinguished, and 
 life becomes a still and holy calm ; it reaches 
 the depth of a dreamless sleep, enters, through 
 its immersion into an eternal essence, beyond 
 the shadows ; it passes, according to Buddhism 
 in its most definite interpretation, into a state 
 of entire unconsciousness." 1 
 
 How different a spirit from all this breathes 
 in Christianity ! In Christianity the world is 
 good as far as it goes, but it does not go far 
 enough. Something of the revelation of the 
 Divine may be discovered within it, but this is 
 only a segment of a greater whole which comes 
 to realisation within the soul. Here, the world 
 is not cast away, despite all its limitations, but 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 11, 12. 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 177 
 
 is perceived as the only sphere where spiritual 
 experience may exercise itself and draw out 
 its own hidden potencies. Tribulation is to be 
 found in the world ; but a standpoint above the 
 world, gained by cutting a path right through 
 the world, is possible. When such a stand- 
 point is reached, the world is seen as it ought 
 to be seen and used as it ought to be used. 
 But this aspect of the meaning of the world in 
 the Christian religion will be dealt with later. 
 It is sufficient to state here that Eucken con- 
 siders Christianity superior to all other religions 
 by virtue of the fact that it overcomes the 
 world, not by fleeing from it, but by transform- 
 ing it. It views the physical world as a stage 
 upon which the life of the spirit has to realise 
 all its possibilities ; the world and all that is 
 within it take a secondary place : the primary 
 place is now accorded to the world of ideals 
 and values as these merge into love and the 
 conception of the Godhead. 
 
 The question of the finality of the Christian 
 religion in its purely historical sense has been 
 discussed by Eucken in his Truth of Religion, 
 Christianity and the New Idealism, and 
 Konnen wir noch Christen sein ? In these 
 three works he arrives at the conclusion that 
 no one religion has a claim to the name 
 " absolute religion," because even Christianity 
 itself cannot be more than a partial, though 
 the highest, manifestation of the Divine. 
 And what Christianity has been and is in 
 
178 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 itself as a force in the history of the Western 
 world cannot be the same as what it was in 
 the personal experience of its Founder. It is 
 not something which descended once and 
 for all into the world, and so remains its per- 
 manent inheritance. It is the most priceless 
 inheritance we possess ; but such an inherit- 
 ance has to be discovered again and again. 
 All this cannot come about without calling 
 up to-day the same spiritual energies as were 
 needful for the tasks that were present when 
 Christianity started to conquer the world. 
 Its aspects of "world-denial and world-renewal" 
 render Christianity the very religion we need. 
 " It is the religion of religions," but a state- 
 ment of this fact does not mean the realisation 
 of the fact. The same energy and aspiration are 
 needful to-day as in the days of yore. Chris- 
 tianity, whenever it has lived on its highest 
 levels, has struggled for two tremendous facts 
 at least : the insufficiency of the world and 
 the regeneration of the world in the light of 
 the Divine. It is not a repetition of what the 
 Founder said concerning religion. What the 
 Founder said cost him enormous labour to dis- 
 cover and to possess. We shall gain so much 
 and no more of the same spiritual substance as 
 we put the same kind of energy in motion. In 
 order that we may unravel the complexities 
 of our day, a spirit similar to his spirit must 
 become ours. When such a spirit ceases to 
 exist, Christianity will become merely a 
 
THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 179 
 
 name ; its power will have disappeared, and 
 men can delude themselves into believing 
 that they possess it when in fact they are 
 the possessors of but little of its spirit and of 
 much of its form. But the possession of the 
 same spirit as that of Jesus constitutes the 
 further development of Christianity, and this 
 further development is nothing other than what 
 we have already seen the experience and 
 efficacy of an eternal order of things in the 
 midst of all the changes of time. Thus we 
 are thrown back once more, not upon our 
 bare individual selves, but upon the presence 
 of the Divine within the spiritual life itself. 
 Christianity is therefore not something that 
 has been completed in the past, but the highest 
 mode of conceiving and of experiencing Life 
 in the present ; it becomes an inward, personal 
 and spiritual experience ; and its duration and 
 expansion depend upon the increase and depth 
 of such a spiritual inwardness. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 IT has been noticed how " Characteristic " or 
 " Specific " religion means the carrying farther 
 of the implications of "Universal" religion. 
 It is not only necessary to know the "grounds" 
 of religion, as these reveal themselves within 
 the conclusions of the intellect : we have to 
 lant ourselves upon these "grounds" ; we must 
 e what they mean. Thus, religion becomes 
 a personal task something that can never be 
 realised until the whole nature comes to 
 constant decisions of its own and acts upon 
 those decisions in the light of what has 
 expressed itself in the form of those over- 
 personal norms which have further developed 
 into a conception of, and communion with, the 
 Godhead. We have noticed further, how this 
 essence of religion was realised in the lives of 
 great personalities in history, as well as in the 
 religions which they helped to found. 
 
 Eucken does not hesitate to affirm that the 
 highest of these religions is the Christian 
 
 1 80 
 
CHRISTIANITY 181 
 
 religion. The core of the Christian religion 
 consists, as we have already noticed, in its 
 presentation of "a world-denial and world- 
 renewal " in a far higher degree than any of 
 the other religions, and also in the fact that it 
 presents the union of the human and the 
 Divine in a clearer light than before. We 
 have noticed, too, how the Indian religions 
 had to condemn the world in order to penetrate 
 to the very essence and bliss of religion. 
 Mohammedanism affirmed the world in too 
 strong a mariner, and its eternal world con- 
 stituted a kind of replica of the present 
 material world on an enlarged scale. The 
 Jewish religion evolved through a series of 
 stages which finally culminated in Christianity. 
 The Roman and the Greek religions presented 
 too many pluralistic aspects to be able ever to 
 reach the highest synthesis whereby the Many 
 found their meaning, interpretation, and value 
 in the One. 
 
 Although the Christian religion cannot be 
 designated as absolute religion, still it may be 
 designated as the highest and most perfect 
 manifestation of the Divine. The meaning of 
 the term " absolute religion " involves a con- 
 ception impossible to maintain, on account of 
 the fact that in all religions some spiritual truth 
 is discerned and realised. The term " absolute 
 religion " is also false on account of the fact 
 that no religion can contain the whole that is 
 to be revealed and experienced. Christianity 
 
182 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 is best valued when it is seen, not as a comple- 
 tion of the revelation of the Divine to man, 
 but as a revelation which has to be preserved, 
 deepened, and carried farther. In the soul of 
 the Founder of Christianity there was doubt- 
 less present far more than is expressed in the 
 Biblical records, and far more than actually 
 filtered into the individual and collective con- 
 sciousness of the earliest Christian communi- 
 ties. But we cannot live on what has occurred 
 in the life of any other individual or community 
 except in so far as this enters also into our own 
 individual and the collective consciousness. 
 We have already touched on this aspect of the 
 impossibility of obtaining sufficient strength 
 for the warfare of the present in anything that 
 occurred in the past. Some measure of strength 
 and no psychology is able to say how much 
 can be obtained from a vision of the spiritual 
 meaning and significance of the life of the 
 Founder. But there is very great danger in 
 looking here alone for the sole source of all 
 the help we need. The spiritual principles of 
 Christianity have been operating in the world 
 ever since the Master presented the Gospel 
 which he lived and died for. The problem of 
 Christianity is thus a twofold problem. On 
 the one hand, we have constantly to go back 
 to the Fountain-head, because it is here that 
 the stream is purest. But we have, on the 
 other hand, to enter into the religious current 
 which surrounds us ; and this may be not so 
 
CHRISTIANITY 183 
 
 pure as it was at its source. Alien waters 
 have entered into the current waters of very 
 different taste from those which even the 
 Founder expected. These have doubtless 
 polluted the stream. But, on the other hand, 
 good elements primary and secondary have 
 entered into the deepest nature of Chris- 
 tianity itself. These have to be taken into 
 account. They have been necessitated by the 
 new and ever more complex situations and 
 conditions into which Christianity has had to 
 enter from generation to generation. It was 
 comparatively easy for Christianity in its early 
 beginnings to include within its compass the 
 whole of life. But by to-day life has branched 
 off in so many new directions ; perplexing 
 problems of knowledge and life have made 
 their appearance. We dare not dismiss these 
 to a region outside the sphere of influence of 
 Christianity. Christianity, if it is to remain 
 and increase as a living force, has to interpret 
 these problems ; it has to help us to distinguish 
 between the chaff and the wheat. 
 
 What, then, is the true meaning of Chris- 
 tianity ? Eucken shows that it is not possible 
 to determine the nature of Christianity with- 
 out realising that the nucleus common to all 
 religions lies in the fact " that they manifest 
 and represent a Divine Life, and that such a 
 Life in its inmost foundation is superior to its 
 external configuration and activity, and is able 
 to withstand all the changes of time, and to 
 
184 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 maintain within itself, in spite of all its curtail- 
 ment through the human situation, an eternal 
 truth" This nucleus lies deeper in Christianity 
 than in any other religion. But even Chris- 
 tianity itself is not a pure spiritual nucleus. 
 Much, as we have already noticed, has gathered 
 around it much that reveals a lower grade 
 of spirituality. All this constitutes the cloth- 
 ing of Christianity. The clothing has been 
 changed again and again in the past. What 
 reason is there for affirming that it cannot be 
 changed again ? It is therefore necessary to 
 differentiate between the Substance of Christi- 
 anity and its Existential-form. The Substance 
 constitutes the fundamental Life superior to the 
 world, and has been present throughout the 
 whole of the Christian era ; and it is this Sub- 
 stance which has raised men beyond the merely 
 human situation ; it is the Substance that has 
 enabled men to overcome the world, and 
 afterwards to see the world from the stand- 
 point of the Divine. In this work of differ- 
 entiation we are dependent in a very large 
 measure upon the results of knowledge. Such 
 results do not grant us the Substance of Christi- 
 anity, because this is something which has to 
 be lived into in order to be possessed. The 
 transformation which occurs on account of a 
 change in the Existential-form may indeed 
 prove helpful to the spiritual nucleus itself, 
 because it represents a truth of the intellect 
 a truth which does not conflict with any 
 
CHRISTIANITY 185 
 
 knowledge outside its own sphere. There 
 are many dangers to be discovered in this 
 process of interpreting the spiritual nucleus. 
 A mode of interpretation whose meaning has 
 very largely passed away is bound to prove 
 injurious, because it comes into sharp conflict 
 with a newer and more comprehensive mean- 
 ing, and consequently Christianity fails to win 
 the support of those who are acquainted with 
 the new Existential-form. And even the 
 individual who retains the old clothing, and 
 looks upon it as being something of the same 
 nature as the spiritual nucleus, is in danger of 
 basing a portion of his religion on a foundation 
 of sand. But, on the other hand, he who is 
 aware of the flaws of the old Existential-form 
 without having assimilated the Spiritual Sub- 
 stance which lies beneath it, is in danger of 
 drifting from religion altogether. The only 
 way of serving best and carrying farther the 
 development of the Christian religion is to 
 grasp and experience deeply the fact that 
 the Spiritual Substance is something entirely 
 different from its form of existence. Its form 
 of existence is an attempt to account for the 
 Substance ; it consists of intellectual concepts. 
 And as with everything else in this world so 
 with religion ; mere intellectual concepts 
 change, and cannot be more than receptacles 
 used by the human mind to enshrine the things 
 which are presented as meanings and values 
 within the soul. 
 
186 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Eucken pays great attention to the necessity 
 of this process of differentiation between the 
 two elements in Christianity. There is a need 
 to-day of a new form of existence for Chris- 
 tianity ; but the satisfaction of this need will 
 not grant us the spiritual nucleus itself. The 
 spiritual nucleus is something to be gained 
 not by means of knowledge, but by means of 
 love. Eucken goes so far as to state that the 
 idea of love and love of one's enemy as pre- 
 sented in Christianity forms a new element for 
 the redemption of the individual and of the 
 race. To grasp this idea and to penetrate into 
 its nature is to solve all the problems of life 
 and death. This is the Eternal element in the 
 Christian religion. It is found, it is true, in 
 other religions ; but why should we look for it 
 elsewhere when it blossomed with such divine 
 glory in the life of the Founder ? This is the 
 highest spiritual synthesis conceivable. The 
 world has known nothing greater, and nothing 
 greater is to be known. This is the Eternal 
 element in Christianity which has to be pos- 
 sessed and preserved and furthered. If we 
 ask the question concerning the success or 
 failure of Christianity in the future, the answer 
 is to be found by answering the question, Is 
 Love to God and Love to man found within 
 it to-day ? If we are able to answer in the 
 affirmative, we are thereby answering the 
 question in regard to the future duration and 
 conquests of Christianity. And if it possesses 
 
CHRISTIANITY 187 
 
 this element deeply enough, it can adopt any 
 existential-form which appears true without 
 any kind of alarm. If we have to answer 
 in the negative, there is no guarantee as to 
 persistence of Christianity in the future. 
 Anything less than the spiritual nucleus of 
 Love is lacking in strength necessary to with- 
 stand the storms of the future. 
 
 We thus see that the essence of Christianity 
 and its durability do not lie in any kind of 
 theology : it lies within the Spiritual Substance 
 which has abode within it throughout the 
 centuries. Here will the world find its peace 
 and power ; here will all social complexities be 
 solved ; here will the meanings and blessings 
 of the spiritual over- world of goodness and love 
 become the possession of man. This is what 
 Eucken means by contending that it is not the 
 business of Christianity to deal with social 
 problems in any light but the light of Infinite 
 Love. Without an experience of this deepest 
 source of Christianity, we do not possess the 
 equipment for doing anything more than 
 patching and re-patching the evils of the world. 
 And all our patching, when but a small span 
 of time has passed away, will leave the situa- 
 tion just as it was, or probably worse. Every 
 solution will give birth to a new complexity ; 
 the world may be incessantly active in 
 connection with the betterment of the social 
 situation, but we shall never heal the wounds 
 of individuals and of nations until they are 
 
188 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 brought to the depth of the spiritual life 
 revealed in Christianity as Eternal Love. " A 
 warm love towards all humanity runs through 
 Christianity; it longs to redeem every in- 
 dividual ; it gives man a value beyond all 
 special achievements and on the other side of 
 all mental and moral deeds ; it has been the 
 first to bring the pure inwardness of the soul 
 to a clear expression. But it has also, through 
 the linking of the human to a Divine and 
 Eternal Order, raised life beyond all that is 
 trivial and merely human with its civic 
 ordinances and social interests. He who, with 
 the best intention, views Christianity as a mere 
 means for the betterment of the social situation, 
 draws it from the heights of its nature, and 
 deprives it of the main constituent of its 
 greatness the emancipation from the petty- 
 human within the depths of the human itself. 
 It is essentially the nature of Christianity 
 that it transplants man into a new world 
 over against the world that is nearest to our 
 hands ; it has planted the fundamental con- 
 viction of Platonism of the existence of an 
 Eternal Order over against the world of Time 
 amongst a great portion of the human race, 
 and has given a mighty impetus to all effort. 
 But it has, though it separated the Eternal 
 from Time, brought it back again into Time ; 
 and through the presence of the Eternal it has, 
 for the first time, proposed to mankind and to 
 each individual a fundamental inner renewal, 
 
CHRISTIANITY 189 
 
 and through this has inaugurated a genuine 
 history." 1 
 
 Acknowledging such a nucleus as constitut- 
 ing the very substance of Christianity, Eucken 
 proceeds to show the necessity of preserving 
 and unfolding the nucleus against the changes 
 of Time. The nucleus has to be preserved 
 over against Nature. It has been noticed in 
 previous chapters how modern science has pre- 
 sented us with a view of Nature immensely 
 vaster than that presented in Christian 
 theology. Such a view has destroyed for 
 ever a large number of the theological con- 
 ceptions of the past. The earth has been 
 reduced to a subsidiary place within the 
 cosmos ; and any attempt to return to the 
 old conceptions is bought at too high a price. 
 A new mode of thought in regard to the 
 interpretation of the physical universe has 
 come to stay, and the sooner the Christian 
 Church comes to an understanding with it 
 the better for the Church itself. And this 
 new mode may be gladly accepted, because 
 it cannot touch the nature and destiny of the 
 soul of man. We are not able to view the 
 perfect circle of things, but we are able to 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 545. It is on this fact that 
 Eucken builds his conception of immortality. Such a 
 conception is not a matter of speculation or of scientific 
 proof, but a matter of an experience born on the summit 
 of the evolution of spiritual life within the soul. It is 
 useless to attempt to press such an experience into a 
 conceptual mould. 
 
190 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 trace a segment of it in the fact of the 
 unmistakably cosmic character of the spiritual 
 life. The progressive intensifying of the Life- 
 process has made the fact abundantly clear 
 that Nature is not the final reality it was 
 supposed to be by the scientific mode of the 
 past, but that it signifies no more than a 
 "human vista of reality." And, as we have 
 already observed in connection with the 
 Theory of Knowledge, the nature of that 
 " vista " is determined by a mental process 
 and a construction beyond Nature. Nature 
 appears as no more than an environment when 
 once the power of Eternal Life has appeared 
 within the soul. An insistence on this power 
 and its capacity has raised man to a level from 
 which he recognises the "priority of spirit" 
 in spite of all the " palpableness of sensuous 
 impressions." Man thus appears great as 
 against Nature; but there is more than 
 enough to make him humble when he views 
 himself in the light of that truth which 
 constitutes the Spiritual and Eternal Sub- 
 stance of Christianity. 
 
 Not only do we find the two different 
 elements present in the Christianity of our 
 day ; they are also apparent in the presenta- 
 tion of Christianity found within the Gospels 
 themselves. The miraculous elements in the 
 Gospels exhibit a number of contradictions ; 
 and an even more serious objection to them 
 is the fact that they come into direct conflict 
 
CHRISTIANITY 191 
 
 with the scientific interpretation of Nature. 
 As Eucken says : " To place a miracle in that 
 one situation would mean an overthrow of the 
 total order of Nature, as this order has been 
 set forth through the fundamental work of 
 modern investigation and through an incalcul- 
 able fulness of experiences. What would 
 justify such a breach with the total mode 
 of reality ought to appear to us with over- 
 whelming, indisputable clearness. Has the 
 traditional fact this degree of certainty, and 
 cannot it be explained in any other way ? 
 Who is able to assert this with entire assur- 
 ance ? If the superiority of the Divine was, 
 on this particular occasion, to be proclaimed 
 in a tangible manner, why did all this happen 
 for a small circle of believers alone, and why 
 did it not happen to others? There seems, 
 however, to have been necessary a certain state 
 of the souls of the disciples to make them see 
 what they thought they saw ; but in all this 
 there is found a psychic and subjective factor 
 in operation a factor whose potency is very 
 difficult to define and to mark its boundaries. 
 It would have been a fact of a wonderful 
 nature if the souls of the disciples, from within, 
 became suddenly and without intermediary 
 convinced of the continuation of the life and 
 the presence of the Master : all this would 
 have been no sensuous miracle no break in 
 the course of Nature. But we have to bear in 
 mind how times of strong religious agitation and 
 
192 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 convulsion are so little qualified to judge con- 
 cerning external phenomena, and how easily a 
 psychic state solidifies into a supposed percept ! 
 Within and without Christianity there are 
 numerous examples of the sensuous appearance 
 of a dead person being considered to be fully 
 authenticated by the narrower circle of friends. 
 Savonarola appeared more than a hundred times 
 after his death, but always to those whose hearts 
 clung to him ; and to fifteen nuns of the con- 
 vent of St Lucia he gave the consecrated wafer 
 through the opening in their grille" 1 
 
 Eucken shows that an inability to accept the 
 miraculous element in the Gospels need not 
 prevent anyone from being the possessor of the 
 Spiritual Substance. The spiritual content of 
 Christianity is a content which lies beyond the 
 region of physical phenomena, whether those 
 phenomena are natural or are supposed to be 
 supernatural. Christianity is dragged down 
 to a lower level by confusing its mode of 
 existence with its spiritual kernel. Religion 
 is able to subsist without such aids simply 
 because it has discovered the true wonder 
 within the spiritual life itself. We do not 
 know what future investigations may reveal 
 from the scientific side. It may be that 
 Nature will appear more and more mechanical 
 in many of its manifestations ; but even if 
 this should prove to be the case, it can 
 produce no injury whatever to the nature 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 550, 551. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 193 
 
 and content of spiritual life. It may be, on 
 the other hand, that the scientific movement 
 now proceeding in the direction of neo- 
 Vitalism will produce results which will 
 modify arid even overthrow the mechanical 
 conceptions of life, and thus enable the future 
 to construct a Metaphysic of Nature. 1 The 
 battle between these two schools of science is 
 proceeding to-day. But even if the final issue 
 should be a decision in favour of mechanism, 
 the destiny of Christianity or of the human 
 soul does not depend upon such a decision. 
 If the issue should turn in favour of the 
 vitalistic conception, great gains are bound to 
 accrue to religion ; for thus a warrant for a 
 belief in a reality higher in nature than what is 
 termed physical will be established and shown 
 to be at work in the origin and constant 
 " becoming " of physical phenomena. The 
 main point for us to-day is to hold fast to the 
 superiority of spiritual life to all that we know 
 concerning the physical universe. Unless this 
 is done, we shall lose the deeper inward con- 
 nections of life, and shall be in danger of 
 sinking back to the level of naturalism a 
 level from which the culture and religion of 
 the Western world have partially emerged. 
 Further, the spiritual nucleus of Christianity 
 
 1 Driesch is attempting the construction of such a 
 Metaphysic of Nature, and a similar attempt is to be 
 discovered in Bergson's philosophy, especially in its later 
 developments. 
 
194 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 must be preserved over against the changes of 
 history. Changes in human society threaten 
 Christianity more directly than even the 
 changes of Nature. These changes, in so far 
 as they are judged by a spiritual standard to 
 be good, can be accepted by Christianity, but 
 only on the presupposition that Christianity 
 has learned how to differentiate between its 
 Eternal Substance and its temporal form of 
 existence. The mere flow of the events of 
 Time is insufficient to produce a religion of 
 substance and duration, for here we are 
 dependent upon the content of the moment. 
 This aspect has been already dealt with in 
 the chapter on Religion and History. 1 A 
 similar necessity for differentiating between 
 the Eternal and the temporary which Eucken 
 enforced in regard to Christianity applies in 
 his view to all the movements of the world. 
 Whatever form -- scientific, philosophical, 
 social, theological these movements may 
 take, they have all to find their meaning in 
 a Standard which is Eternal. Whenever such 
 a Standard has been recognised, mankind was 
 able to move in an upward direction ; when- 
 ever it was absent, the complexities of know- 
 ledge and life increased and had no light to 
 reflect upon themselves, and no power to 
 
 1 Troeltsch has also emphasised this truth in his Absolutkeit 
 des Christentumsund die Religions geschichte and in his Bedeutung 
 der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu fur den Glauben. These two small 
 volumes are of great value. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 195 
 
 raise themselves to a higher plane. When 
 the Eternal and Substantial is present at the 
 governing centre of life, all of reality that 
 can possibly present itself to man is viewed 
 in an entirely different light. Great spiritual 
 movements cannot possibly arise from any 
 shallower source. There must be present in 
 all such movements a consciousness of some- 
 thing of Eternal value, and a faith in the 
 possibility of attaining a higher grade of reality 
 in the midst of all the fragmentary factors 
 which present themselves. Religion is thus 
 viewed as a movement which takes place not 
 by the side of life, but within life itself. A 
 power of immediacy grows within the soul ; it 
 is now able to sift and winnow, to select and to 
 reject ; it is able to penetrate into the difference 
 between first and second things, and to rele- 
 gate all minor things to their lower sphere. 1 
 
 It is of no avail to ignore this difference ; 
 and neither is it of any avail to ignore the 
 difference between the old and the new 
 existence-forms of Christianity. The old and 
 the new conceptions cannot possibly flow 
 together. One mode has to take a primary 
 place, and the other a secondary place. The 
 old intellectual presentation of Christianity 
 has, in many ways, become inadequate. But 
 
 1 Cf. Kbnnen nrir nock Christen sein ? pp. 150 to 210 ; Das 
 Wesen der Religion ; Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 332 ff. ; 
 Christianity and the New Idealism, chapter iv. ; The Truth 
 of Religion, pp. 539 to 6l6. 
 
196 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 still it cannot be thrown overboard in any 
 light-hearted manner, if for no other reason 
 than that it has grown along with the growth 
 of the Spiritual Substance itself. Some kind 
 of shock, and even loss, may be temporarily 
 experienced in parting with it ; but this is a 
 process that has to be passed through ; and 
 once it is passed through, the new clothing 
 of Christianity cannot but help man to see a 
 richer meaning in the Eternal. It may not 
 fit quite so compactly for a time ; it may not 
 merge easily with the Spiritual Substance. 
 We are far less comfortable in a new suit of 
 clothes than in an old one ; but comfort is 
 not the only criterion in regard to the things 
 of the body or of the soul. There may be 
 a need for a change, and our needs are of 
 more significance than our comforts. The 
 change from old to new can be accomplished 
 when the difference of Substance and Form 
 is clearly perceived, and when the Substance 
 is preserved in the midst of the change. This 
 is one of the greatest tasks set to the Christian 
 Church to-day, and no one is competent to 
 undertake it if he has not experienced in the 
 very depth of his own soul the meaning of the 
 Eternal as the essence of the Christian religion. 
 Eucken has grasped this truth in an un- 
 mistakable manner ; and he sees nothing but 
 disaster for religion in any attempt to present 
 a new clothing at the expense of ejecting the 
 Eternal kernel. But still he insists that in 
 
CHRISTIANITY 197 
 
 theology the claims of the new forms are 
 overwhelmingly necessary and just. 
 
 When we turn to Eucken's conception in 
 connection with the place of the personality of 
 the Founder in the Christianity of the present, 
 we are treading on very difficult ground. This 
 is a question which cannot be decided by the 
 cold, calculating intellect. Without a doubt, 
 there is here something unique in the history 
 of the world something which no psychology 
 can fathom and no logic can construct into 
 exact propositions. But here once again, the 
 two elements the Spiritual Substance and 
 its Form are apparent in the life of the 
 Founder, and in our conceptions concerning 
 his life and death. But we need not fear that 
 any real loss will accrue if we hold fast to 
 the indisputable fact of the presence of a 
 divinity within his life a divinity which has 
 to be repeated on a smaller scale in our own 
 lives before we are ever able to have even a 
 glimmer of it. It is out of such a spiritual 
 experience that the life of the Master can gain 
 its real value and significance for us. But 
 in the past there has been a tendency to see 
 a good deal of this significance in theological 
 constructions which have now ceased to con- 
 tain any genuine meaning. At the best these 
 constructions could never mean more than the 
 best intellectual presentations of good men. 
 Something besides them deeper than them 
 all had to appear before any soul could be 
 
198 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 converted to the things of Eternal Life. 
 Here Eucken shows that metaphysical con- 
 cepts such as the Trinity have tended to 
 become purely anthropomorphic and mytho- 
 logical, probably necessary at a certain level 
 of religion, but which have now been super- 
 seded by truer conceptions of life and exist- 
 ence. There is no longer any meaning in 
 asking whether the Founder was a "mere 
 man " or a God. He was an intermediate 
 reality between the two. To measure the 
 depth and content of his soul is a presumption 
 of shallow minds ; to determine in a speculative 
 manner the exact nature of his divinity, and 
 to formulate imposing doctrines out of all this 
 is quite as presumptuous. It is sufficient for 
 us to know that he overcame the world, that 
 the Godhead dwelt in a form of immediacy 
 within his soul. All this is an experimental 
 proof of the working of the Divine upon the 
 plane of Time. But such Divine breaks in 
 pieces if it is subjected to exact determina- 
 tions. Some account of it we must have : 
 the understanding demands this ; but that 
 account must include what the best light of 
 knowledge has to throw on the subject. But 
 when all is said, something infinitely greater 
 remains unsaid, and yet to be experienced 
 something that requires the soul to exert itself 
 in order to experience what all this means. 
 When face to face with the meaning and value 
 of the life and death and spiritual resurrection 
 
CHRISTIANITY 199 
 
 of the Founder of our Christianity, we are 
 face to face with an eternal reality revealed 
 within the soul of the "son of man." At 
 such a depth of our nature, the petty questions 
 concerning how much or how little was present 
 disappear into the background of life, and we 
 are able through such a vision to pass to the 
 Father. When emphasis is laid on such a 
 fact as this, Christianity will again become a 
 religion of the spirit a religion which will 
 unite all mankind at a point of unity beneath 
 all close intellectual determinations and differ- 
 ences. And Eucken points out that it is not 
 in the life of Jesus alone that we can obtain 
 such a vision. But we do not gain the vision 
 by merely saying this. If we know of any 
 other character who was so much and who did 
 so much, probably we shall obtain there what 
 we need. But in the Western world at least 
 we do not know any such character ; the 
 essence of his life and personality has been 
 always connected with the conception of God. 
 But this is not the sole conception and, as 
 Eucken says, we cannot bind ourselves entirely 
 to this one point in Christianity. The narrow 
 paths which lead to religion are many ; we 
 have to draw help from all quarters where the 
 Divine has been revealed. But the danger 
 lies in merely knowing so many such paths 
 while walking on none of them. The person- 
 ality of Jesus will remain in Christianity, and 
 the world in its darkness will turn again and 
 
200 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 again to that palpable proof of the Divine 
 seen on such a summit, and endeavour to scale 
 the same everlasting hill of God. " 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 short blossoming life, 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 exist- 
 ence to its very root ; it has made inadequate 
 what hitherto seemed to bring entire happi- 
 ness ; it has set limits to all petty natural 
 culture ; it has stamped as frivolity, not only 
 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 when all the dogmas and 
 usages of the Church are detected as merely 
 human organisations. That life of Jesus estab- 
 lishes evermore a tribunal over the world ; 
 and the majesty of such an effective bar of 
 judgment supersedes all the development of 
 external power." 1 
 
 We may bring this chapter to a close by 
 once more pointing out Eucken's insistence on 
 the Spiritual Substance of Christianity and the 
 need of a new Existential-form. The Sub- 
 stance was present in the life of the Founder ; 
 mankind has to turn to that fact for one of 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 360. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 201 
 
 the experimental proofs of the Divine. But 
 such a fact is not sufficient. It is something 
 which happened in someone else, and not in 
 ourselves. The fact is to serve as an inspira- 
 tion that something similar shall and can 
 happen in ourselves. When this is realised, we 
 become conscious of the power of the Divine 
 within the soul ; and the problems of our own 
 day are seen and interpreted in the same spirit 
 as that in which Jesus faced and interpreted 
 the problems of his day. Such a spiritual 
 experience will become a power to use all the 
 good of life, and thus sanctify it in the very 
 using of it. The over-personal norms and 
 standards have now become our own posses- 
 sion ; they enable us to see the world as it 
 ought to be seen and to work for the realisa- 
 tion of the vision ; and the norms mean even 
 more than this, for we have already seen that 
 they point to something beyond themselves 
 and yet continuous with themselves. They 
 point to Infinite Love as the very essence 
 of the Godhead. The reality of the over- 
 individual norms and the conception of the 
 Divine as Infinite Love thus induce in us 
 a conviction of the possibility of an evolu- 
 tion of the spirit and of a reality beyond 
 sense and time. The Eternal thus enters 
 into Time and overcomes Time. This is 
 Eucken's final conclusion in regard to the 
 Christian religion and the destiny of man. 
 But all this has to be experienced before it 
 
202 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 can be realised. " The task to-day is to work 
 energetically, to labour with a free mind and 
 a joyful courage, so that the Eternal may not 
 lose its efficient power by our rigid clinging 
 to temporal and antiquated forms, so that 
 what we have recognised as human may not 
 bar the way to the Divine as that Divine is 
 revealed in our own day. The conditions of 
 the present time afford the strongest motives 
 for such work. For once again, in spite of 
 all the contradictions which appear on the 
 surface of things, the religious problem rises 
 up mightily from the depth of life ; from day 
 to day it moves minds more and more ; it 
 induces endeavour and kindles the spirit of 
 man. It becomes ever plainer to all who are 
 willing to see that mere secular culture is 
 empty and vain, and is powerless to grant 
 life any real content or fill it with genuine 
 love. Man and humanity are pressed ever 
 more forcibly forward into a struggle for the 
 meaning of life and the deliverance of the 
 spiritual self. But the great tasks must be 
 handled with a greatness of spirit, and such 
 a spirit demands freedom freedom in the 
 service of truth and truthfulness. Let us 
 therefore work together, let us work unceas- 
 ingly with all our strength as long as the day 
 lasts, in the conviction that 'he who wishes 
 to cling to the Old that ages not must leave 
 behind him the old that ages ' (Runeberg), 
 and that an Eternal of the real kind cannot 
 
CHRISTIANITY 203 
 
 be lost in the flux of Time, because it over- 
 comes Time by entering into it." 1 
 
 Eucken is aware of the various Life-systems 
 which present themselves on every side as all- 
 inclusive. But he sees no hope for a real 
 spiritual education of mankind until every 
 Life-system shall seek for a depth beyond the 
 natural man and all his wants. And such a 
 movement is visible amongst us to-day. It 
 needs to be possessed and proclaimed. The 
 redemption of the world depends upon its 
 success. The Christian religion is such a 
 Gospel. " But a movement towards a more 
 essential and soul-stirring culture to a pro- 
 gressive 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 not able to find 
 its bearings within this deep or to gather its 
 treasures into a Whole unless it realises how 
 many acute opposites it carries within itself. 
 Life will either 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 thorough transformation of our 
 first and shallow view of the universe as well 
 as the inauguration of a new reality. 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 
 
 1 Das Wesen der Religion, S. 16. 
 
204 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 'nature kindles within him a light' (Schopen- 
 hauer) ; he who is a mere speck on the face of 
 a boundless expanse can yet aspire to a par- 
 ticipation 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 constructs 
 at the same time a new world within the 
 spiritual life over against it all ; he who finds 
 himself confined 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 
 religion. Through and beyond all the parti- 
 cular problems of life and the world, it be- 
 hoves us to raise the spiritual life to a level 
 of full independence, to make it simultaneously 
 superior to man as an individual and to bring 
 it back into his soul. When this comes to be 
 there is at the same time a transformation of 
 his inmost being, and for the first time he 
 becomes capable of genuine greatness. . . . 
 These final conclusions strengthen the aspira- 
 tion after a religion of the spiritual life. . . . 
 Such a religion is in no way new, and Christi- 
 anity has proclaimed it and clung to it from the 
 very beginning. But it has been interwoven 
 with traditional forms which are now seen 
 through by so many as pictorial ideas of 
 epochs and times. Earlier times could allow 
 the Essence and the Form to coalesce without 
 discovering any incongruity in this. But the 
 
CHRISTIANITY 205 
 
 time for doing 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 in- 
 dependent development of the Spiritual and 
 Divine, and, along with this, the truth of 
 religion, do not succeed in reaching their full 
 effects if religion is looked upon as merely 
 something to protect individuals, instead of 
 as that which furthers the whole of humanity 
 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 small in the meantime is the 
 number of those who grasp it in a deep and 
 free sense, and who yet are determined to 
 penetrate victoriously into it, so that the inner 
 necessities of the spiritual life may awaken 
 within the soul of man. Whatever new tasks 
 and difficulties lie in the lap of the future, to- 
 day it behoves us before all else to proceed a 
 step upward in the direction of the summits 
 and to draw new energies and depths of the 
 spiritual life into the domain of man ; for this 
 kind of work will prevent the coming of an 
 * old age ' upon humanity and will breathe into 
 its soul the gift of Eternal Youth." 1 
 
 1 The closing sections of The Truth of Religion. A 
 similar aspect is presented in the final chapter of Konnen 
 tvir noch Christen sein ? 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 PRESENT-DAY ASPECTS OF PHILOSOPHY 
 AND RELIGION 
 
 IN this chapter some of the most important 
 problems of the present day will be touched 
 upon in the light of Eucken's Philosophy 
 of Religion. Reference has already been 
 made to Eucken's account of the limitations 
 of various Life-systems, of their struggle 
 with one another, and of the necessity for a 
 religious synthesis which will include their 
 most important results within itself. 1 The 
 answer as to the possibility and necessity 
 of such a synthesis constitutes the kernel of 
 Eucken's Philosophy of Religion. He has suc- 
 ceeded in a remarkable manner in assessing the 
 results of science, philosophy, sociology, art, 
 and religion. In them all he has discovered 
 the presence of a reality which is non- 
 sensuous in its nature, and which reveals itself 
 
 1 Cf. J. S. Mackenzie's Outlines of Metaphysics on the 
 various constructions of the Universe and of Life. The 
 whole volume is of the greatest value. Cf. also A. E. 
 Taylor's illuminating volume, Elements of Metaphysics. 
 
 206 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 207 
 
 in judgments of value that carry within 
 themselves their own necessity and self-sub- 
 sistence. This is his conclusion in regard to 
 the work of the spirit of man on whatever 
 plane of knowledge or experience that spirit 
 works. Man's spirit has to carry all its know- 
 ledge and experience into its own conative 
 spiritual potencies. We thus see that every- 
 thing becomes an aid to the unfolding of an 
 ever greater degree of reality within the spirit 
 of man. It is then within the spirit of man 
 that everything finds its interpretation and 
 value. Whatever interpretation is given to 
 anything apart from the union of the whole 
 potency and cognition of man's spirit is only 
 a partial interpretation. And it is in the 
 failure to recognise this truth that so many 
 Life-systems have set themselves against the 
 higher aspects of philosophy and religion. 
 The most important question has not been 
 asked : What is the relation and value of all 
 results in connection with the deepest potency 
 and necessity of man's spirit ? Are these results 
 capable of enriching that spirit of man when 
 he becomes conscious of them ? These are 
 the questions which Eucken continually asks 
 and answers in his great works ; and it is this 
 fact which makes his teaching so valuable 
 and superior to all the Life-systems of our 
 day. It is difficult to think of any aspect 
 of experience which Eucken has left out of 
 account. He has not, indeed, interpreted 
 
208 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in detail all the Life-systems in vogue, and 
 no human being is capable of achieving such 
 a task ; but he has clearly perceived the flaws 
 which lie in them all. And this discovery of 
 his has revealed a flaw common to them all. 
 That flaw consists in ignoring the presence 
 of a spiritual life as the great workshop where 
 every form of reality finds its truest meaning. 
 This flaw is so serious in that several Life- 
 systems have thus over-estimated the import- 
 ance of their results by neglecting to take 
 into account the potentialities and necessities 
 of man's spirit. Let us, then, try to trace 
 this defect in connection with some of the 
 most important Life-systems in vogue to-day. 
 When the various systems of Idealism are 
 estimated, they seem to present aspects of 
 reality with vast portions of human potencies 
 and experiences left out of account. Absolute 
 Idealism is based upon the demands and im- 
 plications of logic. Its doctrines would have 
 taken a very different colouring had it con- 
 sidered that the necessities of Logic have to 
 be adjusted to the necessities of Life. Such 
 systems are of little value to the soul, because 
 the needs of the soul were not taken into 
 account when they were formulated. This 
 fact was the main cause of the late Professor 
 James's rebellion against all forms of Absolute 
 Idealism. He felt that they bore no relation- 
 ship to human life and its needs, and con- 
 sequently could not exercise any important 
 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 209 
 
 influence on life; they could not move the 
 will, for no possibility of reaching the Absolute 
 was offered to man. All the conclusions were 
 in the realm of an intellectual universal and not 
 in the realm of spirit. They must be unreal in 
 the highest sense on account of this very failure. 
 They have presented their half-gods as realities 
 outside Nature, human nature, the pressing 
 ideals of life, and even God Himself. 
 
 Eucken shows that any true Life-system 
 has to start with Life itself. There may be 
 interpretations needful which have no impli- 
 cations for Life, and these have a right of their 
 own ; but when such interpretations are carried 
 further, when the subject who knows such 
 interpretations and who uses them is taken 
 into account, then the interpretations found 
 on this level are something quite different 
 from what they were when the whole spirit of 
 man was not taken into account. Eucken 
 consequently comes to the conclusion that 
 philosophy has not completely fulfilled its 
 vocation until it has become a philosophy of 
 Life until the truest meaning of every object 
 is discovered in its relation to all the necessities 
 of the spirit. And it is here that his teaching 
 comes into conflict with so much that goes 
 by the name of Idealism. How can any 
 system be more than a half-truth when its 
 final meaning is presented with but little atten- 
 tion to the highest aspect we know in the world 
 to human life in its struggles and conquests, 
 
 14 
 
210 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in its living and loving, and its forward move- 
 ment towards some distant goal ? The special 
 value of Eucken's teaching lies, then, in the fact 
 that it interprets what happens, can happen, and 
 ought to happen within life itself. No system 
 which leaves out the soul with its possibilities 
 is complete. This has been done too often in 
 the past, and is being done to-day. Is it, then, 
 a wonder that philosophy has given so very 
 little help to Life in its complex problems 
 without and its sharp opposites and contradic- 
 tions within ? Life is more and needs more 
 than a philosophy of words, devoid of power, 
 can offer it. Life, when at its best, believes 
 in the all-power of its own spiritual potency ; 
 it has faith in the possibility of ascent from 
 height to height, as well as in the possibility of 
 an incessant progress not only of individuals 
 but of the whole of mankind. 1 A System 
 stands or falls according as it is able to con- 
 ceive of Life in such a manner. And Eucken 
 has done this as probably no other living 
 philosopher has done it. 
 
 If we turn to Immanent Idealism, we 
 discover the same failure. It emphasises 
 the presence within consciousness of what is 
 idealistic and noble, but it leaves out the 
 objective and imperative character of what 
 is present. It also forgets that the pos- 
 session of ideals as ideas is only the initial 
 stage of such ideals becoming a very portion 
 
 1 Cf. Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, S. 98 ff. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 211 
 
 of the deepest substance of soul itself. We 
 may deceive ourselves even with the contem- 
 plation of the best ideals ; they can never 
 become truly ours until the will is set in 
 motion and the whole nature is stirred to its 
 depths in order to press forward to what it 
 perceives as having infinite value. Something 
 has inevitably to happen within the depth 
 of the soul before its real creation can advance. 
 Eucken here, again, has perceived this truth 
 and presents it everywhere with great power. 
 His Philosophy is an Activism of the most 
 powerful type. He is aware that to know and 
 to be are so far apart. But his Activism is 
 not a mere movement of the individual's will, 
 brought forth by anything that has grown 
 within it as a private inheritance. The Activ- 
 ism is started and kept going on its course by 
 the over-personal norms and values already 
 referred to. It is the union of norm and will 
 that constitutes the full action. Life's greater 
 meaning and value is, therefore, not a ready- 
 made possession ; it is rather something already 
 possessed, and a vision of something more in 
 the distance to be possessed. 1 The presence 
 of the Divine within the soul is not the same 
 prior to the search and after the search. This is 
 
 1 Cf. Wicksteed's remarkable address The Religion of 
 Time and the Religion of Eternity, already referred to. There 
 are some striking similarities between Eucken and Wick- 
 steed, who have, however, worked each quite independ- 
 ently of one another. 
 
EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 one of the most distinctive features of Eucken's 
 teaching, and constitutes a necessary supple- 
 ment to certain presentations of Immanent 
 Idealism prevalent in various forms to-day. 
 
 When we pass to Materialism in its various 
 forms, we find Eucken conscious of its poverty 
 and its caricature of life. It is caused by ex- 
 cessive absorption in the sensuous object with 
 all its manifold relations. But it is possible 
 to believe in all that it states ; for it can never 
 really say anything concerning the deeper mean- 
 ing of spiritual life if for no other reason than 
 that it cannot penetrate into life's deeper ex- 
 periences. It is a stage in human thought 
 which is passing away. What will become of 
 it after Professor HaeckeFs passing is difficult 
 to imagine. One thing at least is certain : as 
 a complete system of the universe or of life it 
 is doomed. 1 A mechanical interpretation of the 
 universe is legitimate : we may have to adopt 
 more of such interpretations in the future. But 
 there is no need for any alarm from the sides 
 of philosophy and religion. Their citadel is 
 not built upon a thing, but upon a thought ; 
 and the gap between the two increases in the 
 degree in which our knowledge of Nature and 
 Man increases. Eucken has many great things 
 to say on this subject in his larger works. 
 Doubtless he would agree with some of the 
 
 1 Men of science themselves feel this, and are conscious 
 of the one-sidedness of the results of the scientific side 
 of materialism. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 213 
 
 advocates of Naturalism in regard to the mean- 
 ing of the physical universe, but such agreement 
 would not be an admission that all had been 
 said that could be said concerning the need and 
 the possibility of a Metaphysic of Life. 
 
 The one word More constitutes all the differ- 
 ence. This Mo?*e 9 with Eucken, is the begin- 
 ning of a new order of existence and of value 
 where the physical order ends. His work con- 
 sists in interpreting this More, and we have 
 already seen whither the More leads us : it 
 leads us into spiritual norms and their values, 
 and these in their turn led us into Infinite 
 Love in the Godhead. The failure to see the 
 value of all this is due to the inattention of 
 the advocates of Naturalism in regard to the 
 non-sensuous structure of mind : the Thing 
 and its relations monopolise them so com- 
 pletely that they are blind to every reality 
 non-sensuous in its nature, although they 
 possess some amount of such reality in their 
 very knowledge and adoration of the Thing. 
 Our troubles will continue to accumulate, and 
 che prospect of the future will grow extremely 
 dark, if the grip which physical things have on 
 the world to-day be not relaxed. The very 
 physical powers which we have helped to create, 
 and which hitherto have proved of service to 
 men, will mean our destruction unless some- 
 thing of the More which is beyond them be 
 found as a possession and an activity within 
 the governing centre of life. This is Eucken's 
 
BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 plea over against the various forms of the 
 Naturalism and Materalism of our day. These 
 are not enough for man. But man is so slow 
 in recognising this fact. The appeal of Spiritual 
 Idealism is considered to be something which 
 is vague and useless. Our deepest reality and 
 the source of all true energy have been robbed 
 of their efficacy by our absorption in scraping 
 together physical elements of chaff and dust. 
 How often does Eucken show our dire poverty 
 in the midst of all this external plenty ! The 
 all-sufficiency of all forms of Naturalism con- 
 demns itself through its failure to pass beyond 
 itself. Had there not been some who did pass 
 beyond the Thing and its relations the spiritual 
 values of the race would have been annihilated. 
 " As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere 
 awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover 
 our deplorable poverty, and must confess that 
 what is termed certain seems on clearer in- 
 vestigation to rest upon a totally insecure 
 foundation." 1 " It is not natural science itself 
 which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no 
 natural science could arise if reality exhausted 
 itself in the measurements of naturalism ; but 
 it is rather the weakness of the conviction of 
 the spiritual life ; it is the failure of certitude 
 in regard to the presence of a spiritual exist- 
 ence ; it is the unclearness concerning the 
 inner conditions of all mental and spiritual 
 activity which a shallow and popular philo- 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 103. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 215 
 
 sophy presents it is all this which turns 
 natural science into a materialistic natural- 
 ism." 1 The strength of materialistic monism 
 does not lie in any proof of there being 
 nothing but mechanism in this wide universe, 
 but in its energetic propaganda against certain 
 traditional theological forms of ecclesiastical 
 religion forms which are rapidly being dis- 
 owned by the leaders of religious thought. 
 Even monism concedes that " it is better 
 being good than bad, better being sane than 
 mad." This concession, and the attempt to 
 live according to it, constitute a proof of the 
 presence in some form of a non-sensuous 
 reality and value in the constructions of 
 materialistic monism itself. Hence, Eucken's 
 conception of spiritual life cannot be got rid 
 of after all. It will remain so long as men 
 live above the animal level and strive to ascend 
 to something higher still. 
 
 When the neo-Kantian movement is 
 examined, we find that its long and honour- 
 able history presents us with gains which 
 cannot be measured. But we have already 
 noticed that in so far as this movement has 
 specialised within the domain of the connec- 
 tions of mind and body, and has attempted to 
 reduce psychology to the limits of the relations 
 between the two, it is largely outside the inner 
 meaning and value of the life of consciousness. 
 
 1 Die Lebensanschaiiungen der grossen Denker, 9te Auflage, 
 1911, S. 504. 
 
216 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Its work has proved useful in many important 
 respects. It has made man realise that the 
 connection of body and mind is not so simple 
 a matter as materialistic naturalism would 
 lead us to suppose ; and it has shown, on the 
 whole, the impossibility of reducing conscious- 
 ness to mechanical elements. Even in the 
 various forms of psycho-physical parallelism 
 the factor of mind and meaning stands apart 
 in its origin from the factors of bodily move- 
 ment. But neo- Kantianism has developed on 
 higher lines than those of physiological 
 psychology. It has dealt with the presence 
 of an inner world of thought a world of 
 values and judgments of values, of norms, 
 imperatives, and ideals realities which are 
 not presented in any scheme of natural science. 
 It is impossible to read such a great book as 
 the late Professor Otto Liebmann's Analysis 
 der Wirklichkeit^ without discovering this 
 truth. In this great work, as well as in his 
 Gedanken und Thatsacken, Liebmann shows 
 how man is more than a natural product. 
 
 1 Liebmann passed away in January 1912. He had 
 been Eucken's colleague in Jena for many years. Windel- 
 band designates him as <( the truest of Kantians and the 
 Nestor of Philosophy." Cf. my article on his life and work 
 in the Nation for February 3, 1912. The best presentation 
 in England of the Kantian philosophy and its development 
 is to be found in Caird's Critical Philosophy oj Kant and 
 Adamson's Development of Modern Philosophy. Cf. also G. 
 Dawes Hicks' s valuable articles in the Proceedings of the 
 Aristotelian Society during the past ten years. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 217 
 
 " Natural science," he tells us, " is a very 
 useful, and, indeed, an indispensable hand- 
 maid to philosophy, but it is in no manner 
 the first, the deepest, the most original basis 
 of philosophy." Liebmann's successors, 
 especially Windelband, Rickert, Miinsterberg, 
 Adickes, and Vaihinger, work on similar lines. 
 And there is a great deal in Eucken's teaching 
 which tends in the same direction. But he 
 goes a step further than all the neo-Kantians. 
 We have already noticed how he gives 
 judgments of value and spiritual norms a 
 cosmic significance. He finds that when 
 these norms and values have awakened with 
 great clearness within man's spirit they in- 
 evitably lead to the conception of the God- 
 head. And it is in this work that Eucken's 
 Metaphysic of Life becomes a religious meta- 
 physic. As values and norms mean so much 
 when a reality is granted them by the truest 
 of the neo-Kantians, they come to mean 
 infinitely more when they are acknowledged 
 as somehow constituting the foundation and 
 the acme of all existence. Eucken's main 
 desire is to establish such norms and values 
 beyond the possibility of dispute and beyond 
 the constant changes of Life-systems. They 
 mean for him what is present within their 
 spiritual content as a realisation as w r ell as the 
 More to which they still point. His teaching 
 is not contradicted by anything in the neo- 
 
 1 Analysis der Wirklichkeit, 3te Auflage, 1900, S. vii. 
 
218 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Kantian movement ; he accepts its trans- 
 cendental reality and lifts it out of the realm 
 of individuality and of history into a cosmic 
 realm. After having followed the implica- 
 tions of the neo- Kantian movement so far, he 
 feels compelled to take the next step. For 
 unless that next step is taken, some of the 
 deepest potencies of human nature fail to 
 come to flower and fruit. When the step is 
 taken, they do blossom and bear fruit. Is not 
 this a sufficient justification for taking the 
 " next step " ? It is ; for man cannot allow 
 any potency of his being to remain dormant 
 without suffering a loss ; and on this highest 
 level of all the loss must be incalculable. 
 " Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our 
 heart will never find its rest until it rests on 
 Thee." That confession of Augustine is 
 Eucken's confession also ; and it is the impli- 
 cation which such a confession contains that 
 constitutes the significance of his message to 
 the world. He is in the line not only of the 
 philosophers but of the prophets and the 
 mystics. The ladder of knowledge reaches, 
 like Jacob's ladder, up to heaven itself to 
 that pure atmosphere where knowledge, 
 merged in a deeper reality, becomes some- 
 thing so different from what it was before. 
 An eternal blessedness has now become the 
 possession of man. 
 
 Eucken has a great deal to say regarding 
 the Historical Life-systems of the present day. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 219 
 
 He is aware that the neglect by German 
 thinkers of the fundamental importance of 
 Hegel's teaching on this question has meant 
 a heavy loss. That loss is already perceived, 
 and Hegel's value in the realm of the Philo- 
 sophy of History is being rediscovered. Men 
 are more and more feeling the necessity of 
 conceding a validity and objectivity to the 
 concepts of History. The work of the late 
 Professor Dilthey l in this respect is of great 
 importance, and has strong affinities with 
 Eucken's teaching on the same subject. But 
 Dilthey's objectivity and validity stopped short 
 of religion in the sense in which religion is pre- 
 sented by Eucken. Dilthey gave the norms of 
 History a transcendental objectivity and con- 
 sidered them sufficient for man. But Eucken, 
 as already stated, while granting all this and 
 even insisting upon it, finds that the norms of 
 History do not include the whole that human 
 nature needs. The " next step " has to be 
 taken whereby a reality is revealed beyond 
 the confines of the best collective experiences 
 of the human race. Once more, we are 
 landed in the conception of the Godhead. 
 The step became inevitable, because the best 
 
 1 Cf. Dilthey's Erlebnis und Dichtung ; his article " Die 
 Typen der Weltanschauung und ihre Ausbildung in den 
 metaphysichen Systemen " in Weltanschauung ; Philosophic 
 und Religion in Darstellungen, 1911; also, " Das Wesen 
 der Philosophic " in Systematische Philosophie (" Kultur 
 der Gegenwart " ). 
 
220 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 historical concepts, in their totality, pointed to 
 something still beyond themselves. 
 
 During the past few years Eucken has 
 devoted much attention to the Life-system 
 presented in Pragmatism. He is alive to the 
 value of much of the work of the late Professor 
 William James and of Dr F. C. S. Schiller. 
 He feels that Absolute Idealism is too ab- 
 stract and too remote from life to move 
 the human will. It is too much like placing 
 a man before a mountain, and asking him to 
 remove it. The very magnitude of the object 
 weakens instead of strengthening the will. 
 Pragmatism has the merit of insisting that 
 the task be done piecemeal, so that man may 
 not lose heart at the very outset. And some 
 kind of goal is present in Pragmatism. But 
 Eucken's main objection to Pragmatism is 
 that, however adequate it may be at the be- 
 ginning of the enterprise, it will tend, as time 
 passes, to turn man in the direction of the line 
 of least resistance, and so be degraded to the 
 level of the ordinary life and its petty de- 
 mands. 1 His Activism is entirely different 
 from James's Pragmatism. James depended 
 too much upon the "span of the moment" 
 and its immediate experience. There is in this 
 " span " often no cosmic conviction present in 
 consciousness to proclaim that the action is 
 
 1 Cf. Eucken's Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der 
 Gegenrvart, 5te Auflage, 1912, chapter iv. Also, Erkennen 
 und Leben (1912), ss. 35-51. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 
 
 " worth while " at all costs. While constantly 
 demanding the need of effort in order to 
 experience the deeper potencies of spiritual 
 life, Eucken insists that such effort can enter 
 into a current only in so far as norms and 
 values are clearly perceived as the meaning and 
 goal of spiritual life. A universal of meaning 
 and value must be perceived, however imper- 
 fectly it may be, before the individual can call 
 his deepest nature into activity. And what is 
 such a universal but something beyond the 
 flow of the moment and beyond the realm 
 of ordinary daily life ? Such a universal, too, 
 must have an existence of its own an exist- 
 ence and a value which are beyond the opinions 
 of any individual or of any group of individuals, 
 even if such a group were to include the whole 
 human race. It is clear, then, why Eucken 
 parts company with Pragmatism. 
 
 If, finally, we view his attitude towards the 
 Religious Life-systems of our generation, we 
 find words of warning and of encouragement. 
 His whole work culminates in religion. But 
 he teaches us that we have to learn from the 
 sides of knowledge already presented in this 
 chapter. And it may be said that the Christian 
 Church (or any other Church) has yet to learn 
 this lesson. It still seeks to find its revela- 
 tion in what was, and in modes which come 
 constantly into direct conflict with the results 
 of the various Life-systems already referred to. 
 It wants the fruits of religion without tilling 
 
222 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the ground and nurturing its plants. Its in- 
 sistence on placing the basis of religion in myth 
 and miracle dooms it to a greater disaster in the 
 future than even in the past. Eucken sees no 
 hope for a " revival " of religion in the soul 
 until an inverted order of conceiving reality 
 takes place. The religious synthesis from the 
 intellectual side is to be obtained by passing 
 through the grades of reality explicit in the 
 various Life-systems, and by abstaining from 
 the imposition of barriers which forbid anyone 
 roaming and "ruminating" within these. If 
 one condition is obeyed, this is the most fruit- 
 ful way to construct a new religious metaphysic 
 which will supplant traditional theology. That 
 condition is that the various Life-systems form 
 a kind of scale which extends from Matter up to 
 the Godhead. The new religious metaphysic 
 will then mean a real philosophy of values. 
 
 Does this constitute an impossible task 
 for the Christian Church ? It will remain 
 impossible so long as we look upon th< 
 essence of Christianity as something which 
 descends upon us apart from the exertion of 
 our own spiritual potencies. It is a consola- 
 tion to know that the highest reality may 
 be experienced without having to undergo 
 a training in the methods and implications 
 of science, history, or metaphysics. But the 
 experience here cannot possibly mean so much 
 as the experience which passes through and 
 beyond the implications of knowledge to the 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 223 
 
 Divine. Such an experience as the latter 
 must be richer in content. And even apart 
 from this, it produces something of value on 
 the intellectual side something which grants 
 religion a security in the eyes of the world. 
 When the Church tends in this direction, its 
 faith will come into comradeship with the 
 various branches of human knowledge as these 
 reveal themselves on level above level. Chris- 
 tianity has nothing to fear, but everything to 
 gain, from the development of all the branches 
 of human knowledge. Its source being Spirit- 
 ual and Eternal, why should opposition be 
 presented to any development of the lower 
 realities in science, Biblical criticism, history, 
 and philosophy ? This lesson is not yet 
 learned, and Eucken pleads for its acknow- 
 ledgment. " If we consider how much is in- 
 volved in such a change in the position of 
 the spiritual life, and if we also present be- 
 fore ourselves what transformations civilisa- 
 tion, culture, history, and natural science carry 
 within themselves, we see clearly the critical 
 situation in which religion is placed, because 
 these surface- changes are not of the essence 
 of religion. Through the mighty expansion 
 and the fissures which these changes bring 
 about, the old immediacy and intimacy of the 
 soul have become lost, and religion has now 
 receded into the distance, and is in danger of 
 vanishing more and more. The derangement 
 of things which such changes cause occurs 
 
224 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 not only in connection with their own facts 
 and material and against their old forms, but 
 the effect proceeds into the very character and 
 feelings of man and into his religion. And 
 yet, when we examine the matter more closely, 
 we find that such changes cause not so much 
 a breach with Christianity as with its tradi- 
 tional form, and that they seek to bring about 
 a fundamental renewal of Christianity. For 
 when we penetrate beyond the motives and 
 dispositions of men to their spiritual basis, 
 all the changes are unable to contradict what 
 is essential to Christianity, but they even 
 promise to assist this essential element in its 
 new, freer, and more energetic development. 
 But we have to bear in mind that all this will 
 not descend upon us like a shower of rain, but 
 will have to be brought forth through immens< 
 labour and toil. It becomes necessary 
 replace that which must pass away, and to re- 
 consolidate the essentials which are threatened. 
 All this cannot come about save through an 
 energetic concentration and deepening of the 
 spiritual life, save through a struggle against 
 the superficiality of Time regardless of all 
 consequences, and save through a vivification 
 and integration of all that points in the right 
 direction." 1 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 574. Many hints in this and 
 other respects may be found in W. R. Boyce Gibson's 
 valuable work, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life (3rd 
 edition, 1912). 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 225 
 
 This passage illustrates well Eucken's whole 
 attitude regarding Christianity. It is evident 
 that much remains to be done within and with- 
 out the Church. Within, radical changes are 
 to take place ; but always in the light and 
 with the preservation of the spiritual substance. 
 Without, the indifference of a vast portion of 
 the civilised nations of the world has to be 
 reckoned with. It is an immense problem, 
 often enough to dishearten good men and 
 women. How can men be moved from their 
 inertia and their resentment against the deeper 
 demands which spiritual life makes upon 
 every human being ? That is the problem of 
 problems and the task of tasks to-day. No 
 clear solution of it is yet perceptible. But 
 in the meantime, those who care for Divine 
 things and who have experienced some of 
 their power within their own souls must 
 hold fast to all they possess, and labour 
 unceasingly to increase the spiritual value of 
 their possession. Probably catastrophes have 
 to happen in order to bring the world home 
 to religion and God. 
 
 Rudolf Eucken's gospel is a proclamation 
 of the necessity of religion and the possibility 
 of its possession. This, according to him, is 
 the final goal of all knowledge and life. If 
 religion is not this, it is the most tragic decep- 
 tion conceivable. " Religion is either merely 
 a sanctioned product of human wishes and 
 pictorial ideas brought about by tradition and 
 
 15 
 
226 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the historical ordinance and, if so, no art, 
 power, or cunning can prevent the destruction 
 of such a bungling work by the advance of 
 the mental and spiritual movement of the 
 world ; or religion is founded upon a super- 
 human fact and, if so, the hardest assaults 
 cannot shatter it, but rather, it must finally 
 prove of service in all the troubles and toils of 
 man ; it must reach the point of its true 
 strength and develop purer and purer its 
 Eternal Truth." 1 
 
 The fact that the influence of Rudolf 
 Eucken's personality and teaching is spreading 
 with such rapidity and power from west to 
 east and from north to south is a proof that 
 an increasing number of men and women are 
 aspiring after a religion of spiritual life sue! 
 as was presented by the Founder of oui 
 Christianity. All the Life-systems of our 
 must converge towards such a conceptioi 
 of religion. 
 
 1 The Truth of Religion, p. 71. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 EUCKEN'S PERSONALITY AND INFLUENCE 
 
 IN this chapter an attempt will be made to 
 present in a brief form some of the most im- 
 portant aspects of Eucken's personality and 
 influence. His training and the relation of 
 his teaching to the German philosophical 
 systems of the present have already been 
 touched upon in some of the earlier chapters. 
 But no account of Eucken's teaching is com- 
 plete without a knowledge of his personality. 
 
 We cannot understand his personality with- 
 out bearing in mind Eucken's nationality. 
 He is a man of the North. A mere glimpse 
 of the deep blue eyes reveals this immediately. 
 His ancestors lived in close contact with 
 Nature, and faced the perils of the great deep. 
 The history of the men of the North has 
 witnessed, along the centuries, a struggle for 
 existence as severe as any struggle known in 
 the history of our world. A trait of Eucken's 
 character almost entirely unknown in England 
 is his deep sympathy with the small nations 
 
 227 
 
228 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of Europe, and especially with those of the 
 North. He has written and pleaded on behalf 
 of Poland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and 
 Denmark. He finds that small nations, when 
 their independence is preserved, have the 
 tendency to bring forth original characteristics 
 of thought and life, which are only too apt 
 to get lost in the bustle and mechanism of the 
 great nations. He has shown us on several 
 occasions how much the world is indebted to 
 its small nations for the ideas and ideals which 
 have shaped its destiny. He believes with his 
 whole soul that size does not necessarily mean 
 greatness. When we compare the greatness 
 of Palestine and Greece with that of the larger 
 countries of the world, the latter sink into 
 insignificance when weighed in the balances 
 of the spirit. He has, during the past few 
 years, several times pointed out a danger to 
 personality and character from the vast organ- 
 isations which have been created in the various 
 departments of life during the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century. The deeper person- 
 ality of man has receded more and more into 
 the background through the growth of such 
 organisations. This fact is clear in the realms 
 of commerce and of politics. We call a nation 
 " great " in the degree in which it succeeds in 
 outstripping other nations in its exports and 
 imports, or in forming alliances with its neigh- 
 bouring states or with other nations. A large 
 portion of the gains which accrue from such 
 
EUCKEN'S PERSONALITY 229 
 
 unions is purely accidental, and these gains 
 cannot possibly touch the essentials of life. 
 The explanation of this is the fact that the 
 centre of gravity has been shifted from mental 
 and moral racial qualities to qualities which 
 are far inferior in mental and moral potency 
 and content. Thus, we witness the painful 
 inversion of values which has taken place 
 during the past fifty years. Every " small 
 nation " has to take a secondary place, has 
 to become subservient to a nation which may 
 possess for its inheritance but few qualities 
 besides those of expansiveness and force. The 
 small nation is forced to submit, to develop 
 on lines entirely alien to its original potencies, 
 and to labour with might and main to fill 
 the coffers of the rich nation. The old calm 
 and peace, as well as the originality of the 
 small nations have thus too often been cruelly 
 uprooted ; the characteristics of working on 
 their own original lines, and of producing 
 something of essential value in the history 
 of the world, have been largely shorn of their 
 initiative and freedom in the case of several 
 of the small nations of Europe. Superficiality 
 and indifference to deep national and spiritual 
 traits become the primary things, and the life 
 of the small nations, as time passes, tends to 
 become mechanical and servile. 
 
 When we survey the work of the small 
 nations of the Western world, we discover 
 achievements which have been of immense 
 
230 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 value in the civilisation, culture, morals, and 
 religion of Europe. And what a distressing 
 sight it is to witness the attempts of larger 
 nations to crush the spirituality of the smaller 
 ones ! The attitude of Russia towards Finland 
 and Poland is known to all. A greed for 
 territory and a passion for ready-made values 
 are characteristics which are only too evident 
 to-day in the case of some of the Great Powers 
 of Europe. We need, as Eucken points out, 1 
 a new standard of valuing the national char- 
 acteristics and the relationship of nation with 
 nation. Such standard must include moral 
 judgments and human sympathy. It is the 
 presence of spiritual powers such as these 
 which constitute the really deep and durable 
 elements in a nation's progress. " When 
 righteousness goes to the bottom, then there 
 is nothing more worth living for on the earth." 
 Eucken's philosophy cannot be understood 
 apart from his intense interest in mankind and 
 its spiritual development. He goes, indeed, 
 so far as to say that this is the sole goal of 
 philosophy ; its message is to create new spirit- 
 ual values in the life of the individual and of 
 the race. Our systems of philosophy are pain- 
 fully defective in this respect to-day. Man, 
 as a being with a soul, is little taken into 
 account in most of them. Is it surprising, 
 therefore, that philosophy has not succeeded, 
 
 1 " Gesammelte Aufsatze " : Die Bedeutung der kleiner 
 Nationen, pp. 47-52. 
 
EUCKEN'S PERSONALITY 231 
 
 for centuries, in interesting or influencing the 
 intelligent world at large ? l It will not succeed 
 in doing this until the deepest needs of man- 
 kind are taken to be something more than 
 objects of psychological analysis or of logical 
 generalisations. 
 
 Eucken's personality is rooted in a deep love 
 for humanity and its spiritual qualities; and here- 
 in lies the essential reason of his championing of 
 weak nations and pleading for the preservation 
 of their original spiritual characteristics. These 
 qualities are pearls of too great a price to be 
 lost in a world where so much tinsel passes as 
 what possesses the highest value. 
 
 It is not difficult to see why the small nations 
 of the North feel that in Eucken they possess 
 a true friend who sees clearly what they feel 
 instinctively, and who points out to them the 
 path of their spiritual deliverance. 
 
 It is impossible, also, to understand Eucken's 
 system of philosophy without taking into ac- 
 count his religious experience. This aspect 
 has already been touched upon, but it requires 
 elucidation from a more personal point of view. 
 Eucken's philosophy is the result of the ex- 
 perience of his own soul. It is something 
 which can never be understood until it is lived 
 through. Everything is brought back to its 
 roots in the needs, aspirations, and inwardness 
 of the soul. One must become " converted " 
 
 1 This truth is pointed out most forcibly by L. P. Jacks 
 in his Alchemy of Thought, chap. i. 
 
EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 before he can understand Eucken's teaching. 
 Something has not only to be understood but 
 to be lived through ; the body and the external 
 world have to be relegated to a subsidiary 
 place ; the intellect has to merge into the 
 spiritual intuition which is deeper than itself. 
 It is after one has been willing to pass through 
 this fiery furnace that the great " illumination" 
 begins to appear. And such an illumination 
 will increase in the degree that service and 
 sacrifice are willingly undertaken for the sake 
 of the infinite spiritual gains which remain 
 in store. 
 
 This element in Eucken's personality draws 
 him to everybody he comes in contact with, 
 and draws everybody to him. He has drunk 
 so deeply of the experiences of Plato and 
 Plotinus, of the great Christian mystics and 
 moralists of the centuries, that he sees the 
 value of every soul that comes to him for 
 help. It is far from Eucken's wish for these 
 matters to be published. And the present 
 writer will only state the fact that nobody, 
 however ignorant and obscure, has failed in 
 Eucken to find a father and guide. Hundreds 
 of men who had either lost or had never found 
 their moral and spiritual bearings in life have 
 succeeded in doing so through coming into 
 contact with him. The present writer re- 
 members well many a conversation among 
 students of six or more different nationalities, 
 concerning the secret of Eucken's teaching 
 
EUCKEN'S PERSONALITY 233 
 
 and influence. Imagine Servians, Poles, 
 Swedes, Scotch, English, and Welsh meeting 
 together after a philosophical lecture to discuss 
 the question of the spiritual life and wondering 
 how to discover it ! Eucken's personality had 
 created in their deepest being a need which 
 could never more be filled until the Divine 
 entered into it. In the class-room the great 
 prophet makes it impossible for us to content 
 ourselves with merely preparing for examina- 
 tions. The teacher's exposition and inspiration 
 are creating a deep uneasiness in us. We feel 
 how limited and shallow our nature has been 
 when we are face to face with a man who 
 reveals to us the eternal values of the things 
 of the spirit ; and who reveals them not as 
 they have merely been revealed by the great 
 thinkers of the world, but as he himself has 
 felt and lived them. We all become impressed 
 with the fact that we are in the presence of a 
 power above the world ; and the feeling of pain 
 is changed into a feeling of strong optimism 
 in regard to the possibilities of our own nature. 
 We feel that we, too, in spite of our limita- 
 tions, can become the possessors of something 
 of the very nature akin to that which our great 
 teacher possesses. Eucken works a change in 
 every man and woman who remain with him 
 for a length of time. Many of us understand 
 something of what Jesus Christ meant to his 
 disciples ; how he created an affection within 
 their souls which all the obstacles of the world 
 
234 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 could never obliterate. Eucken has done 
 something of the same kind, on a smaller 
 scale, for hundreds of his old pupils. 
 
 These pupils are found to-day from Iceland 
 in the North to New Zealand in the South, 
 and from Japan in the East to Britain and 
 America in the West. 1 Many of them have 
 risen to eminence, and all of them have ex- 
 perienced something of a spiritual anchorage 
 in the midst of the tempestuous sea of Time ; 
 all alike cherish an affection for their old 
 
 1 Eucken visited England for the first time during 
 Whitsun-week 1911. He had been invited by the 
 Committee of the British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
 tion to deliver in London the Essex Hall Lecture for the 
 year. A large audience gathered together to see and hear 
 him, and he received a most cordial reception. He spoke 
 in German on Religion and Life, and the lecture has since 
 appeared in English. The Rev. Charles Hargrove, M.A., 
 of Leeds (President of the Association) presided over the 
 meeting, and spoke of the great importance of Eucken's 
 growing influence. Interesting addresses were also de- 
 livered by Dr J. Estlin Carpenter, Principal of Manchester 
 College, Oxford; and Dr P. T. Forsyth, Principal of 
 Hackney College. At the luncheon which followed, Pro- 
 fessor Westermarck, Dr R. F. Horton, and others spoke. 
 The lecture was repeated at Manchester College, Oxford, 
 during the same week. On Whitsunday Eucken preached 
 in the evening at Unity Church, Islington, London, N., 
 at the invitation of the writer of this volume. 
 
 In September 1912 Eucken sailed for the United 
 States of America to deliver a course of lectures at Har- 
 vard University covering a period of six months. 
 
 In both countries he was greeted by a large number 
 of his old pupils, many of whom travelled long distances 
 to see and hear him once more. 
 
EUCKENTS PERSONALITY 235 
 
 teacher an affection which is one of their 
 dearest possessions. They have helped to 
 spread his spiritual teaching, and, along with 
 his books, have made his name known in all 
 the civilised countries of the world. Some of 
 Eucken's most important works have already 
 appeared in half a dozen languages. The 
 demand for them increases everywhere. This 
 receptivity is a good omen of better days. 
 The world is beginning to get tired of the 
 mechanism and shallowness of our age, and is 
 once more on the point of turning to the 
 spiritual fountains of life. Where can it find 
 a better guide to lead it to the waters of life 
 than in Rudolf Eucken ? 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IT will probably prove helpful at the conclu- 
 sion to indicate the main contents of Eucken's 
 greatest works in order that the reader who 
 turns to them for the first time may be able 
 somewhat to find his bearings. The whole of 
 Eucken's works turn around the conception of 
 the spiritual life. This fact must be constantly 
 borne in mind. The term has been repeated 
 so often in all the previous chapters that the 
 reader may be inclined to think that some 
 other expression might well have been ex- 
 changed for it. But no other term serves 
 Eucken's meaning, and the recurrence of the 
 term has to be endured in order that it may 
 yield of its rich content. 
 
 It has been shown how Eucken establishes 
 a new world with its own laws and values 
 within the spiritual life. The spiritual life 
 possesses grades of reality : it reveals itself from 
 the level of connection of body and mind and 
 of ordinary life right up to Infinite Love in 
 
 236 
 
CONCLUSION 237 
 
 the Godhead. Such a reality is created within 
 the total activity of the soul ; but it is not 
 mere subjectivism by virtue of the fact that 
 its material comes to it from without. 1 And 
 Eucken shows that it is thus a life partly 
 given to man, and partly created by him. 
 The " given " elements have to enter into man's 
 soul. This they cannot do without much 
 opposition. With the persistent energy of 
 the total potency of the soul a world of in- 
 dependent inwardness is reached a world 
 which will have an existence of its own 
 within the soul, and which will become the 
 standard by which to measure the values of 
 all the things which present themselves. 
 
 It is this superiority of the spiritual life 
 which constitutes the essential factor in the 
 evolution of the individual's personality as 
 well as in civilisation, culture, morality, and 
 all the rich inheritance of the race. Such an 
 inheritance can be developed farther by the 
 
 1 Eucken follows Kant in the fact that after the union 
 of subject and object has taken place a new kind of objectivity 
 has to be taken into account. This result has to be ad- 
 mitted before knowledge becomes possible at all. Eucken 
 has not dealt in a thorough manner with this problem, 
 although several hints are given concerning the import- 
 ance of this transcendental aspect in Kant's philosophy. 
 The implications of such a new kind of objectivity avoid 
 the danger of subjectivism, on the one hand, and of em- 
 piricism on the other hand. Eucken' s forthcoming Theory 
 of Knowledge will deal with this important matter. In 
 Erkennen und Leben certain aspects of the problem are 
 touched. 
 
238 BUCKETS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 full consciousness of the spiritual life and by 
 the exercising of it from its very foundation. 
 
 In The Problem of Human Life Eucken 
 sees in the message of every one of the great 
 thinkers of the ages, however much he may 
 differ from them, the vindication of a life 
 higher than that of sense or even of in- 
 tellectualism. In one form or another, they 
 all present some world of values which is born 
 and nurtured within the mind and soul. All 
 these thinkers stand for something which is 
 great and good. Eucken attempts to discover 
 this core in their teaching ; and in the midst of 
 all the differences some spiritual truth and 
 value make their appearance. This volume 
 has undergone many changes, and is now in 
 its ninth edition. 
 
 In The Main Currents of Modern Thought 
 Eucken deals, in the first part of the book, with 
 the fundamental concept of spiritual life as 
 this reveals itself in the meanings of Subjective 
 Objective, Theoretical Practical, Idealism 
 Realism. The middle portion of the book 
 deals with the Problem of Knowledge as this 
 is shown in Thought and Experience (Meta- 
 physics), Mechanical Organic (Teleology), 
 and Law. The third portion of the volume 
 deals with the Problems of Human Life as 
 these are presented in Civilisation and Culture, 
 History, Society and the Individual, Morality 
 and Art, Personality and Character, and the 
 Freedom of the Will. The final portion deals 
 
CONCLUSION 239 
 
 with Ultimate Problems ; and the two chapters 
 on the Value of Life and the Religious Problem 
 bring out the deeper meaning of spiritual life. 
 
 This volume has undergone many changes. 
 When it appeared in 1878 it was little more 
 than a history of the concepts we have already 
 referred to. 1 But at the present time it deals 
 with the history of the concepts, a criticism of 
 these, and finally the presentation of the 
 author's own thesis regarding the reality of 
 an independent spiritual life. 
 
 In Life's Basis and Life's Ideal he analyses 
 the various systems of thought which have 
 been presented to the world. He finds many 
 of these deficient ; but although something 
 that is contained in them has to pass away, 
 they possess some spiritual element which 
 requires preservation, and which is valid 
 for all time. None of these systems is 
 final ; they have to preserve what is spiritual 
 within them, and also merge it in some newer 
 revelation gained for mankind. Every system 
 of the universe and of life has to move; it 
 has perpetually to drop something of its 
 accidentals, and continually strengthen and 
 increase its essentials. Everywhere emphasis 
 is laid on the fact that the spiritual element 
 
 1 The volume was translated into English and published 
 in the United States of America by Stuart Phelps in 
 1880. I am not aware that the work exercised any great 
 influence at the time either in England or America. 
 Eucken's " day " had not then dawned. 
 
240 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 must be preserved and increased at whatever 
 cost, for it is an element of the highest value 
 for the world, and constitutes the energy of 
 the world's upward march. 
 
 In the Einheit des G-eisteslebens, as well as 
 in the Prolegomena to this, the necessity of 
 a spiritual conception of knowledge comes to 
 the foreground. All systems of Naturalism 
 lack enough spiritual life within themselves 
 to meet the deepest needs of the race. Man 
 is more than all such systems. Even on the 
 grounds of the Theory of Knowledge itself 
 man can be proved to be more. Eucken deals 
 in these two books with the content of 
 consciousness : that content reveals what is 
 a Whole or Totality, what is beyond sense, what 
 includes within itself the isolated impressions 
 of the senses or of the understanding, and 
 what is therefore spiritual in its nature. 
 
 In the Kampf urn einen geistigen Lebens- 
 inhalt a book of the greatest value we find 
 Eucken at his best. His attempt here is to 
 deal with the struggle for the spiritual life and 
 the certainty of its possession. He shows how 
 man has emerged out of Nature, and how he 
 has moved in the direction of gaining an inner 
 world during the long course of civilisation, 
 culture, morality, and religion. Through 
 titanic struggles this inner world becomes 
 man's possession, and constitutes the true 
 value and significance of his life. Man now 
 realises that it is this world of spirit and values 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 which constitutes the only really true world. 
 Issuing out of this possession of the ever richer 
 contents of this inward, spiritual world, the 
 personality constantly becomes something quite 
 other than it was, and its possession adds to 
 the inheritance of the spiritual ideals of the 
 world. At this source man is in possession of 
 a power of a new kind of creativeness in any 
 field of knowledge or life he may be obliged 
 to work. Nothing blossoms or bears fruit 
 without the presence and the power of spiritual 
 life in the deepest inwardness of the soul. 
 
 In The Truth of Religion Eucken roams in 
 a vast territory. All the oppositions of the 
 ages to religion are brought on the stage, and 
 are made to reveal their best and their worst. 
 He shows how every system of thought, devoid 
 of the experience and activity of the deepest 
 soul, fails to engender religion. He shows 
 over against all this the intellectual warrant 
 for religion, and passes from this to the personal 
 search by the soul for what is warranted by the 
 intellect and by the deepest needs of one's 
 own being. This has been the meaning of 
 the religions of the world, and this meaning 
 finds its culmination in Christianity. 
 
 Eucken's smaller books, such as The Life of 
 the Spirit, Christianity and the New Idealism, 
 Konnen wir noch Christen sein?, and The Mean- 
 ing and Value of Life, present certain aspects 
 of the larger volumes in a simpler form. 
 
 Eucken is at present engaged upon the 
 
 16 
 
EUCKEISTS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 completion of a work of great importance 
 dealing with The Theory of Knowledge. His 
 system has been stated to be in need of this 
 important corner-stone, and he has hastened to 
 meet the demand. The book will deal with 
 the " grounds " of the life of the spirit in an 
 even more fundamental manner than any of 
 his books. A preparatory work, small in bulk 
 Erkennen und Leben has just appeared in 
 German, and will be issued in English in the 
 spring of 1913. 
 
 In Erkennen und Leben Eucken shows the 
 need of clearness in regard to the concept of 
 the spiritual life. This work is an introduction 
 to his forthcoming work The Theory of 
 Knowledge. He shows that the Problem of 
 Knowledge can only be answered through a 
 further clarification of the Problem of Life. 
 It is, therefore, necessary to show what such 
 a Life is and how it may be lived, and, finally, 
 how it makes Knowledge possible. This is 
 the only way by which the final convictions 
 of Life are able to possess greater depth and 
 duration. 
 
 Knowledge is possible only in so far as man 
 participates in a self-subsistent life. Without 
 such a self-subsistent life many intellectual 
 achievements are possible, but they do not 
 deserve the name of Knowledge. 
 
 Such a self-subsistent life must be operative 
 in the foundation of our nature, but it must 
 constantly receive its material from the most 
 
CONCLUSION 243 
 
 important meanings and values of the world. 
 The self-subsistent life dare not feed on the 
 mere analysis of consciousness or on the 
 material which it already possesses. 
 
 History shows how a self-subsistent life is 
 not created through the mere succession of 
 events, but is always found as a life which is 
 superior to the perpetual changes of Time. 
 Consequently, every real Knowledge has some- 
 thing sub specie ceternitatis as its essence, and 
 this differentiates it from all mere relativism. 
 
 The movement of History culminates alter- 
 nately in Concentration on the one hand, and 
 in Expansion on the other: Positive and 
 Critical epochs alternate. Both aspects are 
 necessary for the growth of life. 
 
 In modern times the growth of the Ex- 
 pansion-side of life has destroyed in a large 
 measure the equilibrium of life ; and the task 
 to-day is to construct a new Concentration- 
 side. 
 
 Such a new Concentration is possible : the 
 experience of History testifies to its presence 
 in several epochs ; and there is a deep longing 
 for it in many quarters to-day. 
 
 In order to attain to such a Concentration 
 the " dead-level " life of the present must be 
 overcome, and a turn must take place towards 
 a new Metaphysic of Life. 
 
 Such is the problem to-day, and no complete 
 answer is to be found in the past systems of 
 Metaphysics. " The possibilities of Life and 
 
244 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of Knowledge are in no way exhausted, but it 
 is only through our own courage and actions 
 that the possibilities can become actualities " 
 (Erkennen und Leben, p. 161). 
 
 The various systems of Thought need a 
 synthesis which will include them all. It is 
 difficult to-day to obtain a theory of life which 
 does not leave out of account some essential 
 elements. Is there a possibility of discovering 
 such a synthesis ? I believe that Eucken's 
 works answer this question. But we wait 
 eagerly for the appearance of his greatest 
 work, and I think that, when it appears, he 
 will more than ever deserve Windelband's 
 designation of him as " the creator of a new 
 Metaphysic." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 LIST OF EUCKEN'S WORKS 
 
 1866. " De Aristotelis docendi ratione." Pars I. De 
 particularis. This was the Doctor's dis- 
 sertation at Gottingen University. 
 
 1868. " tJber den Gebrauch der Prapositionem bei 
 Aristoteles." 
 
 1870. "Uber die Methode und die Grundlagen der 
 
 Aristotelischen Ethik" (Separatabdruck aus 
 dem Programm des Frankfurter Gymnasiums 
 von 1870). 
 
 1871. "Uber die Bedeutung der Aristotelischen Phil- 
 
 osophic fur die Gegenwart" (Akademische 
 Antrittsrede gehalten am 21 November, 1871). 
 This was in Basel. 
 
 1872. " Die Methode der Aristotelischen Forschung in 
 
 ihrem Zusammenhang mit den philosophischen 
 Grundprincipien des Aristoteles." 
 
 1874. " Uber den Wert der Geschichte der Philosophie" 
 (Antrittsrede, Jena, 1874). 
 
 1878. " Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart." This was 
 translated by Stuart Phelps in 1880, and pub- 
 lished by Appleton of New York. The fourth 
 edition has been translated by M. Booth, and 
 has been published by T. Fisher Unwin in 
 1912. The title of the third German edition 
 was changed to "Geistige Strdmungen der 
 245 
 
246 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Gegenwart." The English edition is entitled 
 " The Main Currents of Modern Thought." 
 
 1879. " Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie." 
 
 1880. " Uber Bilder und Gleichnisse in der Philosophic 1 ' : 
 
 Eine Festschrift. 
 
 1881. "Zur Erinnerung an K. Ch. F. Krausse" (Festrede, 
 
 gehalten zu Eisenberg am 100 Geburtstage 
 des Philosophen). 
 
 1884. " Aristoteles Anschauung von Freundschaft und 
 
 von Lebensgutern." 
 
 1885. "Prolegomena zu Forschungen liber die Einheit 
 
 des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der 
 Menschheit." 
 
 1886. " Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino und 
 
 die Kultur der Neuzeit." 
 
 1886. "Beitrage zur Geschichte der neueren Phil- 
 osophie." (Second edition, 1906, under the 
 title " Beitrage zur Einfuhrung in die Ge- 
 schichte der Philosophic.") 
 
 1888. "Die Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein 
 und Tat der Menschheit." This will be 
 published by Williams & Norgate. 
 
 1890. " Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker." 
 The ninth edition appeared in 1911. Changes 
 and additions have been made in each succeed- 
 ing edition. English translation (1909) by 
 W. S. Hough and W. R. 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 1 Sons, New York ; and T. Fisher 
 Unwin, London). 
 
 1896. "DerKampfum einen geistigen Lebensinhalt." 
 (Second edition, with many changes, 1907.) 
 A translation of this volume will be published 
 by Williams & Norgate in the spring of 
 1913. 
 
APPENDIX 247 
 
 1901. "Das Wesen der Religion."" (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 Religion." 
 
 1901. "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," 1901. 
 (Second edition, with numerous changes, 1905 ; 
 third edition, with changes, 1912.) The 
 second edition was translated by W. Tudor 
 Jones, and published by Williams & Nor- 
 gate in 1911 under the title of "The Truth 
 of Religion." A translation of the third 
 German edition will be published at the close 
 of 1912. 
 
 1901. "Thomas von Aquino und Kant: ein Kampf 
 zweier Welten." 
 
 1903. " Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Philosophic und 
 Lebensanschauung." 
 
 1905. " Was konnen wir heute aus Schiller gewinnen ?" 
 (Kantstudien : Sonderdruck). 
 
 1905. " Wissenschaft und Religion." This comprises 
 a chapter in the collection of essays entitled 
 "Beitragezur Weiterentwickelung der Christ- 
 lichen Religion." 
 
 1907. " Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung." 
 This volume was translated by Alban G. 
 Widgery, and published by A. & C. Black in 
 1911 under the title of "Life's Basis and 
 Life's Ideal." 
 
 1907. " Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der 
 Gegenwart." (First edition, 1907; fourth 
 and fifth editions (with additions), 1912.) 
 The first edition was translated by W. R. 
 Boyce Gibson and Lucy Gibson under the 
 title " Christianity and the New Idealism : a 
 Study in the Religious Philosophy of To-day." 
 
248 EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 This is published by Harper & Brothers, 
 London and New York. 
 
 1907. "Philosophic 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. R. Boyce Gibson and 
 Lucy Gibson under the title of " The Meaning 
 and Value of Life 1 ' (Publishers: A. & C. 
 Black). 
 
 1908. " Einfuhrung in eine Philosophie des Geistes- 
 lebens." Translated by the late F. L. Pogson 
 under the title of "The Life of the Spirit" 
 (third edition, 1911). 
 
 1911. "Religion and Life" (the Essex Hall Lecture 
 for 1911). This is published by the Lindsey 
 Press, London. 
 
 1911. " Konnen wir noch Christen sein ? " A transla- 
 
 tion of this is in preparation. 
 
 1912. " Naturalism or Idealism ?" (the Nobel Lecture, 
 
 translated by A. G. Widgery). This is 
 published by Heffer & Sons, Limited, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 1912. " Erkennen und Leben." A translation of this 
 
 work, by W. Tudor Jones, is in preparation, 
 and will be published by Williams & Nor- 
 gate in the spring of 1913 under the title 
 of " Knowledge and Life : An Introduction 
 to the Theory of Knowledge." 
 
 1913. " Erkenntnistlehre." This volume will appear 
 
 early in 1913. The translation will also 
 appear during 1913, and the book will be 
 published by Williams & Norgate under the 
 title of " The Theory of Knowledge." 
 
INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Adamson, R., 216. 
 Adickes, 217. 
 Aristotle, 15. 
 
 Balfour, A. J., 118. 
 
 Bergson, 62, 74, 76, 100, 123, 
 
 131, 138, 193. 
 Boehme, 105. 
 
 Bosanquet, B., 8, 54, 74, 13*- 
 Boutroux, 105. 
 Bradley, F. H., 130. 
 
 Caird, E., 45, 63, 155, 216. 
 Carpenter, E., 123. 
 Carpenter, J. Estlin, 234. 
 Class, G., 19. 
 Copernicus, 60. 
 
 Darwin, 60. 
 Descartes, 65. 
 Dilthey, W., 23, 219. 
 Driesch, H., 62, 193. 
 
 Fichte, 17, 121. 
 Fischer, Kuno, 16. 
 Forsyth, P. T., 234. 
 
 Galileo, 60. 
 
 Gibson, W. R. B., 224. 
 Goethe, 16. 17, 50, 76. 
 Green, T. H., 63, 88. 
 
 Haeckel, 19, 64, 212. 
 Haldane, 62. 
 Hargrove, C., 234. 
 Harnack, A., 56. 
 Hartmann, Ed. von, 26, 123. 
 Hegel, 17, 30, 47, 79, 219. 
 
 Hicks, G. Dawes, 216. 
 Hb'ffding, H., 137. 
 Horton, R. F., 234. 
 Hiigel, F. von, 106, 
 Husserl, 23. 
 Huxley, 21, 22. 
 
 Jacks, L. P., 231. 
 James, W., 43, 92, 208, 220. 
 Jesus, cf. chapters on Historical 
 Religions and Christianity. 
 
 Kade, R. , 100. 
 
 Kant, 30, 63, 65, 120, 216, 217. 
 
 Liebmann, Otto, 16, 23, 216, 217. 
 Lipps, 23. 
 Lodge, O., 163. 
 Lotze, 13, 14. 
 Luther, 158. 
 
 MacDougall, W., 62. 
 Mach, E., 19. 
 Mackenzie, J. S., 206. 
 Meredith, G., 127. 
 Morgan, T. H., 62. 
 Miinsterberg, H., 19, 22, 63, 72, 
 93, 94- 
 
 Nettleship, R. L., 88. 
 Ostwald, W., 19. 
 
 Paul, 5, 50. 
 Paulsen, F., 15. 
 Phelps, Stuart, 239. 
 Plato, 15, 49, 59, 188. 
 Plotinus, 49. 
 
 249 
 
250 
 
 EUCKEJSTS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Reinke, 62. 
 
 Reuter, 13. 
 
 Rickert, H., 19, 22, 72, 160, 217. 
 
 Royce, J., 63. 
 
 Runeberg, 202. 
 
 Savonarola, 192. 
 Schafer, E. A., 20, 62. 
 Schelling, 17. 
 Schiller, 16, 17, 120, 127. 
 Schiller, F. C. S., 220. 
 Schopenhauer, 17, 123, 204. 
 Siebeck, H., 19. 
 Simmel, G., 23. 
 Socrates, 59. 
 Sorley, W. R., 23. 
 
 Taylor, A. E., 206. 
 Thomson, J. A., 62. 
 Trendelenberg, 15. 
 Troeltsch, E., 19, 100, 194. 
 
 Vaihinger, 23, 217. 
 Volkelt, 19, 71. 
 
 Wallace, W., 44, 45. 
 Ward,J., 63, 130, 155. 
 Westermarck, E., 234. 
 Wicksteed, P. H., 56, 211. 
 Windelband, W., 18, 19, 23, 132, 
 
 216, 217. 
 Wundt, W., 23, 94. 
 
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