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 regeneration of the Christian type, with purification of the heart, is unintelligible to us."[23] 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 conceive [p.80] 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 destined 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 exercise 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 [p.81] of phenomena which seem to conduct to the creation of great misery and which, with unmerciful callousness, drive man over the brink of an abyss. The faintest hint would have sufficed to hold him back from such a catastrophe; but this is not given, and consequently destruction takes its course. Petty accidents destroy life and happiness; a moment annihilates 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 constantly sweeping as dark clouds over man and occasionally descending as a crashing tempest."[24] 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.

[p.82] And when we enter the domain of human society the superiority of the spiritual life becomes 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 spiritual 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 syntheses; 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 longing, 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 [p.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 atmosphere 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 perplexing 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 [p.84] of disposition and attitude of the soul that permanent 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 ramifications 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 [p.85] another; and failure after failure will be the inevitable result of all the attempts. Movements 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 Beitraege 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. [p.86] 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; enthusiasm 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 [p.87]

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 concept is something far removed from the level of the sensuous object or of its mere perception. 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 knowledge 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 not, has constructed an ideal world of meaning which constitutes the explanation [p.88] of the external world. This is a fact so familiar that it needs no further elucidation 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.[25]

Eucken maintains that the insufficient attention paid to this priority of the subject is the [p.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 belonging 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 [p.90] definite ends in Nature. The whole matter belongs to the region of speculation; and speculation based on something other than observation and experiment has greatly retarded progress in connection with the truest interpretation 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 disadvantage. But this cannot be helped; and [p.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 individual. 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 presence 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 [p.92] 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. Textbooks of the nature of William James's Principles 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 connection 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 consciousness 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 connection [p.93] of mind and body.[26] 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 includes 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, feelings and impulses, which the scientist must describe and explain too. But if the psychologist 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, [p.94] remains just as indifferent and valueless as the movement of the atoms in the outer experience. 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 considered, 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 illuminate 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 carelessly destroyed the pure system of science, and given up the presupposition of the strictly naturalistic work."[27] Wundt presents a standpoint not quite so pronounced, but which looks in the same direction.[28]

This fundamental difference has been recognised by Eucken, and forms an important contribution on his part towards elucidating [p.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 difference 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 discernible, and step by step, discover the way of ascent; thus the psychological method becomes at the same time a psychogenetic method. The main condition is that both methods be held sufficiently apart in order that the conclusions of both may not flow together, and yet may form a fruitful completion."

[p.96] "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 preponderantly 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 content is only reachable if the movement of life raises man out of and above the initial performances and the initial motives. No mechanism, [p.97] 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."[29] This difference between noeology and psychology is pointed out by Eucken in his delineation of spiritual life along the whole course of its development. The insistence 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 [p.98] 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 concerning 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 consciousness which has no psychological name; they come to a kind of focus within the blending 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 impressions of things. An inverted order of things has come about: the sensuous world is relegated to the circumference, and a spiritual world [p.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 announcement 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 meaning 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, [p.100] in the form of even valid logical concepts, concerning such experience.[30]

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.[31] Eucken has lately paid great attention to this matter in the new edition (1912) of Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart, especially in the chapter on the "Philosophy of Religion and the Psychology of Religion."[32]

The root of the matter here seems to be the ready acknowledgment of the content of [p.101] spiritual life as well as of the fact that it possesses a higher grade of existence than anything in the world without or even within the psychic life. This is granting the manifestation 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 acknowledgment 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 instincts 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 [p.102] 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 established 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 content of the soul is seated at the centre of life, and when every outward is interpreted and governed by an inward. This experience is [p.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 individual 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. [p.104] 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 conflict. 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 significance 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 Godhead arises. It is not a speculative dream but a conclusion forced upon the man by the actual situation; the material for the conclusion 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. [p.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 possessed, 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 momentous 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 themselves as over-individual norms and ideals are realities of cosmic significance. The Godhead 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[33] points out, "Jacob Boehme learnt from the mystics what it means to possess God. One must take care, so these masters [p.106] 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.[34]

Eucken touches on this subject in an extremely interesting chapter in his Truth of Religion. "This is a question of fact, and not of argument.... Because we convinced ourselves that things were so, we gained the standpoint of spiritual experience over against a merely psychological standpoint. For the [p.107] latter standpoint occupies itself with purely psychic processes, and in the province of religion especially it occupies itself with the conditions of the stimulations of will and feeling, 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 connections, and without these it cannot possibly exist. Man never succeeds in reaching the Divine unless the Divine works and is acknowledged 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."[35]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI [p.108]

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 um 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 historico-social construction.

Society has gained much through the necessity of emphasising some aspects of a Whole—of thinking and acting collectively—instead [p.109] 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? [p.110] There must be some common standard by which the ideal of each section of the community 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 judgment 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 complexities 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, [p.111] in connection with the deepest meaning of society and the individual, he sees the need of ideals which are universally true and universally 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 territory 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 environment or the group is ever able to bring forth. "Life," says Eucken,[36] "cannot be made simply [p.112] 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 directing itself aright and ascending from the semi-spiritual to the truly spiritual construction 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 [p.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 [p.114] 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. [p.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 [p.116] 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 simultaneously 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."[37]

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 [p.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 disintegration 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.

[p.118] 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.[38] We know what we need and what prevents decadence 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.

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CHAPTER VII [p.119]

RELIGION AND ART

Eucken has written less on this subject than on any of those which constitute the headings 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 [p.120] 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 composers produced by Germany is a proof of this. The period of the Aufklaerung 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 Koenigsberg. 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 conceptions 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 suggestiveness.

Schiller worked in practically the same direction. A moral standpoint of a high order [p.121] is to be discovered in his writings, and he believed this standard to be possible of preservation alongside of a legitimate "freedom granted in the phenomenon." "Then the two tendencies again became divided. Romanticism gave a peculiar definite and self-conscious expression to the priority of art and the aesthetical view of life, while Fichte and the other leaders of the national movement exerted a powerful influence 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 towards 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."[39]

Eucken shows how such an antithesis between 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 [p.122] 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 condemned 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 meaningless, 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, [p.123] 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.[40] 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 nothing less than an ideal creation of a world consisting of Nature and the spiritual potencies of man. It is evident that if the internal [p.124] 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 outside art (as is the case with morality or value), operates, there is no danger of art degenerating 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 satisfaction 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 [p.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 essential 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 relationship 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 fundamental 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 interpretation where our life itself fails in the possession of a governing unity? We discover ourselves in the midst of the most fundamental transformations 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 [p.126] 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."[41]

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 acknowledging 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 teleology [p.127] 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[42] (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 elements, 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 construction 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."[43]



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CHAPTER VIII [p.128]

UNIVERSAL RELIGION

We have followed Eucken's system developing 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 persisted 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 [p.129] has been made subservient to man. When the attention is turned to this "fact of facts" concerning the work of spiritual life, individually 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 evolution 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 ascended 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 [p.130] something that pertains to spirit and meaning rather than to matter and its behaviour.[44] 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 whatever for concluding that the whole universe is not co-operating now in its further development? 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 [p.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 acknowledgment, 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 aeternitatis has to take the foremost place in life. We are beings who perpetually move. Eucken and Bergson are both emphasising 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.[45] But [p.132] 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 certainty; it exists, and its existence is in itself. It is the star for the Wollen.[46] 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 [p.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 spirituality, 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."[47]

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 [p.134] 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 meaning and interpretation to all life and existence. That is the conclusion Eucken arrives at in his Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt. The problem of religion qua religion is hardly touched. But, indeed, what other than religion 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 constrained to grant the norms a reality of their own, we have only just touched, here and there, [p.135] upon their cosmic significance. The matter thus reaches a further point than we have yet touched. What justification is there for granting 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 consciousness. 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 distinction 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 characteristic 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 [p.136] 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 something 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 discover and establish religion through the power and conclusions of the intellect. It is evident that when the knowing aspect of consciousness [p.137] takes such a leading part, and deliberately ignores the affective and active aspects, no more than a segment of the reality can be discovered, and such a segment leaves out of account important 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 greatness 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.[48] 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 [p.138] 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.[49] Thus the conception 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-subsistence. 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 consciousness 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 [p.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 subsidiary element accompanying lower intellectual 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 acknowledged 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 movement. 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 [p.140] truths which are absolute and complete within the life is in direct antagonism to much that was previously present within it. This fundamental 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 conviction of such a revelation as being objective in its very nature. It belongs to something or somebody outside our own individual experience 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 [p.141] is a proof of its existence somewhere at the core of the universe. It cannot mean an illusion; 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 [p.142] 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."[50]

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 constitutes 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 Absolute becomes merely an object of thought and contemplation; and in all this the individual does not become aware of a burning desire to move in the direction of the goal. [p.143] The pragmatist leaves the individual at the mercy of the momentary content of consciousness; 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 consequently 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 [p.144] 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 [p.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 something 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 religion. The work is far from being completed: the world still clings to the old level of ordinary 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 [p.146] drawn down and mixed with what was inferior in its nature, yet they have never been completely destroyed in this evil process. They have still a marvellous power of disentangling themselves from human perversions, and of revealing themselves once more in their pristine power and glory. "But the spiritual life declares its ability also positively within the human province through a persistent effort to move outside 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 [p.147] revealing to him the presence of a new order of things?"[51]

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-individual norms have to be accepted and interpreted 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 attended 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-important 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 [p.148] 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 [p.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, indeed, 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.