An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy Part 3

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 s.p.a.ce 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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.sists the spiritual and when the individual pa.s.ses 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 G.o.dhead 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 G.o.dhead. The man is here at an alt.i.tude so rare and pure that it forbids any logical or psychological a.n.a.lysis. G.o.d 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 G.o.dhead 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 G.o.d." Here, as Professor Boutroux[33]

points out, "Jacob Boehme learnt from the mystics what it means to possess G.o.d. One must take care, so these masters [p.106] teach, not to liken the possession of G.o.d to the possession of anything material. G.o.d is spirit, _i.e._ for the man who understands the meaning of the term, a generating power previous to all essence, even the divine. G.o.d is spirit, _i.e._ pure will, both infinite and free, with the realisation of its own personality as its object. Henceforward, G.o.d cannot be accepted by any pa.s.sive operation. We possess Him only if He is created within us. To possess G.o.d is to live the life of G.o.d." 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 const.i.tutes 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 relations.h.i.+p to environment and of the development of mutual relations.h.i.+ps (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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sions, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 inst.i.tution 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.

CHAPTER VII [p.119]

RELIGION AND ART

Eucken has written less on this subject than on any of those which const.i.tute 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 _Aufklarung_ viewed art with scant favour, but with the rise of the New Humanism a change in favour of art took place.

The origin of this change is to be found where one might least expect it--in the soul of the sage of Konigsberg. Kant's _Critique of Judgment_ is unanimously allowed to be the greatest book ever produced on the subject. Goethe and Schiller were influenced by it--the latter in a remarkable manner. We find in these writers an effort to unite the Good and the Beautiful. It is impossible to read the poetry of Goethe without finding that great moral problems are imbedded in his 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 a.s.sign 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 ant.i.thesis 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 pa.s.s 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 vanis.h.i.+ng, 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 partic.i.p.ate 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]

CHAPTER VIII [p.128]

UNIVERSAL RELIGION