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But the great tasks must be handled with a greatness of spirit, and such a spirit demands freedom freedom in the service of truth and truthfulness. Eucken is aware of the various Life-systems which present themselves on every side as all-inclusive. But he sees no hope for a real spiritual education of mankind until every Life-system shall seek for a depth beyond the natural man and all his wants.
Eucken sees no hope for a "revival" of religion in the soul until an inverted order of conceiving reality takes place. The religious synthesis from the intellectual side is to be obtained by passing through the grades of reality explicit in the various Life-systems, and by abstaining from the imposition of barriers which forbid anyone roaming and "ruminating" within these.
As values and norms mean so much when a reality is granted them by the truest of the neo-Kantians, they come to mean infinitely more when they are acknowledged as somehow constituting the foundation and the acme of all existence. Eucken's main desire is to establish such norms and values beyond the possibility of dispute and beyond the constant changes of Life-systems.
All the Life-systems of our day must converge towards such a conception of religion. In this chapter an attempt will be made to present in a brief form some of the most important aspects of Eucken's personality and influence. His training and the relation of his teaching to the German philosophical systems of the present have already been touched upon in some of the earlier chapters.
That flaw consists in ignoring the presence of a spiritual life as the great workshop where every form of reality finds its truest meaning. This flaw is so serious in that several Life-systems have thus over-estimated the importance of their results by neglecting to take into account the potentialities and necessities of man's spirit.
Whatever interpretation is given to anything apart from the union of the whole potency and cognition of man's spirit is only a partial interpretation. And it is in the failure to recognise this truth that so many Life-systems have set themselves against the higher aspects of philosophy and religion.
Thus many Life-systems present themselves. Each of these includes a good. 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.
If, finally, we view his attitude towards the Religious Life-systems of our generation, we find words of warning and of encouragement. His whole work culminates in religion. But he teaches us that we have to learn from the sides of knowledge already presented in this chapter.
It still seeks to find its revelation in what was, and in modes which come constantly into direct conflict with the results of the various Life-systems already referred to. Its insistence on placing the basis of religion in myth and miracle dooms it to a greater disaster in the future than even in the past.
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.
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