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The man possessed of something of the vision within his own soul proclaims his "gospel," and conceives of all kinds of ways and means by which humanity can be drawn towards the same goal. This is the meaning which Eucken attaches to the origin and development of the union of universal and specific religions as these have been revealed in human history.
To wish to check the course of Time means not to serve Eternity, but to ascribe to Time what belongs to Eternity." It is not said by Eucken anywhere in his writings that the natural sources at which Life drinks must be abandoned.
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.
Eucken offers no support to theologians; and Bergson does not seem to express a clear belief in a personal god or personal immortality.
The presence of the Divine within the soul is not the same prior to the search and after the search. When we pass to Materialism in its various forms, we find Eucken conscious of its poverty and its caricature of life. It is caused by excessive absorption in the sensuous object with all its manifold relations.
Still, it is not the whole meaning of things, for, as Eucken points out: "But we are now experiencing what mankind has so often experienced, viz. that at the very point where the negation reaches its climax and the danger reaches the very brink of a precipice, the conviction dawns with axiomatic certainty that there lives and stirs within us something which no obstacle or enmity can ever destroy, and which signifies against all opposition a kernel of our nature that can never get lost."
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.
The danger of an activistic position, of course, is to undervalue the reasoning powers of man. Some critics hold that Eucken does this; the reader must judge for himself, but in doing so it will be well to remember that before trusting to intuitive revelation, Eucken demands the setting of one's face towards the highest and best.
Thousands who have heard the name of Eucken and have read frequent references to him are asking, "What has Eucken really to say?" and we have attempted to give a systematic, if brief, answer to the question.
Excessive devotion to "Bread Studies," whether voluntary or compulsory, tends to make a man's vocation the prison of his soul. Professor Eucken recently told his countrymen that the greater their perfection in work grew, the smaller grew their souls.
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