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He has drunk so deeply of the experiences of Plato and Plotinus, of the great Christian mystics and moralists of the centuries, that he sees the value of every soul that comes to him for help. It is far from Eucken's wish for these matters to be published. And the present writer will only state the fact that nobody, however ignorant and obscure, has failed in Eucken to find a father and guide.
Impulses and passions, the narrow outlook, the timidity and hollowness of the "small self" all these, which have previously remained at the centre of life, have to be thrust to the periphery of existence. So that an entrance into the highest spiritual world is not merely something to know, but far rather something to do and to be. This is the meaning of Eucken's activism.
Eucken's personality had created in their deepest being a need which could never more be filled until the Divine entered into it. In the class-room the great prophet makes it impossible for us to content ourselves with merely preparing for examinations. The teacher's exposition and inspiration are creating a deep uneasiness in us.
But until this fact is acknowledged, there is very little hope, in Eucken's opinion, of the Christian religion gaining many adherents from the side of those who understand the modern meaning and significance of natural science.
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful appear as the sole realities by the side of which everything that preceded, if taken as complete in itself, appears as a great shadow or illusion. Here we are reminded of Eucken's affinity with Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, as well as of his attachment to the revival of Platonism by Plotinus.
To it, religion is nothing other than an absorption into the infinite and eternal Being an extinguishing of all particularity, and the gaining of a complete calm through the suspension of all the wear and tear of life." Eucken's discussion of faith and doubt is very illuminating.
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.
And as the meaning of the physical universe has become clearer through the conception of evolution, so the meaning of consciousness, originating in a higher world than Nature, will become clearer if viewed in a similar manner. Let us then turn to one of the most important aspects of Eucken's work, Evolution and Religion.
Further considerations of the nature of God can only lead to intellectual speculations. For an activistic philosophy, such as Eucken's philosophy is, it would seem sufficient for life and action to know that all attempts at the ideal in life, originate in, and are inspired by, the Absolute Spiritual Life, that is by God.
They know that the mental models which they have to frame in order to interpret phenomena are not material things, and exist nowhere except in a world of mind and meaning. Eucken's conclusion then is that what knows and interprets is a mental quality. He would rather call it the life of the spirit of man, or the spiritual life.
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