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And it would seem that many critics have failed to appreciate the work of Eucken to the extent they should, because they have expected him to deal in detail with problems which it is not his intention to discuss, and have failed to appreciate what special problem it is that he attempts to solve.
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. 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.
The appeal of Spiritual Idealism is considered to be something which is vague and useless. Our deepest reality and the source of all true energy have been robbed of their efficacy by our absorption in scraping together physical elements of chaff and dust. How often does Eucken show our dire poverty in the midst of all this external plenty!
Thus, and thus only, Eucken thinks that the Church can fulfil its proper function, and avoid being a danger to religion. Eucken's appreciation of Christianity is sincere. Viewing it from the standpoint of the Spiritual Life, he finds that it fulfils the conditions that religion should fulfil.
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.
The question of the finality of the Christian religion in its purely historical sense has been discussed by Eucken in his Truth of Religion, Christianity and the New Idealism, and Können wir noch Christen sein?
And it is this, as Eucken shows, which has been partially accomplished by the religions of the world. Their founders were personalities who had scaled the heights towards the "holy of holies" of the One; they descended into the plains to reveal what they had seen and heard and experienced on the heights.
When we approach the problem of the nature of the Absolute in itself, the main difficulty that arises is whether God is a personal being. God, says Eucken, is "an Absolute Spiritual Life in all its grandeur, above all the limitations of man and the world of experience a Spiritual Life that has attained to a complete subsistence in itself, and at the same time to an encompassing of all reality."
The Past does not mean a mere series of events which occurred some hundreds or thousands of years ago, and before which we bend and towards which we try to turn back the world, for that would mean what Eucken terms "mere historism."
The book will deal with the "grounds" of the life of the spirit in an even more fundamental manner than any of his books. A preparatory work, small in bulk Erkennen und Leben has just appeared in German, and will be issued in English in the spring of 1913. In Erkennen und Leben Eucken shows the need of clearness in regard to the concept of the spiritual life.
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