An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy

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 accou

ly sensuous and natural, and so bar the way to the Divine. Still, the obstruction 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 a

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 c

cious 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 incl

th 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

must enter into some relation with Nature. But such a relation produces even more than all this. When viewed in a friendly mood, 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 factor, which represents itself in the form of moral

ixed 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 vanishing, 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

ubstance 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 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 reg

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