powerful are the external forces which condition man's life, he is yet with all the intensity of his great nature insistent that man is free to select for himself whatever of good the universe has to offer for his soul. "We must view the world as still in a state of flux and regard man as not being merely a closed and limited individual." "A conflict between fate and freedom appears primarily in the individual in the development toward personality and spiritual individuality."

But that for which Eucken especially stands, that which gives its name to his philosophy and propaganda, is "activism." If one were to try to give in but a single phrase something of the significance of this title as used by Eucken, no clearer words could come than those of the divine Nazarene, when he says, "He that doeth the will of my Father shall know of the doctrine." Eucken feels that no lounger in an easy chair, however wise, is in any position to show the way, the truth, the life, but only he who has manfully taken up the burden of living the life. The great word with Eucken is work; his great phrase is "spiritual work." How he would have delighted the heart of honest Thomas Carlyle with his doctrine that "each step in the way must be taken through some form of spiritual work."

As Eucken despises superficiality, so is he impatient with all that is one-sided. No one-eyed steed may bear this knight of the new spirit upon his redemptive task. As the materialist is found wanting, the man who has thought only for the objective world of sense which lies before him; so does the mere delver into the recesses of his own consciousness fail to satisfy this man whose rich red mental blood calls out for a life concerned with real things. Subjectivism cannot dig deep enough; and one may not study the teeming life of the wide ocean in a well. Neither man's soul nor the sensible world alone may stand as the basis and foundation of the universe's life. The one must appropriate the other, take it up into itself, make the dull thing which strikes against its toe a part of itself. And the objective must be made to feel the warming breath of man's spirit before it may really live.

For Eucken there are three things in the universe: self and

the objective world of sense and a universal Spiritual Life. At every door there stands the spiritual Possibility, knocking, ready to enter, to take up its abode, to give of its glowing life to every dull thing which yet shall be enough alive to catch the glimmer of light. And yet the spiritual is not given. It is not given for naught. It must be appropriated. It must be worked for. It must be lived. As the good housewife mixes her bread, carefully intermingling the flour and the yeast-quickened liquid, leaving no portion of the snowy mass unmoistened, so must there be a working over of matter's inertness, a mingling with the saving spirit, until all shall be redeemed.

Very inspiring is Eucken's recipe for the attainment of spiritual reality for one's life-inspiring to those who are undismayed by the vision of hard work. For it is a life not of dreams, as some have fondly thought, but of severest labor of the soul. A man to cheer "the day's work" of such an one as Rudyard Kipling is Eucken, one with upraised hammer poised to strike upon the glowing iron of spiritual possibility as it rests upon the only anvil that will hold it, the life of every day. And with every stroke there goes the soul of the man, into his work, into the lifeless thing before him, to enliven it. That is the only starting point for Eucken, the life-process itself, the art of living itself. The very living itself, if it shall signify the impressing of a man's soul upon some portion of the Almighty's creation, to re-create it in the Almighty's spirit, and to give to it of the life which man has received, shall prove itself a divine thing.

And as a man climbs up to the higher levels of human living, as he learns to sacrifice his own immediate good or pleasure for the things which he sees mean gain for his fellow men-gain for the whole, that is the crux and hinge of the entire problem-he begins to understand that there is something besides mere nature and the natural man. As soon as one sees that, he is spiritually strong enough to raise his head above the low level of selfishness and the life of nature; he is prepared to take another step on the toilsome, glorious journey. As soon as there is a Whole to work for, there is a glow of hope upon the horizon which the night of naturalism left black. Pitiless is Eucken's analysis of

naturalism and its result. If there is no Soul at work in the universe, if there is no spiritual existence working in the souls of men, then there is no goodness, no truth, no anything raised above the level of the sordid. Vainly the systems of the past half century, like Esau gorged with his mess of pottage, strive to find room for the higher things of life which they have displaced. "The naturalistic thinker ascribes unperceived to nature, which to him can be only a co-existence of soulless elements, an inner connection and a living soul." Surreptitiously the radicals try to admit through the back door what they have ceremoniously ejected by the front door. They insist that they too love goodness and truth and honor, and all the nobler influences in life. But in their systems what room is left for these things? If there be no spiritual Force in the universe, if all that we find around us is the inexorable result of fixed causes and undeviating processes, how may there be anything but a blind carrying out of nature's impetus? Start with material causes proceeding in mechanical ways, and how may we expect aught but material results? How may we have the finer fruits of spirituality? If we have these things, says Eucken, then they must have spiritual causes. And the man who has risen to the dignity of sacrifice of personal good for an invisible something which he knows is better, shows in his life the influence of a spiritual Cause. For example, he whose socialism is of the godless sort works indeed for an ideal for a redeemed and glorified humanity. Let us strike hands with any brother who is looking for humanity's good, who is capable of the spirit of sacrifice of self. But whence came his motive power? Somewhere we must get back to something more than natural causes; somewhere we must find a stream of influence which is above anything inherent in the mere clay. Our socialist neighbor's is a more splendid lineage than he knows. His fine enthusiasm has a spiritual ancestry which, when his resentment at what he feels to be the oppression of society and the tyranny of the past shall have to some degree abated, he will yet acknowledge.

How clear is Eucken's conviction of the existence of this independent spiritual life a few of his own words will show: "The union of man with the spiritual life is much closer, and the

spiritual life in itself is incomparably more, than is represented by the customary conception of that life. For in our conception man does not merely enter into some kind of relation with the spiritual life, but finds his own being in it, and becomes so completely united with it that it is able to determine him immediately as his own self. The spiritual life is not a particular function among others, not a part or an aspect of a more comprehensive world, but is itself a world, and, indeed, a world in which life first attains to self-consciousness and becomes a complete reality. If this life becomes the immediate possession of man himself, his life must experience a deep-reaching change, indeed a revolution of its usual condition."

But how find and appropriate this great good? There is but one way; and this way Rudolf Eucken shows, the ascent slow and toilsome of the spiritual mount; and as one goes he takes his life of the valley with him, so much of it as may deserve a place upon the spiritual heights. The rest must be left behind. As the Alpine traveller carries upon his back that which will sustain him at the summit, so the climber of spiritual steeps must take from the earth below only those things which will be conducive to the health of his soul. No ascetic, however, is Eucken. He will leave out no good thing. Music, art, literature, the pure and beautiful things of life all find with him a cordial welBut for most of us the pruning process must be very severe. For the great majority a drastic regimen is needed. The materialistic interest has overwhelmed us body and soul. Our higher life has been strangled. We need to escape, take what has been really good in the achievement of our life, and find our way to the heights.

come.

But we go not alone. Very comforting is Eucken's doctrine of the Independent Spiritual Presence. Illuminating is his treatment of history, where in every epoch he finds this enveloping and moulding life. Throughout human history we may see the hovering Presence, purposeful for the race, the continuity of significance for the ages, the spiritual existence, the one real thing, reaching out beckoning hands to men to lay hold upon it, to enter its life and really live. He sees in human history the impregnating power of the spirit of reality, the matrix of the

material growing big with a spiritual destiny. But let me hasten to guard our prophet's vision against the heresy-sniffer's insinuating organ of scent. Eucken feels as keenly as a Spinoza or any pantheist that God is in all; only with him the Deity is no mere regulative Force, but a living God, and an intensely personal God. The most thorough-going Christian needs find no fault with Eucken's God, unless to him "personal" be synonymous with "anthropomorphic." God is personal; and man under his finite conditions may work out a personality which shall partake of the infinite Personality and yet retain its separate and individual being.

The Greeks of old were able with eager soul to rise above the things of sense to the realm of the spirit. Christianity definitely established this rule of life, and made the invisible kingdom of God the true home of man, the most immediate and the most secure that this life knows." But the Spirit of the ages has not yet done its work. Even Christianity has been too formal, too mechanical, too crystallized. We need a new realization of the meaning of Christ's truth. In a world made over anew by the marvellous discoveries of this present age, we must take up anew the spiritual problem, the spiritual task. It is a task which is never done. To find its consummation would be to find its grave. But to launch our boat upon the great ocean of agelong spiritual struggling means to be enfolded on the bosom of the universe's living Soul. But it does not mean to be submerged. The individual identity is not lost. The frail craft of the individual soul maintains its own course through the awe-inspiring waves. No soporific Nirvana is its goal, but the outworking and the unfolding of its own true self. God could have no better good for man than this.