Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life. Eucken Rudolf

and how unintelligible the joy in a life’s vocation would be, if the idea of utility solely and entirely determined conduct, if the chief concern were always how the work paid! Should we not sink, in such a case, into a slavery which would enthral man far more oppressively than any command which a tyrant could be capable of?

      It is true that on the average level of existence much is turned to the service of the merely useful which was produced from love and work, and this reversal of spiritual goods may be the first thing which comes definitely under our notice. In order, however, even to be so applied and reversed, they must originally have been generated in some manner, and this original generation can never proceed from the useful, but only out of the inner force and compulsion of the object, as, for example, in the case of the great transitions of thought, of artistic creation, and of religious conviction. And, as these have proceeded from inner movements, so they have also brought about powerful inner changes. They have not altered this or that in a given world in order to make it more comfortable to man, but with an energetic revolution have transformed our world from its very foundations, and have constructed a new world in contrast to that which immediately surrounds us. How much or how little individual men, or indeed even mankind as a whole, have appropriated of this; how far man has corresponded and still corresponds to the necessities of his own nature, is a matter and a question in itself: in the spiritual life of humanity the new magnitudes are extant, and they operate here as norms for testing all achievement. At the same time, they show that our life and our nature are of a kind different from what Naturalism represents them to be. However much Naturalism may boast that it is possible for even the highest to be drawn into the service of the merely human, with all its boasting it has not explained the origin of the highest: can a thing proceed from its own shadow? The naturalistic attempt to trace everything back to the useful really reverses the condition of affairs and results in inner destruction wherever disposition stands first. For conduct changes its character completely according as it is regarded as a mere means, or as an end in itself; according as its aim is striven for directly or only indirectly. Do such things as love, fidelity, honour deserve these names if the thought of selfish advantage is their motive power? It lies in the nature of certain things that they must be treated as ends in themselves and as matters of primary concern: to degrade them to a subsidiary position is in their case only a finer kind of destruction; to be opposed to utility is an attribute inseparable from their very being. Where disposition is valued only as a pre-condition of achievement, as in Naturalism, at the highest only a tolerable appearance, a substitute for a genuine disposition, can be reached in the whole moral sphere. Naturalism affords us an example of such a substitution when it sets up an altruistic action, that is, an action which produces something useful to another, in place of an inner expansion of life, which takes the other up inwardly into our own volition and being, and which alone leads beyond egoism. Naturalism is able to overlook all this; is able to make what is the secondary view of things the primary one; the derived, the original; is able to put the relation to human perception in place of the thing itself, only because its interest is so completely occupied with external relations that it does not independently evaluate the inner; and again, because a reflection that appeals to the understanding hinders all immediate relation and spontaneous appropriation. Otherwise, it also would feel how deep, how intolerable, a degradation of man ensues if his innermost experience, his striving after truth, his wrestling for unity within himself, his love, and his suffering are made a mere means to physical self-preservation, and are thus regarded from the point of view of utility.

      If we glance over the life of universal history, we see that a history of a distinctively human character extricates itself from the machinery of nature only through man’s acquiring an independence over against his environment, evolving a life conscious of itself and from it exerting a transforming power upon all presented to it. Only thus does a civilisation grow up in contrast with the mere state of nature. In civilisation and culture man enters into conflict with the infinity of the external world, but he cannot carry on this conflict victoriously without setting an inner infinity in opposition to that external one. In the struggle between these two worlds the life of man is transformed no less than the appearance of reality. More and more the visible world becomes an expression of an invisible one; more and more life draws the world into itself and finds the chief problems in its own sphere. Thus life becomes raised above simple physical preservation; that which serves in this preservation is regarded as a condition only and as something preliminary.

      Among the peoples situated nearest to us, this tendency has taken different forms; but the separation of creative spiritual activity from all mere utility is common to all. Thus, Greek culture gave birth to a life resting in its own movement, a life satisfied in itself. In the sharpest manner it marked off the beautiful, that which could produce pleasure immediately and of itself, from the merely useful, everything which served something else. It lauded the life filled with the perception and appreciation of the beautiful as the only free life, and pronounced every other way of life to be servile. Further, if in Christianity, in the comprehensiveness of its relations, the care for the welfare of the narrowly human takes up a great amount of attention, and a utilitarianism of a religious kind is evolved, the height of its creation and disposition is not affected: in it the winning of a new life superior to all selfishness, the becoming one with the divine, is the one end in itself. If Clement of Alexandria could say that, if it was a matter of choosing between the knowledge of God and eternal bliss, he would have, without hesitation, to renounce the latter, or if Thomas à Kempis said, “I would rather be poor for Thy sake than rich without Thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim with Thee on the earth, than without Thee to possess heaven. For where Thou art, there is heaven; but where Thou art not, there is death and hell”—then these are not merely the lofty sayings of individuals, but a faithful expression of that which gave to the whole system its world-penetrating and world-reviving power.

      The Modern Age, too, which has conceded so much to utilitarian striving, is in the innermost essence of its effort far removed from the spirit of mere utility. For, from the two poles of its life, from the subject as from the object, it breaks through all that is simply “given” and forms a new, self-existent world. In modern times the subject frees itself from the environment, places itself proudly over against it, and finds its securest experience in the self-certainty of its own life. At the same time it in no way renounces the surrounding world; but through the activity of thought it reconstructs that world, and in this conceptualises and idealises all its magnitudes. The more the subject becomes assured of seeing all things spiritually and scientifically by means of its own organisation, the more true is it that all sense experience is sustained and modified by spiritual power. Natural self-preservation cannot possibly satisfy the striving of the subject. For this striving can never be reduced to a mere means, but finds its power, as its joy, in becoming a world in itself; in the proud maintenance and establishment of its own nature in face of every opposition; in the impression of its particularity upon the infinity of things. On the other hand, over against the circumstantiality of man, great systems of thought are formed; evolve a characteristic content and independent powers; and, as forces in the life of universal history, press forward their consequences with inevitable necessity. These systems seek to bring reality under their sway, and do not manifest the least concern with regard to the continuance and the interests of man. Science and art and the political and economical aspects of life afford examples of what we mean. Accordingly, in the modern world and in the modern man, two movements towards infinity clash together, and from these there arise great commotion and violent unrest. Whatever may remain enigmatical in this, the fact of the transformation of the first, the sense experience of things, is beyond doubt. It is also beyond doubt that man, regarded spiritually, does not find himself a member of a given world, but must first seek and make clear his fundamental relations to the world. From this position Naturalism, with its naïve assertion of the finality and permanence of the sense impression, appears to be an intolerable dogmatism.

      Naturalism is seen to be far below the highest point of universal historical development; it cannot appropriate the experiences and results of that development; it consists of a confusion of naïve and scientific modes of thought, which win the adherence of many individuals, but which, through their contradictions, can never guarantee to life genuine stability and a clear course. Only because it evolves in the atmosphere of a world of another kind, and thereby imperceptibly enhances its own conceptions, does it appear at all plausible. Nevertheless, even