“cannot be made simply [p.112] a question of relationship to environment and of the development of mutual relationships (as this tendency would have it) without the independence of the isolated factor [spiritual life] being most seriously reduced.  And it must not be forgotten that the individual is the sole source of original spiritual life; corporate social life can do no more than unite and utilise.  The maintenance of the strength and freedom of this original life would be less important, and its limitation would be more easily endurable, if human life stood upon a firm foundation and needed only to follow quietly in a naturally appointed direction.  In reality, life is not only full of separate problems, but being situated (as it is) between the realm of mere Nature and the spiritual world, must begin by systematically directing itself aright and ascending from the semi-spiritual to the truly spiritual construction of life.  It is hence called upon to perform great tasks, which cannot be carried out without serious efforts and the mobilisation of all our spiritual forces.  This necessarily leads us back to the original sources of strength, and hence to the individual.”

This passage represents well Eucken’s main teaching in regard to our social problems.  We shall ever fail in the highest sense if the spiritual content of life is no more than a means to reach material ends, however necessary such ends may be.  For in such a [p.113] manner spiritual life—­the universally true and valid—­is reduced to a lower plane; it becomes entangled in lower stages, and thus ceases to be a “light on the hill” illumining the steep upward path.  Convictions of a spiritual nature—­the very forces which have moulded society—­are absent from such a system of life which has no more than the day or the hour to look forward to.  Individual and society become the creatures of mere impulses and passions, stimulated to activity by a “dead-level” environment.  Something of value is gained when even this kind of environment is a good; but the response is quite as readily given to that which is injurious, simply because the “universally true and good” is absent as an inwardness and conviction in the soul.

Without such an inwardness and its content the deeper energy of life is not touched, and men drift with the tide of the environment.  Without the ideals or syntheses which are, in their very nature, universal and absolute, progress comes to a standstill, and degeneration soon sets in.  The ordinary situation, apart from the presence of the content of the over-world within the life of the soul, swings like a pendulum between a shallow optimism and a blind pessimism.  There is no power present in the soul to come to any fundamental decision, but life drifts on a river between Yea and Nay; a failure to penetrate beneath the [p.114] crust of chance and circumstance becomes evident, and the deeper values and meanings of life disappear.