This growing popularity is all the more noteworthy since it is not attained by any novelty of form, or even brilliancy of style. Eucken never tries to stimulate thought by shocking the reader with audacious paradoxes, as did Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as do Shaw and Chesterton. He has none of the freshness of phraseology and wealth of novel illustrations which attract to James and Bergson their wide circle of admirers. He does not, like Ostwald and Haeckel, make use of the direct and concrete mode of expression which has been introduced into literature by modern science. Eucken always writes in a serious and methodical style, elaborating his line of thought as he goes along with exactness and just proportion; expressing himself in general and abstract terms, rarely making use of imagery or concrete illustrations, never introducing personalities. A sweeter-tempered philosopher never lived. He speaks no evil, even of the dead. He indulges in no polemics with his contemporaries. In his historical works he passes through all fields of thought, gleaning good grain wherever he goes, and saying as little as possible about the tares and brambles that he finds with it.
Very curiously, it has been Eucken's lot to have been closely associated, on the faculties of small universities, with the two men whose views are most antagonistic to his: at Basel with Nietzsche and at Jena with Haeckel, and he has been on the best of terms with both of them. I was particularly interested in what Professor Eucken told me of Nietzsche, whose personality and philosophy were in such violent contradiction. This advocate of ruthless brutality, this scorner of sympathy and compassion, was in reality a most tender-hearted man, but too shy and sensitive to be popular; and when his feelings were hurt he wrote down in a passion what he felt at the moment.
At the University of Basel Professor Eucken often served with Nietzsche on the examining committee of candidates for the doctorate in classical philology. On such occasions, if the student appeared to be getting the worst of it in the verbal contest, Nietzsche would be observed to become more and more nervous until, finally, he could contain himself no longer and would break in with leading questions: "I suppose you mean so-and-so?" or "Do you not believe this or that?" until he got the student to say just about what he should have said in the first place. Professor Eucken does not regard the widespread influence of Nietzsche as altogether evil, believing he should not be held responsible for all the vagaries and extravagances of his devotees. The reason of Nietzsche's popularity, according to Eucken, is his strong individualism; for the Germans, in spite of governmental control and the Social Democracy, are pronounced individualists in character. The German will insist upon having his own house, his own seat, his own opinion. This sounded strange to the American, accustomed to have Germany referred to as the most regimented of nations.
But modern Germany is a land of incongruities and contradictions, a wild confusion of swirling cross-currents. The increase of population, the checking of emigration, the amazing prosperity, the extension of commerce, the demand for territorial expansion, would indicate a sound physical constitution and a healthful growth. The immense sale of serious works on religion and philosophy shows a revival of interest in spiritual affairs. Yet, if we were to judge of the character of the people by the most conspicuous of its achievements in art and literature, we should say that modern Germany is hopelessly decadent and corrupt. In drama and fiction Gallic license is allied with Gothic coarseness. In pictorial art hideousness and viciousness are depicted by means of strange and violent methods. Germany of to-day, as seen by the tourist, is a land of spotted painting, spotted literature, and spotted faces.[3] In the little university town of Jena the incongruities of modern Germany are curiously conspicuous. In this historic stronghold of Protestantism, this leader in the Enlightenment, the home of Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Fichte, the Humboldts, Hegel, Schelling, and Wieland, the barbarous customs of the past have the strongest hold. A student is likely to miss his seven o'clock Wednesday lecture on the spiritual life because he sat up till two o'clock drinking compulsory beer with his corps brothers in the middle of the marketplace. And he may cut out his eight o'clock Saturday lecture because he has an imperative engagement to cut off the nose or the ear of a fellow student at the Mensurort of Döllnitz.
Among the nobler manifestations of the spirit of new Germany the tourist is likely to take most interest in the architecture. Here, indeed, he will find much that is displeasing and eccentric, but that in itself is encouraging, for it shows that we are in the presence of a living art which is not content to keep to the safe and beaten paths, but would strike out new ways for itself. In city and country unexpected forms and colors delight the eye on villa, monument, and public building; new and ingenious solutions of problems as old as man. The modern German architect is not the imitator, but the rival, of the master builders of the past. He knows how to harmonize the old with the new, utilizing the old to give him inspiration, but not permitting it to hamper him. A striking example of this is the new university buildings of Jena, erected on the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the university in 1908. The whole group cost only three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, not so much as some single buildings in our leading universities, yet I know of none more satisfactory from both the utilitarian and the esthetic point of view. Here the problem of harmonization was particularly difficult; not only must the new buildings fit into the picture of old Jena, but a tower of the ancient ducal castle was actually to be incorporated. Yet the architect, Theodor Fischer, has made no sacrifices to the spirit of antiquity. At Oxford the newer buildings either clash violently with their elders or imitate them so closely as to be almost equally inconvenient and uncomfortable. The Jena buildings look as though they might well have been built by Kurfürst Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige in 1558, but are up to date, commodious, hygienic, well ventilated, steam heated, equipped with electric lights and clocks, and electric vacuum cleaners.
There are no superfluous statues stuck around in niches and on pedestals. The adornment, plastic and polychromatic, is strictly structural. It is put where it belongs. With the possible exception of a Rodin bust of Minerva in the vestibule, I did not see any "objects of art" that I could have carried off without tearing down the building. On the stone of the north façade are roughly chiseled the Ephesian Diana in the gable, and, beneath, four Egyptian-like figures representing the four faculties. That of Philosophie, with solemn and inscrutable face, is very appropriately nearest to the lecture room of Professor Eucken. As we enter we see opposite the portal to the Aula, the university hall of state, on either side of which are gigantic paintings emblematic of the transmission of culture, a grown man on one side holding out his torch to a young man, that he may light his torch by it. The most important picture at the Jena University is the Auszug deutscher Studenten im Jahre 1815 by Hodler, who used as a model for the middle figure the youngest son of Professor Eucken.
Auditorium Number 1, the largest classroom of the new building, is assigned to Eucken, and we find it already about half filled, although it is not yet seven o'clock in the morning. Some seventy students I count, and among them about a dozen women, not segregated, but scattered here and there, for Jena is coeducational now, and masculine resentment at the intrusion of women has quite died out. The students may seat themselves wherever they choose, affixing a card with name and hour if they want to hold a particular place. These cards and even the desks are scrawled with automatic writing and sketches by the inattentive hands of students. The seats, long benches with a fixed desk and book rack in front, are better than those found in English universities, but not so good as the American individual seats. There are plenty of windows along one side of the room, and the walls—white above, light green below—diffuse the rays agreeably. The floor slants down to a plain pine desk and a small blackboard. On the wall is a mosaic portrait of the late Professor Abbé, the real patron of the University, for a prosperous optician is of much more use to a modern university than a needy Gross-Herzog.
Promptly on the hour a vigorous shuffling and stamping of feet announces the arrival of the professor, who begins with "Mein' Herren und Damen" as his first foot steps upon the platform. A German professor always gives good measure, a full hourful, pressed down, shaken together, and running over; no period of preliminary meditation on what he shall say and of casual conversation at the end, as often in America. Nor do the German professors find it necessary to adopt the low voice, indifferent air and hesitating utterance regarded at Oxford and Harvard as the mark of the gentleman and the scholar. In fact I find, in roaming about our universities, that so many of our younger men have adopted this pitch and tempo, being often inaudible and never impressive to the back seats, that I am tempted to lay down the law that the younger the instructor the poorer the voice. When I complain of it they reply coldly: "One can never shout and tell the truth." But Eucken is evidently not afraid that being heard will impair his veracity. You might take him for a revivalist. You would not be wrong if you did. His voice rings out loud and clear. He is tremendously in earnest. Occasionally, when he thinks of it, he sits down. But not for long. He springs to his feet and throws himself forward on the reading-desk in the effort to really reach his audience. He clasps his hands to his breast and then throws his arms out wide, as though to seize the Geistesleben with which his heart is overflowing and spread it far over a materialistic and indifferent generation. Who can doubt the reality of "the spiritual life" after he has seen Eucken? It shines in his face. We do not need to be told that Activism is his philosophy. It shows in his movements. He lives his theories. Few philosophers do, luckily for most of them.
"Happiness" is the subject of this lecture. The spiritual life is the theme of it, as always. The spiritual life, he says, goes out from within and transforms the world, thus giving true happiness. We must work with the world movement if we would partake of its divine purpose. And here he quotes Plotinus, the first religious philosopher, for whom he has as high regard as have Maeterlinck and Bergson. We must utilize the force of faith; must bring this Christian power into modern life. True ability is moral ability. Labor is not merely activity; it has a purpose; it is directed against opposition. By strife and striving we must reach the reality of the spiritual life. Through labor and love we attain our true selves. The fulfilling of duty is inner freedom. The unrest and stress of the present day are the signs of a new spiritual birth. The function of philosophy is not to afford intellectual or esthetic gratification, but it is to deepen and enrich life. To the fine old German saying, "A man is more than his work", Eucken added "Mankind is more than his culture." It is a Lebensanschauung rather than a Weltanschauung that he teaches, for to him a theory of life is more important than a theory of the cosmos.
These are merely a few fragmentary thoughts that I gathered in that memorable hour. Of no value in themselves, I give them merely to prove that I got something out of the lecture, for I never understood spoken German until I heard Eucken. But even a deaf man would have found it profitable to be there. A second lecture followed immediately, on "Pessimism and Optimism", delivered with the same vigor and listened to with the same interest. Professor Eucken was then sixty-seven years old, and would have been Carnegied if he were in an American university, instead of giving lectures from seven to nine. His hair and beard are pure white, but set off handsomely his pink cheeks and his bright blue eyes still unspectacled.