Six Major Prophets

by Edwin E. Slosson

And when he leaves the lecture room he does not leave his work, but goes to more of it at home. On one wall of his study is a photograph of Michael Angelo's "Creation", from the Sistine Chapel, and on the opposite a cast of a section of the Parthenon frieze. Between these is the desk of the man who has brought together the highest aspirations of Greek and Christian culture; a table stacked high with papers and manuscripts.

His correspondence is now voluminous, but he answers all letters promptly and carefully, writing his replies in the old-fashioned way, with a pen. He receives all visitors and will talk of his philosophy to a single auditor with the same unwearied enthusiasm as to an audience. Even those who are repelled by the severity of his literary style are attracted by the charm of his personality, and this accounts in large part for his devoted following in all parts of the world.

After granting me an interview which took the heart out of his afternoon, Professor Eucken returned good for evil by inviting me to dinner in the evening, when I found that the lady on my right was from Nebraska and the one on my left from Switzerland, while around the table I saw a young Boer from the Transvaal, a don from Oxford, a professor from Tokyo, and representatives of I don't know how many other nationalities.

The extension of the influence of Professor Eucken through this hearty hospitality is due largely to his wife. Frau Eucken has happily not confined herself to the duties which the Kaiser prescribes as woman's only sphere, Kirche, Kueche und Kinder[4] She is not only wife, mother and housekeeper, but artist and musician as well. Her success in managing what might be called an international salon of philosophy is facilitated by her ability to converse in many languages. On account of the generous hospitality extended to students and strangers by the Eucken household a removal was made last year to a new villa in the suburbs. Professor Eucken's wife and daughter came with him on his visit to America.

Eucken's philosophy of life is dramatic. His life has been undramatic; the even, ordered course of the typical German professor, made even more uneventful by reason of his mastery of the gentle art of not making enemies. Born in Aurich, East Friesland, January 5, 1846, he studied at Göttingen under Lotze, and at Berlin under Trendelenburg; taught for four years in a gymnasium; then for three years in the University of Basel; in 1874 was called to the University of Jena, where he has ever since remained, in spite of calls to larger institutions. His inner life has been as uneventful as its external aspects; a continuous, methodical, logical development of thought, without leaps or backslidings.

First, in 1878, he laid the foundations in the study of the concepts of philosophy which attracted the attention of President Porter. Seven years later he was ready to outline his own guiding theory in a volume bearing the characteristically Germanic title of "A Prolegomena for the Investigation of the Unity of the Spiritual Life in the Consciousness and Acts of Mankind." From this standpoint of the unique significance of the spiritual life he then reviewed the whole history of the evolution of philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche. His purpose in this work, known in English as "The Problem of Human Life", was, as he explains, "to afford historical confirmation of the view that conceptions are determined by life, not life by conceptions", and "that human destinies are not decided by mere opinions and whims, either of individuals or of masses of individuals, but rather that they are ruled by spiritual necessities with a spiritual aim and purport, and that for man a new world dawns, transcending the merely natural domain—the world, namely, of the spiritual life."

The sentences quoted are alone enough to show that Eucken's "history of philosophy" is a very different thing from what usually goes by that name, that is the chronicling of the speculations of successive generations of metaphysicians, each one wiping clean the slate before he began to write. Eucken sees an aim and purpose in philosophic thought. He does not regard it as a mere amusement or as an intellectual exercise, but rather as a method by which humanity may grow into a higher sphere of existence. The vital need of the day, then, is to awaken the present indifferent and busy generation to a realization of the supreme importance of spiritual things and to the necessity of bringing the Christian religion into vital connection with modern thought.

This is the task to which Eucken devoted his energies when by the close of the nineteenth century he had fully matured his views, and the rapid succession of volumes which have since come from his pen are concerned with the moral and intellectual difficulties which nowadays impede religious progress.