In the religious aspect of his philosophy, Bergson stands at the parting of the ways. He must associate with creation not merely an impulse vaguely psychical, but the personal attributes of will, intelligence and purpose, and so advance towards theism; or else he must be content to rest in naturalism, albeit of a glorified type.
II. Eucken and the Truth of Religion
Since the death of William James, the brightest stars in the philosophical firmament have been Henri Bergson of Paris and Rudolf Eucken of Jena. One reason for the popularity of both is that the centre of interest in their best-known works is not in epistemology. They do not approach the problem of existence as beholders, merely asking how they can see, and whether what they see is real, but their standpoint is that of intimate, vital human experience. Both writers place themselves in the stream of life, and find that the moments of deepest insight into reality are those of creative activity in art or other constructions of the mind, or else, with Eucken, of moral achievement and victory.
Eucken has been called the German Emerson, and his message to his time is that of a seer rather than of a systematizer. He is the prophet of a spiritual life, protesting against materialism and secularism, and vindicating the sovereign rights of the spiritual aspects of existence. In the term "Activism," which he applies to his philosophy, he intimates that there must be an activity of the soul upon its material and social environment, before the insights of philosophy and the achievements of art and the experiences of religion can be attained. There must be an assertion by the soul of its own spiritual nature. The conviction that man is not merely the product of nature, but in his spiritual life is independent and supreme, is not the result of a revelation to a passive recipient. It is an achievement, a venture of faith, a self-assertion of the soul in the face of hostile forces which would confine it within the trivial and the phenomenal.
Eucken's relation to Christianity will appear if we notice briefly (1) his critique of other philosophical theories; (2) his own constructive theory of religion; and (3) his answer to the question, Can we still be Christians?
1. As an exponent of the "monistic trinity" of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, Eucken is brought into comparison with his famous colleague, Haeckel, with whose "brand-new monism" he has little sympathy. Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him. From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art, social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is constructed through the activity of the human mind alone."[163]
Against Pragmatism, with which Eucken's Activism has some superficial resemblance, he argues for the "independent character of reality over against our experience of it." He believes that our deepest nature can be called into action only by the recognition of an Ought, which has an existence and value of its own, regardless of the opinions of any group of individuals or of the whole human race. "When the good of the individual and of humanity becomes the highest aim and the guiding principle, truth sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opinion.... Truth can exist only as an end in itself. 'Instrumental' truth is no truth at all."[164]
The method of the intellectualist as well as of the voluntarist is inadequate to reach the truth of religion. Religion should be a fact of the whole man, and of his own decision, and it should recognize by a unique experience, which cannot be called exclusively feeling or thought or will, an encompassing and basal whole. Thought "left simply to its own resources would never be able to get beyond empty forms and highly abstract conceptions."[165] No merely intellectual form of religion is able to overcome doubt. Thus "the transformation of the Spiritual Life into an impersonal thought-process destroys it to its very foundation."
2. This effort, already in part described, to assert an independent spiritual world over against a natural world, this recognition of over-individual standards and of an absolute, self-subsistent Spiritual Life (Geistesleben), is called Universal Religion. The term Godhead to indicate this conception is in some ways preferable to that of God. A higher stage of religion is indicated by Eucken's term Characteristic Religion, by which is meant a deeper insight into the divine, a more personal experience of the divine energy of Spiritual Life. Universal Religion, it may be said, is the demand or the feeling after God; while Characteristic Religion is the supply or the finding of God. In the effort to conform to the over-individual standards and to attain harmony with the divine, there is an inevitable sense of weakness and failure. It becomes evident that man's own energy cannot save him from inner discord. "If a rescue is possible, Divine power and grace must do the work. That such power and grace really accomplish this, is the fundamental conviction of religion."[166] There originates a mutual intercourse with the soul and God as between an I and a Thou; and "consequently, there culminates here a movement away from the colourless conception of the Godhead to that of a living and personal God."[167]