ndles
the spirit of man. It becomes ever plainer to all who are willing to see
that mere secular culture is empty and vain, and is powerless to grant
life any real content or fill it with genuine love. Man and humanity are
pressed ever more forcibly forward into a struggle for the meaning of
life and the deliverance of the spiritual self. But the great tasks must
be handled with a greatness of spirit, and such a spirit demands
freedom--freedom in the service of truth and truthfulness. Let us
therefore work together, let us work unceasingly with all our strength
as long as the day lasts, in the conviction that 'he who wishes to cling
to the Old that ages not must leave behind him the old that ages'
(_Runeberg_), and that an Eternal of the real kind cannot [p.203] be
lost in the flux of Time, because it overcomes Time by entering into
it."[69]

Eucken is aware of the various Life-systems which present themselves on
every side as all-inclusive. But he sees no hope for a real spiritual
education of mankind until every Life-system shall seek for a depth
beyond the _natural_ man and all his wants. And such a movement is
visible amongst us to-day. It needs to be possessed and proclaimed. The
redemption of the world depends upon its success. The Christian religion
is such a Gospel. "But a movement towards a more essential and
soul-stirring culture--to a progressive superiority of a complete life
beyond all individual activities--cannot arise without bringing the
problem of religion once more to the foreground. Our life is not able to
find its bearings within this deep or to gather its treasures into a
Whole unless it realises how many acute opposites it carries within
itself. Life will either be torn in pieces by these opposites, or it
must somehow be raised above them all. It is the latter alone that can
bring about a thorough transformation of our first and shallow view of
the universe as well as the inauguration of a new reality. Man has
emerged out of the darkness of nature and remains afflicted with the
afflictions of nature; yet at the same time, with his appearance upon
the earth the darkness begins to illumine, and [p.204] 'nature kindles
within him a light' (Schopenhauer); he who is a mere speck on the face
of a boundless expanse can yet aspire to a participation in the whole of
Infinity; he who stands in the midst of the flux of time yet possesses
an aspiration after infinite truth; he who forms but a mere piece of
n