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Page 6
Idealism was at its height in those red-letter days when a high state of
culture had been attained, and great personalities produced masterpieces
in art, music, and literature. The progress of the sciences and of man's
natural activity has directed the spirit of the age towards material
progress; the ideals of mankind tend to become external and
superficial, and the interest in the invisible world falls to a minimum.
To some extent, too, idealism breathes of aristocracy--a most unpopular
characteristic in a democratic age. Experience shows that man is raised
above himself only in rare cases, and that the great things in the
realms of art, music, and literature are very largely the monopoly of
the few, and these mainly of the leisured classes. Hence the appeal of
idealism to certain types of men and women must necessarily be a feeble
one.
Then, again, there is the general indifference of mankind to lofty aims;
this militates against the power of idealism even more than in the case
of religion, for while in the latter there is the idea of a personal God
who is pleased or displeased urging men to renewed effort, the teachings
of idealism may appear to be mere abstractions, and can, as such,
possess little driving-power for the ordinary mind.
Idealism, too, seems to be a mere compromise between religion and a life
devoted to sense experience, and like most compromises it lacks the
enthusing power of the original ideas.
Finally, the whole theory leaves us in uncertainty--"that which was
intended to give a firm support, and to point out a clear course to our
life, has itself become a difficult problem."
But Eucken has more to say concerning idealism, even though in a
different form from the theories of the past. Indeed, his philosophy is
generally classed amongst the idealisms. Eucken makes a great endeavour,
however, to avoid the difficulties and objections to the idealistic
position; later we shall see that a great measure of success has crowned
his efforts.
Having discussed the two solutions that place special stress on the
invisible world, he proceeds to deal with the theories which emphasise
the relation of the life of man to the material world.
He first treats of _Naturalism_, that solution of the problem that makes
the sense experience of surrounding nature the basis of life,
subordinating even the life of the soul to the level of the natural,
material world.
Nature in the early ages had been superficially explained, often in the
light of religious doctrine. Man gave to nature a variety of
explanations and of colouring, depending largely upon his ideas of the
place of nature in relation to himself and to the invisible world. But
such anthropomorphic explanations could not long survive the progress of
the sciences, for a scientific comprehension of nature could only be
attained by getting rid of all human colouring, and by investigating
nature entirely by itself, out of all relation to the human soul. Man
then investigated nature more and more as an object apart from himself.
The first result of these investigations was to impress upon him the
reality of nature as something independent, and to increase on a very
large scale his knowledge of, and control over nature. When man began to
formulate and understand nature, he began, too, to invent machines to
profit from the knowledge he gained. Hence followed a marvellously
fruitful period of human activity, an activity which at first
strengthened man in his own soul, and gave him increased consciousness
of independence and power. While he was compelled to admit the greatness
of the natural world, he became more and more convinced that he himself
was far greater, for could he not put the laws of nature to his own use
and profit? Hence the gain to man at this stage of the development of
the sciences was very great, for he had come to appreciate more than
before the superiority of the human soul over the material world. Hence
resulted a more robust type of life, "a life energetic, masculine,
pressing forward unceasingly." Matters, however, were not destined to
remain long at this stage. As man's knowledge of the processes of nature
increased further, a twofold result followed. On the one hand, the sense
world of nature became increasingly absorbing in interest; on the other
hand, laws were formulated and nature was conceived of as being a chain
of cause and effect, a combination of mechanical elements whose
interactions were according to law, and could be foretold with the
utmost precision.
These two factors worked in the same direction, namely, that of
rendering less necessary the conception of a spiritual world. The
interest of mankind became so concentrated upon material things that the
interest in the invisible decreased, while the mechanical, soulless
elements with their ceaseless actions and reactions in definite order,
and according to inviolable law, were held sufficient to account for the
phenomena of nature. The keynote was "relation to environment"; a
constantly changing environment, changing according to law, called for
ceaseless readjustment, and the adaptation to environment was held to be
the stimulus to all activity in the natural world.
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