The problem of human life : as viewed by the great thinkers from Plato to the present time / by Rudolph Eucken ; Translated from the German by Williston S. Hough and W. R. Boyce Gibson.

  • Eucken, Rudolf, 1846-1926.
Date:
1912, ©1909
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The problem of human life : as viewed by the great thinkers from Plato to the present time / by Rudolph Eucken ; Translated from the German by Williston S. Hough and W. R. Boyce Gibson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    begins. Men cannot for long deny their spiritual nature and suppress all concern for its welfare. Their inner life holds its own against all pressure from without; it persists in relating all events to itself and summoning them for judgment before its own tribunal. Even opposition serves but to remind the Sub- ject of the fundamental and inalienable rights of its own in- wardness and freedom. So a slumbering giant needs only to be roused to the consciousness of his power to show himself superior to all the forces the world can bring against him. And when simultaneously with these changes an elemental passion for individuality of life and inner well-being asserts itself, when the rationality of existence, the salvation of the soul, become pressing, torturing problems, of a sudden the whole aspect of the world is transformed; that which was once held a sure possession now becomes a matter of painful per- plexity and an object of weary search. A regenerative movement of this kind is now in perceptible progress: and though the Powers of Mechanism still continue to extend their outward sway, our faith in them is shaken and the struggle against them has begun. Great movements are abroad to-day which, despite manifold differences of tendency, converge to a common issue. The passionate impetus of the social movement, the evidences of increasing religious earnest- ness, the ferment of artistic creation, all express one and the same desire, an ardour of longing for more happiness, for a fuller development of our human nature, for a new and a loftier order of life. And yet, despite its progress, the movement is still in many respects very incomplete and chaotic. It is not only that cer- tain of its side-currents variously intersect and frustrate each other; the main stream itself is a curious blend of higher and lower, nobility and meanness, youthful freshness and senile punctiliousness. Instead of seeking to transform his inward experience into an ordered cosmos and to strengthen freedom into law, the Subject is apt to measure his progress by the ex- tent to which he can dispense with all authority, not excluding