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CHAPTER IV [p.70]

RELIGION AND HISTORY

The subject of history has obtained a most prominent position in the whole of Eucken’s philosophy.  All his books deal with the subject, and in a manner resembling one another, whatever the particular subject dealt with may be.  But the most exhaustive treatment of history presented in his volumes is to to be found in the chapter on history in Systematische Philosophie("Kultur der Gegenwart,” Teil I., Abteilung VI.), and in the latter half of The Truth of Religion.  In the former volume Eucken deals with history in its relation to civilisation and culture, and in the latter the place of history in the religions of the world is strikingly expressed.

We have already noticed in the previous chapter how he set out to discover the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of knowing the physical world and in the constructions which form both the basis and the apex of physical science.  It was shown [p.71] here that a life higher than the physical was present in order to be able to read the meaning of the world.  Such a life became a standpoint to view Nature, and is the possession, more or less, of each individual.  But although the possession of individuals and above Nature, the consciousness that knows Nature is still carried beyond its own individual life.  The meaning of the physical world appears in consciousness, through the syntheses it forms, as objective, although it is not an object of sense but of thought; and, further, this very objectivity subsists in the form of generalisations and meanings which create standards for each individual in his relations with the physical world.  Eucken then concludes that there is a trans-subjective aspect present in the conclusions of physical science itself.[19] And it is on this fact that he bases the presence of a mental or spiritual life in the very act of knowing at all.  But it is evident that the whole of man’s potencies and relations are not confined to the knowing of Nature and framing interpretations concerning it.  There are other provinces to which man is related—­other objects besides physical ones to which his attention is called to frame interpretations concerning them also.  History is one of these provinces.  The subject-matter here is entirely [p.72] different from the subject-matter of physical science.  In the latter the objects are physical; in the former the objects are not things, but will-relations.[20] We are in history dealing with the effects of heredity and physical environment upon all organic life—­man included.  But it has been already shown that man, though rooted in the natural world and dependent upon it, is still the possessor of a world which is above the physical.  Man’s roots in Nature have been unearthed in a large measure; and his dependence on the world from which he has emerged is greater than was suspected, and probably it will be discovered in the future that he is still more dependent on what is below him.  But however deep his connection with Nature may prove itself to be, he will still remain an unsolved problem if he is coolly stripped of all the qualities he has gained since he emerged from the bosom of Nature.