In 1871 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the University of Basel.  In 1874 he received a “call” to succeed the late Kuno Fischer as Professor of Philosophy in the renowned University of Jena.  It is here, in the “little nest” of Goethe and Schiller, that Eucken has remained in spite of “calls” to universities situated in larger towns and carrying with them larger salaries.  It is fortunate for Jena that Eucken has thus decided.  He, along with his late colleague Otto Liebmann, has kept up the philosophical tradition of Jena.  In spite of modern developments and the presence of [p.17] new university buildings, Jena still remains an old-world place.  To read the tablets on the walls of the old houses has a fascination, and brings home the fact that in this small out-of-the-way town large numbers of the most creative minds of Europe have studied and taught.  The traditions of Goethe and Schiller still linger around the old buildings and in the historical consciousness of the people.  Here Fichte taught his great idealism—­an idealism which has meant so much in the evolution of the Germany of the nineteenth century; here Hegel was engaged on his great Phenomenology of Spirit when Napoleon’s army entered the town; here Schopenhauer sent his great dissertation and received his doctor’s degree in absentia; here too, the Kantian philosophy found friends who started it on its “grand triumphant march”—­a philosophy which raised new problems which have been with us ever since, and which gave a new method of approaching philosophical questions; here Schelling revived modern mysticism and attempted the construction of a great Weltanschauung. But only a small portion of the greatness of Jena can be touched on.  Eucken has nobly upheld the great traditions of the place, not only as a philosophical thinker but also as a personality.

What is the secret of Eucken’s influence?  It is due greatly, it is true, to his writings and their original contents, for it is not possible for [p.18] a man to hide his inner being when he writes on the deepest questions concerning life and death.  A great deal of Eucken’s personality may be discovered in his writings.  Opening any page of his books, one sees something unique, passionate, and somehow always deeper than what may be confined within the limits of the understanding, and something which has to be lived in order to be understood.  And to know the man is to realise this in a fuller measure than his writings can ever show.  He has to be seen and heard before the real significance of his message becomes clear.  His personality attracts men and women of all schools of thought, from all parts of the world, and they all feel that his message of a reality which is beyond knowledge—­though knowledge forms an integral part of it—­is a new revelation of the meaning of life and existence.  Professor Windelband, in his History of Philosophy and elsewhere, describes Eucken as the creator of a new Metaphysic—­a metaphysic not of the Schools but of Life.  This aspect will be discussed at fuller length in later pages, so that it may be passed over for the present.