Eucken insists that it is not the movement of democracy towards better social conditions that will be effective in bringing about such a change.  Much, of course, can be effected by better social conditions.  There are needs to-day in connection with labour which ought to be met.  But at the best they can do no more than touch the periphery of human existence.  A poverty in the “inward parts” will still exist in the midst of external plenty.  But if men and women could be brought to the consciousness of spiritual ideals and their efficacy, a disposition of soul and character would be created which would rapidly change the evil conditions of life and the perplexing problems of capital and labour.  Several writers have gone astray when they have imagined that Eucken has but scant sympathy with the social needs of our times.  It would be difficult to find anywhere a man of a more tender heart.  But he sees deeper than the level of material and social needs and their fulfilment.  He sees that it is only by a change [p.84] of disposition and attitude of the soul that permanent changes in the material well-being of the world can come about.  For it is in the soul’s relation with its over-individual and over-historical ideals that permanent qualities can be created and preserved:  it is in our own deepest being, through a conviction of the values of sympathy, sacrifice, and love that any genuine history can find its birth and nurture.  We require to pay no less attention to the things of the body; but the things of the spirit must step into the foreground of life once again.  Then we are working at the heart of the Life-process—­a Life-process which is the beginning of a new cosmic process; and what will issue out of such a result will probably be greater and better than anything we can dream of.  Men are called to this work to-day.  They understand but little its significance and its trend; they must be willing to learn from those who have lived through these problems, and who see ramifications of the problems into a soil deeper than is perceptible by the masses.  The masses must be willing to be taught in the things of the spirit.  Hence we see the need of great personalities who will combine in their own souls a penetrating knowledge and an intense enthusiasm for the real welfare of mankind.  A true history can never be born outside this region; the world, without such a conviction, can only wander out of one morass into [p.85] another; and failure after failure will be the inevitable result of all the attempts.  Movements will have value and duration only in so far as they are the outcome of a need of a spiritual life which includes demands of intellect, morality, and religious idealism.