Eucken believes in the reality and necessity of his message.  He is aware that that message is contrary to the current terminology and meaning of the philosophy of our day.  Some of his great constructive books were written as far back as 1888, and have remained, almost until our own day, in a large measure unnoticed. [p.19] The Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der Menschheit is a case in point.  It is one of his greatest books, and its value was not seen until the last few years.  But the philosophy of the present day in Germany is tending more and more in the direction of Eucken’s.  Writers such as the late Class and Dilthey, Siebeck, Windelband, Muensterberg, Rickert, Volkelt, Troeltsch —­naming but a small number of the idealistic thinkers of the present —­are tending in the direction of the new Metaphysic presented by Eucken in the book already referred to as well as in the Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt.

The philosophy of Germany at the present day is making several attempts at a metaphysic of the universe.  Much critical and constructive work has been done during the past quarter of a century and is being done to-day.  The attempts to construct systems of metaphysics may be witnessed on the sides of natural science and of philosophy.  Haeckel, Ostwald, and Mach have each given the world a constructive system of thought.  But these three systems have not, except in a secondary way, attempted a metaphysic of human life.  Haeckel’s system is mainly poetico-mythical, chiefly on the lines of some of the pre-Socratic philosophers.  Ostwald’s attempt is to show the unity of nature and life through his principle of Energetics; and Mach’s may be described as an inverted kind [p.20] of Kantianism in regard to the problem of subject and object.

None of these has attempted a reconstruction of philosophy from the side of the content of consciousness; in fact, they all find their explanation of consciousness in connection with physical and organic phenomena observed on planes below those of the mental and ideal life of man.  Such work is necessary; but if it comes forward as a complete explanation of man, it is, as Eucken points out again and again, a wretched caricature of life.  To know the connection of consciousness with the organic and inorganic world is not to know consciousness in anything more than its history.  It may have been similar to, or even identical with, physical manifestations of life, but it is not so now.  Eucken admits entirely this fact of the history of mind; but the meaning of mind is to be discovered not so much in its Whence as in its present potency and its Whither.[1] A philosophy of science is bound to recognise this difference, or else all its constructions can represent no more than a torso.  Physical impressions enter into consciousness, [p.21] and doubtless in important ways condition it, but they are not physical once man becomes conscious of them.  A union of subject and object has now taken place, and consequently a new beginning —­a beginning which cannot be interpreted in terms of the things of sense—­starts on its course.  This is Eucken’s standpoint, and it is no other than the carrying farther of some of the important results Kant arrived at.