Schiller worked in practically the same direction.  A moral standpoint of a high order [p.121] is to be discovered in his writings, and he believed this standard to be possible of preservation alongside of a legitimate “freedom granted in the phenomenon.”  “Then the two tendencies again became divided.  Romanticism gave a peculiar definite and self-conscious expression to the priority of art and the aesthetical view of life, while Fichte and the other leaders of the national movement exerted a powerful influence in the direction of strengthening morality.  The social and industrial type of civilisation, which became more and more powerful during the course of the nineteenth century, was inclined, with its tendency towards social welfare and utility, to assign a subordinate part to art.  Modern art arises in protest against this and is ambitious to influence the whole of life; in opposition to morality it holds up an aesthetic view of life as being alone justifiable.  Hence at the present time the two spheres stand wide apart."[39]

Eucken shows how such an antithesis between morality and art has partially existed for thousands of years.  But whenever a cleavage takes place both morality and art suffer.  On the one hand, morality tends to become a system of rules for the performance of which a reward is promised either in this world or in the world to come.  On the other hand, art is stripped of the distinction between the values of sensuous things as these express [p.122] themselves in their relation to human life.  In the former case, insistence on morality (even on morality alone) has deepened human life; it has given it a more strenuous tone; and it has created a scale of values which alters the whole meaning of life.  But morality conceived as a system of regulations and laws has always the tendency to harden and narrow the life, and to posit the individual too much upon himself.  Any justification from without—­from the physical side—­consequently fails to give any help or satisfaction.  And man needs this help.  As it is impossible for him to fly out of the world to some region where mind or spirit alone reigns, he has to do the best he can with the physical world in the midst of which he exists.  It is within such a world that he has to cultivate the spiritual potencies of his own being.  It is true that the spiritual potencies of his own being are higher and of more value than anything in Nature.  Still, that does not mean that Nature has to be discarded or condemned before the potencies of his own being can develop.  Nature is not a mere blind machine; it has produced all—­including man and his potencies—­that is to be found on the face of it.  It is therefore not entirely meaningless, and the meaning it possesses is a necessary element in the evolution of personal spiritual life.  Man must enter into some relation with Nature.  But such a relation produces even more than all this.  When viewed in a friendly mood, [p.123] Nature herself