some of the most important Life-systems in vogue to-day.  When the various systems of Idealism are estimated, they seem to present aspects of reality with vast portions of human potencies and experiences left out of account. Absolute Idealism is based upon the demands and implications of logic.  Its doctrines would have taken a very different colouring had it considered that the necessities of Logic have to be adjusted to the necessities of Life.  Such systems are of little value to the soul, because the needs of the soul were not taken into account when they were formulated.  This fact was the main cause of the late Professor James’s rebellion against all forms of Absolute Idealism.  He felt that they bore no relationship to human life and its needs, and consequently could not exercise any important [p.209] influence on life; they could not move the will, for no possibility of reaching the Absolute was offered to man.  All the conclusions were in the realm of an intellectual universal and not in the realm of spirit.  They must be unreal in the highest sense on account of this very failure.  They have presented their half-gods as realities outside Nature, human nature, the pressing ideals of life, and even God Himself.

Eucken shows that any true Life-system has to start with Life itself.  There may be interpretations needful which have no implications for Life, and these have a right of their own; but when such interpretations are carried further, when the subject who knows such interpretations and who uses them is taken into account, then the interpretations found on this level are something quite different from what they were when the whole spirit of man was not taken into account.  Eucken consequently comes to the conclusion that philosophy has not completely fulfilled its vocation until it has become a philosophy of Life—­until the truest meaning of every object is discovered in its relation to all the necessities of the spirit.  And it is here that his teaching comes into conflict with so much that goes by the name of Idealism.  How can any system be more than a half-truth when its final meaning is presented with but little attention to the highest aspect we know in the world —­to human life in its struggles and conquests, [p.210] in its living and loving, and its forward movement towards some distant goal?  The special value of Eucken’s teaching lies, then, in the fact that it interprets what happens, can happen, and ought to happen within life itself.  No system which leaves out the soul with its possibilities is complete.  This has been done too often in the past, and is being done to-day.  Is it, then, a wonder that philosophy has given so very little help to Life in its complex problems without and its sharp opposites and contradictions within?  Life is more and needs more than a philosophy of words, devoid of power, can offer it.  Life, when at its best, believes in the all-power of its own spiritual potency; it has faith in the possibility of ascent from height to height, as well as in the possibility of an incessant progress not only of individuals but of the whole of mankind.[72] A System stands or falls according as it is able to conceive of Life in such a manner.  And Eucken has done this as probably no other living philosopher has done it.