great personalities produced masterpieces
in art, music, and literature. The progress of the sciences and of man's
natural activity has directed the spirit of the age towards material
progress; the ideals of mankind tend to become external and
superficial, and the interest in the invisible world falls to a minimum.

To some extent, too, idealism breathes of aristocracy--a most unpopular
characteristic in a democratic age. Experience shows that man is raised
above himself only in rare cases, and that the great things in the
realms of art, music, and literature are very largely the monopoly of
the few, and these mainly of the leisured classes. Hence the appeal of
idealism to certain types of men and women must necessarily be a feeble
one.

Then, again, there is the general indifference of mankind to lofty aims;
this militates against the power of idealism even more than in the case
of religion, for while in the latter there is the idea of a personal God
who is pleased or displeased urging men to renewed effort, the teachings
of idealism may appear to be mere abstractions, and can, as such,
possess little driving-power for the ordinary mind.

Idealism, too, seems to be a mere compromise between religion and a life
devoted to sense experience, and like most compromises it lacks the
enthusing power of the original ideas.

Finally, the whole theory leaves us in uncertainty--"that which was
intended to give a firm support, and to point out a clear course to our
life, has itself become a difficult problem."

But Eucken has more to say concerning idealism, even though in a
different form from the theories of the past. Indeed, his philosophy is
generally classed amongst the idealisms. Eucken makes a great endeavour,
however, to avoid the difficulties and objections to the idealistic
position; later we shall see that a great measure of success has crowned
his efforts.

Having discussed the two solutions that place special stress on the
invisible world, he proceeds to deal with the theories which emphasise
the relation of the life of man to the material world.

He first treats of _Naturalism_, that solution of the problem that makes
the sense experience of surrounding nature the basis of life,
subordinating even the life of the soul to the level of the natural,
material world.

Nature in the early ages had been superficially explained, often in the
light of religious doctrine. Man gave to nature a variety of
explanations