te
into paths of grotesque and arbitrary fancy. Our actions and ideas must
issue from our world. Even a poem or work of art must make its appeal to
the universal mind; any other kind of originality would wholly lack human
interest and sever all creation and life from their root in human nature.
But at least we must acknowledge that Bergson has done to the world of
thought the great service of liberating us from the bonds of matter and
the thraldom of a fatalistic necessity. It is his merit that he has
lifted from man the burden of a hard determinism, and vindicated the
freedom, choice, and initiative of the human spirit. If he has no
distinctly Christian message, he has at least disclosed for the soul the
possibility of new beginnings, and has shown that there is room in the
spiritual life, as the basis of all upward striving, for change of heart
and conversion of life.

5. In the philosophy of Eucken there is much that is in harmony with
that of Bergson; but there are also important differences. Common to
both is a reaction against formalism and intellectualism. Neither claims
that we can gain more than 'the knowledge of a direction' in which the
solution of the problem may be sought. It is not a 'given' or finished
world with which we have to do. 'The triumph of life is expressed by
creation,' says Eucken, 'I mean the creation of self by self.' 'We live
in the conviction,' he says again, 'that the possibilities of the
universe have not yet been played out,[29] but that our spiritual life
still finds itself battling in mid-flood with much of the world's work
still before us.' While Bergson confines himself rigidly to the
metaphysical side of thought, Eucken is chiefly interested in the ethical
and religious aspects of life's problem. Moreover, while there is an
absence of a distinctly teleological aim in Bergson, the purpose and
ideal {122} of life are prominent elements in Eucken. Notwithstanding
his antagonism to intellectualism, the influence of Hegel is evident in
the absolutist tendency of his teaching. Life for Eucken is
fundamentally spiritual. Self-consciousness is the unifying principle.
Personality is the keynote of his philosophy. But we are not
personalities to begin with: we have the potentiality to become such by
our own effort. He bids us therefore forget ourselves, and strive for
our highest ideal--the realisation of spiritual personality. The more
man 'loses his life' in the pursuit o