e break between the higher and the
lower nature. For Eucken, as for Dante, there must be 'the penitence,
the tears, and the plunge into the river of Lethe before the new
transcendent love begins.' There is no evasion of the complexities of
life. He has a profound perception of the contradictions of experience
and the seeming paradoxes of religion. For him true liberty is only
possible through the 'given,' through God's provenience and grace:
genuine self-realisation is only achievable through a continuous
self-dedication to, and {126} incorporation within, the great realm of
spirits; and the Immanence within our lives of the Transcendent.[34]

In styling the tendencies which we have thus briefly reviewed
non-Christian, we have had no intention of disparagement. No earnest
effort to discover truth, though it may be inadequate and partial, is
ever wholly false. In the light of these theories we are able to see
more clearly the relation between the good and the useful, and to
acknowledge that, just as in nature the laws of economy and beauty have
many intimate correspondences, so in the spiritual realm the good, the
beautiful, and the true may be harmonised in a higher category of the
spirit. We shall see that the Christian ideal is not so much
antagonistic to, as inclusive of, all that is best in the teaching of
science and philosophy. The task therefore now before us is to interpret
these general conceptions of the highest good in the light of Christian
Revelation--to define the chief end of life according to Christianity.

[1] Kasper Schmidt, _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_.

[2] Haeckel, _op. cit._, chap. xix.

[3] Haeckel, _op. cit._, chap. xix. p. 140.

[4] Hobbes' _Leviathan_, chap. vi.

[5] Cf. Pringle-Pattison, _Philos. Radicals_, and J. Seth's _Eng.
Philosophers_, p. 240.

[6] _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii.

[7] _Idem_, chap. iii.

[8] Cf. Spencer, _Data of Ethics_, p. 275; also _Social Statics_. In the
former work an attempt is made to exhibit the biological significance of
pleasure and the relation between egoism and altruism.

[9] See _First Principles_, p. 166 ff.

[10] See Kirkup, _An Inquiry into Socialism_, p. 19.

[11] See Luetgert, _Natur und Geist Gottes_, for striking chapter on
Goethe's _Ethik_, p. 121 f.

[12] Cf. Eucken, _Main Currents of Modern Thought_, p. 401 f.

[13] Macmillan, _The Crowning Phase of the Critical Philosophy_, p. 28.

[14] Hegel, _Phil. of Right_, p. 4