voted to the Parts--to the environment, the needs of the
hour, the material comforts and happiness of life. But granting that the
possession of all these will come about, what then? We are still
wretchedly poor in the "inward parts." What we have won has not within
itself sufficient spirituality to touch the deepest recesses of the
soul. Material plenty and pleasure are a good when they are used as they
ought to be used. Where is that "something" that teaches us this? Where
is the Ought? The Ought is something outside and infinitely higher than
all the gains which the environment or the group is ever able to bring
forth. "Life," says Eucken,[36] "cannot be made simply [p.112] a
question of relationship to environment and of the development of mutual
relationships (as this tendency would have it) without the independence
of the isolated factor [spiritual life] being most seriously reduced.
And it must not be forgotten that the individual is the sole source of
original spiritual life; corporate social life can do no more than unite
and utilise. The maintenance of the strength and freedom of this
original life would be less important, and its limitation would be more
easily endurable, if human life stood upon a firm foundation and needed
only to follow quietly in a naturally appointed direction. In reality,
life is not only full of separate problems, but being situated (as it
is) between the realm of mere Nature and the spiritual world, must begin
by systematically directing itself aright and ascending from the
semi-spiritual to the truly spiritual construction of life. It is hence
called upon to perform great tasks, which cannot be carried out without
serious efforts and the mobilisation of all our spiritual forces. This
necessarily leads us back to the original sources of strength, and hence
to the individual."

This passage represents well Eucken's main teaching in regard to our
social problems. We shall ever fail in the highest sense if the
spiritual content of life is no more than a _means_ to reach material
ends, however necessary such ends may be. For in such a [p.113] manner
spiritual life--the universally true and valid--is reduced to a lower
plane; it becomes entangled in lower stages, and thus ceases to be a
"light on the hill" illumining the steep upward path. Convictions of a
spiritual nature--the very forces which have moulded society--are absent
from such a system of life which has no more than the day or the