hour to
look forward to. Individual and society become the creatures of mere
impulses and passions, stimulated to activity by a "dead-level"
environment. Something of value is gained when even this kind of
environment is a good; but the response is quite as readily given to
that which is injurious, simply because the "universally true and good"
is absent as an inwardness and conviction in the soul.

Without such an inwardness and its content the deeper energy of life is
not touched, and men drift with the tide of the environment. Without the
ideals or syntheses which are, in their very nature, universal and
absolute, progress comes to a standstill, and degeneration soon sets in.
The ordinary situation, apart from the presence of the content of the
over-world within the life of the soul, swings like a pendulum between a
shallow optimism and a blind pessimism. There is no power present in the
soul to come to any fundamental decision, but life drifts on a river
between Yea and Nay; a failure to penetrate beneath the [p.114] crust of
chance and circumstance becomes evident, and the deeper values and
meanings of life disappear.

Eucken's only solution for our present-day troubles is a return to our
own deeper nature as this was depicted in previous chapters. The signs
of the times, he tells us, are encouraging; the utilitarian mode of life
is wearing itself out; the tastes of material comforts have been with us
long enough to experience the poverty of their quality; and the mad
gamble for the "things which perish" is gradually weeding out its
devotees. Eucken's solution to the problems of society is a _religious_
one. Where is the conception of religion as the solution of the
momentous and intricate problems of our day to be found in the teachings
and writings of our economists? It is not to be found. These deal either
with petty details or with laws which have no spiritual content whatever
in them. Society may proceed with various Life-systems--individualism,
socialism, or any other, but until it gets into touch with its deepest
soul, each such system of life is hastening towards its own destruction
and towards the injury of progress.

The conception of the State is presented by Eucken in a similar manner.
He points out how we stop short in our politics of dealing with the
universally true and good. Party strives against party, and nation
against nation. [p.115] Groups of all hues and cries propound their own
particular