ency of the soul, gained in a province
outside art (as is the case with morality or value), operates, there is
no danger of art degenerating into mere subjectivism; otherwise there is
a very grave danger. Loosened from morality it becomes a mere play of
decoration and fancy--a mere superficial embroidery of an empty life; it
can look on the human world and all its struggles with an indifferent
and often cynical mood. Why has all this happened? Because the inward
factor of the "strenuous mood" has been replaced by a sentimental factor
based on nothing deeper than the satisfaction of the senses; and the
result of this is found in feelings which are more psychical than
spiritual in their nature.

But that art is necessary for any completion [p.125] of life is seen by
the fact that its contribution to the soul is more than a _thought_
contribution. For the deeper life of the spirit of man is more than
thought, although thought forms an essential element of it; this deeper
life has wider demands than can be expressed in the form of logical
propositions. Eucken shows how true art is therefore indissolubly
connected with spiritual life. "Without the presence of a spiritual
world [the resultant of the union of the spiritual potencies and
external objects], art has no soul and no secure fundamental
relationship to reality, and in no way can it develop a fixed style.
We hear to-day of a 'new style,' and are in the saddle after such a
conception. But shall we find it so long as the whole of life does not
fasten itself upon simple fundamental lines and does not follow the main
path in the midst of all the tangle of effort? How is it possible to
attain to a unity of interpretation where our life itself fails in the
possession of a governing unity? We discover ourselves in the midst of
the most fundamental transformations of life; old ideals are vanishing,
and new ones are dawning on the horizon. But as yet they are all full of
unrest and unreadiness; and the situation of man in the All of things is
so full of uncertainty that he has to struggle anew for the meaning and
value of his life. If art has nothing to say to him and no help to
offer--if it relegates these questions far from itself--then art itself
must sink to the level of a [p.126] subsidiary play the more these
problems win the mind and spirit of man. But if art is capable of
bringing a furtherance of values to man in his needs and sorrows, it
will have to recognise and ac