Eucken insists that it is not the movement of democracy towards better
social conditions that will be effective in bringing about such a
change. Much, of course, can be effected by better social conditions.
There are needs to-day in connection with labour which ought to be met.
But at the best they can do no more than touch the periphery of human
existence. A poverty in the "inward parts" will still exist in the midst
of external plenty. But if men and women could be brought to the
consciousness of spiritual ideals and their efficacy, a disposition of
soul and character would be created which would rapidly change the evil
conditions of life and the perplexing problems of capital and labour.
Several writers have gone astray when they have imagined that Eucken has
but scant sympathy with the social needs of our times. It would be
difficult to find anywhere a man of a more tender heart. But he sees
deeper than the level of material and social needs and their fulfilment.
He sees that it is only by a change [p.84] of disposition and attitude
of the soul that permanent changes in the material well-being of the
world can come about. For it is in the soul's relation with its
over-individual and over-historical ideals that permanent qualities can
be created and preserved: it is in our own deepest being, through a
conviction of the values of sympathy, sacrifice, and love that any
genuine history can find its birth and nurture. We require to pay no
less attention to the things of the body; but the things of the spirit
must step into the foreground of life once again. Then we are working at
the heart of the Life-process--a Life-process which is the beginning of
a new cosmic process; and what will issue out of such a result will
probably be greater and better than anything we can dream of. Men are
called to this work to-day. They understand but little its significance
and its trend; they must be willing to learn from those who have lived
through these problems, and who see ramifications of the problems into a
soil deeper than is perceptible by the masses. The masses must be