CHAPTER VI [p.108]

RELIGION AND SOCIETY


Eucken shows that the problems of history are closely allied with those
of society. The best accounts of the meaning he attaches to human
society are to be found in _The Main Currents of Modern Thought, Der
Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt_, and _Life Basis and Life Ideal_.
The conclusions reached in these three books are the same--they are an
insistence on the need of spiritual life as a creative power in the
utilisation of norms and ideals as well as in the creation of further
norms and ideals. He points out the devious paths which human society
has travelled over: all these, in the case of society and of the
individual, are shown to lead to disaster when they depend merely upon
the environment or upon the ideals of a utilitarian mode of a
historico-social construction.

Society has gained much through the necessity of emphasising some
aspects of a Whole--of thinking and acting collectively--instead [p.109]
of emphasising merely the Parts. The history of human society, in a very
large measure, is the history of shifting the centre of gravity of life
alternately from the Whole to the Parts and _vice versa_. When the
centre of gravity remains in some kind of Whole, a number of individuals
move towards the same goal, and much that is subjective has to be
shifted to the background of life. Now, this is a gain, and it is the
only path on which a corporate life becomes possible. Men (and women
too) stand shoulder to shoulder when some kind of Whole or Ideal seems
to them to be a necessity of their nature. But progress is brought about