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 acknowledge the problems of spiritual life as
well as participate in the struggle for the vindication and formation of
a spiritual world. When art does this, these questions which engage our
attention are also its questions."[41]

In spite of the contradictions of life, in spite of much which seems
indifferent to human weal and woe within the physical universe, the
contradictions may be surmounted by the union of man's spirit with other
aspects of existence which look in an opposite direction. The ideal
world of art is not to be discovered by ignoring these contradictions,