An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy by W. Tudor (William Tudor) Jones
page 85 of 186 (45%)
page 85 of 186 (45%)
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but by acknowledging them to the full, and by seeing that Nature is
supplemented by man and his soul. Such a union, as has already been pointed out, will create an earnestness and joyousness of life; it will enable man, when any teleology of Nature herself fails to give him satisfaction, to realise a teleology within the _substance_ of his own life--spiritual in its essence, infinite in its duration, and the flowering of a bud which has grown with the help of the natural cosmos. When Nature is thus viewed as a preparatory stage for spirit, it will wear an aspect very different from the mechanical one. Its real teleology [p.127] will be seen: there can be no dispute about it; it has actually produced man, and man has now to carry farther the evolutionary process. Eucken has presented this aspect in a fine manner in his article on Schiller in _Kantstudien_[42] (Band X., Heft 3), _Festschrift zu Schillers hundertstem Todestage_. No one in modern times discovered the contradictions of the world in regard to the needs of man more than Schiller. And yet no one led a more joyous life than this "half-poet, half-thinker." Pressed from within and without by many alien elements, he overcame them all and found, despite his physical weakness, what a gift life is. It is in the direction of a great synthesis of spiritual life and natural phenomena that true art will discover the qualities for a permanent duration. Such a synthesis will enrich the spiritual life, and will grant it something of higher construction concerning the meaning and value of the union of Nature and Man. So Eucken has once more landed us into the spiritual life as the source and goal of all true Art. "Only the rooted knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest achievement, eye a mark |
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