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PROBLEM OF VALUES

This point presents three types.—Guyau and Nietsche expect new forms of life to arise, and they base their expectation upon the fact that the overflowing fullness of vital energy in our present experience and our present conditions of life cannot find an adequate outlet. Like Rousseau they insist on the right of spontaneous, instinctive life as against analytic reflection. The formula R < E finds its application here.—Rudolph Eucken likewise makes the contradiction between the capacity and the actual status of men his starting-point. The life of every-day experience is incoherent, without any center of gravity, and suffers from the contrast between nature and value. The only possibility of a true culture is through a new concentration which lays hold of a "spiritual substance" beyond the confines of experience,—"a spiritual existence" in which what has been already acquired is preserved and from which new constructions proceed. William James treats religious problems purely psychologically. He seeks to examine religion as it manifests itself at first hand in individual men, "personal religion" (as against institutional religion"), which is a result of the individual's life-experiences, the experiences which determine his fundamental attitude and his method of reacting towards the fact of life. This fundamental attitude or this reaction constitutes religion whenever on account of contrasts and conflicts they acquire a transcendent character.

1. Jean Maria Guyau (1854-1888) exemplifies a rare combination of subjective emotion with indefatigable reflection. He feels the profound difficulty of the problems and the illusion of the majority of the solutions, but he holds that the illusions are valuable if only they are fruitful, i.e. if they excite the activity of the intellect