Basel. In 1874 he received a "call" to succeed the late Kuno Fischer as
Professor of Philosophy in the renowned University of Jena. It is here,
in the "little nest" of Goethe and Schiller, that Eucken has remained in
spite of "calls" to universities situated in larger towns and carrying
with them larger salaries. It is fortunate for Jena that Eucken has thus
decided. He, along with his late colleague Otto Liebmann, has kept up
the philosophical tradition of Jena. In spite of modern developments and
the presence of [p.17] new university buildings, Jena still remains an
old-world place. To read the tablets on the walls of the old houses has
a fascination, and brings home the fact that in this small out-of-the-way
town large numbers of the most creative minds of Europe have studied and
taught. The traditions of Goethe and Schiller still linger around the
old buildings and in the historical consciousness of the people. Here
Fichte taught his great idealism--an idealism which has meant so much in
the evolution of the Germany of the nineteenth century; here Hegel was
engaged on his great _Phenomenology of Spirit_ when Napoleon's army
entered the town; here Schopenhauer sent his great dissertation and
received his doctor's degree _in absentia_; here too, the Kantian
philosophy found friends who started it on its "grand triumphant
march"--a philosophy which raised new problems which have been with us
ever since, and which gave a new method of approaching philosophical
questions; here Schelling revived modern mysticism and attempted the
construction of a great _Weltanschauung._ But only a small portion of
the greatness of Jena can be touched on. Eucken has nobly upheld the
great traditions of the place, not only as a philosophical thinker but
also as a personality.

What is the secret of Eucken's influence? It is due greatly, it is true,
to his writings and their original contents, for it is not possible for
[p.18] a man to hide his inner being when he writes on the deepest