Since the death of William James, the brightest stars in the philosophical firmament have been Henri Bergson of Paris and Rudolf Eucken of Jena. One reason for the popularity of both is that the centre of interest in their best-known works is not in epistemology. They do not approach the problem of existence as beholders, merely asking how they can see, and whether what they see is real, but their standpoint is that of intimate, vital human experience. Both writers place themselves in the stream of life, and find that the moments of deepest insight into reality are those of creative activity in art or other constructions of the mind, or else, with Eucken, of moral achievement and victory. Eucken has been called the German Emerson, and his message to his time is that of a seer rather than of a systematizer. He is the prophet of a spiritual life, protesting against materialism and secularism, and vindicating the sovereign rights of the spiritual aspects of existence. In the term "Activism," which he applies to his philosophy, he intimates that there must be an activity of the soul upon its material and social environment, before the insights of philosophy and the achievements of art and the experiences of religion can be attained. There must be an assertion by the soul of its own spiritual nature. The conviction that man is not merely the product of nature, but in his spiritual life is independent and supreme, is not the result of a revelation to a passive recipient. It is an achievement, a venture of faith, a self-assertion of the soul in the face of hostile forces which would confine it within the trivial and the phenomenal. Eucken's relation to Christianity will appear if we notice briefly (1) his critique of other philosophical theories; (2) his own constructive theory of religion; and (3) his answer to the question, Can we still be Christians? 1. As an exponent of the "monistic trinity" of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, Eucken is brought into comparison with his famous colleague, Haeckel, with whose "brand-new monism" he has little sympathy. Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him. From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art, social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is constructed through the activity of the human mind alone."[163] 163: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," 3d ed., 1912, p. 36; E. T., "The Truth of Religion," 1913, p. 52.