His native province, East Friesland, is an agricultural and trading region in Germany, near Holland, with occasional fisheries as industry. His birth town, Aurich, is the commercial and social center. The boy’s childhood was somewhat sad; he was the first child born to his parents after ten years of marriage, and his father died when the lad was five years old. He had a series of misfortunes in his infancy and youth: his throat was badly torn in the effort to extricate a curtain-fastener which he nearly swallowed as a baby; he had scarlet fever and wrong treatment, so that he was threatened with blindness for a time but recovered; a younger brother’s death added to the family gloom. Rudolf Eucken inherited studious inclinations. His father, spending his days in the postal service, was a fine mathematician. His mother (daughter of a clergyman who was a leader of Radicalism) was well-read in science and ambitious for her son; the latter records that she was, also, a practical housewife. After the father’s death their finances were low and the mother took lodgers to add to her income. She was determined that Rudolf should be well educated, that he should become a philosopher or scientist. He recalls his debt to her in his reminiscences. At the gymnasium at Aurich he showed interest in mathematics and in music. A strong influence of those plastic days was his teacher, Reuter, who was forced to retire by the bureaucracy because of his liberalism. Other professors who left traces upon his development were Letze and Teichmüller. For a time he was at the University of Berlin. After experimental teaching he was called to Basel as professor of philosophy. His mother went with him but their plans for happy years together were shattered by her death. Basel was at this time a small University with about one hundred and fifty students; Eucken came into close contact with these in the classroom and outside activities. Already he had begun to write studies upon philosophers of classic days, Aristotle and others. In 1873 he accepted a call to Jena University where he was brought into comradeship with such brilliant associates as Kuno Fischer, Haeckel and Hildebrand. The issue, in 1878, of Eucken’s book, _Fundamental Ideas of the Present Day_ (or _The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought_) aroused sudden interest among scholars of every country in this daring, idealistic philosopher of Jena University. The basic idea was to emphasize the harmonious relations of history and criticism. At the request of President Noah Porter of Yale University, a translation of this book into English was made by Professor M. Stuart Phelps; thus American readers became acquainted with this German scholar who was to enter later into friendly contact with academic organizations here.