CHAPTER I: THE MORAL SUBJECT.
THE MORAL SUBJECT.
SECTION LVIII. The Moral Subject.
THE moral subject is the personal spirit, in a stricter sense, the created spirit. Between the different grades of spiritual beings, there is, in respect to the moral life-task, no essential difference; and, hence, for the individual spirit, the life-task never comes to a definitive close. The basis of the moral life is the individual moral person; but in so far as a plurality of persons constitute themselves into a spiritual life-whole, such a collective totality becomes also itself a moral subject with a peculiar moral task.
In the widest sense of the moral thought, even God himself, as the holy One, is a moral subject. But in so far as ethics has regard not to an absolutely infinite, eternal Being and life, but to a task accomplishing itself in time, it considers only the created spirit as a subject of morality. But all created personal spirits without exception are moral subjects, and that too with an individual task that never comes to a close; the blessed spirits, angels included, have not only, like earthly men, constantly to accomplish morality, but so soon as we leave sin out of view as an abnormal reality, their moral task is essentially the same as that of man; and Schleiermacher is wrong in limiting moral acting, and hence also ethics, to the, as yet, militant life, and in excluding them from the perfected life of the blessed (Syst., p. 51, 61). Unless we are to conceive the blessed as spiritually dead, then they must have a life-activity answering to the divine will,--that is, a moral one. Were this not the case, then Christ's holy life would be moral only so long as he had to do with an opposing world; and only the earthly, but not the glorified, Christ, as also not the saints in heaven, could be looked upon as moral examples for us. It is true, the manifestation-form of the morality of a blessed spirit will be different from that of the yet militant; nevertheless the essence remains the same.
The distinguishing of the moral collective subject from the individual subject is a point of essential importance; for, the moral activity of the two is by no means the same. For the member of a moral community, there arise special moral duties that fall to him, not as a moral individual but as an organic member of a whole, and which he is to fulfill not in his own name but in that of the totality. The action of the individual is, of course, the first, the presupposition of the other; the moral community is always the fruit of a precedent moral activity of the individuals,--is itself a realized-good, which, however, at once becomes in turn itself a morally-active subject, unless indeed it is to cease to be. __________________________________________________________________
I. THE INDIVIDUAL MORAL SUBJECT, MAN. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LIX. Man as a Spirit.
Man as created after God's image is, as spiritualized nature, both spirit and nature, and also the real unity of the two.
A. As a spirit he is a rationally-free, self-determining being, attaining to his full, peculiar reality through free activity. The basis and essence of this spirituality is personal self-consciousness. Only in so far as man is self-conscious can he be moral, and by virtue of this self-consciousness he is answerable for his life,--his life becomes to him a moral one, and is counted to him. But he is conscious of himself as a personal individual, that is, he distinguishes himself from others not merely by his being, but by a to him exclusively-peculiar, determined being,--by his peculiar personality, which in this peculiarity does not belong to him directly from nature, but is acquired only by personal, moral activity, and hence constitutes character-peculiarity. The individual being of man is distinguished from that of nature-objects by the fact that it has inherent in itself, as an inner rational power, the destination not to remain a mere individual unit, but to become a personality,--in a word, man is from the very beginning not a mere specimen of his species, but is called to become a peculiarly-determined being.
The Christian idea of man is summed up in the thought of the image of God, and hence presupposes dogmatically the development of the idea of God. The great emphasis which is laid in Scripture on this idea of God-likeness [Gen. i, 26, 27; ix, 6; 1 Cor. xi, 7; James iii, 9; Col. iii, 10; Acts xvii, 28, 29] shows of itself that we have not to do here with a mere poetic figure. All that is created is good,--is an expression of the divine will, and hence is an image of the divine thought; but the rational creature, as the crown of creation, is the most complete expression of this goodness,--is the image of God, bears upon itself the most perfect impress of the Creator. Now as God is essentially a spirit, hence, man is God's image more immediately only as a rational spirit, whereas the body merely bears on itself, like other nature-objects, the trace of the Creator, but not his perfect impress, and it becomes an image of God only, mediately,--namely, in so far as it is progressively transfigured by the spirit into its own perfect expression. In the Scriptures Christ is called by pre-eminence, the true image of God; but man is called to become like this image [Rom. viii, 29]. Christ is this image not merely as the eternal Son of God, but also and especially as the true Son of Man, who historically and visibly reveals the divine [Col. i, 15]; and as such he is the "first-born among many brethren."
The rational spirit stands in contrast to mere nature-existence. A nature-entity determines not itself, but is determined by a nature-force not lying within its own consciousness,--is even in its activity predominantly unfree, whereas that which constitutes the essence of spirit is, to be free, to determine itself in its peculiarity, to be active toward conscious ends. The brute has not purposes, but only impulses. There is indeed reason in the brute; the brute does not, however, have the reason, but the reason has the brute. The reason that is in nature is only objective rationality; whereas spirit is a subject possessing reason as a consciousness. This consciousness is rational, however, only as self-consciousness, wherein man becomes to himself a real object,--comes into spiritual self-possession, and in this self-possession distinguishes himself from all other objective beings. By virtue of self-consciousness man remains ever in the presence of himself, and at one with himself; and only in virtue of this continuous sameness of the personal spirit, is it morally responsible.
But a spirit is more than a mere numerical individual; nature-creatures differ from others of their species, not by essential peculiarities but by their mere separate being and by outward fortuitous determinations,--are mere essentially-similar specimens of the same kind, mere repetitions of the same existence. But each individual personal spirit has, as distinguished from other personal spirits, a determined peculiarity of its own, which raises it from a mere numerical existence into a determined personality. In self-consciousness man knows himself not merely as a man, but as this particularly-determined man. He bears, therefore, a personal name, the significance of which is, that it is his destination to be something different from others,--to possess in his being something which others neither have nor can have in the same manner. The name is, with man as well as with God, an expression of personal peculiarity--of that which inwardly distinguishes one determined personality from others [Exod. xxxiii, 12, 17; Isa. xliii, 1; xlv, 3, 4; lvi, 5; John x, 3; Rev. iii, 5]; this personal peculiarity the spirit does not have from nature, nor yet is it generated by merely natural development; but the child has from the very beginning the capacity for, and hence the destination unto, such a personality-constituting peculiarity; nor is this capacity a merely conceived possibility, on the contrary it is a real germ; but this germ can come to development only by moral activity. This germ of personality which lies in the very essence of the rational spirit does not contain within itself the determined peculiarity; it simply requires development, but as to how, and unto what peculiarity it becomes developed, that depends on the free moral activity of the person himself. That this personal peculiarity does not come from nature, but belongs to the life of the free spirit, is clearly implied in the custom, prevalent among almost all nations and tribes, of name-giving. Nature gives to man at birth his individual existence; the spiritually and historically formed society, or family, gives to him his personal name,--designating thereby either the goal of this personality or its already acquired peculiarity [Gen. iii, 20; iv, 25; v, 29; xxi, 3; xli, 51, 52; Matt. i, 25; Luke i, 60, etc.].
This thought of the moral quality of the personality is not so uncontested as might be supposed. Schleiermacher, in his Philosophical Ethics, [4] holds that moral individualities differ primitively, before all moral activity, and hence do not merely become different. While preceding moral systems, and especially that of Kant, either overlooked the special peculiarity of the person, or even ignored it as something illegitimate, Schleiermacher emphasizes justly enough the moral significancy of this peculiarity, but lie also rushes to the opposite one-sidedness, and magnifies the difference into a primitive, determined, ante-moral one,--a sort of moral atomistics, which, in order to escape the difficulty of the notion of free self-determination, assumes a much greater incomprehensibility. In a system, sprung up from essentially Pantheistic soil, this view is not inconsequential, inasmuch as here the notion of a really free self-determination is out of the question; but at the same time also the notion of moral personality is precluded, and ethics is reduced to a presentation, not of how man as a free individual should conform himself to a moral idea, but of how he must develop himself in his strictly naturally-determined idiosyncrasy. But a spirit that is absolutely determined by the All (conceived here as strictly impersonal) could not essentially differ from a mere nature-creature; even brutes have unfree spirituality. We admit that men, even had they not sinned, would not have manifested perfect similarity, but would have been in some respects differently attuned from nature itself,--as, for example, in the peculiarities of sex, of temperament and of nationality, (see § 67,) but these natural differences affect not the personal essence itself,--do not make of the individual a being strictly personally-different from all others, but are only different traits of entire clans or groups,--are not so much differences of individuals as of races. The fact that in the present condition of mankind, each individual has inborn within him the germ of determined moral peculiarities, of particular vices and the like, is simply a result of his illegitimate abnormal state, and is very far from justifying us in merely cultivating and developing our inborn peculiarities. But Schleiermacher is very erroneous when he regards this original difference, even in spiritual and moral respects, as something necessary and contributive to the aesthetic beauty of the All,--as, for example, when he says: "Some [of the phases of humanity] are the most sublime and striking expression of the beautiful and the divine; others are grotesque products of the most original and fleeting whim of a master-hand; . . . why should we despise that which throws into relief the chief groups, and gives life and fullness to the whole? Is it not befitting that the single heavenly forms should be glorified by the fact that thousands of others bow themselves before them? Undying humanity is unweariedly busy in reproducing itself and in manifesting itself under the greatest variety of manner in the transitory phenomena of finite life. Such is the harmony of the universe, such the great and wonderful simplicity in its eternal art-work. What indeed were the monotonous reiteration of a beau ideal in which, after all, the individuals would be (time and circumstances substracted) strictly like each other-the same formula with the coefficients varied?--what were such a monotony in comparison with this infinite variety of human peculiarities? . . . This individual appears as the rude animal part of humanity, affected only by the first infantile instincts of the race; that other one, as the finest sublimated spirit, free from all that is common and unworthy, and with light wing rising above the earth;--but all are there in order to show, by their existence, how the various forces of human nature operate separately and in detail." (Reden, 2 ed., p. 130 sqq.). Such language outdoes even the Greek distinction of man into barbarous and free-men, and is, as a consistent expression of a purely naturalistic view of the world, in most direct antagonism to the Christian thought of a moral world-order upheld by a holy God.--Rothe (Ethik i, § 120 sqq.) adopts the view of Schleiermacher in a somewhat different, though less consistent form. __________________________________________________________________
[4] System, p. 93 sqq., 157, 172; comp. Christl. Sitte, p. 58 sqq., and Grundlin. einer Kritik, etc., p. 79 sqq. (2 ed., p. 57); Monologen, 4 Ausg., p. 24 sqq.; Reden, 2. ed., 129. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LX. The Cognizing Spirit.
The self-conscious personality unfolds its life under a variety of forms.--(1) Man is a knowing, a cognoscitive, spirit,--he takes objects spiritually, that is, according to their idea, into himself, and thus makes them his enduring possession. The object of knowledge is truth, and the knowing spirit is capable of attaining thereto. Knowledge is in itself true and does not deceive, for God's created universe is good, and hence true and in perfect harmony with itself. As a rational spirit, man knows not only the created world but also its divine source,--in fact the essence of rationality consists in the knowledge of God in his existence, his nature, his government, and his will. This God-consciousness, resting upon a self-revelation of God to man, is indeed, as finite knowledge, not capable of thoroughly comprehending the infinite essence of God, yet, with a full consciousness of its own limits, it is nevertheless a true, real, and well-grounded knowledge of the divine, and as such it is the presupposition of morality.
The human spirit is an image of the eternal divine life, though in the form of a temporal life. God, in his eternal life, is eternally self-begetting, self-knowing, and self-loving,--absolutely his own object; and the finite spirit, reflectively manifesting the life-development of God, has a threefold object upon which its life-movement is directed, namely, itself, the external world and God. Man is God's image in this threefold relation,--in willing, in knowing, and in feeling; but as, primarily, his reality is given to him, as already existing without his co-operation, hence these three activities appear in another and chronologically different order of succession, as knowing, feeling, and willing. Thus the finite spirit knows (takes cognizance of), feels (loves) and wills both itself, the objective world and God; and, as the life of a created being is a progressive development whose spiritual significance lies before it as a goal or purpose,--as something not as yet fully real, but rather as to be won by effort,--hence the threefold life of the spirit has also a threefold end, namely, truth, happiness, and the good; and it is only in the perfect attaining of this threefold end that the image of God in man perfects itself,--that the highest good is realized. But as the perfection of created things consists in the fact that they perfectly correspond to the divine creative idea, so the perfection of knowledge, feeling, and willing, and consequently of truth, of happiness, and of the good, consists in their so relating to God that all finite objects are known, willed, and loved only in God and as relating to him. God himself is the truth, the good and love, and whatever falls under this threefold notion, does so only in so far as it is rooted in and in harmony with God.
Man, as created good by God, must have the capacity perfectly to attain to this good state which is divinely proposed to him as his life-goal. Hence his knowledge cannot be deceptive, but must have the truth as its contents. The world would not be good, would not be in harmony, if the intellectual images of objects in the knowing spirit were not true to the originals,--if the thought as objectively real were essentially other than the subjective one. What Christ promises to his followers: "Ye shall know the truth" [John viii, 32], must also be fully applicable to man per se; redemption is in fact essentially a restoration of the lost perfection; God wills that all men should "come unto the knowledge of the truth" [1 Tim. ii, 4]. The destination of man to know the truth is expressed in Gen. ii, 19, 20. God brought the beasts to Adam in order "to see what he would call them," that is, how he would distinguish them from himself and from other objects,--form of them a definite, generically-characterizing notion; the name is an expression of the obtained notion;--and whatsoever he severally called them, "that was the name thereof;"--this is not a mere experiment on the part of God, but, on the contrary, a divine guaranty for the truthfulness of human knowledge, and at the same time for the freedom of the same. God himself brings before man the outer world; thereby he guarantees to him that his knowledge is legitimate, true, and reliable; and it is not God who gives names to the objects; man himself does it, and freely; the knowing (taking cognizance) of the truth is a free, and hence a moral activity; and this calling by name, this definite, distinguishing knowing, is sealed by God as truthful,--"that was the name thereof;" man's free knowing is not to be mere empty play, but to have a reality as its contents; and the spiritual significance of things is to find its goal only in its being spiritually appropriated by man. Our knowledge of the objective world is not to remain a mere sensuous beholding, as with the brute, but is to rise beyond that stage into the sphere of ideas; this is for us a moral duty, and one which has a divine promise. Thus the first man takes cognizance of, and names, also the woman, his created helpmeet [Gen. ii, 23]; and Eve, as well as Adam, recognizes the divine will and distinguishes it from her own as owing obedience to the former [Gen. iii, 2, 3]; in the one case as well as in the other, there is manifested at the same time a definite self-consciousness as different from the objective consciousness.
The relation of our knowledge to God is of course quite different from its relation to the world. While all worldly being may, as created, be also ultimately fully known and comprehended by man, on the contrary the infinite and eternal being and essence of God is, for the essentially limited human spirit, a thought never fully to be grasped; and the incomprehensibility of God [Psa. cxlvii, 5; Isa. xl, 28; lv, 8, 9; Job xi, 8; Rom. xi, 33] is a Christian doctrine by no means to be rejected. But this incomprehensibility does not preclude a very essential and true knowledge, otherwise were all Godlikeness in man a mere empty rhetorical phrase. Even as the eye is unable to take in the entire ocean, and nevertheless has a very definite intuition of its existence and peculiarities, so likewise is the finite spirit unable to take in the infinite, to fathom it in its bottomless depths, and yet it is able with constantly increasing clearness to attain to a true knowledge not only of the existence but also of the nature of God,--not, however, by means of the understanding, which relates to and is exclusively occupied with the finite, but by means of the reason, which relates essentially to the infinite. As all created being is a reflection of God, and as man is his image, hence the type leads directly to an (imperfect it may be, but yet) true knowledge of the prototype [Rom. i, 19, 20; Col. iii, 10]. The assumption that man can know of God only that he is, and what he is not, but not what he is, is self-contradictory and unbiblical; a merely negative knowledge is no knowledge at all, and of that of whose nature I know nothing I cannot affirm even, that it is. The Evangelical Church very strongly emphasizes primitive man's capability of attaining to a knowledge of the truth, even in relation to the divine nature; the Apologia (i, § 17, 18) ascribes to him sapientia et notitia dei certior, "a correct and clear knowledge of God." Skepticism may readily find excuse for itself outside of Christianity, but what holds good of man as estranged from God, does not hold equally of him who is in communion with that God who is himself the truth; and hence within the Christian world, skepticism has no longer any reason of existence. Also the assertion of Kant, that the object per se remains hidden from human knowledge, and that all knowledge of reality has, in the sphere of pure reason, only a formal and subjective validity, is in direct contradiction to the Christian world-view, which expresses a much greater confidence in the harmony of the universe. The perfect man and the Christian can do more than "conjecture and presume;" for, "the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord" [Prov. xx, 27].--That man's first God-consciousness should rest on an objective self-revelation of God, was a necessary condition to his spiritual education toward finding the truth for himself. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXI. The Volitionating Spirit, Freedom of Will.
(2) Man is a willing, a volitionating, spirit; the goal of his life-movement is for him a conscious end. He is not impelled unconsciously and by extraneous force toward that to which he is to attain, but he knows the end, and himself directs himself toward it,--he chooses the known goal by virtue of a personal will-determination,--that is, in his willing he is free. The end of rational willing is the good, and, in so far as this is to be realized by freedom, the morally-good. That which in nature-objects takes place by necessity, becomes, in the sphere of the moral will, a "should;" that which in the former case is natural law, becomes here a moral precept; that which is there natural development, becomes here moral life. But the will of the created spirit differs from the prototypal will of God by the fact that its development in time is not unconditioned, but is always conditioned on free self-determination, so that consequently there exists the possibility of another self-determination than that toward the true end,--that is, in a word, by the fact that man's freedom of will, as distinguished from the divine (which is, at the same time, eternal necessity), is freedom of choice--liberum arbitrium. The finite spirit can, and should, attain to the good as the purpose of its life, but it can also--what it should not do--turn away from this good; and it attains to the good only when it freely wills to attain to it. Man, as created good, has this freedom in the highest degree, so that it is not limited or trammeled by any tendency to evil inherent in his natural non-perfection, as, for example, by his sensuousness. It is incumbent upon ethics to describe and explain the development of the natural freedom of the, as yet, undetermined will, into the moral freedom of the holy will.
The moral freedom of the will is distinctly presupposed in the Biblical account of primitive man. "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it" [Gen. ii, 16, 17]. God's injunction addresses itself to the free will of man, and requires of him moral obedience. When, now, man nevertheless actually did that which was forbidden, he simply did the opposite of what God's holy will was; and he thereby demonstrated in fact, though to his ruin, the reality of human freedom of choice. Scripture knows absolutely nothing of any other view of the true nature of man than that he was capable of freely choosing good or evil. For this idea of freedom of choice, however, Scripture has no specific expression; for eleutheros, eleutheria, originally used in a legal sense, designate the condition of mall as emancipated by Christ; the idea of man's freedom of choice is expressed rather as a "choosing between good and evil;" for example, in Isa. vii, 15, 16, where the time of the spiritual maturity of a man is called the time when he "shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good" [comp. Deut. xi, 26 sqq.], or when he can do "according to his pleasure" [Esth. i, 8], or that which is "good in his own eyes" [Gen. xvi, 6; xix, 8]. The view of freedom of choice as presented in the book of Sirach xv, 14, holds good in its full sense evidently only of man as free from the bondage of sin. In the New Testament, man's freedom of choice is implied by thelein (for example, in Matt. xxiii, 37; whereas the "power over one's own will" mentioned in 1 Cor. vii, 37 refers more to our moral discretion).
In the Christian church the full moral freedom of choice of man before the fall, has been uniformly admitted; and the notion that human actions are necessarily determined, just as uniformly rejected [comp. Apol. i, p. 52, 53; Form. Conc. ii, p. 580, 677]. The "supralapsarian" predestinarianism of Calvin has never been ecclesiastically sanctioned, nor in fact does even it deny freedom of choice as a principle, and expressly, but only actually. Entirely different from this teaching of Calvin is the fundamental denial of freedom of will in all Pantheistic systems since Spinoza. In Pantheism there is no place for freedom, and what appears there under this name is something entirely different from that which the consciousness of all nations understands thereby. Where conscious spirit is not the ground, but simply a product of the collective development of the All, there the individual spirit is in its entire existence, essence, and life, absolutely determined; and its single life-manifestations are quite as absolutely determined as is its being itself;--in which case the rational spirit can never have a consciousness of freedom, but only a "sense of absolute dependence," and hence there can be no room for any moral responsibility. The seemingly moral life is as immediate and necessary a manifestation of the "all-life" as is the growth of plants, and it differs from the nature-life only in the fact, that man has a consciousness of that which he does necessarily, in fact, but which he fancies he does freely. The will differs from unconscious nature-impulse only by the consciousness which attends it, but it is, in fact, quite as absolutely determined and unfree as is the latter. This view is expressed most clearly, simply, and consequentially, by Spinoza; and it is neither in the interest of clearness nor of scientific honesty, when more recent systems, based on him, make free use of fair-sounding words about human freedom. In essential agreement with Spinoza, Schleiermacher, in his "Discourses on Religion," rejects the freedom of the will. The essence of religion is a sense of the absolute unity of the universe and the individual existence,--a consciousness that our whole being and activity are the being and activity of the universe itself, and are determined thereby.--Schelling, who subsequently attributed to the idea of the personal will a very high significancy, held as yet in his "Lectures on Academic Study" (1803) to the unconditional necessity of all apparently free phenomena. History is quite as fully an immediate and necessary manifestation of the absolute, as is nature; men are but instruments for carrying out that which is per se necessary, and they are, in their reality and peculiarities, quite as fatally-determined as the actions themselves. Actions appear as free or arbitrary only in so far as man makes a necessarily-determined action specifically his own, but this action itself, as well as its result in good or evil, and hence also man in all his life-manifestations, is but the passive instrument of absolute necessity; all that which is apparently free is but a necessary expression of the eternal order of things. Subsequently (1809), Schelling sought to rise above Pantheism, and, in some manner, to comprehend the freedom of the will, but he did not rise beyond wide-reaching contradictions. The assumption of an ante-mundane fall into sin was intended to reconcile freedom with necessity (Phil. Schr., 1809, i, 438 sqq., 463 sqq.). On this we remark here simply, that from an ethical stand-point it makes no moral difference whether free self-determination is precluded, for our whole mundane life, by an absolute natural necessity, or by a pretended ante-mundane free determination of man himself, but of which he has not the least consciousness. Where there is no continuity of the consciousness, there is also no unity of the person; and a pretended free act which I am supposed to have done, but of which I know absolutely nothing, is not my act but is absolutely foreign to me; and a fettering of my freedom, by a, to me entirely unknown, timeless act cannot be regarded from a moral point of view as other than a simple being-determined by unconditional necessity.--Hegel has left the idea of freedom, in many respects, in great uncertainty; he is very fond of talking of freedom; but his system itself is compatible only with a universal all-determining necessity; freedom is nothing more than "the not being dependent on another, the sustaining relations to one's self;" in its full sense, however, this is true only of the spirit as absolute; individual spirits are only transient manifestations of the collective life, and are determined by the same.--More recent philosophy, wherever it deviates from strict Pantheism, uniformly attempts to bring personal freedom of will more clearly before the consciousness. There is here no possibility of a middle-ground, and ambiguous rhetoric can no longer deceive. Where God is not the infinite eternal Spirit, but comes to self-consciousness only in man, there the thought of a real freedom of will is impossible. The infinite domination of the All leaves no place for the free movement of the individual spirit; the misused freedom of a single creature would throw the collective universe into disorder, for the unfree All affords no possibility of preserving moral order as against the free actions of individuals. On this ground there remains a freedom only for thoughtless contemplation; and this would then, of necessity, lead to the ethics of an unlimited self-love which can seek and find in the bedlam of individual wills nothing higher than itself. Freedom is possible only where a free Spirit rules in and over the All. The personal God is able, in almighty love, to create free spirits, and to guarantee them in their freedom, namely, in that he lovingly withdraws his direct activity from the sphere of will-freedom, and thus preserves the created spirit in its spiritual essence which is freedom itself; and such a God is able in the midst of the diversity and multiplicity of free actions, and even of ungodly ones, to preserve the moral order of the universe.
(The question of freedom of will has of late been much discussed, mostly from the stand-point of recent philosophy and in relation thereto. Daub: Statement and Criticism of Hypotheses Relating to Free-Will, 1834; Romang: On Free-Will and Determinism, 1835 [starting out from Schleiermacher's stand-point, he attains only to a semblance of freedom]; Matthias: The Idea of Freedom, 1834; [since Hegel] Herbart: On the Doctrine of the Freedom of the Human Will, 1836 [critical, rather than furnishing new matter]; Vatke; Passavant: On the Freedom of the Will, 1835; K. Ph. Fischer, in Fichte's Zeitschrift, iii, 101; ix, 79; Zeller, in the Theologische Jahrbücher, 1846; and others). __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXII. The Feeling Spirit.
(3) Man is a feeling, a sensitive, spirit,--becomes conscious of himself as standing in harmony with, or in antagonist to, other being; and, inasmuch as in the primitive unperverted creation, goodness, and hence harmony, is an essential quality, and a real disharmony therein inconceivable, hence while man--as self-developing, that is, as seeking after an, as yet, unrealized goal--has a consciousness of something yet lacking to his ultimate perfection, still he knows nothing of any real antagonism of existence, and hence he has no feeling of pain, but only of joy in existence, arising from his consciousness of an undisturbed harmony of universal existence with his own. personality,--that is, in a word, the feeling of happiness. In so far as this feeling expresses at the same time the recognition of this existence in its peculiar reality, it is love. Bliss and love to God and to his works are not two different things, but only two different phases of the same spiritual life-manifestation,--the former being rather the subjective, the latter the objective phase,--inasmuch as in bliss and love man is, in fact, perfectly at one with the objective universe.
Feeling is not peculiar to the rational spirit; it becomes rational only in so far as it is an expression of self-consciousness; and as self-consciousness is rational only in being a consciousness not of mere individual being but also of a Godlikeness in the peculiarity of the person, so also is rational feeling not of a merely individual nature, but it is excited by the traces of God which shine forth from all created existence, and hence it is, at bottom, always a love of God. The goodness of created existence is embraced by rational feeling not as being good merely for the feeling individual, but as a being-good per se; the rational spirit feels not merely that this or that entity stands in harmony with itself, but it feels itself as standing in harmony with the totality of existence,--feels the harmony of God's world as such. In the same degree that spirituality rises, rises also the vividness and compass of feeling. The unconscious nature-object is affected only by the very few things that come into immediate contact with it; the brute shows so much the more extended and more lively a sympathy with external existence the higher and nobler its rank. Emotionlessness, blunt indifference toward external objects, is always, save where it is artificially superinduced by false teachings, a sign of deep moral degradation. The Biblical account of the primitive condition of man uniformly represents the destination of nature to be, to procure to the rational spirit the feeling of joy, of happiness. Man is placed in the garden of Eden, and thereby brought into the immediate presence of the full harmony of the created. world; in it God causes to grow "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;" and the full feeling of happiness, as springing from his love to that which harmonizes with him, is procured to man (to whom it is not "good" to be alone) by the creation of woman,--in whom he at once recognizes that she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,--a being other than, and yet of, himself.
Feeling is the presupposition of all activity, and hence also of the moral; and the most real feeling of all--that which relates to the moral-is not an un-pleasure feeling,--as is often assumed in antagonism to the Biblical world-view, but in fact a happiness-feeling. It would not imply a "good" creation, nor indeed any God-likeness in man, were it a fact that man were incited to activity only by un-pleasure, that is, by pain, while yet happiness were the end of the active life. Even as God is not prompted to activity by any feeling of want, but rather in virtue of his eternal and absolutely perfect bliss, so also can the true moral feeling of man, who is God's image, be no other than the feeling of happiness and love; but the consciousness of a yet to be won good is per se by no means a feeling of unhappiness, on the contrary it in fact awakens a direct pleasure in seeking. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXIII. The Immortal Spirit.
(4) Man, as a rationally self-conscious spirit, is personally immortal; only as such is he a truly moral being,--has a moral life-task transcending his own immediate individuality. Faith in immortality is the presupposition of true morality; for the moral life-task is one that is incessantly progressive, ever self-renewing, and at no moment perfectly brought to a close; and, as the perfect realization of Godlikeness, it can only be accomplished through an uninterruptedly-continuing personal life.
We have to do here, not with the scientific demonstration of the doctrine of personal immortality, but only with its moral significance. In recent times, especially since Kant, the notion has frequently been maintained, that morality is entirely independent of a belief in immortality, nay, that it evinces its purity and genuineness by the very fact of entirely leaving out of view this belief, and that a man is not truly moral so long as he allows himself to be determined in his moral activity by this belief. It is true, Kant deduces from the idea of the moral, the idea of personal immortality as a rational postulate; the moral idea itself, however, is with him independent of this postulate,--calls for its fulfillment absolutely and unconditionally. There is in this some degree of self-contradiction; if the "categorical imperative" demands morality unconditionally, and utterly irrespectively of immortality, then this immortality cannot be embraced in it as a postulate, but must be merely associated thereto from without. In the endlessness of the life-task, however, as it is presented by Kant, there actually lies, in fact, the thought of immortality as included in the moral idea itself,--so that his express dissociating of the two ideas is illegitimate and unnatural. Schleiermacher goes further; and, even in his Dogmatics, he is unable entirely to rise above his previous express denial of immortality. In his Discourses on Religion he places the religiously-moral life-task proper in an actual disregarding of the idea of this immortality. "Strive even in this life to annihilate your personality, and to live in the One and All; strive to be more than yourselves, in order that you may lose but little when you lose yourselves;" the immortality to be aimed at is not that of the personality, not above and beyond the earthly existence, but it is an ideal immortality in each and every moment; men should not desire to hold fast to their personality, rather "should they embrace the single opportunity presented to them by death for escaping beyond it." [5] Even in his Dogmatics Schleiermacher holds, that the purest morality perfectly consists with a "renunciation of the perpetuity of the personality,--that, in fact, an interestedness in a recompense is impious. In the Hegelian philosophy morality is absolutely independent of immortality; this idea in fact can nowhere find footing in the system; the religion of the "this-side" which sprang from this philosophy, affects to give point to its rhetorical flourishes on morality by its seemingly magnanimous renunciation of all expectation of eternal life.
The pretended disinterestedness of moral actions performed without reference. to immortality, is mere appearance. All moral activity looks to an end, and this end is a good; and personal perfection is for each individual an essential part of the highest good, or, in fact, this good itself; hence not to wish to obtain any thing for one's self by one's moral activity is simply absurd; the first and most necessary of all goods, and the one which is the presupposition of all morality, is in fact existence; to desire to renounce personal existence, or to regard it as indifferent, is equivalent to renouncing moral life, and is consequently not unselfish, but it is immoral. It is true we cannot claim for the so-called teleological proof of the immortality of the soul, full demonstrative power; this much, however, it does prove, namely, that the highest moral perfection would be impossible without immortality; for, as man can never arrive at such a perfection of the moral life as that he can advance no further, so that consequently his farther existence would be purposeless, but in fact, on the contrary, every fulfillment of one moral duty gives in turn birth to new ones, and there is absolutely no point to be found where the moral spirit might say, "thus far and no farther, there remains nothing more for me to do," --hence also moral perfection cannot be realized save in an unbroken perpetuity of personal life. To say now, that the moral life-task does not consist in obtaining entire moral perfection, but only a limited degree thereof, would be per se immoral. And in fact should we for a moment concede some such limited degree of the moral, then there would be no conceivable rule for fixing this degree, and each would be at liberty to narrow the limits of his morality at pleasure, without that any one would be justified in blaming, or less esteeming him therefor.
In all moral systems, even those of heathen nations, morality is more precious than temporal life, and that person is regarded as ignoble and contemptible, even by pagans, who clings to his life at any price, for example, at that of failing in his duty to his country, to his family, or to his own honor. This moral sentiment of honor we have no wish to weaken. It is conceivable, on the assumption of the prevalence of sin, that one's moral duty, as, for example, that of speaking or confessing the truth, or of fidelity in love or obedience, cannot in some conjunctures be fulfilled save at the sacrifice of temporal life. Now, to one's existence in general one has an unlimited right; it is his first and most natural right. In the absence of immortality, however, the sacrifice of one's life for a moral duty would not only not be a moral requirement, but it would be downright folly and sin; for morality can never require the giving up of the first condition of all moral activity, namely, personal existence. The first, the most immediate and absolutely unconditional duty, is self-preservation, and other duties are binding only in so far as they do not radically interfere with this one. As it would not be a moral action, but on the contrary a proof of insanity if one man should really choose [6] eternal damnation for the sake of another, just as little is any being whatever at liberty to purchase for others any temporal good, however great, at the cost of personal existence; and in the absence of immortality there can be none other than temporal goods. Man may sacrifice any one good only for the sake of a higher good; but in renouncing existence he obtains no good whatever. The sound and unsophisticated judgment will find, on the denial of immortality, no other rule of life-wisdom than simply to take advantage of the short span of life here allotted to us for enjoying the greatest possible happiness. Happiness is in fact an absolutely necessary phase of human perfection, and an essential expression of the highest good; to strive after it is not only not selfishness, on the contrary, it is a requirement of reason and of moral duty; and it is not possible that in a world of rational order morality should work any thing else than happiness. Were it otherwise it would be a plain proof of the non-existence of a rational, moral world-order, and in that case it would be totally absurd to speak further of moral duty at all, for duty is itself a part of a moral world-order. If there is, now, no eternal blessedness as a highest good, then it can be only after temporal, earthly happiness, that man has to seek, and by which consequently he is to measure the morality of his acts. If it is true that all morality necessarily renders happy, then on the above hypothesis only that can be moral which procures for us earthly comfort, temporal enjoyment; the teachings of the Epicureans would then be the only rational theory, and no valid objection could be made to the moral rule: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" [1 Cor. xv, 32]. Foolish then would he be who did not recklessly seek as much enjoyment in his earthly life as in any way he possibly could. It is, of course, not necessary that this system should lead simply to groveling sensual enjoyment; the ancient Epicureans knew well enough that riotous intemperate indulgence works much suffering, and the modern ones also know equally well, that by unrestrained wantonness they bring themselves into shame and contempt in the eyes of the morally-taught masses; this, however, does not in any degree ameliorate the essence of this morality of the "this side." The outwardly-respectable life of many a denier of immortality rests in reality on the power of public opinion, and on custom as grown up from Christian ground. But the case is quite otherwise where unbelief becomes fashionable in wider circles of society. Let vouch for this, the utter immorality and depravity that prevailed in the circles of the French and of the Gallicized German free-thinkers of the last century. In the lower walks of society where a simpler logic prevails, and where respect for position and for public opinion has a less controlling power, the practical inferences from a naturalistic philosophy are more speedily and consistently drawn; and the ringleaders in depravity among the lower classes of the present day are, for the most part, deeply imbued with the conquests of "free thought," and are able thereby admirably to justify their wantonness; and there is scarcely conceivable a more absurd rôle than that assumed by the "respectable" among the free-thinkers, who presume to preach morality to their more free-thinking and more logically reasoning brethren.
He who is without belief in immortality cannot act from an unconditional moral idea, but only from empirical external fitness, from circumstantial need; he cannot make moral duty his life-task, and his moral life sinks to a merely higher-cultured animal life. The question as to whether Christian morality is possible without a belief in immortality would have to be rejected as trivial,--seeing that a belief in Christ's and God's express word is certainly included in Christian morality,--had it not been expressly affirmed by some. The word of Christ, however, is a sufficient answer. "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it," and "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal" [Matt. x, 39; Luke ix, 24; xvii, 33; John xii, 25; x, 17; comp. 1 Cor. ix, 25; Phil. i, 21]. We emphasize in these passages, not the expressly pronounced affirmation of a life after death, but simply the express requirement to sacrifice one's life in the interest of a moral duty. But a world-government in which the realization of the good is possible only by the destruction of him who has for his life-task to realize the good, would be per se in a state of utter anarchy, and would have no right to impose moral duties. The simple undeniable fact is this, that the Christian heroes who literally fulfilled the above word of Christ, had joy in so doing only because of that living faith that enabled them to pray amid the tortures of death: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" [Acts vii, 59]. But between the Christian martyr's joy in death and an unbeliever's defiant contempt of death, there is a world-wide difference. Cases are not unfrequently seen of hardened criminals and atheists meeting death with undaunted courage and great coolness; this is, however, but another form of the cold defiance with which other persons blow out their own brains; and whoever has the assurance to compare such blind hardness, even in the remotest degree, with the joyousness and peace of soul of the Christian, surely shows himself utterly incapable of appreciating the true nature of morality.
When Schleiermacher and others, after him, declare it as unpious to be interested in a recompense,--understanding by this assertion that there is wanting a pure and immediate seeking for piety and morality themselves, and that both are desired merely as means for attaining to perfect happiness in a future life,--there is indeed some ground for their position, but only in so far as the subject should regard morality merely as a means to happiness, and that too as a meritorious means even in our present state of sinfulness, while the happiness should be considered as a justly claimable reward. But so soon as the objectors presume to reprehend the seeking after happiness as an essential and necessary phase of the highest good, and to brand as unpious the striving after the same as an actual life-purpose in general, we must reject their position as one-sided and untrue. Every good and hence every moral end produces happiness; and it would be a strange requirement, to permit the seeking after the good but not the seeking after the happiness therein contained. When Christ and the Apostles hesitated not to base all moral sacrifice on the promise and confident hope of eternal life, it does not seem very becoming in a Christian to stigmatize this as immoral self-seeking. When appeal is made to the Reformed divine Danaeus, who (in his Ethica Christ. i, c.
17) represents the honor of God as the sole motive, and that for the sake of which we should be in duty bound to take upon ourselves eternal death, were it required of us, and who stigmatizes it as mercenary to act morally for the sake of eternal happiness,--we may reply, on the one hand, that it could never occur to one who is a Christian and conscious of redemption by grace to regard eternal blessedness, as a reward due for his virtue-merit,--which, in fact, is the sole view that Danaeus rejects [fol. 78, ed. 3],--and, on the other hand, that this somewhat rash and readily misunderstood declaration has quite a different sense in the mouth of Danaeus, who held fast to personal immortality, and in the mouth of those who see in the thought of immortality only a "dogma" without significance for the religious life, and which it is well to vail as much as possible in ambiguous phraseology. And in fact it doubtless forms a part of the moral honoring of God, that we believe in his promises, and love and thank him for them, and also act piously from this loving thankfulness. For the moral life is genuine only when it is a full and true expression of the filial relation of man to God; and it is not only illegitimate, but also a sinful disregarding of God, to require that we should keep only one phase of this relation in view, and violently throw aside and forget the other,--that we should see in God only the Sovereign and not also the lovingly promising Father. If God has gifted man with immortality, if he has promised to the Christian eternal life, then neither can nor should man, as moral, have any other moral goal than that which answers to this promise; if man, in his moral life, ignores that this life is the way to eternal life,--that God has placed before him an everlasting goal,--such conduct is an immoral rejecting of God's love. Whoever does not act from love acts immorally; now, for the promise of eternal life we owe God thankful love; hence there is no true morality which has not this loving thankfulness for its motive.
Against this view,--which is surely in perfect harmony with the general Christian consciousness,--indignant warning has been made, [7] as if it were an ignoring of the inalienable "conquests of recent science," and even appeal has been made to the Old Testament, in which, as an actual fact, it is asserted, the doctrine of immortality is not presented as a moral motive. Now, if the conquests of modern science are to consist in going back to the Old Testament stand-point, for which, on other occasions, the objectors are not in the habit of showing any very high esteem, we may well allow ourselves to deem it a progress beyond said conquests, to come back to the stand-point of Christ and the Apostles. What the wise educative purpose of the said Old Testament peculiarity was, we have elsewhere inquired, and we do not hesitate in the least to claim that Christian morality stands higher than that of the Old Testament, and that also in moral respects "he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater" than the greatest of the Old Testament saints [Matt. xi, 11], though indeed the latter also had, in their faith in the divine promise, in their hope of a future glorious goal for all the children of God, a powerful moral motive that was in no wise opposed to a belief in immortality, but on the contrary implicitly contained it. Whether those who in recent times decline, with such professed disinterestedness, the application of faith in immortality as a moral motive, seek their moral glory in quite as unconditional a submission to God's revealed Word and guidance as did the saints of the Old Testament, seems to us, after all, quite questionable. We do not doubt but that there may be some sort of morality without said faith; but the question is as to true morality--that which embraces the whole man, appropriates to itself all truth, and is of the truth. The pains which some persons give themselves to prove that there may be a moral life without faith in immortality, reminds us very much of the recently made experiment of a naturalist:--he scooped out with a spoon the brain of a living dove, and the poor bird actually continued to live for six several weeks, and even partook of food in the mean time! Very interesting experiments may be had by performing similar amputations on the living body of the Christian faith,--and some of our theologians are quite busy at the work,--but whether the patient prospers very well under the operation is another question. __________________________________________________________________
[5] Reden üb die Rel., p. 174 sqq., 2 Auf.
[6] It is only seemingly so that Paul expresses such a willingness in Rom. ix, 3.
[7] So especially Alex. Schweitzer in the Protest. Kirchenz., 1862, Nr. 1; Fr. Nitzsch in the Stud. u. Krit., 1863, II, 375. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
B.--MAN AS TO HIS SENSUOUSLY-CORPOREAL LIFE. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXIV.
The natural body, as the physical basis on which the spirit develops itself to its full reality, has not a purpose in and of itself; but only for the spirit, namely, to be the perfectly-answering and absolutely-subserving organ of the spirit's relations to nature. This embraces three points:--1. The sensuous corporeality is, despite its seemingly trammeling power over the freedom of the spirit, per se absolutely good, and there is neither any thing evil in it nor is it the cause of any evil whatsoever; and as the body must, in so far as it is normal, be in harmony with the spirit and with nature, hence there is in it no sort of ground for any trammeling of the spiritual life--for any pain.
The moral significance of the sensuous nature, the corporeality, of man is a very important point in the Christian world-theory, and can in no wise be regarded as non-essential. It is, in fact, one among the living questions of the day,--questions which are being warmly agitated even outside of the church, and in relation to which the bearing of the Christian consciousness is, in many respects, entirely misunderstood. As early as the fourth century there infected the Christian church (partly under the prompting, or at least the countenance of non-Christian influences) a spiritualistic view of the naturally-sensuous,--a practical disesteeming of the same in comparison with the spiritual; and the Middle Ages followed in general the same tendency; the Reformation returned to the primitive Christian and biblical view. The recent rationalistic philosophy of the understanding developed, in contrast to the Middle Ages, the theoretical rather than the practical phase of spiritualism, and conceived the sensuously-corporeal life, not merely as the cause of sin, but as per se and originally a trammeling of the spiritual life,--as the real source and seat of sin, and hence as a mere transitory and soon entirely-to-be-thrown-off evil,--and interpreted, utterly erroneously, the New Testament term, sarx, referring it to the natural corporeality. Death, which had previously been viewed as the wages of sin, was now regarded as the emancipator from the seductive and spirit-burdening corporeal life,--as the divinely appointed normal beginning of the untrammeled life of the spirit. Sensuousness is here the not inherited, but innate, and not guilty, but guilt-generating malum originis--an evil, the origin of which was not free responsibly-sinning man, but the divine creative will itself; in getting rid of corporeality therefore man gets rid at the same time also of his (so-regarded) scarcely-imputable sinfulness. Sin consists essentially in the predominating of the sense-life over the spirit; the spirit per se would have little or no occasion for sin. The doctrine of a resurrection of a glorified body is rejected as belonging to a crude, unspiritual world-view; it is only the pure disembodied spirit that is free and perfect. In opposition to this view, the more recent and now spreading irreligious Materialism has exalted the sensuously-corporeal nature above the spirit, and conceived of the spirit as merely a transient force-manifestation of organized matter.
The evangelically-Christian view is neither the above spiritualistic nor this materialistic one. Christianity, though so often charged by worldlings with a one-sided spiritualism, places in fact a much higher moral worth on the corporeal nature than was ever done by heathenism. The body is destined, it is true, to absolute subserviency to the spirit; but it has precisely in this, its perfect service, also a share in the high moral significancy of the spirit,--it is not only not to be discarded as a trammeling of the spirit, but is a very essential part of the moral person. As the eye cannot say to the hand: "I have no need of thee" [1 Cor. xii, 21], neither also may the spirit thus speak to the body. As the nature-side of man, corporeality mediates the action of the spirit upon nature, so that nature becomes thrown open to the spirit as an object both of knowledge and of action. The spirit stands in living relation not only to spirit, but essentially also to nature, and virtualizes also therein its Godlikeness.
The normal relation of the body to the spirit cannot be directly inferred from the present actual state of humanity; for if we assume, even preliminarily, the possibility that the moral spirit of the race has fallen away from its harmony with God, we yet thereby render it unsafe to infer that relation from the present state of things, since from the disturbed harmony of man with God follows also the disturbance of his harmony with himself, and especially of that between spirit and body. The true original relation can be educed only, on the one hand, from Scriptural declarations and from the living example of Christ, and, on the other, from the Christian idea of creation. The simple fact that all that God creates is good, is itself proof that the corporeality created for the spirit can neither be a trammeling nor a natural source of suffering for the same. Suffering and pain are indeed means of educative chastening for man as sinful, but for the unsinful their presence would be the reversing of all moral order. In God's good-created world, men, were they unfallen, would receive their moral training through manifestations of love, without the intervention of suffering and pain; to deny this would be to deny either God's love or his power.
The sensuous corporeality in its uncorrupted primitiveness can disturb neither the moral life by really immoral appetites, nor the feeling of happiness by pains and sickness,--the aequale temperamentum qualitatum corporis (equipoise of the qualities of the body) of the Apologia (i, 17);--in that which was created good there can be no antagonism between the life of the spirit and that of the body, nor between the body and nature; but every suffering, every pain, is evidence of an antagonism, of an evil in its subject. In the Scriptures all bodily sufferings are expressly traced back to sin [Gen. iii, 16, 19; Rom. v, 12-21]; this is the only possible "theodicy" in regard to human suffering. The body of the rational spirit is under the dominion of that spirit, and not under that of unspiritual nature; and the spirit is under the power of itself, and not under that of a nature-bound body; and it is only such a spirit as is free in every respect,--one that is not rendered unfree by a hampering corporeality,--that is in a condition to fulfill the whole of moral duty. In proportion as the now actually spirit-hampering sensuous corporeality is held to be the normal condition, and to answer to the divine creative idea, in the same proportion must the moral life-task also be lowered. And when Rationalism finds the true freedom and moral emancipation of the spirit only in the freeing of the same from the body, there is at least this much of truth in the position, namely, that it is an admission that the present bondage of the spirit under the manifoldly-hampering power of the body is not in harmony with the true life of the moral spirit. But whereas the evangelically-Christian consciousness refers this antagonism in God's world to the guilt of man, Rationalism casts the responsibility for this condition (which itself admits to be in contradiction to the moral idea) upon God, and thereby, in fact, undermines the Christian idea of God, and hence also the unconditional obligatoriness of moral duty. Ultra posse nemo obligatur (Obligation does not transcend ability); this is an ancient truth valid not only in the sphere of jurisprudence but also in that of morality. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXV.
2. The body mediates the relation of the objective world to the personal spirit, through the senses; and this mediation, as being established by the divine creative will, is a truthful one. On the other hand, the body mediates the active relation of the spirit to the objective world, and, in subserving the spirit, it thereby mediates the morally-essential dominion of the spirit over nature, and is, hence, the necessary and adequate organ of the moral spirit in its relation to the external world,--and not that of nature for its dominion over the spirit.
If the created spirit has surety of ability for knowing the truth, this of itself implies that the knowledge mediated by the senses must be real and true,--that sense-impressions per se do not deceive us. "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them" [Prov. xx, 12]; but God is a God of truth; and the solemn exhortation: "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things!" [Isa. xl, 26], is at the same time a guarantee of the reliableness of the senses. If the senses deceive us, then God deceives us. Just as without faith in God there is no morality, so also, without confidence in the truthfulness of the divinely established world-order--which of course includes the vital relations of creatures to each other--a complete morality is impossible. Man cannot be under obligation to be truthful, if creation is not so. The matter is therefore not so morally indifferent as at first glance it might seem. If God is to be seen in his works [Rom. i, 20] then must these works speak truthfully to us. If sense-impressions have only subjective truth, then they have none at all, and hence no worth whatever,--then we sustain no moral relation to the objective world, inasmuch as under such circumstances it would have for us no existence. There could then be no further question save of a moral duty of man to himself or to God. Skepticism on this point is therefore no less anti-moral than impious. Deceptions growing out of false judgments as to per se true sense-impressions, must of course not be confounded with the deception of sense-impressions themselves; it is not the eye that sees the sky touch the earth at the horizon, it is only a premature judgment that leads to this deception. Real sense-deceptions spring of disease, but disease does not exist in a state of moral purity.
The spirit is to dominate over nature, not directly, however, by a mere magic-working will, but by the instrumentality of its own dominated body. The destination to this domination is expressed even in the build of the human body: erect, with upturned look, with hands planned for the most manifold activity, the human body bears upon it the impress as well as the reality of dominating power. While Materialism subordinates spirit to nature, the Christian worldview subordinates nature to spirit; and as the spirit is entirely master over its body, so is it likewise master over nature by means of the body. A childish, morally-unripe spirit cannot, it is true, dominate nature at the will of its irrational whims,--but we speak here only of the rational spirit, and in this sphere the words, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," have no application; in normal man the flesh is also willing and strong. Even as through the senses nature is open and unlocked for the cognizing spirit, so is it also through the bodily organs for the volitionating spirit. If the facts seem otherwise in the present reality of things, if the body is no longer an absolutely obedient medium for the dominion of the spirit over nature, but on the contrary is much oftener a mere instrument of nature for her dominating over the spirit, this is simply because the right and primitive relation has been disturbed, and has given place to the enfeebling influence of sin. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXVI.
3. The incipient limitation of the freedom of the normally self-developing spirit by the body in consequence of the dependent condition of the latter on external nature, is only the corresponding normal expression of the still existing unfreedom of the, as yet, unmatured spirit, and is therefore also the protection of the same against its own immaturity,--a divinely-intended means of discipline for the same. But this primarily limiting relation of the body to the spirit is only transient, and is not a real trammeling. The body, while following in its own development the growth of the spirit in rationality and freedom, passes gradually over from its at first predominantly determining and conditioning character to that of being predominantly determined and conditioned by the spirit; and in its ultimate perfection,--as corresponding to the fall moral maturity of the spirit,--it becomes perfectly spirit-imbued and spirit-appropriated,--the absolutely subservient organ of the emancipated spirit,--becomes a perfectly spiritualized and transfigured body, which latter, as being developed by a regular growth out of the original unfree nature-body, is conditioned neither on a violent death of the nature-body nor is subject itself to death, seeing that it is simply the necessary and normal organ of the immortal spirit.
It would be an injustice in the Creator, and a God-repugnant defect in creation, were the essentially free and morally matured spirit bound in unfreedom by a per se irrational nature; and the anti-scriptural notion, that the rational spirit has been banished into a body, as into a prison, in punishment for the sins of a previous life, would then be the sole possible justification of the Creator. But the conditional unfreedom of the spirit such as we must admit also for the unfallen state, namely, that it is limited by the natural alternation of sleeping and waking [comp. Gen. ii, 21] by the natural wants of food, etc., [comp. Gen. i, 29, 30], is not against but for the spirit. It reminds the personal spirit of its belonging to the per se unitary and law-governed All, its regulated connection with nature; it protects the, as yet, inexperienced spirit from unwise presumption, from arbitrary irrational meddling with the divinely-established order of the world,--teaches it to submit itself to the divinely-willed and ordered laws of existence, teaches it humility, and brings to its consciousness its dependence on God's power, thereby impressing upon it the lesson that it can attain to true freedom only by a free and cheerful self-denial in relation to the will of God. Hunger, e. g., is the most powerful stimulus to activity, and hence to the development of the spirit, and ever since the entrance of sin into the race there has been no other so sure and effectual a means of stirring up the spirit out of its slothful indolence [Prov. xvi, 26, in the original]. In the present state of man hunger is not only of significance for the individual, it is a world-historical power, the first and most persistent stimulus to civilization. Unfallen humanity, it is true, knows nothing of any hunger-stress, but it knows it as a want requiring satisfaction; and it is not a feature of the suffering but of the true humanity of Christ, that he also felt hunger.
That which was a disciplining beginning, however, is not to be permanent; but it is not the body, but only the limiting power of the same that is to pass away. The view that the body is not a permanent condition of the spirit, but only a prison-house destined to destruction,--a merely useless burdening incident of the spirit,--is a very favorite one, it is true, but it is a very un-Christian one. What God does is done well, and he has given the body to the spirit for perfect service, and not for a burden and a clog. Of the notion that the original body is only a worthless case or husk, to be cast off like the chrysalis of the butterfly, the Scriptures know nothing;--the dissolving of the earthly house [2 Cor. v, 1] applies only to the body of sin and death [Gen. iii, 19];--the body is originally, on the contrary, the divinely-established permanent condition of true life, though indeed not an absolutely necessary condition of the life of the spirit in general. Christ, the perfect man, shows in his own person what the human body signifies and is; Christ's resurrection is a stone of stumbling for all one-sided spiritualism. Christ lives on, not as a mere bodiless spirit, but in his now glorified body, and he will transfigure our sin-ruined body that it may be like unto his glorious body [Phil. iii, 21]. This transfiguration, though without death--not a being unclothed, but a being clothed upon [2 Cor. v, 4]--is the original purpose of the body given to the immortal spirit as its subservient organ. The spirit's body is in fact, as such, no longer a mere nature-object, but, as the exclusive possession of an immortal subject, it is also itself raised above the perishableness incident to all mere nature-objects.--Death is in the Scriptures uniformly referred back to sin; and the great emphasis which the New Testament lays upon the resurrection of the body indicates what the original body was to have been. If it is the moral destination of the spirit to be free, to dominate by reason over the merely natural, then death, as a violent interruption of life, comes into direct antagonism with this destination; it indicates a complete ascendency of unconscious nature over spirit, the impotency of the spirit in the face of nature--a condition of the real bondage of spirit to nature. Were this wide-reaching antagonism between the actual state and the moral nature of the spirit the original condition, and were it included in the nature of things or in the creative will itself, then the nerve of all morality would be paralyzed, and all moral courage broken. To struggle against too great odds is folly; if irrational nature is more powerful than the moral spirit, then the latter can rationally take no better course than to yield to superior force, and to place its own sensuous nature higher than its spiritual. __________________________________________________________________
C.--THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT AND THE BODY. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXVII.
In virtue of the union of spirit and body into one personality, the spirit is manifoldly determined also in its moral life, and it appears in consequence under different phases of existence, which occasion also correspondingly different manifestations of morality.
1. The stages of life. The spirit is dependent in its development on that of the body, not absolutely, however, but only relatively; the development-stages of the moral spirit--which do not entirely coincide with those of the body, but only in general and partially run parallel therewith--are the following:--(a) The stage of moral minority, childhood. Here the body is as yet master over the spirit; the spirit is as yet in most things essentially unfree--dependent on outer, sensuous, and spiritual influences,--is more guided than self-guiding.--(b) The stage of transition to majority,--still wavering between freedom and unfreedom; morality appears essentially under the form of free obedience toward educators.--(c) The stage of moral majority. The person has come into possession of himself,--is actually master over himself as regards moral self-determination, is able by his moral consciousness to guide himself independently; hence he is fully morally responsible, and is in process of developing an independent character.--A relapsing of the morally matured into a state of moral irresponsibility, a becoming childish, is not conceivable in a normal condition of humanity, though here there would doubtless, indeed, be a greater turning away from merely earthly things, and a growing preoccupation with the supernatural,--in the stage of moral old age.
The development of a spirit as united with a body, consists in one of its phases in the fact that it more and more throws off its primarily normal greater dependence on the corporeal life,--that it becomes freer, ripens toward maturity. Although we cannot conceive of the first created human beings as beginning life in a state of unconscious childhood, still the above-mentioned stages of life, seeing that they are implied in the very nature of self-development, must hold good, at least, of all succeeding generations; and even the first man could not appear at once as a perfectly mature, morally-ripened spirit, but had to pass through similar stages of development. According to the naturalistic view, the spiritual development is exclusively and absolutely conditioned on that of the body--is only the bloom and vigor of the same. This assertion, as well as the theory on which it is based, is refuted by the simple matter of fact that spiritual development often far outruns that of the body, and in fact in a normal development must do so, and also that in persons of precisely equal bodily development, the spiritual ripeness may be very widely different. In an as yet unmatured body there may be a mature spirit, in a weak and ailing body, a strong spirit; this would be inconceivable on the naturalistic hypothesis. But especially the moral development may come to ripeness of character much earlier than the corporeal life; growth in knowledge is much more dependent on the development of the body; the understanding does not outrun the years, and children that are early ripe intellectually, are usually morbid phenomena; but a very youthful soul may acquire a real and firm moral character. The proverb, "Youth is without virtue," in so far as it is meant to be an excuse, is absolutely immoral and perverse.
In consequence of the normal super-ordination of the spirit to the body, the spiritual development-stages do not coincide, in point of time, with the corresponding bodily stages, but precede them somewhat. The first stage is that of childlike innocence, where the child as yet knows not how to distinguish between good and evil [Isa. vii, 16], where, as yet, the moral consciousness slumbers, and the life-activity does not spring from a will conscious of a moral purpose, but, on the contrary, from unconscious feelings which are directly excited by external or sensuous influences; hence an accountability proper cannot as yet be presumed. The child has indeed propensions and aversions, love and anger, and other states of feeling, but it does not have them intelligently,--is not as yet in spiritual self-possession. Obedience is, as yet, a mere scarcely-conscious following, taking its rise simply from natural feelings and from the instinct of imitation, and which is indeed a germ of morality, though not, as yet, actual morality, but is, in-fact, also found to some extent among domesticated animals. The typical character of children as presented by Christ [Matt. xviii, 3] does not relate to any moral perfection in them, but only to their receptiveness for moral impressions, to their innocence, to their consciousness of need, and their readiness to believe.
The stage of transition, or youth, is the time when the person can distinguish between good and evil, and where, consequently, there exists a real moral consciousness, though not one that is thoroughly formed and in every case self-determining, but only primarily a consciousness of good and evil in general, and the particular application of which in single cases is, for the most part, not left to personal free self-determination, but to the guidance of educators. The boy has the definite law, as yet, only in an objective manner, in the will of his parents; his moral consciousness sketches only general outlines,--for the more definite traits and shades it is as yet dependent on some other, to him objective, consciousness. Hence the most characteristic form of the morality of this period is obedience; and the greatest danger to morality, so long as this partial uncertainty yet remains, is the tendency, readily resulting from the incipient consciousness of moral self-determination, to wish to determine one's conduct in particular cases directly and immediately from the, as yet, only general and indefinite moral consciousness,--that is, the tendency to premature freedom, the pleasure in an unregulated enjoyment of freedom, in arbitrary self-determination. This in fact was the danger to which our first parents fell a prey.
The stage of moral maturity, in a normal development, far more than overtakes that of bodily ripeness. While civil law fixes the civil majority, that is, the time of ripe understanding, at the period of full bodily maturity, the moral community, the Church, declares man as morally mature much earlier (confirmation); also the state fixes full moral responsibility much earlier than the civil majority. These distinctions rest on well-grounded experience. The young man knows not merely moral duty in general, but he is also capable of conforming his life thereto in particular. Obedience to parents or guardians assumes now the form of obedience to the moral law, which latter indeed includes the former, but no longer as an essentially unconditional obedience, but simply as one that is to be subordinated to the moral law. But a morally mature person can come into an actual conjuncture where it is necessary to refuse obedience to parents, only on the presupposition of a morally disordered state of humanity; and also civil law finds in such obedience, after years of moral majority, no excuse for criminal acts.
The becoming-childish of the aged would be a very weighty reason for doubting of personal immortality, were it a normal phenomenon of old age. When, however, we consider that even in the present sin-disordered condition of the race, this becoming-childish is by no means a necessary and universal phenomenon, but that, on the contrary, the fruit of a morally-pious life--even in far advanced age, and despite the otherwise slumber-like obscuration of the intellectual faculties--is a heightening of the religious and moral consciousness, and that even the better forms of heathenism consider reverence for the moral wisdom of the aged as a high virtue,--we can readily, then, infer from this, how little room there would be for a real becoming-childish in any respect whatever in an unfallen state of humanity. Precisely what would have been the characteristics of normal old age in a sinless state, we know not; this much, however, we do know, that the life of an immortal spirit, as being destined to a higher ennoblement or transfiguration, and as not subject to a positive violent death, could not be liable to a return to a state of moral minority,--at the farthest it would only have prepared itself for this freely self-accomplishing ennobling, by a greater turning away from earthly things. All senility of age we can regard only as an absolutely abnormal sin-born phenomenon, seeing that it stands in manifest antagonism to the nature and destination of the personal spirit. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXVIII.
2. Differences of temperament--the different tempers of the spirit in its bearing toward the outer world, as determined by differences of bodily peculiarity. These differences are--as an expression of that manifoldness of being which is necessary to the perfection of the whole--per se good, and give rise to a vital reciprocalness of relation among the members of society. As mere natural determinations of the spirit they have primarily no moral significance; they receive such, however, as conditions of the moral life. They do not constitute moral character; on the contrary, they are, in their disproportionateness, to be controlled by the character, and trained into virtue.--Related to the temperaments are the normal differences in the natural peculiarities of nations.
From a naturalistic stand-point great importance is attributed to temperaments, as if they were original moral determinations. But that which is original and merely natural is not as yet moral; it is only the antecedent condition of the moral. Moral character is not determined by nature, but only by the free action of man himself; in proportion as we consider the moral as determined by nature, we destroy its very essence. While the ancients considered the temperaments rather in their purely corporeal significance, in recent times emphasis is often given rather to their spiritually-moral significance, to the detriment of morality. On this point there has been much fallacious speculation, and the inclination is in many respects manifest, to attempt to comprehend man in his moral peculiarity from mere nature-circumstances, rather than honestly to look into his moral nature--to search his heart; and men are very ready to excuse their moral foibles and vices on the score of temperament; this course is naturalistic, and, in fact, materialistic. Temperament is, essentially, simply the normal basis on which morality is to develop itself; it does not, however, itself determine the moral life-task, but only has influence in throwing it into its peculiar form; he whose character is shaped only by his temperament has no character. The moral character stands above all temperament; and where there are different and opposed temperaments like moral characters may be formed, and the converse. Temperaments are not per se a peculiarity of the spirit, but are based in that of the corporeal life, and pass over upon the spirit only by virtue of a kind of communicatio idiomatum. It is usual to distinguish four temperaments,--according to the susceptibility for external influences, and to the active bearing toward the outer world: (1) that which is very open for outward impressions, and is at the same time more acted upon from without than self-active--the light, sanguine temperament;--(2) that which is very open for outward impressions, but is at the same time rather self-active, initiatively working, and influencing the outer world--the warm, choleric temperament;--(3) that which is less receptive for outward impressions, and at the same time rather inactive, indifferent--the cool, phlegmatic temperament;--(4) that which, while equally feebly-receptive for outward impressions, is yet more active, storing up in itself what it receives--the heavy melancholic temperament.--The types of temperament, however, do not usually appear under these pure forms; generally they are commingled and toned down. Nor does a temperament always remain the same, but it changes with the outward relations and age of the person.
As the moral person is not to permit himself to be determined by the irrational, but should himself freely determine himself on the basis of the moral consciousness, hence he is all the more moral the more he subordinates his temperament to his moral will,--not cultivating simply those virtues which are more congenial to his temperament, as, for example, friendliness in the sanguine, patience in the phlegmatic, courage in the choleric, etc. Morality consists rather, on the contrary, in the inner harmony of all the different moral phases, and must consequently counteract the one-sidedness of any particular temperament. The light temperament tends to frivolity, the warm to passionateness and revenge, the cool to indifference and indolence, the heavy to selfishness and narrowness. He who leaves his temperament unbridled, cultivates not its virtue but its defect; for virtue is never a mere nature-proclivity. As a peculiar endowment, temperament, like every other endowment, must be morally shaped, and hence brought into proper harmony with the moral whole of the life. No sin finds a moral justification in temperament; and, on the other hand, only that course of action is morally good which springs not merely from temperament, but from the moral consciousness.
The differences of natural national peculiarities are related to the difference of temperament. Also in a sinless state, a diversity among nations, a difference of taste, etc., arising primarily from differences of country, would be perfectly normal and necessary [Acts xvii, 26]. As the mountaineer is different in his entire bodily and spiritual temper from the dweller in the plain, the inhabitant of the North from him of the Tropics, etc., so there arises therefrom a diversity of forms of the moral life-work,--which, however, cannot come into hostile antagonism with each other, but in fact constitute a stimulating diversity, from which arises an all the greater and more vital harmony of the whole. Labor and enjoyment, the family-life and the life of society, will necessarily assume different forms; and the proper development and preservation of the normal peculiarities of nations form an essential feature of general moral perfection. It is not as a progress of spiritual and moral culture, but to some extent as a perversion thereof, that we must regard the tendency manifested in recent times to sweep away, to a large extent, the peculiarities of nations, and to bring about the greatest possible uniformity. Manifoldness of language and spirit is not confusion, and it has, as opposed to a bald, lifeless monotony, its legitimate moral right. The sons of Jacob, as differing in character, imparted also a normal difference to the tribes in Israel; nevertheless one spirit could and should have pervaded them all. __________________________________________________________________
SECTION LXIX.
3. The difference of sex conditions a correspondingly different peculiarity of the moral life-work. Man represents the outward-working, productive phase of humanity, woman the receptive and formative,--he more the spirit-phase, she more the nature-phase; in him preponderate thought and will; in her rather the feelings, the heart; to man it is more peculiar to act initiatively,--to woman rather, morally to associate herself. The moral life-work of each is different in the details, but in both it is of like dignity; it is simply two different mutually-complementing phases of the same morality. The morality of both sexes consists, in fact, in especially developing that phase of the moral life that is peculiar to each,--not as strictly the same as, but as in harmony with, the peculiarity of the other.
The antithesis of the two sexes is the highest spiritualized manifestation of that primitive antithesis of the operative and the reposing, the active and the passive, that conditions all earthly life,--that assumes an endless variety of forms, and appears in each single phenomenon of the world under some of its many forms of combination. Nowhere do we find mere force, nowhere mere matter, but every-where in nature both are united, and yet they are not the same. What this primitive antithesis is in nature,--what the greater antitheses of the light and the heavy, repulsion and attraction, motion and rest, sun and planet, animal and plant, arteries and veins, etc., are,--this is, in highest refinement and perfection, the antithesis of man and woman in humanity. That the nature-phase is somewhat more prominent in woman than in man is evidenced also by the earlier physical development and maturity of the female sex, and by the greater dependence on nature and on the changes of the seasons in the entire female sex-life. The higher intellectual power is undoubtedly with man, and the moral subordination of woman to man in wedlock and in society is an unmistakable law of universal order. The difference of the two sexes is not to be t6ned down, but to be developed into moral harmony. As an effeminate man or masculine woman is offensive to the esthetic sense, and a hermaphrodite repugnant to uncorrupted feelings, and a sexless form expressionless and unnatural, so also, in moral respects, it is the duty of man to cultivate his manliness, and of woman to cultivate her womanliness; and any assumption by one party of the peculiarities of the opposite sex, is not only unnatural but also immoral. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
II. THE COMMUNITY-LIFE AS A MORAL SUBJECT.
SECTION LXX.
Man is not simply an individual being, but, by virtue of his moral rationality, which seeks everywhere to reduce the manifold to unity, he effects also a moral community-life, a community of persons, to which the individual is related as a serving member, and which has in turn itself a definite moral life-purpose, to the fulfilling of which the individual members are indeed called, though this moral life-purpose, that is to be carried out by the individual, is not identical with the life-work which he, as a personal individual, has to fulfill for himself. A plurality of persons constitutes a moral community-life only when, in virtue of a real common-consciousness, and a common moral life-purpose, they are molded into a life-unity, so that the individual members bring not only the whole into active relation to themselves, but also and essentially themselves into active relation to the whole; and the moral life of the individual is the more perfect the more it develops itself into a life of the whole; and the ultimate goal of moral development is, that all humanity become a unitary moral community. The true morality of the individual assumes therefore always a twofold form: one that is personally-individual, and one that is an expression of the moral life-purpose of the community-life, and in the name of which it fulfills that purpose; neither is subordinate to the other, but they stand in vital reciprocity of relation.
The notion of the community-life as a moral subject is of very great significance for ethics. Heathenism attained to it but very imperfectly, inasmuch as the thought of the unity of mankind was entirely wanting, and as where the community-life was most prominent--in China--there only a naturalistic, mechanical world-theory prevailed, and as, on the contrary, where the personal spirit came into prominence--in the Occident--there it did so only in the form of the strong individual will,--that is, the will did not appear as general but as individual and arbitrary, so that the community-life itself bore the impress of the individual will. In the Israelitic theocracy we find, in virtue of the divine disciplinary purpose, only the embryonic beginnings of the community-life; as yet, the morality of the individual prevails over the collective morality. But to the idea of the latter itself there is very clear allusion. The words, "I will make of thee a great nation;... in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" [Gen. xii, 2, 3], are not a mere blessing, but they imply also for Abraham a moral duty, namely, that he live not for himself, but also for his people, and through them for the whole race,--that he work and act not merely as Abram but as Abraham, as the father of nations [Gen. xvii, 5]. Christianity brought the great idea to realization; the truth that makes man truly free rendered again possible the founding of a true moral community,--primarily as the Church, but then also as the Christian state. The idea of moral communion becomes here at once a fundamental one. Personal communion with the personal Son of God and of Man as chief, creates the true, vital moral community-life; the individual lives for the community and the community for the individual, and both through Christ and for Christ. This circumstance is very suggestive as to the moral destination of humanity as sinless.
The moral activity of the individual person as such is clearly to be distinguished from the moral activity of the same as an embodiment of the public morality. The mere circumstance, that in a state of sinfulness these two forms of morality may appear in antithesis and contradiction--that a man may perform his duty as a citizen to a certain degree of serviceableness, while his personal morality stands very low--shows that in the thing itself there is a real difference. What I do as a vital member of the moral community--as it were out of the spirit of the same, and to some extent, in the name of and as representing the same, that is, what I do, not because I am a moral individual, but because I belong, as a part, to a moral community,--that must of course, under circumstances of moral maturity, be in entire harmony with my personal moral disposition; but harmony is not identity. As representing the moral community-life and the common consciousness, my personal individual will retires essentially into the back-ground, and the public spirit possesses me and guides me,--rules sovereignly in me, and thrusts aside even my otherwise legitimate individual weal. The warrior, in fighting for his country, acts not from his personal individual will; he seeks, in case he enters into it morally, nothing for himself, but every thing solely for his country; he sacrifices his personal right to domestic happiness, to quiet labor, to legitimate enjoyments, and even his life itself, for the community,--not as a personal individual, but as a vital member of the nation. The morality of the individual bears more a masculine, that of the community more a feminine character, inasmuch as in the latter case there is a predominancy of yielding to influence, of self-associating, of devotion even to sacrifice. The moral honor of a community is other than that of the individual; when the soldier defends the flag of his regiment, it is not, or should not be, his own honor, but that of the entire body, that prompts him; and where there is honor, there is also morality.
The distinction of this twofold morality presents itself, under one of the special forms of the second phase, namely, official morality, as recognizable also outwardly. What the clergyman, the soldier, the judge does officially, is also morality, but it is not by any means identical with his personal morality, as is shown even by the fact of the different degrees of censure incurred for violations of duty in the two spheres. An untruth, a deception, perpetrated in official activity, is much more severely punished, and deserves also severer moral rebuke, than a like act done in non-official life. He who is acting in a public capacity is not at liberty to overlook an offered indignity, while his very first duty when insulted in a private capacity, is, to manifest a readiness for reconciliation. The moral community often expresses this difference in the fact that those who act principally and professionally in its name, wear a special official garb, so that the entire external appearance and bearing of such public persons are not governed merely by their personally free self-determination. but bear the impress of that which transcends the individual will, namely, the community-life; personal character, while realizing public morality, falls back behind the character of the community-life. Nevertheless it is true that the whole moral activity and life of the individual contributes essentially to the honor or shame of the family and of the community to which he belongs [Lev. xxi, 9], so that consequently this distinction of a twofold moral sphere of activity does not amount to a real separation. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________