CHAPTER IV: THE MORAL MOTIVE.

THE MORAL MOTIVE.
SECTION XC.

EVERY motive to action is primarily a feeling; but feeling springs from a consciousness. And feeling is such motive under both of its forms of manifestation, as feeling of satisfaction or of dissatisfaction, and hence of pleasure or of displeasure. The feeling of displeasure is to be assumed as existing to a certain degree also in a state of strictly normal life-development, namely, in so far as man, before reaching his last stage of perfection, has always a consciousness, that as yet something is lacking to him to which he is yet to attain. This is not pain, but yet it is a feeling of want.

Any view is contrary to the nature of the soul-life which assumes any other soul activity, as, for example, cognition, as the most immediate motive of the moral. Thought per se contains nothing that moves the will; but thought is in fact never absolutely alone, is never a merely inert possession, but it excites at once and necessarily a feeling, and then, through this feeling, the will. I feel myself in some way affected by the perceived or conceived, more or less agreeably or disagreeably, according as it is in harmony with, or in contradiction to, my present state. An entire indifference is here impossible, though indeed the shades of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure may be very different,--impossible for the reason that that which I receive into myself sensuously or spiritually, must necessarily come into some sort of relation to my present corporeal or spiritual reality, and for the reason that this relation must always be either one of harmony or disharmony. It is true indeed that the different phases of a received impression may have different bearings, and hence the feeling that arises from them may be of a complex character; nevertheless in this complexity the elements of the pleasant and the unpleasant remain always distinct,--do not coalesce together into a feeling of total indifference, just as every object that is taken for nutriment is either strengthening or weakening to the body, but cannot be absolutely indifferent. Now, every feeling stirs up also straightway the will, and hence activity in general; in case it is a pleasant feeling we desire to possess its object, either by preserving it or by appropriating it; in case the feeling is unpleasant we seek to get rid of it. In this double-movement all action is embraced, and hence also all that is moral; and this movement itself rests absolutely on an antecedent feeling. Thought, it is true, is the foundation of the moral, but it is only the feeling excited thereby that is the motive proper of action. Only he can will the good who has pleasure in the law of the Lord [Rom. vii, 22; Psa. i, 2; cxii, 1].--When the thought of something not yet existing, but which may be realized by my action, awakens in me a feeling of pleasure, this is in fact the thought of a good, which, by virtue of this feeling, becomes an intention, which differs from a resolution in the fact that the latter relates not to the good itself but to the means of realizing it. While, however, an intention refers to a good, a purpose refers to the good. I purpose to become a perfect man; I have an intention of mastering a science; I form a resolution or determination to study. But a thought becomes to me a purpose only by the accession thereto of the feeling of love; in a resolution the will stands forth a little more actively.

It might, now, seem that while in the condition of the primitive sinless goodness of human nature, there would be place for feelings of pleasure, that is, of happiness, yet there would not be occasion for the feeling of displeasure. This would be only then correct when man's original perfection should be conceived of, contrary to the very idea of life in general, as a state of completion. But all capability of development implies a certain lack, though not a fault, nor a non-good; and every consciousness of a lack awakens the feeling of a want, which, though it is not a pain, and does not destroy inward happiness, is yet also not the pleasurable feeling of complete satisfaction. That even he who is perfectly constituted, and who remains in this perfection, should still have bodily and spiritual wants, which are per se necessarily attended with a certain, though indeed only momentary, feeling of displeasure, is implied in the very nature of the creature and of its development.

SECTION XCI.

Feeling as relating to the object that excites it, is, as a feeling of pleasure, love, and, as a feeling of displeasure, hatred. Between these two there is no third, although both may exist in different degrees and even in association with each other. Hence love is the feeling of pleasure which springs from the consciousness of the harmony of a real or conceived object with the actual state of the subject, together with a desire to preserve and to perfect this harmony, and hence also to preserve the being and essence of this object. Hatred is the feeling of displeasure which springs from the consciousness of an irreconcilable antagonism between the object and the subject, together with a desire to destroy this antagonism in the object, even should this involve the destruction itself of that object. In a normal moral condition of things where all that exists is good, love alone has a real object, while hatred has only a possible one.--Love is essentially of a preserving character, hatred is essentially of a negating, destroying character; as, however, all moral action aims to create a reality by continuous development, hence preserving love is necessarily at the same time also promotive of the being and nature of the beloved object, and negating hatred is at the same time a confirming of the opposite of the bated object. Hence love works in order to be able to love always; hatred works ill order to destroy itself; love lives in order to be eternal; hatred lives in order to come to an end; only that hatred can be endless whose object is eternal--namely, Satanic hatred. As moral hatred is necessarily an effort to destroy the antagonism of existence, that is, to re-establish its harmony, hence it is in essence the same thing as love. Hatred is per se as moral as love,--is but its necessary reverse phase. There is no moral love without hatred, and no moral hatred without love; pure hatred without love would be simply Satanic hatred. As moral hatred is in its essence love, hence the actual motive of all moral activity is love.

"Love is the fulfilling of the law" [pleroma, Rom. xiii, 10]; in this formula the Christian idea of the moral motive is very definitely expressed; love leads to the fulfillment of the law; it is the rich fullness in which all law is included. Without love there is no morality; and where love is, there morality is truly free, for love develops itself into all forms of the moral. Hence Christ, after the example of the Old Testament [Deut. vi, 5; x, 12; xi, 13], sums up the whole law in the one precept of love to God and to our neighbor [Matt. xxii, 37; Luke x, 27]; "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments" [1 John v, 3]; love is not and cannot be a mere inert feeling, but it is by its very nature active, it produces that which its subject loves,--brings about the full and free harmony of the person and his life with God. Whoever assigns any other motive for morality than love, knows nothing of the moral. But love tends by its essential nature to a unity of the diverse,--seeks not its own mere isolated being. Mere self-love to the exclusion of love to others is not love at all, but only immoral self-seeking; it is indeed a motive to action, but to anti-moral action; Even that which appears in the animal world as an unconscious symbol of moral virtue, is based on love, and is an expression thereof. There is no form of moral activity conceivable which would not be an expression of love [1 Cor. xvi, 14].--The moral love of the divine is, per se and necessarily, also hatred against that which is ungodly. But as the ungodly is primarily not real but only conceivable, and as this thought itself becomes really vital only through the reality of sin, it does not come here properly within our scope.

Love is taken here primarily as not yet a virtue or a disposition, but as a simple feeling occasioned by a consciousness of harmony or of disharmony. The love that is required as the fulfilling of the law is more than mere feeling, though indeed it has feeling as its basis and essence. And yet the love here in question is not a mere feeling of pleasure, not a mere impressed state of the heart, but it contains in itself at the same time a power prompting to an active relation to the beloved object. All love has for its object a something that is good, and hence, as relating to the subject, a good (§ 51), and it evidences the existence of this good by the outgoing and recognizing life-movement of the subject toward it,--by the effort of the subject toward the object in order to preserve or intensify its unity, its harmony therewith. Now as all existences are created for each other and destined to a self-harmonious life, hence love is the primitive feeling of all rational creatures,--the direct witness of the goodness of existence, an echo of that first witness of the Creator as to his created work, and hence also the innermost vitality of the moral life, the purpose and essence of which is in fact, harmony, or the good. Directed toward the good, and hence the divine, love has for itself the pledge of eternity; whereas moral hatred, as directed against all non-good, that is, anti-divine, has, in virtue of its negating nature, for its purpose, the destroying of its object and of itself with it. Peace is the goal of love and also of hatred,--is an essential phase of the highest good itself.

SECTION XCII.

If love is the motive to all moral action, and consequently also the necessary presupposition thereof; hence there must also be an ante-moral love, one that is per se not yet moral but which simply leads to the moral. In man's originally-possessed, though not as yet developed, God-likeness, there is in fact implied an original love antecedent to all moral volition,--an immediate love of the created spirit for the Creator as revealing himself to it, and for the surrounding universe as proclaiming the Creator's love. This direct and not morally-acquired love is, however, not an unfreely-operating, compelling instinctive impulse, but receives the character of moral freedom through the simultaneously awakening consciousness of personal independence and of the therein-contained love of the person to himself, so that in virtue of this twofold primitive love, which offers the possibility of an antagonism as well as of a harmony, man is invited to a free self-determination.

If the feeling of love is a directly excited one, and, as such, the presupposition of the moral activity to which it leads, it would seem as if moral freedom were actually precluded. For this feeling is as yet involuntary and unfree; and love and hatred produce, directly, a desire or a rejection. On the other hand, we cannot possibly exclude love from the sphere of the moral, and make of it a mere antecedent condition of the same; for according to the Christian consciousness at least, man is morally responsible for his love and his hatred; love is an object of duty, and is required by Christ as the essence of all fulfillment of the law. This seems like an irreconcilable contradiction.

In the first place, it is unavoidably necessary to admit that there is an ante-moral love. Brutes even have love, and are thereby impelled to activity; also the child at its mother's breast feels and manifests love. This is not a love springing from free conscious volition,--not a moral love,--but a purely natural love, which forms, however, the necessary antecedent condition of all development to morality. Primitive man must also have had such a love, inasmuch as without this a life of God's image is not conceivable. Created in harmony with God and with the All, he must have had also a direct feeling of this harmony, must have felt happy in his existence and in his Paradise-world; and in this feeling of happiness he must also have loved that whereby it was produced in him; there met him on every hand the image of divine love, of the harmony of the universe, and he must have felt and loved it; and when God revealed himself to him as the loving Father, then must man have experienced also toward Him a feeling of harmony and love. But all this love is as yet simply a directly-excited one,--is not freely produced by moral activity, and is consequently not yet a moral love, though it indeed conducts to moral activity and thereby to a transformation of itself into moral love. If now this first ante-moral love of man for God and his work were the sole love really existing in man, then evidently the action answering to it, and hence also to the will of God, would flow out of it so immediately and necessarily that the possibility of a contrary self-determination would be scarcely conceivable, so that though indeed moral freedom in general would not be thereby destroyed, yet liberty of choice would actually and essentially be precluded. Man would not stand in free self-determination between the choice of the good and the evil, but he would be overpoweringly driven by an inner potent impulse to a choice of the good. Now, though this would in fact render conceivable an absolutely sinless development, still it would render all the more inconceivable the possibility of a determination to the sinful.

But the matter assumes a very different aspect when we take into account the equally natural and immediate ante-moral impulse of self-love. This must, in fact, also be regarded as ante-moral, for the reason that it is the involuntary natural expression of soul-life in general, and hence exists also unconsciously among brutes. The fact that with man it is conscious, and constitutes a phase of rational self-consciousness, does not make it per se moral, but simply renders it capable of being formed into a moral quality. While now in the case of the brute the unconscious self-love can never become really evil, the self-love of man is, by virtue of the higher independence of the free spirit, only in a possible harmony with the love to God and the universe, but should come into real harmony therewith. Self-love is per se good,--is by no means the same as self-seeking or selfishness; Christ himself represents self-love as morally right, and as the measure for our love to our neighbor [Matt. xxii, 39; Luke x, 27; comp. Rom. xiii, 9; Gal. v, 14; James ii, 8; Eph. v, 28, 29, 33; 1 Sam. xviii, 1, 3]; but the goodness of this love consists not in an antecedently-established harmony with the love to God and the world, but simply in its liberty to confirm this harmony spontaneously. The love of God and the love of self are both equally primitive, and are per se not in antagonism with each other in the least, but yet they are different from each other and relatively independent of each other. In this mutual independence of these two forms of love there is afforded opportunity for the freedom of human choice. Man is called freely to confirm the harmony of his self-love and his divine love, and that too not by suppressing the one or the other, nor by making his love of God dependent on his self-love, but in fact by making his self-love dependent on his love of God,--by freely subordinating it thereto. As soon as the divine command was given to him, man was at once conscious that there was a difference between his self-love and his love to God, but also, at the same time, that it was his duty to develop this difference, not into antagonism but into harmony. The one (logically) possible mis-choice, of suppressing the per se legitimate self-love by disproportionate exaltation of the love to God, was impossible in fact, inasmuch as the love to God necessarily involves in itself all possible good, and hence also the proper love of self, for God preserves that which He himself has willed; so that consequently there remained possible only the other mis-choice (which was therefore morally forbidden), namely, of subordinating the love of God to self-love, instead of preserving the latter in its true character through its proper subordination to the former. If simply the love of God had been primitive in man, then a choice of the ungodly would have been impossible; if simply self-love had been primitive in him, then a choice of the good, of submission to the divine will, would have been equally impossible, and man would have been in the one case irresponsible for the good, and in the other for the evil--without desert and without guilt. But by virtue of the fact that the love to God and the love of self are alike primitive, as the ante-moral germ of the moral, it follows that man is fully responsible for the confirmation or the disturbance of the harmony of this twofold love; for this determination was not already involved in the constitution of man, but was proposed as a moral task to his free will. The mere love to God would have made man good but not free, the mere self-love would have made him seemingly free but not good; the twofold love made him free for choosing the good, but also free for the possible choice of the evil,--which, under these circumstances, assumed, in consequence of the equally real original love to God, the form of infidelity to God, of a punishable sin. The case is quite similar with the moral culture of the child. The child, as soon as self-conscious, has love for its mother, and also a per se strictly legitimate love for play; when the will of the mother calls the child from its play, it becomes conscious of the difference of the two forms of love; it knows also that it can prefer its love for play, and leave the will of the mother unheeded. It must by a morally-free choice, make a decision,--must subordinate the one love to the other; if it chooses obedience, then in thus choosing, and thus only, it feels itself truly free. If there had been no difference of a twofold love, the child would have had no choice; it would have just as unfreely, and without a consciousness of the good or a right to praise, followed its mother, as, on the other supposition, it would have unfreely and without a consciousness of the evil or a desert of blame, preferred its play. It is only such cases of choice, of moral self-determination, that bring the child's morality to development and to maturity.--It would be very erroneous to consider self-love as per se evil, and as a natural germ of the evil; the fact is, it simply offers-not per se, however, but in its normal difference from the love to God--the possibility of evil, but equally so also the possibility of moral good in general. It is only in the consciously-wrought free subordination of self-love to the divine love, that the latter as well as the former becomes moral. There can be no question of a "must" in the determination, whether in the one direction or in the other, but only of a "should" and a "should not."

SECTION XCIII.

The primitive love of man to God and his works becomes moral only, when, with consciousness and free recognition, it is confirmed by the self-loving spirit, and when the love to God is made to control the love of self, that is, when this twofold love becomes a striving of the self-love to put itself into harmony with all love, through free self-subordination to the love for God. Love as moral, and as consciously striving toward its object, becomes disposition. Hence for all further development of the moral life, a moral disposition is the necessary antecedent condition; and it is such in its twofold form, as the affirming disposition of love, and, with reference to evil, as the negating disposition of hatred. It is only as disposition, but not as ante-moral natural lobe, that love is an object of the divine law, a moral requirement, whereas the ante-moral love is simply an element of the good that is conferred in creation itself. Hence, as moral motive, love is also the basis of the moral in the fullest sense of the word, the life-inspiring germ of all other moral activity.

By the fact that love becomes a moral duty, it does not cease to be a moral motive. Man, as, awakened to moral consciousness, is to have no other motive of his moral activity than one which he has himself morally constituted,--not a merely natural ante-moral love, but love as a disposition. Many are led to deny that love is at all an object of the divine law, from the simple fact that they reduce it to a mere involuntary feeling. Also Rothe affirms that we cannot command to love, but only to learn to love. This is very nearly a distinction without a difference; for if we can command to learn, and this learning has a necessary result, then evidently in commanding the learning we also command the result. The notion that man is per se, and irrespective of his moral depravity, not master of his own heart,--that he cannot dominate his proclivities. his love or his repugnance,--simply destroys his moral responsibility. If man cannot control his love and his hatred, and bring about in himself moral love, but must allow himself to be ruled by blind inclinations, then is he no longer a moral creature, but simply a dangerous sort of animal. If marriages are contracted only from "irresistible inclination" and dissolved because of "irresistible aversion," then they lie outside of the sphere of morality. Christian morality does not indeed require that marriages shall continue to exist despite the pretended "irresistible aversion;" on the contrary, it denies fundamentally that the notion of such an ungovernable aversion is to be admitted, inasmuch as it makes man morally responsible for his love and his hatred. It would not only be a monstrous but also an absurd theory of morals which should admit, on the one hand, that we are not at all master of our love and our aversion,--that love cannot be commanded as a duty,--and yet, on the other hand, should require that man should not act according to his love or aversion, but according to requirements of the moral law that have no connection therewith; he who has not love cannot practice love without hypocrisy; but that he has it not is his own fault. Christian ethics requires not to proclaim love in our deeds where there is no love, for it cannot require falseness; but it requires us to have love for all, and, for that reason also to practice it. The Scriptures declare unequivocally that love, the motive of all moral action, is also a duty commanded by the moral law; the law "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" [Lev. xix, 18; Matt, xxii, 39; Mark xii, 31] is called a "royal law," that is, a law that dominates all others [James ii, 8; comp. Gal. v, 14; Col, iii, 14; 1 Tim. i, 5; 1 John iii, 11 sqq.; iv, 7 sqq.].

SECTION XCIV.

As morality is the free fulfilling of the divine will, hence moral love is primarily always love to God, and the love to created things is moral only in so far as it springs from the love to God,--considers created things as the work of God, and loves them in him. The God-consciousness, as developed into a moral love of God, is piety (eusebeia); hence all morality rests on piety. All non-pious love is immoral, and hence also all love to the creature as such, taken in itself without connection and interpenetration with the divine love. But all love to God rests on our consciousness of God's love to us; love is produced only by love; all moral love is, in its essence, reciprocal love; a non-loving creature can be loved only in so far as God's love is reflected to us from it; and for this very reason moral love to persons seeks indeed their love in return, but does not need it.

As rational thought finds the unity of its thought-world only in the thought of God, so also moral love finds its rest and its unity only in love to God; it is not content with the semblance thereof but only with the truth; and all things have their truth only in their relation to God. As that love is higher, truer, and mightier which loves, in a person, not merely the earthly but also the soul, so is that love higher, truer, and mightier which loves in man, not merely the creature but also the image of God, and, through it, God himself. Love is the more genuine the higher its object; he who sees in creatures the trace of God, and loves God in them, he alone loves with the whole might of love. The proper love to the creature rests on the consciousness that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" [1 Cor. x, 26]; this does not lower the creature in the eyes of the love, but elevates both its worth and the love for it. Thus also Christ presents the precept of love to God as "the first and great commandment;" and "the second is like unto it," that is, it is already implied in it, though it does not absolutely coincide with it,--it is in fact the reflection of our love to God back upon our neighbor; our love for our neighbor is erroneous, when it does not rest upon love to God. Hence Christ says: "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me" [Matt. x, 37]. To the natural man this sounds hard and severe; but from a Christian stand-point, nay, even from a religious stand-point in general, no other view is possible than in fact, that a love for the creature without the higher divine love, or with one that prevails over the latter, is sinful. By this relation of all love to the love of God, this love is preserved also from one-sided narrowness,--clings not, in irrational caprice, to isolated objects,--but extends itself to all that is created, though indeed different degrees of such love are possible, from the fact of the differing peculiarity of the object and of the loving person.

This true mutual relation of our love to the creature and our love to God, appears still more striking when we attentively consider the relation of human love to the divine love. As human thinking is only a reflection of the divine thought, so also is human love only a reflection of the divine love. All that is true and good in the copy is enkindled by the true and the good of the prototype; "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love" [1 John iv, 8]. Man could not love God, and hence could not love morally at all, were he not loved of God. God's love is a love of grace; man's love is a love of gratitude,--the answering love of a child. Love cannot love any thing else but love [Psa. ciii, 1 sqq.; Col. iii, 17; 1 Thess. v, 18; 1 John iv, 11, 19]. For this reason there is no pain so great as where love remains unrequited. But to the pious heart it is not unrequited; such a heart finds the love which it seeks; Christ says: whatsoever "ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me;" and where, against the loving one, the heart of man coldly closes itself, there the love of God comes in its place.

SECTION XCV.

While our love to created things is either simply a love to the inferior, or to the equal, or to the merely relatively higher, and hence always meets its object with a consciousness of its own independent power and of an individual personal right, our love to God is, as directed to One that is absolutely superior to all that is human, always associated with a consciousness of our own impotency as in contrast to the infinite holy power of the Beloved, and hence is a love of fear. Love to God is essentially God-fearing; there is, however, no moral fear of God without also love to God. Mere fear alone is not a moral motive, for only love is this.

In all love to a created object our moral action is complementive and promotive of the being and life of the same; we render to it in our love a real service, and obtain for ourselves a claim upon its grateful, answering love. But God's being and life cannot be complemented and heightened by our love; we cannot render to him a real service for which he would be under obligation to us [Job xli, 2; Rom. xi, 35]. Our love to God consists only with the consciousness that we receive every thing from God, and God nothing from us,--that our entire being and life stand absolutely in his power. Such a consciousness includes necessarily the feeling of fear--not fear of a mere power operating without reference to moral action, but of a righteous God who opposes all that is unholy; and in this sense Christ himself makes a regard for the penal judgments of God a motive for moral action [Matt. v, 22, 25 sqq.; xxv, 45, 46]. Fear of God in the absence of love is, in fact, by no means irrational; rather is it, wherever such love is lacking, the natural expression of the antagonism between the unholy nature of the person and the holy God, but such fear is not a moral motive. It presupposes the antagonism which the moral denies; and it cannot do away with it, for it is love alone that harmonizes. That nevertheless this slavish fear is of moral significancy for the state of sinfulness, we shall subsequently see. For the unfallen state, mere fear has neither reason nor possibility, for mere fear is, in its essence, hatred,--hatred against the more powerful being with whom we are not united by love.

Mere love, however, without fear, as toward God, is not truthful, for that would be only a love of familiarity as with our equal. He who is conscious of his moral freedom, must also be conscious, as often as he makes use of this moral freedom, that God opposes his holy power to its misuse. The feeling which springs out of such a consciousness is not contrary to love, nor is it yet love itself, but it is genuine moral fear. Hence this moral awe of God, the true reverence for God, is the beginning of all wisdom and the condition of all morality [Deut. v, 29; vi, 2; x, 20; Prov. i, 7; viii, 13; ix, 10; xv, 33; xvi, 6; Psa. cxi, 10; cxii, 7; Job xxviii, 28; 2 Cor. vii, 1]. Only those who fear the Lord trust in the Lord [Psa. cxv, 11]; for only the holy God gives surety for his love and truthfulness; not to fear God involves being godless [Prov. i, 29; Rom. iii, 18], and piety is synonymous with the fear of God (phobos Theou) [Acts ix, 13; Eph. v, 21; 2 Cor. vii, 1]. The reference is not to this pious dread of the holy God, but to that mere servile fear which is at bottom hatred, when St. John says: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment (kolasin echei, is a feeling of estrangement from God, of unblessedness); he that feareth is not made perfect in love" [1 John iv, 18]. The true fear of God is closely allied to the love of God [Deut. x, 12].

SECTION XCVI.

Where the love to God is true God-fearing, there it is also a firm trusting in God. Trusting is the reverse side of this fearing. Man-fearing is devoid of trust; God-fearing is per se also God-trusting. In relation to all that is evil, I fear God, who will bring it to naught and me with it; in relation to all that is good, I trust God, who will not permit me to come to naught, but will gloriously accomplish that which I begin in his name. God-fearing love is full of confidence in the results of its moral strivings; because it fears God, it has no reason to fear any power that is hostile to God. Certain of its victory, and certain that it works in God and for God, and hence that it accomplishes divine and imperishable work, it becomes enthusiasm, which is the highest and truest moral motive, and the only sufficient power where there is involved a moral working for general interests that transcend all temporal individual interests,--where the temporal happiness of the person must be sacrificed to a moral principle,--which, however, is conceivable only where sin is dominant.

Trusting in God is faith, love, and hope at the same time; primarily, however, it is not a result of moral self-culture. but it is simply the germ of that threefold life that is antecedent to all actual moral life. As the awakening consciousness of the child expresses itself in an, as yet, obscure trust to its mother, so is it with man's first life-relation to God. Man attains a trust not simply through faith and through love, but faith and love are per se, and of necessity, trust already; and hence trust is a necessary antecedent condition of all moral life. Trust relates to the idea of an end; the mere desire of an end is not a sufficient motive to inspire moral effort toward it; it may be a hopeless, and hence an inactive, desire; doubting Peter sinks in the waves; it is only an unshaken trust that confirms courage and awakens strength [Psa. xviii, 31 sqq.; xxvii, 14; xxxiv, 9; xxxvii, 3 sqq.; lxii, 6 sqq.; lxxxiv, 13; Prov. xvi, 20, and elsewhere].--There is no enthusiasm for evil,--at furthest only a Satanic pleasure in evil, but this pleasure is attended with fear and malice, but not enthusiasm. Man as sinful may err as to what is good or evil, and he may therefore have enthusiasm for a folly, but only from the fact that he takes it for something good and noble. Nor can the merely individual and temporal awaken enthusiasm; nothing but the ideal can do this,--that which is, or is conceived of as, absolutely valid, as eternal truth, and hence of divine significancy, in a word that in the victory and permanent endurance of which the person has entire confidence. For that which is merely individual or useful I may indeed have energy or passion, but not enthusiasm. Only the absolutely good, the divine, is free from all doubt. Doubt is death to enthusiasm; without faith it is not possible morally to battle for the divine. Without enthusiasm there can be but a cold, calculating working for temporal ends, but no effort for the divine and eternal; hence whatever is not of faith is sin, for it is non-moral, whereas man ought constantly to be moral. The apostles had indeed, during Christ's earthly life, a warm love for their Master, so that they were ready even to die with him [John xi, 16], but they had enthusiasm only after the pouring out of the Holy Ghost.

SECTION XCVII.

As love springs from the consciousness of the harmony of the person with his object, and as the feeling of such a harmony is the feeling of happiness, hence all love is per se also happiness, and its striving is necessarily a striving for happiness. As, however, love does not seek its own, but finds its bliss alone in that of the beloved, it is clear that this striving for happiness, as based on moral love, is in nowise self-seeking and narrow-hearted, but, on the contrary, a proper motive of moral activity,--only, however, in so far as it is in unison with the right love, and does not appear as something different from it,--not as the first and fundamental element, but only as a derived one; but it becomes an immoral motive in so far as it is an expression of mere self love (Eudemonism).--The tendency to the good, which is produced by moral activity, becomes in turn itself a higher motive to the moral.

The question as to the morality of happiness-seeking as a moral motive, cannot be answered without a more definite characterization. The "eudemonistic" view proper, that of the Epicureans, is evidently immoral, as it rests on mere self-love. Heathen ethics could oppose to this self-seeking happiness-principle nothing other than the notion that virtue should be sought after for its own sake. If there was here a seeming subordinating of the person to a general moral idea, still, because of the inner untruthfulness of the position, it could not possibly be otherwise than that in fact, even in the strictest Stoicism, the mere proud self-consciousness of the individual should be, after all, the influencing motive proper. The thought of love as the true moral motive was entirely wanting to heathen ethics,--is peculiar to Christianity. The Christian idea of love harmonizes the legitimate self-love with submission to the moral law. In loving God, man loves also himself as a child of God, and in fulfilling his duty he at the same time realizes his happiness. The love to God and to His creatures is, on the one hand, a feeling of happiness, and, on the other, a motive to moral activity. The old controversy about the happiness-principle, which has in recent times been revived, especially by the school of Kant, receives its proper solution only in the Christian view, namely, in that, while Christianity recognizes in the proper seeking for happiness a strictly moral motive, it also exalts the character of this seeking by the love in which alone it bases it. It is therefore a very one-sided illiberality in Rationalists to reproach Old Testament ethics with "Eudemonism." It is true, the Old Testament recognizes the seeking after happiness as a proper motive in the fulfilling of the law: "That it may go well with thee and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth" [Deut. iv, 40; Exod. xx, 12; Deut. v, 16; xxix, 33; Psa. xxxvii, 37; cxxii, 6, etc.]; the formula "Blessed is he that," etc., [Psa. i, 1; ii, 12; xxxiv, 8; xl, 4, etc.] and other similar ones, are very frequently given as an encouragement to moral obedience; but also Christ himself and the apostles expressly present such a motive: "Do this and thou shalt live" [Luke x, 28; comp. Matt. xix, 16, 17, 28, 29; vi, 19, 20; Mark x, 21; Luke xii, 33; John iii, 36; Eph. vi, 3; Rom. ii, 7; 1 Tim. iv, 88; vi, 19]; the "crown" of life is promised as a reward to fidelity [1 Cor. ix, 25; 2 Tim. iv, 8; 1 Peter v, 4; James i, 12; Rev. ii, 10]; but neither the Old nor the New Testament separate this striving for happiness from the love to God and our neighbor in which, in fact, both Covenants find the true motive to moral action. There is, in reality, no essential antagonism between love and the striving after happiness; but the latter is directly implied in the former, and is, in the nature of the case, inseparable from it. Christianity knows no other happiness than love to God in the consciousness of being loved by him.

All moral activity has necessarily a permanent result in the person himself; it makes the moral his possession and property,--forms more and more his moral character, and hence creates a tendency to, and a readiness in, moral acting. I his moral possession, as a result of moral activity--virtue--becomes in turn itself, as an active power, a motive force to moral life, so that by his moral activity man constantly increases the actuating power of the same. Of this readiness or skill in moral acting we will have occasion to speak hereafter; we merely remark here, that by virtue of acting morally the originally as yet undetermined freedom of choice receives a determined character,--takes up into itself the morally good as such. The moral develops itself into a constantly increasing power,--renews itself on a progressively larger scale in the organic circulation of life. The good becomes to the moral man, as it were, a second nature, which, in turn, works out of itself by virtue of its own power; it is no longer simply something objective to him, nor merely a natural quality conferred upon him, but it is a vital possession, and hence an actuating power within him.