SECTION L.

THEOLOGICAL Christian ethics, as distinguished from philosophical ethics, has an historical presupposition—the redemption accomplished in Christ. But redemption presupposes sin, from the power of which it delivers man; and sin presupposes the moral idea per se, of which it is the actual negation. Hence the knowledge of Christian ethics, as resting on the accomplished redemption, presupposes a knowledge of the moral state of man while as yet unredeemed, as in turn this knowledge presupposes a knowledge of that ideal state of being from which man turned aside in sin. Christian ethics has therefore a threefold state of things to present:

(1) The ethical or moral per se irrespectively of sin,—the moral in its ideal form, the proto-ethical, that which God, as holy, wills.

(2) The fall from the truly moral, namely, sin, or the guilty perversion of the moral idea in the actual world,—that which man, as unholy, wills.

(3) The moral in its restoration by redemption, that is, the regeneration of moral truth out of sinful corruption,—that which is willed by God as gracious, and by man as repentant.

SECTION LI. The Good.

THE moral idea rests upon that of purpose or end. An end is an idea to be realized by a life-movement. Whatever answers to an idea is good relatively to that idea. Whatever answers to, and perfectly realizes, a rational, and hence also a divine, idea, is good absolutely. All divine life and activity has a divine purpose; whatever God brings to realization is therefore absolutely good,—is in perfect harmony with the divine will.—A nature-object is good per se and directly, in virtue of the creative act itself; and whatever is implied in it, as an end to be attained to by development, is actually realized in fact by an inner divinely-willed necessity. The essence of a rational creature is per se likewise good; but its full realization as that of a truly rational being, that is, its rational end, is not directly forced upon it by natural necessity, but is proposed to it as to be realized by its own rational, and hence free, activity. The goodness of a merely natural being lies in the necessarily self-fulfilling purpose of God in the creature; that of a rational creature lies in the free, self-fulfilling, through it, of the will of God to the creature. The divine will is, in the latter case, not merely an end for God, it is also a conscious end for the rational creature. The good in general, in so far as it is a conscious end for a rational creature, is a (concrete) good. In as far as this good is unitary and perfect, and hence perfectly answering to the divine will as to the creature, it is the highest good,—which consequently must also be absolutely one and, for all rational creatures, essentially the same, namely, their fully attained rational perfection. Hence all rational development of a rational creature aims at the realization of the highest good.

As far back as in ancient Greece, philosophers have engaged in the discussion of the notion of the good, and of the highest good, and have proposed various definitions thereof,—those of Aristotle being in the main correct. In and of itself the question is quite simple; it becomes difficult only when we look upon the actual condition of man without fully taking into account the antagonism of his reality with his ideal, and are for that reason unable clearly to distinguish in human aspirations the abnormal from the normal. As to the notion of the relatively good, there is no dispute; it is always the. agreement of a reality with an idea or with another reality, and hence is based on the thought of a mutual congruity of the manifold.—The simple and true notion of the good is indicated in Gen. i, 3, 4, 31; [comp. 1 Tim. iv, 4]. God speaks and it comes to pass; the reality is the perfect expression of the divine thought and will, and hence, of its own ideal. We have here the notion, not merely of the relatively good, but of the absolutely good; relatively good is every harmonizing or congruence of the different; absolutely good is a harmonizing with God. Hence, first of all, God himself is good and the prototype of all good [Psa. xxv, 8; lxxxvi, 5; Matt. xix, 17],—good relatively to himself, as being in perfect harmony with himself,—good relatively to his creatures, in that He sustains them in the form of life which He gave them, that is, in their true peculiarities and autonomy, and constantly manifests himself to them as their loving God and Father [Psa. xxxiv, 9]. A creature is good in so far as it is an image of God,—namely, such a revelation of the divine as is conditioned by the normal peculiarity of the creature,—and, from another point of view, in so far as its actual state is in harmony with its essence, its ideal, and hence also (since all creatures are created for each other) with the totality of creation. Every thing that God created was “very good” also in this respect, namely, that the different creatures constituted among themselves a perfectly concordant and harmonious whole; “it was not good that the man should be alone,” seeing that a finite creature is, in its very essence, not a mere isolated individual, but should constitute a member of a community. Hence the expression טוב has also the signification of κάλος, gratus, jucundus, suavis; we attribute this quality to an object as bearing upon ourselves in so far as it harmonizes with and reflects our own peculiarities,—in so far as we feel an affinity for it and are enriched and furthered by it in our life-sphere and activity. Hence, that is truly good for man which contributes to the attainment of his true, divinely-intended perfection, and hence, in the last instance, this perfection itself. Now, a mere nature-object possesses the good within itself as a necessary law, and cannot but realize it; but a rational creature has it within itself as a rational consciousness, as a free law, as a command, and it may decline to realize it. In a nature-object the end fulfills itself; in a rational creature it is fulfilled only by the free will of the same. Nature-objects are, in and of themselves, an image of God; but man was created not only in accordance with the image of God, but also unto it,—has this image before him as a goal to be attained to by free action, as a rational task.

Whatever is good is good for some object, and is for the same, in so far as actually appropriated by it, a good. That only can be a true good which is good absolutely, that is, divine; all true goods are front God [James i, 17], and lead to God. The idea of the highest good we propose here to determine, preliminarily, not as to its contents, but simply as to its form. It cannot belong exclusively to any one phase of man’s being, but must consist in the symmetrical completion of his life as a whole; hence it cannot be simply the perfection of his isolated individuality as such, but only as a living member of the living whole. Nor is the highest good a merely relatively higher among many other less high goods, otherwise the sum total of the former together with these latter would amount to something higher still; on the contrary all goods collectively, as far as they are really such, must be single elements of the highest good; and the simple fact that a particular object which I desire, and which hence seems to me as a good, is adapted to be a manifestation or an element of the highest good, is clear proof that it is a real, and not a merely seeming, good. Whatever a man aims after appears to him as a good; whatever he shuns, as an evil; and rationality consists in the fact that he aim not at the seemingly, but at the really, good, and, in each single good, at the highest good; and this aiming is itself good. The highest good is, consequently, the highest perfection of the rational personality, or the perfect development of God-likeness, or, in other words, the perfect agreement of the actual state of man’s entire being and life with his ideal, that is, with the will of God,—which all are, in fact, only so many different expressions for the same thing. Whatever contributes to this highest end is good; whatever leads from it is evil.

SECTION LII. The Moral.

In so far as a rational creature realizes the good rationally, that is, with a consciousness of the good end, and with a free will, it is moral. The moral is the good in so far as it is realized by the free will of a rational creature; and. in this manifestation of rational life, both the will, and also the action and the end, are moral; and true morality consists in the complete harmony of these three elements. Morality is therefore the life of a rational being who accomplishes the good with conscious freedom, and, hence, works the harmony of existence,—as well the harmony of its own being with God as also (and in fact thereby) the harmony of the being in and with itself and with all other beings, in so far as they themselves are in harmony with God. Morality, therefore, embraces within itself two phases of rational life: on the one hand, it preserves and develops the normal autonomy and peculiarity of the moral subject,—does not let it vanish into, or be absorbed by, God or the All,—for there is harmony only where there is a distinctness and individuality of the objects compared; on the other hand, it does not permit this difference to become an antagonism or contradiction, but preserves it in unity,—shapes it into rational harmony. The moral is therefore the beautiful in the sphere of rational freedom,—is rationally self-manifesting freedom itself. To be rational and to be moral is, in the sphere of freedom, one and the same thing.

Moralness bears the same relation to the goodness of mere nature-objects, as conscious freedom to unconscious necessity. The goodness of creatures is not their mere being, but their life, for God whose image they are, is life; God is not a God of the dead but of the living. Hence the goodness of rational creatures is essentially life also, and in this life morality realizes the good. With this view of morality we may properly enough speak also of a morality of God; the fact that human morality is really a progressive development of the image of God, even presupposes this; moreover the Scriptures positively express this thought, and there is no good ground for explaining it away. God is good [טוֹב] and upright; [ישׁר; Deut. xxxii, 4; Psa. xxv, 8]; hence our German hymn: “O God, thou upright God!”) is strictly Biblical. God, as the absolutely holy will, is perfect morality itself, inasmuch as his entire being and activity are in perfect accord with his will and essence, and inasmuch as his infinite justice and love establish and uphold the harmony of life in the created universe. God’s morality is his holiness. For this reason God is also the perfect prototype and pattern of all morality; “ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” [Lev. xi, 45]; also virtue, ἀρετή, in the strict sense of the word, is attributed to God [1 Pet. ii, 9; 2 Pet. i, 3]. Hence, man is moral not merely in general, in that he makes God’s will the law of his life, but more specifically, in that he makes God’s morality his pattern. In God all good is also moral or holy; in the creature; all that is moral is also good, but all that is good is not also moral.

Rothe objects to the more common notion of the moral, because it embraces only the idea of the morally-good, but not that of the moral in its secondary sense; in his view a definition of the moral should include also the morally-evil. It is evidently proper, however, to confine a notion primarily to the normal manifestation of its contents, and to treat the contrary manifestation as an abnormal perversion. Surely, for example, it would be too much to ask that the notion of the rational be so conceived as to embrace also the irrational,—that of organism, so as to include also disease. In fact the objection of Rothe has weight with him, chiefly for the reason that, in his system, evil is viewed not as a merely morbid phenomenon, but on the contrary as a necessary transition-state of development; in which case, of course, a definition of the moral would have to include also evil.

SECTION LIII. The Moral. (Cont’d)

Though morality, as the free realizing of the good, appears essentially in the sphere of the will, yet as this will is a rational one,—the expression of a consciousness and of a love to the object of that consciousness,—hence, morality embraces the whole life and being of the spirit in all its forms of manifestation, as knowing, feeling, and willing. Moral knowledge is faith, not only religious, but also rational faith in general; moral feeling is pleasure in the good, and love of it, and, on the other hand, displeasure in the non-good; moral willing is a striving after the realization of the good. Morality itself, however, is not one of these three, but always and necessarily the union of all three of these phases of the spirit-life.

These three phases of the spirit-life are severally and collectively an expression of the union of the subject with objective being, with the All in general,—in the final instance with God. The subject itself becomes also to itself an object, and only thereby attains to its truth. The mere isolatedness of a being is per se evil, is the opposite of true existence and life, the ruin of life, that is, death,—is a dissolution of the unitary collective life into indifferent ultimate atoms. The individual exists in its truth only in so far as it comes into union with the All; this union is not its annihilation but its preservation, its recognition in the All as an organic member of the same; it is a mutual, vital relation, a unity in diversity; and this is in fact the essence of life, namely, that both the individual being and the collective whole, in all its parts, stand in relation to each other, and that, in this relation, the individual is, on the one hand, as a member, quite as fully at one with the whole, as, on the other, it is an integral being of itself.

In actively knowing, man brings the object into relation to himself,—takes it up, in its idea, spiritually into himself; in feeling, the subject brings himself in this spiritual appropriation into relation to himself,—embraces the appropriated object as in harmony or as in disharmony with his own being and character, that is, as pleasing or displeasing; in willing, the subject assumes an active determining relation toward the approvingly or disapprovingly received object; hence, the will rests on feeling, as in turn, feeling on knowledge, though the latter may be obscure and only half-conscious. In each of these three respects the spirit may be more or less free or unfree; in so far so it is free, it is also moral. It is true, knowing and feeling are primarily unfree,—they press themselves directly upon the essentially passive subject without his voluntary co-operation, and in so far as this is the case they are as yet extra-moral; but the moment they appear as freely willed they enter into the moral sphere, and this is their higher, rational form. Knowing is moral when we will to know rationally, that is, when we embrace isolated being, whether that of objective nature or of ourselves, as not existing for itself in its isolation, but on the contrary, when, passing beyond its isolatedness, we conceive it as having ultimately a divine ground,—in other words, when we associate all individual being with the infinite being and life of God, and thus conceive all existence as unitary and as established by God. Now, this passing beyond the individual object is not an unfree process; the object does not force us to do so, much rather it arrests us at its own immediate reality; but it is our rational nature that induces us to will to pass beyond. Knowing becomes moral when it becomes a pious consciousness,—assumes a religious character; and this pious associating of the finite with the infinite is faith, which is in its very essence religious. Faith can never be compelled by a presentation of arguments; in all its forms it is a voluntary matter; and from the simple fact that faith is a moral knowing, and hence includes within itself willingness and love, it is consequently not a mere knowing, not a mere holding-for-true; hence it may be, and is, a moral requirement. Without this willingness to find and acknowledge the divine in infinite objects, there is no knowledge of God, and hence no real rationality of knowledge. Though faith is essentially religious, nevertheless, springing forth from this source, it overflows and fructifies with its moral potency the entire field of rational knowledge. By virtue of this faith we have confidence in the truthfulness of the universe,—confidence that truth is discoverable, that the laws of our mind and the impressions made upon us by the external world are not untrue and defective, that divine order and conformity to law, and hence conformity to reason, pervade the universe, so that, consequently, we may rely on this order and this conformity to law. Without such a faith, without such a confidence independently of all presentation of evidence, there could be no knowledge—no possibility of a spiritual life in general. Without this confidence we would be unable to avoid suspecting poison in every cup of water, in every morsel of bread,—we would tremble lest, at every step, the ground might give way beneath our feet. Fondness of doubting presupposes depravity; skepticism proper, like the arts of sophistry, is an immoral dissolution of rational knowledge; under the skeptic’s eye, both the spiritual world and the realm of nature fall apart into lifeless ultimate atoms.

In so far as feeling is simply a direct consciousness of such an impressed state of the subject, it is as yet extra-moral, because unfree; it becomes rational and moral through freedom on the basis of the religious consciousness,—namely, when I do not permit myself to be determined by finite things in an absolutely passive manner, but, on the contrary, when I subordinate all my states of feeling to the power of faith or of the religious consciousness,—in a word, when I rise so far into the sphere of freedom as to have pleasure only in that which is God-pleasing, and displeasure only in the ungodly,—when my love to finite things is only a phase of my love to God.

The will, the more immediate sphere of the moral, is in itself likewise not as yet moral, but must first become so. Free will, as distinguished from the unfree impulse of the brute, is primarily as yet devoid of positive contents,—is only the possibility, but not the actuality, of the moral. It becomes a really free and, hence, a moral will only by coining into relation to faith, namely, in that it ceases to be a merely individual will determined solely by the isolated personality of the subject,—for, as such, it is as yet simply irrational and animal,—and furthermore in that it imbues itself with a positive faith,—determines itself by its God-consciousness and by its love to God,—so that thus, passing beyond mere finite being, it bases its outgoings on a rational faith in the infinite. This is so wide-reaching a condition of the moral will, that even an evil will (which also lies within the sphere of the moral) is determined by a certain faith-consciousness, seeing that such a will is a rebelling against its God-consciousness; “devils also believe” in God’s existence “and tremble” [James ii, 19]; the degree of guilt is strictly determined by the degree in which God is known. Hence the will is morally good when it rests on faith,—when it strives to realize the God-pleasing because of its God-consciousness and of its love to God; and it is morally evil when, despite its God-consciousness, it aims at the ungodly,—seeks to divorce finite beings, and especially its own, from its union with God. Hence in general terms, though morality has its essential sphere in the will, yet it also embraces, as intimately involved therein, the spheres of knowledge and of feeling.

SECTION LIV. The Moral. (Concl’d)

As the life of a rational spirit is continuous, namely, a continuous free activity, hence it bears continuously a moral character. Morality is not simply a succession of single moral points, it is an uninterrupted life, and every moment of the same is either in harmony or in antagonism with the moral end,—is either good or evil. In the entire life of man there is not a single morally indifferent moment or state.

Man is God’s image only in so far as he lives this God-likeness, for God is life, and all life is continuous; a real interruption of the same is its destruction,—is death. Sleep is only a change in the manifestation of life, arising from the union of the spirit with material nature, but not a real interruption of the same. Spirit sleeps not; also the slumbering spirit is moral,—may be pure or impure; the soul of the saint cannot have unholy dreams; dreams are often unwelcome mirrorings forth of impure hearts; when Jacob rebuked his son Joseph for his supposed ambitious dream [Gen. xxxvii, 10], his moral judgment was quite correct,—simply his hypothesis was erroneous. Ally assumption that there are morally indifferent moments in life is anti-moral. And that there are;, in fact, in the natural life of man middle states between life and death,—for example, swoons,—is of itself a fruit of depravity, and in the same sense that death is such. Morality is the health of the rational spirit; and every interruption of health is disease. God’s will is incessantly binding; there is absolutely nothing conceivable which would not either harmonize with, or antagonize, it.

SECTION LVI. Scientific Classification of Ethics.

The usual distribution of the subject-matter of ethics into the doctrine of goods, of virtues, and of duties, does not answer the nature of this science, as these are not different parts of the whole, but only different modes of contemplating one and the same thing,—modes which are so intimately involved in each other, that such a classification inevitably involves, on the one hand, an unnatural severing of the subject-matter, and, on the other, manifold repetitions of the same thought. All the various articulations of this science into the mere discussion of virtues, duties, and goods, according to the different classes and subdivisions of particular virtues, duties, and goods, come short of exhausting the subject-matter, and must therefore involve the throwing of other important ethical considerations into an introduction or some other subordinate position.

Among the various classifications of the matter of ethics, the above-mentioned is in recent times the more usual; it is adopted by Schleiermacher, though only in his Philosophical Ethics, and it is applied by Rothe to Theological Ethics also. In both of these writers, the importance of such a classification lies in the thought of the working of reason upon nature, in which morality is by them made to consist. The goal of this working, namely, the positive harmony of nature and reason, is the good; the power of reason which works this good, is virtue; the mode of procedure for working the good, the directing of the activity toward it, is duty.Schleirm. Syst., p. 71 sqq.; Grundlinien, 1803, p. 175 sqq; Üb. d. Begriff des höchsten Gutes, Werke III, 2, 447 sqq. Comp. §. 48. This view, irrespectively of the so-strongly emphasized thought of Rothe, of the good as a harmony of (material) nature and reason,—which is utterly inapplicable to Christian morality,—is in fact valid also for Christian ethics (Schwarz). In Christ’s words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [temporal goods] shall be added unto you” [Matt. vi, 33], are comprehended both the highest good and the single goods, duty and virtue,—the latter being embraced in “righteousness,” though righteousness is indeed more than virtue. There is a difference between the goal to be reached, the way or movement toward it, and the power of the subject which conditions this movement; still it does not follow from this that the entire subject-matter of ethics can be organically and exclusively distributed on this basis. The antithesis of duties and goods could be most easily carried out, since the producing activity and the produced result are clearly distinguishable. But even here the difficulty arises, that true good, and hence, of course, also happiness (as Aristotle very justly remarks), is not an inert result but an activity; but every activity, if it is rational, must be the expression of a moral idea, the realizing of a duty; so that we are brought to the at first strange-seeming conclusion, that dutiful acting is itself a part of the being and essence of the good,—is in one respect itself a good. The family, the church, the state, etc., are goods; but these all are conditioned not merely on dutiful acting,—they themselves are a purely moral life,—consist, strictly speaking, in a collectivity of moral actions, although not solely therein. If we once abstract these actions, there remains neither family nor state nor church; these are not mere empty spaces in which moral acting takes place, but they are themselves incessantly generated by this acting, and without it would not exist,—just as the fiery ring of a revolved torch is not an entity per se, but exists alone by virtue of the motion. Hence the visible embarrassment of the ethical writers in question as to where they shall treat, for example, of family and political duties, whether under the head of duties proper or of goods.—Still more embarrassing is it in the discussion of the virtues. That virtue is per se a good, being an end to be acquired by moral effort, is perfectly evident, and is so admitted by Schleiermacher (Werke, III, 2, 459); also in the above-cited utterance of Christ, righteousness appears as a goal of effort, as an element of the essence of the kingdom of God [comp. Phil. iv, 8]; we aim at virtue, and we possess virtues; but every possession is a good. Now as goods are of course not merely objective,—as indeed the highest good of Christians, the possession of the kingdom of God, comes not with outward observation but is of a strictly inward character [Luke xvii, 20, 21],—hence it is plain that virtue is also a good; as indeed the kingdom of God consists “in power” [1 Cor. iv, 20], and hence by its very nature includes in itself virtue. Hence the doctrine of goods cannot be discussed without treating also of virtue. On the other hand, a merely dormant power is in reality nothing at all; the reality of a power is its outgoing,—the reality of virtue is moral action, that is, the fulfilling of duty. It is not possible, therefore, to discuss the virtues without at the same time treating of all the duties, and vice versa. Hence the distribution of ethics above-mentioned can be adhered to only so long as the discussion lingers in generalities and avoids the particular.

Schleiermacher and Rothe, in fact, admit that the three divisions, goods, virtues, and duties, are not, in reality, different parts of, but only a three-fold manner of viewing, the same object,—yet in such a manner that in each of the three the other two are included, if not expressly, at least substantially. The doctrine of goods, of virtues or of duties, embraces, either of them, according to Schleiermacher, when fully developed, the whole of ethics (Syst., p. 76 sqq.). The classification in question can therefore be carried out only by arbitrarily leaving some of the divisions imperfectly discussed. Particular goods, says Rothe, do not spring from the working of a particular virtue and through the fulfilling of a particular duty, but on the contrary no single one is realized otherwise than through the co-working of all the virtues and through the fulfilling of all the duties, and each single virtue contributes to the realization of all the goods, and is conditioned on the fulfilling of all the duties, and each particular virtue contributes in turn to every dutiful manner of action (i, 202). Irrespectively of the fact that the latter declarations are too sweeping,—seeing that, for example, the family may often exist as a good without the virtue of courage, of industry, etc., and that courage may exist apart from the fulfillment of the family duties, etc.,—still it is quite evident that if either of the three divisions in question were really and completely, and not merely in general, carried out, there would remain nothing for the other divisions save a few general observations. The family, for example, is a good only in so far as it has domestic love for its basis, and, in point of fact, Rothe treats of domestic love among the goods; but what remains then to be said of it in treating of the virtues and duties? The remarkable scantiness of Schleiermacher’s discussion of duties is itself evidence of an erroneous classification. And Rothe obtains for his discussion of duties (in fact confessedly finds any occasion whatever therefor) simply because, as he says, reference is there to be had to sin, so that the discussion of duties becomes essentially the portrayal of struggle. But this admission destroys the very basis of the classification;—were it not for sin, a discussion of duties would not be possible, whereas the basis of this classification has not the least reference to sin. If Schleiermacher, after speaking, in his first part, of chastity and unchastity, had then in his second part spoken of chastity as among the virtues,—which his plan required of him, but which he does not do—and in his third part fully discussed the duties of chastity, then in order to carry out his classification he would have had to reiterate the same matter three times.—Rothe speaks in very strong expressions against those who do not adopt this classification, affirming that all previous ethical teaching and phraseology have been erroneous, and have ignored the fact that even every-day parlance makes a difference between being virtuous and acting dutifully;—as if common usage does not, just as frequently and just as correctly, speak also of acting virtuously and being true to duty! Oddly enough it seems, in the face of this so-deemed “imperishable desert” of Schleiermacher in regard to this classification, that Schleiermacher himself—clearer-sighted here than Rothe—does not apply it to his own Christian Ethics; and not only that, but he even declares it inadmissable here,—seeing that a description of virtue and a description of the kingdom of God as the highest good, cannot possibly be kept separate, inasmuch as virtue is simply a “habitus” generated by the Holy Spirit as indwelling in the kingdom of God; nor can Christian ethics, in his opinion, be treated under the-head of duties, seeing that no one duty can be discussed save in and with the totality of all the duties, and hence in connection with the idea of the kingdom of God (Chr. Sitte., p. 77 sqq.). And the same might also be said against the application of this classification to Philosophical Ethics.

If this classification of general ethics into the doctrines of goods, of virtues and of duties, is practically untenable, much more is it inapplicable to Christian Ethics, since it lacks one essential Christian thought, that of the divine law. Schleiermacher presented no discussion of the law, as he wrote wholly irrespectively of the idea of God; and for this reason alone his classification would be inapplicable to Christian Ethics. For duty is not identical with the law. The law is objective, duty subjective; the law is the moral idea per se in its definite form, as thought, as universally valid—the will of God in general; duty is the subjective realization of the law for a particular individual under particular circumstances,—relates per se always to the strictly particular, the actual. The law is valid always, and under all circumstances; duty varies largely according to time and circumstances; the very same mode of action which is to-day my duty, may be to-morrow, contrary to my duty;—to-day my duty is silence, to-morrow I must speak. The law is categorical, duty is usually hypothetical; the former is the expression of divine morality, the latter of human. So also is the relation of goods to virtue; the former are more the general, objective phase; the latter is more the particular, personal, subjective phase; virtue is the subjective possession of a moral power the product of which is objective good. In the Old Testament the moral life-movement went over from the divine objective will, namely, the law, to the human subject in order to bring the latter into possession of the highest good; in the Christian world the moral life-movement goes out from the subject as being already in union with God, and already in possession of the everlasting good, and directs itself to the objective realization of God-like being,—from the inward possession of the kingdom of God to the objective manifestation and realization of the same.

Of other scientific classifications, we will say but little. The older popular division of the subject-matter of ethics according to the Ten Commandments, was a form very well adapted for popular Christian instruction, and, indeed, by giving a large construction to the more immediate scope of these commandments, it admits of the treatment of all evangelically-ethical thoughts: it does not, however, suffice for a scientific development of Christian ethics, seeing that this series of commands was constructed primarily for merely practical purposes; very essential points, such as the moral essence of man and of the good, and (as parts of the latter) of the state and the church, would have to be thrown into introductory or collateral remarks.—The classification according to our duties to God, to our neighbor, and to ourselves, while in fact embracing the whole circle of duties, yet requires likewise too much of the essential matter to be thrown into an introduction.—Harless makes the divisions, the good itself, the possession of the good, and the preservation of the good; but by “good” he understands rather the antecedent condition than the goal of the moral life; by “possession,” more the obtaining and preserving of the possession; and by “preservation,” rather its actual manifestation. This, as well as Schleiermacher’s theological classification, relates only to distinctively Christian ethics.—A very common classification is, into general and special ethics,—the latter treating of the special circumstances and relations of the moral life; but such a system can be carried out without violence only when the first division is reduced to a mere general introduction.

SECTION LVII. Scientific Classification of Ethics. (Concl’d)

Morality is life, and hence, activity or movement, and more definitely, rationally-free movement. Herein lie three things: the subject that moves, the end toward which the movement goes out, and the movement-activity itself. The subject goes out from its immediate condition of being per se, through movement, over into another condition which lies before it as an end. But the moral subject is not a mere isolated individual; on the contrary, it is the freely self-developing image of God as the primitive ground and prototype of all morality, and it lives only in virtue of constant inner-communion with God. The holily-ruling God becomes, as distinguished from man, the eternal, holy proto-subject of the moral life; and there is no moment of the moral life in which the human subject, strictly per se and without God’s cooperation, works the good.—The goal toward which the moral movement directs itself is also of a twofold character. Man finds himself already in the presence of an objective world different from himself; and even where he makes himself his own object, this, his reality, is, primarily, a gift conferred upon him without any moral action on his own part; this conferred existence (world and self) is the working-sphere of his moral activity—the most immediate object and end of the same. But man is not, in his activity, to throw himself away upon this objective world-to merge himself into it—but he is to shape it by his own power, and in harmony with the moral idea,—to male the possibility of the good into real good, to realize a spiritual end in and through the objective world. Hence the goal of the moral activity is to be considered under two phases: (a) As a pure object untouched as yet by the moral activity,—as a mere platform, as material given for the moral activity in order to be spiritually dominated by this activity so as to become a spiritually and morally formed real good. (b) This object itself as morally fashioned, as having become a good,—existing primarily only as an idea, a rational purpose, but afterward as a result of moral activity, as a fruit realized,—that is the ideal goal proper, or the end of the moral activity. In the first case, the object is, for the moral activity, a directly-given reality, but it is not to remain as such; in the second case it is primarily not real, but exists only in thought, but it is ultimately to become a reality expressive of the thought.—The third phase of the moral movement, namely, the moral activity itself, is, as spiritually free, likewise of a twofold character; on the one hand, it is to be considered from its subjective side, that is, in respect to how it is rooted in the subject himself, and from him issues forth,—the subjective motive of the moral activity, the source of the stream; on the other hand, it is to be considered as a life-stream, sent forth from the subject and directed upon the object,—that is, the activity proper itself as having become real and objective in its progressive development toward the attained goal in which it ends.

The subject-matter of ethics falls, therefore, into the following subdivisions:

1. The moral subject, purely in and of itself considered.

2. God as the objective ground of the moral life and of the moral law, and also as the prototype of the moral idea, and as co-working in the moral life.

3. The given objective existence upon which, as material to be fashioned, the moral activity exerts itself.

4. The subjective ground of the moral activity, the personal motive to morality.

5. The moral working or acting itself, the moral life-movement toward the moral goal.

6. The conceived object of the moral activity, its goal or end,—the good as an object to be realized.

While Dogmatics sets out most naturally from the thought of God, Ethics takes its start from man, the moral subject, inasmuch as morality in its totality is simply the rational life-development of man,—God coming into consideration here not so much in his character as Creator as rather in that of a Lawgiver and righteously-ruling Governor. Should we, however, divorce Ethics entirely from Dogmatics, we would, of course, have to preface the moral discussion of man by a presentation of the doctrine of God.

The idea of the moral subject, of the rational personality, is the foundation-thought of ethics,—the root out of which all the other branches spring. But man is a morally rational person only in so far as he conceives of himself, not as an isolated individual, but as conditioned by the divine reason and the divine holiness. Hence the idea of the moral personality leads out beyond itself to the thought of God, as the eternal fountain and the measure of morality, as the holy and just Lawgiver; the prototypal relation of God to the moral has its personally-historical manifestation in Christ, the Son of God; the moral idea becomes in Christ an actually-realized ideal. The doctrine of the moral law belongs not in the sphere of the human subject, but in that of the divine, for the law is not man’s but God’s will.

In the notion of the moral subject considered as an individual being, there lies implicitly also the notion of an objective world different from the same. Morality, as active life, has this world before it as its theater of effort; the activity in its outgoing comes into contact with a reality independent of itself, which, though because of the unity of creation it is not antagonistic to the subject, is nevertheless primarily foreign to the same, and not in any wise imbued with or dominated by it. But to be a spirit, implies in itself the dominating of the unspiritual, the entering into harmony with all that is spiritual. It is the task of the moral subject to bring about this domination and this harmony. Moreover, in so far as man finds himself in a simply given, and not as yet spiritually-dominated and cultivated condition, he becomes to himself his own object, his moral activity being directed upon himself.

The modifying activity as exerted upon this given existence is not, however, of a purposeless character, but it has before it, in the rational end, an ideal object the realizing of which is to be effected by the activity as moral. In an ethical discussion which follows the actual order of the moral life, this moral activity will have to be considered first, although with constant reference to the moral end. This activity, as a spiritual outgoing from the subject, has, on the one hand, its fountain in the moral subject, on the other, it has also a development-course as a stream. Each is to be considered separately, so that we have here again two subdivisions. The consideration of the subjective origin or ground of the moral activity—its motive,—has to do with the why. The existence of the law and the encountering of an external world by the subject, do not suffice to explain why man should enter upon a course of moral activity; there must be found, as distinguished from these, a motive in the subject himself that prompts directly to moral activity,—that sets the subject into movement. The mere “should” is not enough to move us; we may remain indifferent and emotionless in the presence of every “categorical imperative” and of every, however well-grounded, command; if there is not some impulse to activity within us, all and every command will fall back powerless from us; and this impulse must be of a rationally-free, a moral character.

The moral activity itself, which is occasioned by this inner motive, is to be considered primarily only in its essence and in its general forms of manifestation, and it involves only the general, but not the special, discussion of the doctrine of duties. By far the largest scope of special activity comes under the last division of our classification; for the true essence and real worth of moral good lies in the fact that it is not a dormant possession, but that, on the contrary, it unfolds continuously new and richer life,—just as a natural fruit is not simply a product in which the life of the plant ends, but is also the germ of a new life;—with this difference, however, that the fruit of the moral activity is not merely the germ of a new life that simply repeats its former self, but rather of an enriched, spiritually-heightened life. In the attained moral good the moral life-movement rises to a new, higher circulation; the person in possession of this good has become richer,—is a spiritually higher-developed personality; the previously existing moral-subject has become more exalted and spiritualized,—is, in fact, the already attained moral good itself; and the moral activity gains thereby ampler and more ennobled contents; with the acquired good springs up new duty.

In elucidation of the classification we have given, compare the passages Deut. x, 12 sqq.; xi, 1 sqq.; xii, 1 sqq. Here we may consider as the moral subject the people of Israel,—the moral mission and activity of whom cannot possibly be understood save in the light of their historically-moral peculiarity. Jehovah is the sovereign, requiring moral obedience to his will; the people’s sinful hearts [x, 16], the heathen country and inhabitants [x, 19; xi, 10 sqq.; xii, 2 sqq.], and the national life of the Israelites, form the sphere. the theater, of the moral activity; thankful love to the merciful, longsuffering God is the moral motive [x, 15, 21 sqq.]; willing obedience, the walking in the ways of God, is the moral activity; and the approbation of God and his blessings are the moral end [x, 13-15; xi, 8 sqq.; xii, 7 sqq.].

In consideration of the thought that there lies at the basis of all moral activity an end to which the activity directs itself, it might seem more correct to consider this end, namely, the good, before discussing the moral activity itself; however, on the other hand, as the realization of the good presupposes the moral activity, and as we are to consider the good not as simply conceived, but as realized, and, inasmuch as out of the realization of one good a new field of moral activity arises in turn before us, hence it is clearly more natural, in fact, to place the discussion of the end or the good (as being actually the last in the order of the moral development) in the last place; for, it is in fact quite evident, that we cannot speak of the family, the church, and the state, without having first examined the moral activity per se. To begin with the discussion of the good would be the so-called “analytical method,” whereas ours, on the contrary, is the “synthetic;”—the course of the former is, so to speak, retrogressive; while the latter proceeds forward, more in the actual course of the moral development, and hence is the more natural.

The first three subdivisions of our classification embrace, it is true, only the antecedent conditions of the moral activity itself; but it does not follow from this that their subject-matter is to be thrown into an introduction. Free rational life, as an object of ethics, cannot be treated as a mere activity without taking into consideration also the active subject, as well as the law by which the subject is governed, and the field upon which it acts; he who describes vegetable life, must surely speak also of the organs of plants. In any case, a controversy as to whether this consideration forms only an introduction to the subject-matter, or is a part of the subject-matter itself, would be very unprofitable.

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,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. 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.

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 ἐλεύθερος, ἐλευθερία, 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 θέλειν (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.”Reden üb die Rel., p. 174 sqq., 2 Auf. 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.

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, σάρξ, 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.

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.

SECTION LXXVII.

(b) The inner revelation of the holy will of God in the rational consciousness of man is not a mere instinctive impulse, as this is the characteristic of irrational nature-creatures, nor is it a mere feeling, inasmuch as this, so far as relating to spiritual things, always presupposes a knowledge, a consciousness, but it is a real consciousness, which, however, is at first only obscure and indefinite, and receives more definite contents only through educative revelation, whereby it is developed into full clearness. The inner and the objective revelations, though differing from each other as to the order of their taking-place and as to their form, do not differ in their essential contents, nor indeed as to their certainty; and the objective revelation is no more rendered superfluous by the inner one, than is the latter by the former; each mutually calls for the other.

Just as the educative influencing of the child does not render superfluous its own active moral self-development, but in fact calls for the same as its end, and as the latter without the former is not possible, so is it also with the twofold revelation. If the historical revelation did not lead to a knowledge of the moral law as immanent in the reason itself, man would remain in perpetual nonage,—would not come to a consciousness of his rationality; in fact this revelation has its own withdrawal into the back-ground as its ultimate end,—as indeed since the accomplishment of redemption it has actually, in a large degree, so withdrawn.—By inner revelation, here, is not to be understood a real inspiration as in the case of the prophets, for this would in fact be supernatural and extraordinary; it is simply the gradual coming forward of the divine image in man,—the rational spirit’s becoming-conscious of itself as such image. This becoming-conscious on the part of one’s own rational nature is properly called a revelation, for the reason that this God-likeness is not conditioned by man himself but is created by God in the state of a germ, and is by the free activity of man, simply developed. The positive revelation is the light whereby this divine image, hidden in man’s inner nature, becomes visible to his understanding, or more properly, it is the warming sunlight under whose influence the germ of rationality unfolds itself out of secrecy into day. The inner revelation is neither in antagonism to, nor is it identical with, the objective; it is no more in antagonism therewith than is man’s own active self-development to moral maturity in antagonism with his training received from others; nor is it so nearly identical therewith as to amount to a repetition of the same thing. Their respective difference of origin continues to hold good also for the morally mature; even for the regenerated Christian, though he possesses the law of the Spirit as a living power within him, the historical revelation continues to serve as a permanent unvarying basis for the development of his moral consciousness, and as a sure criterion for testing the truth of the light within him; Christ came not to destroy the law.—As in their origin, so also in their form, they are different; the positive revelation bears a thoroughly historical character; the inner, a psychological. The former assumes the form of positive laws given at particular times, and through particular personal instrumentalities; the latter is continuous in every individual throughout his life.

On this inner revelation through the God-likeness of the rational spirit the Scriptures lay some stress, notwithstanding that they speak of it simply in connection with man as perverted by sin, in whom the natural consciousness of God and of his will is seriously obscured and in need of special illumination,—for which reason the natural inner, and the supernatural inner, revelations are not strictly and formally distinguished. In allusion to moral wisdom, it is said: “It is the spirit in man, the breath of the Most High, that gives him understanding” [Job xxxii, 8; comp. Prov. xx, 27]; and it is prophesied of the new Covenant: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” [Jer. xxxi, 33],—as in contrast to the Old Covenant under which the law was predominantly objective and in sharp antagonism to the sin-blinded heart. But what is true of the New Covenant is likewise true of the unfallen state. This prophecy refers, it is true, to the working of the Holy Spirit, but unfallen man was per se already filled with this Spirit. Paul speaks of a natural consciousness of God and of the moral, even in the heathen [Rom. i, 19 sqq.]; by how much more must this be true of man as unfallen. This natural God-consciousness is the general manifestation of that “life” which was the light of men [John i, 4].

It is a favorite manner with some to speak of a moral “feeling,” and even of a moral instinctive “impulse,” as the primitive germ which subsequently develops itself into a moral consciousness. If by such feeling or impulse so much is meant as a knowledge as yet indistinct—a presentiment rather than a comprehension,—we can readily admit it, though in any case the expressions are very inappropriate, and serve only to confusion. Understood in their proper sense, we must emphatically reject them; for feeling is simply an immediate becoming-conscious of a state occasioned in the subject by an impression, and is hence always of a merely subjective and strictly individual nature, whereas the moral law is per se necessarily objective and universal—an idea; an idea cannot be felt, but must be known, though indeed this knowledge may be primarily as yet indistinct. A direct feeling can be occasioned only by a sensuous impression; of spiritual things I can have a feeling properly so-called, only after they have become an object of my cognizing consciousness; every feeling presupposes either a sensuous impression or an idea, a conception. To consider feeling, in the sphere of the religiously-moral, as the fundamental antecedent condition before all knowledge, is simply to confound an, as yet indistinct, anticipatory consciousness with feeling proper, and poorly serves to the attainment of scientific clearness. Still less can we speak of a moral impulse; in the strict sense of the word, as the primitive antecedent; an impulse that does not rest on a moral consciousness belongs not to the sphere of the moral but to that of the merely natural, and in the exact proportion that we attribute power to some such pretended impulse, we violate the freedom of the will. If an unconscious impulse toward the good is the primitive antecedent in man, then is a choice of the evil utterly impossible. If, however, we should assume, as the primitive condition, that there were in man contradictory impulses, the one toward the good, the other toward the evil, still we would not, by this anarchical duality, safeguard the freedom of the will, if we did not assume as above these mutually conflicting impulses, also a higher moral consciousness,—whereby in fact the hypothesis itself would be destroyed.

SECTION LXXVIII.

The revelation of the divine will to the moral subject, as given in the rational self-consciousness, is the conscience. This is not an originally ready power, but, as given at first only in germ, it must be developed,—stands in need of culture, primarily by God himself, and, in all after the first generation. by the already morally-matured spirit of men; and with its further moral development it constantly becomes more definite, more clear and more rich in contents. Now, as sin separates man from God and from the knowledge of Him, and also damagingly affects the moral training received from others, it is clear that the conscience has its full purity and power only in a sinless state.—As relating to the moral life-manifestations, the conscience appears as a morally-judging power, and as such it is either in harmony with the particular manner of action—in which case it awakens a joyous feeling of approval,—or it is in antagonism therewith, and in this case it awakens a painful feeling of disapproval; and either feeling prompts to a corresponding course of action. As the conscience is a revelation of the moral law as the divine will, hence it never exists without a God-consciousness,—it is itself, in fact, one of the phases of this consciousness, and is per se of a religious character, and is inexplicable from the mere world-consciousness. In its germ it is a primitive and not a derived power, and in this sense it is already presupposed on the entrance of the positive divine revelation. The actual acceptance of this revelation is of itself already a moral act which presupposes the conscience; but the latter is excited to activity and to full development only by the positive revelation. Conscience is essentially an integral part of man’s God-likeness,—is, like rationality in general, a divine life-power imparted to the creature.

The conscience is in its essence, not different from the God-consciousness, but is only the bearing of the God-consciousness upon the moral; as relating to the good, it relates also to God, for none is good but God alone [Matt. xix, 17]; and God is the criterion of all good, for the good is the God-answering; a conscience which is not a God-consciousness is a perverted, an unanchored one. As the conscience is an inner revelation of God to man, we place its discussion in this section, although it is an essential element of the moral subject.—The manners of conceiving of the conscience differ very widely; it is, in turn, regarded either as a cognizing consciousness, or as a feeling, or as an instinctive impulse; and consequently it is sought for in all the different spheres of the soul-life; it is indeed true that the conscience cannot be real without embracing in itself all three of these spheres; and hence the word may be used in all three significations. In the expression: “Conscience says to me,” or “it approves this and rejects that,” it is conceived of as a cognizing, judging consciousness; but we also speak of a joyous, or a chastising conscience; and again we say: “conscience compels me to this act or deters me from it.” The question, however, is: which of the three phases is the primitive, the fundamental one? which constitutes the essence of the conscience? According to what we have previously said as to the relation of feeling and willing to the cognizing consciousness, it follows very plainly that the essence of the conscience is to be found in that which its name directly expresses in various languages, namely, a being-certain, hence a certain knowing, a cognizing consciousness; in the New Testament the term συνείδησις—(from σύνοιδα, conscious sum, strictly: “I am a fellow-knower,” and in a higher sense: “I know with God,” in whom all knowledge centers),—an associate knowing with God, in virtue of his indwelling in rational creatures, is used of the conscience, both in so far as it leads to the good (αγαθή συνείδησις, or καλή or καθαρά), and in so far as, by reproving, it punishes evil [John viii, 9]; and the same word is used also directly in the sense of religious consciousness, presenting the conscience as a consciousness of the divine will [1 Peter ii, 19; Rom. xiii, 5; Heb. ix, 9]. The conscience, as differing from the enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit [Rom. ix, 1], is a power inherent in the essence of man per se, see Rom. ii, 14, 15; in this passage the λογισμοί are not the conscience, but the reflections that spring from the conscience, which itself is the “work of the law written in the hearts,” that is, the consciousness of the contents, of the requirements of the moral law; Paul is not speaking here of the true and perfect conscience, but of the natural conscience of sinful man; the essential features of the true conscience, however, still lurk in the disordered one; and this essential character appears here evidently as a consciousness of the moral. In the Old Testament the conscience is designated by the word heart, לֵבָב [Job xxvii, 6].

The conscience is not a mere simple knowing, it is an utterance of the practical reason, a direct judging of moral thoughts and actions, an approving or condemning witness as to the moral conduct of man [2 Cor. i, 12; v, 11; Rom. xiv, 22; Acts xxiii, 1; xxiv, 16; 2 Tim. i, 3; 1 Peter iii, 16; Heb. xiii, 18]. Such a judging presupposes the consciousness of a moral law, according to which the decisions are made; and this consciousness is the inner essence of conscience itself. The conscience is a judging power, for the reason that it is per se a consciousness of the law as the divine will; it utters itself discriminating and deciding (κρινών) because it is mindful of the eternal ground of the holy,—because it is the inner essence of the divine image as coming to self-consciousness; this latter is the essence of the conscience, the judging is its active manifestation.—The conscience can be awakened, cultivated, and refined by human instruction, but not generated; it is a perpetual witnessing of God as to himself and his holy will in the rational spirit of man, and for this simple reason it is not within the control of man, but is a power above him; it may be silenced temporarily, and led astray in its particular utterance as a discriminating power, but it can never be eradicated nor definitively perverted. It is not the person, strictly speaking, who has the conscience, but it is the conscience that has the person; it dwells indeed in the individual personality, but it is not itself of subjective character, since it is of divine quality; it does not express my personal peculiarity, but the holy will of God in regard to me. Conscience is the fact of the divine morality in man antecedent to all human morality; it is the germ proper of man’s God-likeness,—the God-likeness itself as bearing relation to free conduct, in so far as this consciousness constitutes a part of the essence of rationality. Without this divine germ of the moral in man, morality would be impossible—as impossible as is seeing without eyesight, no matter how much light there might be, or instruction without previously existing rationality as a basis. A convicting by argumentation is possible only when there is antecedently existing in the subject some certain knowledge wherewith the new truth shall agree. What axioms are in mathematics, that is the conscience in the moral sphere. He who does not recognize the axioms, and hence has, as it were, no mathematical conscience, is beyond the reach of instruction. He alone can become rational and moral, and live so, who is so already in the original structure of his being; and this deepest ground of moral rationality is in fact the conscience. He in whom the witness of the holy God does not witness for the holy, cannot be moral; but such an abandoned one there cannot be in the entire creation of God, for to none has he “left himself without witness.” A man may become ungodly, may be unconscientious, and yet not be free from the power of conscience; he may deprive himself of his eyes, but not of his reason, and consequently not of his conscience. For this simple reason, every sin is a fall of man from his own proper nature, an unfaithfulness toward himself. Conscience rests on the. discrimination of the personal creature and its will from the personal God and his will; it finds its universal expression in the words of the Lord: “Not my will but thine be done.” Whoever supposes himself to act from necessity, or merely according to his own individual will, for him the idea of the conscience is obscured; the irreligious are necessarily unconscientious. It is for the simple reason that it is not the individual ego, but the divine, that speaks in the conscience, that there can be a reproving, an evil, conscience, in which the difference of this twofold ego appears in an irreducible antithesis. But this voice of the divine ego does not first come to the consciousness of the individual ego, from without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already this inner one; there must echo out from within man something kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized and accepted as divine. Even as Adam at the first sight of, the woman recognized at once that she was flesh of his flesh, so recognizes man immediately on the utterance of the divine will by special revelation that this is spirit of that spirit which dwells and speaks within him,—not, however, as his individual ego, but as distinct from it, and as having uncontested right to rule over it.

The first manifestation of conscience in the Scriptures appears in the words wherein Eve opposes the temptation: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said: ye shall not eat of it.” Here Eve distinguishes the command, as the divine will, from her own will; which latter, however, she afterward carries out; but this adversely judging conscience presupposes a previous first activity of the same, namely, the recognition of the divine command as obligating. The command itself spoke in fact, primarily, only to the understanding; the recognition of it as divine, as a legitimate determining authority for the individual will, the receiving of it into the heart, and the willingness to conform the individual volitions to it,—all this is not a matter of the cognizing understanding, nor in general of the individual spirit as such, but of that divine element in man which responds to the divine command—the conscience; and in the very first utterance of this power, it shows itself primarily, indeed as a consciousness, but then straightway also as a feeling of love as toward the congenial, the right, and as a willingness arising from this consciousness and this love.

The cognizing activity of the conscience relates primarily and directly only to the God-pleasing, and not also to the God-repugnant; for the former is real, but not the latter, and all true and real cognition relates to something real. Hence the second phase of conscience, that where men’s “eyes are opened” and they “know the good and the evil,” does not belong to the primative and pure conscience, but is a manifestation of the conscience as already in antagonism to the moral actuality of man. As primarily relating to the Godlike, and hence as attended by a feeling of approbation, the conscience has originally nothing to do with fear of punishment, but is on the contrary an expression of peace with God; fear presupposes already a disturbed harmony and a knowledge of good and evil; hence in the Scriptures we find conscience expressly distinguished from fear. [Rom. xiii, 5.]

According to Rothe, conscience is the divine activity in its passive form, that is, it is the soul’s self-activity as being determined by the body, or, in general, by material nature, and, in the final instance, by the divine self-activity, or, in general, by God himself,—that is, it is instinctive impulse as religious. In his opinion conscience lies not on the side of the self-consciousness, but on that of the self-activity, and relates not to conceptions and to the understanding, but to volitions and to actions. Conscience has essentially an individual character,—is of subjective, not of objective, nature; hence it is not correct to speak of a tribunal of conscience. “The conscience of another has not the least binding force for me, but only my own; when an appeal is made to conscience, there all further discussion is cut off, there all objective arguments become powerless; whatever is a matter of conscience to me is to me a sanctum sanctorum which none dare violate”—not even for objective reasons; nor does my conscience bind any one else. Conscience is essentially a religious instinct-impulse; and as being an activity of God in man under the form of an instinctive impulse, and hence also a sensuously perceptible one, it is attended by sensuously-somatic phases of feeling. Now every instinct-impulse is either positive or negative, hence conscience is either approbative or disapprobative; as disapprobative it is religious aversion,—an instinctive impulse toward the counterworking of the sin (hence stings of conscience); as approbative it is the religious appetite. Rothe takes occasion here to complain seriously of the hitherto prevalent confusion of phraseology on this subject,—namely, in view of the fact that conscience is treated of, sometimes as a propension, sometimes as a moral feeling, sometimes as a religious feeling, sometimes as such and such an instinct-impulse, or as such and such a sense; in this, however, he is manifestly unjustifiable; it is to no good purpose to quarrel with language which is, in fact, often profounder and truer than the boldest theoretical systems: No one has a right arbitrarily to define ideas contrarily to the general consciousness, and then to find fault with language because it does not harmonize with the definitions. In the present case we find language perfectly justifiable in making so wide a use of the term conscience, inasmuch as all the above phases are in fact embraced in it, though indeed not in equal degrees. The strange notion that conscience rests on a determination of the personal soul by the material body, so that by implication a rational spirit without a material body would not have any conscience, we pass over in silence, and make only the following observations. Should we admit that conscience relates to volition and action, it does not follow from this that it is not per se, and primarily, a consciousness; thought in fact may influence volition; and the necessary presupposition of every volition is a thought; but an unconscious instinct-impulse is neither religious nor moral, but irrational. The fact is, conscience lies most strictly on the side of the self-consciousness; otherwise an evil conscience could not contain a self-accusation. That the conscience is of subjective nature is only in so far correct as it constitutes an integral element of rational personality; but it is entirely incorrect in Rothe to reduce it to a mere individually-subjective phenomenon, and entirely to deprive it of objective character. If conscience is to be at all of a rational character, it must have a general, and hence also an objective significancy. That which is merely subjective has not the least moral significancy, rather is it the opposite of the moral; what is holy for me must be also holy per se and before God, and what is holy before God must be holy for all moral creatures. My conscience is true only in so far as it is an expression of the moral idea; but the moral idea is not of a merely subjective nature. For every Christian, it is a matter of conscience to follow Christ; this holds good in general as well as in particular, and not simply for me as such and such a particular person. The more the conscience bears a merely subjective character, the more defective it is; in a normal condition of humanity all moral consciences would necessarily be essentially concordant, inasmuch as there is only one God and only one divine will, and inasmuch as conscience is the expression of this will. Rothe comes himself into violent contradiction with his assertions, in that he makes conscience to be determined by a divine activity; for this divine activity must be objective to the subject; and, as of a holy character, it certainly does not determine each individual to a different decision: and a little farther on Rothe himself takes this position: that the conscience as an activity of God in man, has a direct and unconditional authority, and from which man cannot in any manner escape; that arguments avail nothing as against conscience,—that perfectly convincing arguments may be urged and yet the conscience remain unmoved; that consequently conscience is also infallible, that it never deceives and is incapable of being bribed; and that though we may blind ourselves as to its decision, yet it is itself not to be deceived. These positions, so utterly extreme and so contrary to all experience, are manifestly irreconcilable with his previous position, namely, that conscience, being entirely devoid of objective character, is a mere subjective phenomenon; for in the notion of an authority in conscience, and especially of an unconditional one, it is manifestly implied that the subject is subordinate thereto.Rothe appears to have become dissatisfied with this exposition of the conscience. In his revised edition (Theol. Ethik, 2 Auf., 1867, § 177, Anm. 3) he carries his dissatisfaction with the term conscience so far as entirely to exclude it from his work. He declares the word as “scientifically inadmissible,” inasmuch as it is devoid of “accurately determined logical contents;”—it is but a popular expression for the collective moral nature of man.—Translator.—According to Schenkel (Dogmatik, 1858, I, 135 sqq.) the conscience is a special faculty of the human soul, or rather that one of its organs which has to do with religious functions, whereas the reason and the will do not relate directly to God but to the world; this conscience, in which the God-consciousness is primarily and immediately given, is at the same time also the ethical central-organ. What is to be gained by this freak of fancy it is difficult to determine. When men thus arbitrarily, and contrary to prevalent usage, limit the notion of the reason and the will, it is of course an easy matter to discover new faculties of the soul and new organs of the same; but whether anything important is gained thereby, and whether the supposed epoch-making new discovery will meet with much favor, we may seriously doubt.—Trendelenburg shows much more circumspection and acumen in considering conscience as the reaction and pro-action of the total God-centered man against the man as partial, especially against the self-seeking part of himself (Naturrecht, 1860, § 39).

II.—THE ESSENCE OF THE MORAL LAW AS THE DIVINE WILL.

SECTION LXXIX.

The essence of the moral law as the divine will cannot be deduced from the nature of man alone, but essentially only from the idea of God as ruling righteously in his creation.—(a) As morality rests on freedom, and as freedom consists in the fact that a man chooses, by a personal independent volition, a particular mode of action among several possible ones, hence every moral action is at the same time the leaving undone of a possible contrary action. The moral law is therefore per se always twofold; it is command and prohibition at the same time, and consequently there is in fact no essential difference whether the law appears in the one or in the other form; and as the moral life of man is a continuous one, hence he must at every moment of time be fulfilling a divine law; a mere non-doing would be a negation of the moral. It is in consequence of the freedom of choice, and not in consequence of sinfulness, that the divine law bears the form of a “should.”

Every presentation of the moral law from the stand-point of man alone, that is, purely from the nature of man, without deriving it from God, is anti-religious, and can never include the whole truth of the moral idea. And in precise proportion as we conceive more highly of the moral nature of man from that stand-point, we render unavoidable his Pantheistic exaltation into the highest realization of God himself—the putting of man in the place of the personal God. We cannot possibly understand the moral law save as the divine purpose in regard to free creatures, and we can base it on the nature of man only in so far as we recognize in and through this nature the divine creative will, the fulfillment of which lies in the realized moral perfection of man.

The fact that any particular action is morally good, necessarily implies as possible a contrary, or non-good one; and the commanding of the former is per se a prohibiting of the latter; every command directly implies the prohibition of the contrary form of action. Now it might seem as if the converse did not hold good, namely, that a prohibition does not imply at the same time also a command; the laws: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, seems to require simply a non-doing. This, however, would be possible only on condition that a mere non-doing were in general a moral possibility. But as life is strictly continuous in all of its stages, and as even a momentary real cessation of life is death, hence least of all can the highest form of life, the moral life, be a non-living, a simple non-doing, without thereby turning into the contrary, namely, into spiritual and moral death. As the human spirit, even in the deepest sleep as conditioned by the weariness of the body, is never idle, but keeps up an activity in remembered or unremembered dreaming, so also the highest form of spirit life, the moral life, is never interrupted by a pure inactivity. Hence a prohibition that should include in itself no contents of a positive character, no command, could not be of a moral nature. The moral non-doing of a morally prohibited action is in and of itself necessarily the doing of the contrary. Hence, Luther, in his elucidation of the Commandments, is strictly right in never leaving them in the form of a simple “thou shalt not;” but in uniformly deducing from them a very positive “thou shalt.” The law: “thou shalt not kill,” though in form a simple prohibition, nevertheless directly implies the enjoining of all that man, in his intercourse with others, ought to do as contrasting with the disposition that leads to murder; we should not only not kill our neighbor, but we should help and succor him in all his bodily perils;—a mere non-doing in the face of such perils would be a direct violation of the law. If man is not to commit adultery, then must he, in the conjugal relation, not only not do any thing that stimulates and nurtures an adulterous disposition, but he must do the contrary thereof; that is, he must live purely and chastely in words and acts, and love and honor his own consort.

Nevertheless it is not indifferent as to which of the two forms the moral law assumes; the difference, however, lies not in the essence, but in the practical educative adaptation. As the essence, the end, of the moral life is not negative but has positive contents, the true and perfect form of the law is in fact that of the express command; “thou shalt” is higher than “thou shalt not.” But for man while as yet undeveloped to moral maturity, the form of prohibition is the more obvious and simple, since, on the one hand, it brings his moral liberty of choice more clearly to his consciousness, and, with the exclusion of the immoral, opens to him the whole field of the discretionary, and since, on the other, it establishes protecting limits for the field within which he is to train himself up to moral maturity, to a consciousness of the good. With the child, education always begins in the prohibiting of what conflicts with its well-being; God’s first law to man was a free throwing-open of the field of the discretionary in connection with a limiting prohibition [Gen. ii, 16, 17], whereas the real command appears primarily only in the general form of a blessing, as expressive of the goal of moral effort, the good [Gen. i, 28]. While the Mosaic Commandments bear predominately the character of prohibition, Christ sums up the moral contents of the divine law in the form of a positive command: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself;” and at the same time Christ declares that this command embraces the whole ancient law. Hence, while the essence of the divine law continues ever the same, the revelation of it gradually advances from the predominantly prohibitory form to that of the positive command.

As both forms of the divine law present a duty to the free will of man, they both bear the expression of a command, a “should.” This is the form assumed by nearly all laws, from the first one given to Adam to the perfect laws of Christ. Since the time of Schleiermacher, however, many take offense at this “should,” and strive to banish it, at least, from the pure moral law. In Schleiermacher’s Philosophical Ethics, this rejection of the “should” is entirely consequential; for here the moral is quite as necessarily-determined a phenomenon of the universe as is the natural, and for freedom of will there is no place whatever; consequently ethics has no other task than simply to describe that which takes place from necessity, but not to present laws under the form of requirements, of duty. Rothe follows this view only up to a certain point; he rejects the form of the “should” only for sinless man, as indeed also one cannot apply the idea of “should” to God; only for sinful man can the moral appear as a duty (Eth. I, Auf., § 817). As relating to God this is doubtless correct, inasmuch as God’s freedom is not human liberty of choice, and as it absolutely excludes the possibility of sinning, and since God is absolutely his own law. But as relating to free creatures, even though they be as yet perfectly sinless, it is erroneous,—at least unless we are to regard the moral perfection of the same as a cessation of all freedom of choice and likewise of all moral duty. As long as man does not cease to propose to himself moral ends, and freely to aim to reach them, so long will duty as yet continue. This form of the law would be unsuitable for perfect man only when it should be conceived of as something uncongenial to man, as some sort of oppressive yoke, which, however, is by no means the case. The as yet unrealized state of a freely-to-be-attained goal always implies a “should.” It is only from some such misconception as if the “should” implied something foreign and burdensome to man, that we can explain why even Harless limits the application of this word to the fallen state (Christl. Ethik, 6 Auf., p. 80 sqq.). There is, however, no shadow of censure in the form “thou shouldst;” in fact, there is for the free will no other form of law conceivable than that of the “should.” Without a distinguishing of the divine will from that of the subject, no real conscious morality is possible; and simply this distinguishing and nothing more—not an antagonism of estrangement—is contained in the idea of the “should.” It is in this idea in fact that morality and piety find their unity, the moral being conceived as the divine will [Deut. x, 12; Micah vi, 8]. The child that does the good for the reason that it knows that it is the will of its parents that it should do so, stands morally higher than the one that does it without a consciousness of its duty; the former, but not the latter, is able to offer resistance to temptation; for temptation is overcome only by the thought of the divine will, or of duty. A command does not presuppose a contrary inclination, but only the possibility of sin, that is, it presupposes freedom of will. In denying to man while as yet in a sinless state all consciousness of the divine law, and supposing him to act simply from a direct impulse of love, we not only contradict the express declaration of the Scriptures as to a revelation of the divine will to primitive man, but we also render the fall into sin an impossibility.