tix Lions C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES f CLARK'S rOEEIGK THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. T III E D S E E I E S. VOL. XXXIX. iMartensjen on Cljrt^tian CtljiciJ. EDINBUEGH: T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET. MDCCCLXXXV. PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON, HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO, DUBLIN, GEORGE HERBERT. NEW YORK SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. CHRISTIAN ETHICS. BY H. MARTENSEN, D.D., BISHOP OF ZEALAND. Cran£ilatrt» from tJbe Bmisf), lui't]^ tlje Sanction of tlje ^ut^or, BY C. SPENCE. E D I N B U E G II : T. & T. CLAKIv, 38, GEOEGE STEEET. MDCCCLXXXV. TEANSLATOE'S PEEFACE. jN accordance with the earnestly expressed desire of the author of this work, Dr. H. Martensen, Bishop of Zealand, the present translation has been made directly from the original Danish, and not through the medium of the German edition. It is hoped that the author will thus have suffered less from the disguise of the terse and forcible style in which he expresses himself in his own tongue, than would have been possible if the book had passed through the ordeal of two different interpreters, more especially as the Danish language has far more affinity to English, in the structure of sentences, than to German. Philosophical terms, such as moment, have been left untrans- lated, both as being doubtless familiar to English students of this class of literature, and also because, if in a few instances this is not already the case, the context will generally bring out the meaning of such tei'ms clearly enough, without interference with the author's choice of words. It is probably superfluous to remind the English reader, that whenever reference is made to the Decalogue, the division of its parts differs from that to which we are accustomed. Thus, " Honour thy father and thy mother" is spoken of as the fourth commandment, and the first table of the law is said to consist of three precepts. In the work of translation, great encouragement has been experienced from the lively interest manifested in its progress, not only by the venerable author himself, who most courteously supplied information on any point on which he was consulted, but also by many friends in this country, as Professor Calder- wood, Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Dr. Macgregor. C. SPEXCE. PREFACE. |ET WEEN the present volume and my work published many years ago, and entitled Outlines of Moral Philosophy^ there exists connection, in so far as that production of my youth, in which everything was only briefly and generally sketched, finds here more copious expression ; but besides this there is alteration, as the necessary consequence of a more profound research into the first principles and the religious postulates on which the science of Ethics is founded. Readers of my Christian Dogmatics will find here the same fundamental conceptions which formed the basis of that work, but treated from another point of view relatively independent of doctrines of belief. The relation between Ethics and Dogmatics, its limits, sub- divisions, and methods, are all fully set forth in the Introduction. Notoriously these are questions which have hitherto been answered in very different ways, so that on this subject there are many points still undecided ; and, in general, the position of Ethics as a theological science is essentially different from that of Dogmatics. For however many diversities, and even contra- dictions, may appear in the treatment of Christian doctrines of belief, there is yet a far greater unanimity in the determination of the limits of that science, and in the arrangement of its mate- rials. The reason why the study of Dogmatics thus enjoys a more favourable position than the other, must not be sought only in the fact of its being supported on a great tradition, whilst Ethics, as a system, has no such support. The cause of the difference lies in the nature of the subjects. For, whatever may with justice be said of the difiiculties of doctrinal know- ledge, it may be averred with equal truth, that the divine things revealed to us are far simpler of comprehension than VI 11 PREFACE. the human ; that in revelation and belief, considered by and for themselves, order and connection are much more readily discernible than in human life, with all its labyrinthine multiplicity of acts, far-branching, intertwined, and intricate, which nevertheless Ethics must contemplate in their relations to faith and revelation, although they cannot witliout great difficulty be brought under one universally valid Schema. Unquestionably much valuable service has already been rendered to this science ; yet nevertheless it is scarcely too much to affirm, that hitherto no one has succeeded in weav- ing together into one complete web this infinitude of finite relations. From the uncertainty and want of harmony in the methods of considering Ethics, no surprise should be excited by the assertion now made, that a systematic treatment of this subject is as yet impossible, and that in the solution of ethical problems we are constrained to confine ourselves to the employment of separate monographs. And undeniably the monographic treatment affords some great advantages, which are denied to the s^'stematic method. Of this, in times antece- dent to Christianity, the dialogues of Plato furnish an example; and from the early periods of Christianity, as well as the more modern, we possess treatises of exceeding value on individual ethical conceptions and relations of life, evidently proceeding from a large grasp of the whole, although this lacks develop- ment. But this very deficiency, which the limited character of each monograph makes apparent, strengthens the demand for the wider development of Ethics as a complete view of the subject. And, for our part, we cannot relinquish the hope that a want so much felt as that of a connected exhibition of the teachings of Ethics will ultimately be supplied. Signs encouraging this hope are even now visible in theological literature, in the greater unanimity to be found on important points, both as regards the conception of Ethics and its struc- tural foundation. I hope that the present work may con- tribute to the solution of this problem : How may Ethics be placed on the same platform as Dogmatics ? But whatever weight may be laid on the scientific question, of far more importance to me is the view of the world, and of life itself, whicii, to the best of my ability, I have sought to express in this form in these pages, and the value of which for PREFACE. IX life-teaching is quite apart from particular modes of discussion. At what time I may be able to complete the special portion of the subject of this work, depends on circumstances beyond my own control. At all events, this section, containing the discus- sion of the general part of it, is complete in itself, and will be tested and judged of as such. I have bestowed great pains on the endeavour to render myself as intelligible as the nature of my subject would permit ; and I do not entirely despair of finding readers among educated people, even though they be not theological, if they are disposed for that serious contemplation of some life-questions of deepest import. I trust that this work, which, in the hours remaining at my own disposal from the occupations of an important office, has braced and invigorated my own mind, may in some measure have the same effect also upon others, serving to confirm them in Christian views of life, or to prepare the mind for the reception of these, and, which is indeed inseparable from such views, deepening the comprehension of the true relation between Christianity and the human race. H. MAETEXSEN. Ajpril ISri. TABLE OF CONTENTS. OF THE CONCEPT OF CHEISTIAN ETHICS. The Moral, ..... Morality and Religion, .... Christian Morality. Catholicism and Protestantism, Christian Ethics and Dogmatics, Christian Ethics and Modern Humanity, . Divisions of Christian Ethics, FACTS 1 13 22 85 46 52 THE GENERAL PART. the postulates of christian ethics, The Theological Postulate -. The Ethical Concept of God. God the alone Good, . . 61 The Anthropological Postulate : Man created in the Image of God. Man as a Creature possessed of Soul and Body, ..... 75 Personality and Individuality. Eelations of the Soul to its Organism, ...... 80 Impulse and Free-will — Sin, ..... 94 The Free and the Fettered WiD, . . . .109 The Cosmological and Soteriological Postulate : The Moral System of the World. Providence and Redemption. Aim of History, and the Education of the Human Race, . 131 The Eschatological Postulate : The Result of History and the Completion of God's Kingdom. The Fundamental Concepts of Ethics, . . . 140 THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF ETHICS, AND THE ETHICAL VIEWS OF THE WORLD AND LIFE. I. the highest good. God's Kingdom the Highest Good. Eternal Bliss and Earthly Happiness, ....... God's Kingdom and the Kingdom of Sin. The Highest Evil, . God's Kingdom and the World. Optimism and Pessimism, 147 160 164 xu CONTENTS. God's Kingdom and the Kingdom of Humanity. Redemption and Emancipation, ...... God's Kingdom and the Individual. Socialism and Individualism, FACE 191 202 II. VIRTrE. The Ideal of Personality. Christ our Example, . . . 237 The Unparalleled in History. Christ and Great Men, . 2-42 The Example of Self-Government. Son of Man and Son of God, . 219 The Example of Love and Obedience. The Lord under the Form of a Servant, . . ..... 260 Contemplative and Adoring Love. Active Love, . . . 2G6 Active and Passive Love, ...... 275 The Type of Glory. Christ in His Exaltation, . . .281 Discipleship, ....... 284 Imitation of Christ. Followuig Christ, and justifying Faith, . 293 The Cardinal Virtue of Christianity. Imitation as Sauctification, 308 The Highest Motive. Salvation and Disinterested Love to God. The Deepest Quictive, . . . . . .319 The Christian Character, ...... 339 III. THE LAW. Duty and Law. The Law of Morality and the Law of Nature. Authority, ....... Conscience, ....... The Law's Content, ...... The Revealed Law. Moses and Christ, . . . . The New Relation to the Law. Nomism and Antinomianism. In- dividual and Social Antinomianism, . . . . Jesuitism. Antinomian Precepts to Worldly Prudence, The Obligatory and the Permissible. The Befitting. Ethical For- bearance (Accommodation), . . . . , Duty and "Works of Supererogation, Evangelical Precept and Command, ....... Duty and the Present Moment. The Harmonizing of Duties and the Moral Employment of Time. Collision and Casuistry, Can the Regenerate fulfil the Law ? Merit and Reward, . The Significance of the Law to the Regenerate. The Threefold Use of the Law. The gracious Invitation in the Gospel, and the binding Authority, .... God's educating Grace in Christ. Christ and the Nations, Authority and Liberty in the Development of Society. Conserva tism and Progress, ..... Transition to the Special Part, 344 35G 368 376 382 406 415 423 425 434 438 442 449 463 ox THE CONCEPT OF CHEISTIAN ETHICS. HRISTIAN ethics is the science of morals condi- tioned by Christianity. But as a moral course of life is to be found also outside of Christianity, and as much has been written concernino; its teachings and motives, we take as our starting-point that which is common to all ethics : THE MORAL. §1. According to its general conception, the moral is that which regulates human will and action — the norm or rule by which men spontaneously acquiesce in what must and ought to be. Only in the domain of freedom can there exist the moral as opposed to the merely natural, a relation which the ancients expressed by the contrast between Wr] (manners) and 'rrdOii (appetites, passions, and generally the animal part of our nature). In the conduct of life, that which regulates the will appears as the valid and usual in society, as habit become a second nature. But the concept of the moral is not exhausted by the terms manners or morality, which mainly refer to actions and the out- ward conduct ; it embraces, moreover, the inner being;, the dis- position of the mind, or what has been specifically termed " the moral." The conventional usages, as well as the moral sentiments and maxims, which men at any given time construct, are, how- ever, only derived rules {normce normatce) ; whilst the moral itself is an idea not originating in use and wont, but itself the unconditioned norm or rule of conduct. All deeper research into the moral leads to the perception of an eternal principle of wisdom, embracing the whole of human life, which is to be A 2 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. realized by man's unfettered efforts ; or, iu other words, to the idea of an absolute aim or object for human will and voluntary action. This all-embracing aim is the good. Good is whatever answers to its end or purpose, and in this common acceptation we apply the term to the productions of both nature and art, to everything, in short, which is as it ought to be. But the morally good is to be found only where man realizes the all- embracing aim or object of free-ivill or self-government. §2. The significance of the good, as the all-embracing aim of free-will, is more evident when, following Kant, we conceive existence itself as a " realm of aims." Nature also shows us a realm of aims, a vast teleological scheme, exhibiting design in every part, a system of wise adap- tations. But whilst the purposes of nature are accomplished with absolute certainty, the aims of morality, though in themselves law-appointed and necessary, are only carried out under the conditions of man's voluntary self-government, which may run wholly counter to them, or through mere neglect may fall short of them. For the aims of self-government are something more than mere ideas, which, independently of man, manifest them- selves as metaphysical unities amid the changing diversities of the external world, and by which, as Plato expresses it, the finite " becomes partaker of the eternal, the perfect, the truly existent," — they are, moreover, idecds. For ideas become ideals when they present themselves to the free-will as models for imitation, after which each individual course of action is to be shaped and reduced to practice. And between self-government and its ideals there is an inward invisible bond, since man not merely cannot escape from the admission that he ought to strive after their attainment ; but moreover in his inmost heart there exists an instinct, a longing, often it may be mistaken or misdirected, which can only be satisfied by actual living union with them, as constituting his own true being. Whilst nature may be said to fulfil its proper ends, — though even here a more profound consideration may lead to results modifying this assumption, — self-government is constantly hovering be- tween the ideal and the actual. And even if in a certain measure and deiiree the former has been attained, there will THE MORAL. 6 still always remain even in those conditions of life which are relatively the most perfect, a consciousness, often accompanied by retiret, that the reality is not all that it might and ought to be, that there is still something to strive after : as for instance in culture and civilisation, in art and science, in national and political conditions ; and each individual man, in the various relations of his private life, will have the same experience. But the more tlie attention is thus directed to the diversity of human ideals and the multiplicity of the aims of self- government of all degrees of importance, the more imperative becomes the necessitv to acknowledge one aim as the hiohest, the all-embracing and central, which brings unity and colier- ence into what was before diversity and plurality ; whilst it can then no longer escape observation, that the contrast complained of between real and ideal turns chiefly, nay essentially, on that between the actual life of man and his ideal, or this highest of his aims. This all-embracing and central aim of life, the ideal of self-government par excellence, is the good, or the ethical ideal. And if we inquire concerning the contents of this ideal, it can only be described as man himself^ human personality conceived in its purity and perfection, as the one and universal type which shall assume form in a realm of human entities or individuals, where each on his own account and all in unison must work out the realization of this grand aim. Without this tmity the individual and separate aims of self-government would inevitably clash, and freedom merge in anarchy. Diversity of will, of talents, and capacity, whilst each followed only his own special object and sought only his own interests, would offer the spectacle of a reasoning animal kingdom, of war between each and all, because each individual — and the greater his genius, power, or foresight, just the more certainly — would seek to exalt his own speciality as alone valid and all- important, and employ his fellows with their lesser gifts as the mere instruments of his eo;oism. This we see does occur amongst the lower types of creation, and also amongst men wherever the immoral has won ascendency. But the ethical is the harmonizins; and centralizins; chief end in the realm of self-government, so that the many wills, though each pursues its own specific task, concur at last in one ultimate aim — the universal human. We only acknowledge the will of any man 4 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. as morally good \Ylien his iiullvlclual will is In accordance with this universal-human. It is this characteristic of will or effort which gives personal worth to a man, and it is this which equalizes men and smooths down the social contrasts between the gifted and the ungifted, the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate. The ideal of the good may therefore be more closely defined as the ideal of humanity^ since it requires the harmonious unity of all human things, and at the same time their centralization in the aims of personality. Humanity or human nature, that which constitutes man a man, is on the one side innate, that is to say, when it is considered as the summary of natural gifts, and from this stand-point it is the subject of anthropology ; but it is also acquired, and in this view it forms the subject of ethics. In a state of nature the life of the man, like that of the child, mani- fests the moral, or rather the human, only as instinct and as amiable temper. But self-conscious ethical activity or^3erso?ifiZ morality begins when the man begins, in the spirit of voluntary submission to what appears to him as the common weal or the universal human, to do his duty. For duty is the bond be- tween the individual and the community, and duty demands obedience and self-denial. Obedience is the fundamental virtue of childhood, and must be the first aim of education. From this point morality developes itself from its lowest to its highest and most noble forms. We may therefore provisionally define the ethical as the normal condition of humanity, in as far as it is fashioned and worked out by human self-government ; and we may therefore express the requirement of ethics in the provisional formula, " Strive to realize in thyself and in the community the ideal of humanity;" and as the first step towards this aim, we suggest the maxim of Socrates, " Knoio thyself! " No human aim is excluded from the ethical, it embraces every development of talent. But the development of human talent, which as such is merely a development of culture, receives moral importance only as it serves to the development of personality or character. To cultivate one's natural gifts is not the same as to devote them to the service of morality. To cultivate the natural is to mould it into an instrument and means for the special aims of free-will J to employ it in the service of morality (ethisere) is to THE MORAL. 5 mould it into an instrument and means for the aims of person- ality, to employ culture itself as a means for something higher. An artist may cultivate his talent in the service of art, but he converts it into a moral power when he makes his whole artist- life subservient to the development of his personality, which again will have a reflex influence at once purifying and ele- vating on the development of his talent. There are great artists over whose productions is spread forth not merely aesthe- tic ideality, the result of talent and culture, but moreover an impress of purity and power issuing unseen from their person- ality. That the civilising and the morally ennobling are not one and the same thing may be seen from history, which often shows us dazzling periods of culture and splendid development of talent coupled with a profound decay of morality. The pursuit of every special aim is only moral in the measure and degree in wdiich it is embraced in the aim of entire humanity. Personality and the realm of personality are thus the ultimate and the hio-hest in the realm of aims which existence shows us. § 3. If we endeavour more closely to grasp the moral in its general applications, three fundamental ideas, and along with these, three different stand-points of contemplation, present themselves as absolutely necessary. That is to say, the good may be partly contemplated as an ought, a demand on man's will as regulating it, or as man's duty, partly as admitted into the will, or as virtue, as the ability to do good, to produce it, or also to accept it, so far as it should appear, that what we have called the hichest aim of the will is somethinir which at the same time must be bestowed on us as a higher gift ; and lastly, it mav present itself before the thoufiht as the realized aim which flits before man, as the ideal for his efforts and his work- ing, the object of his most earnest desire, as a state of perfec- tion which is for man tlie highest good, in the attainment and possession of which he first finds his final satisfaction and repose. The highest good, however, must not be contemplated from the stand-point of the individual only, but also from that of society ; it must be considered as a world, embracing both the individual and society, or as a realm, whicii we provision- ally define as the realm of humanity, considered in its perfec- 6 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. tion, or with all its ideals realized. The highest good conceived of in its perfect reality must be the sum or total of all good things. History shows that the science of ethics has been sometimes treated from the first, sometimes from the second, and some- times from the third point of view. For sometimes it has been considered as instruction with regard to human duties, viz. what ought to be done, and what ought to be avoided ; some- times as instruction regarding the virtues and their opposite vices, or the formation of human character ; and sometimes as instruction about the highest good, about that in the life of man which has intrinsic worth, and by which everything else is to be estimated ; about that which should be desired or dis- liked, should be chosen or should be rejected ; about what may be truly called a good or an evil, weal or woe, so far as these are dependent on man's own will and behaviour. From this last point of view ethics is often treated as instruction in the way to be happy, sometimes limited to the individual, sometimes embracing the condition of human society. But it is too narrow a conception of the subject which only takes in one of these points of view. A perfect system of ethics must embrace them all, as they only describe three sides of the same thing, and one of them always presupposes the two others (Schleiermacher). Dutv cannot be fulfilled without virtue, and virtue cannot be real except as regulated by duty; and neither duty nor virtue can attain substance or completeness if there be not an object which is for man at once the most worthy of admiration and the most worthy of desire, in short, a highest good. And the converse is true, since the highest good itself would lack all moral content if the law of virtue and freedom were excluded therefrom. A happiness, a state of perfection without virtue, without purity of will and disposition, would be, ethically con- sidered, a monstrosity. § 4. Whilst the formal determination of the moral as it has hitherto been presented as the law of humanity, so far as this is fixed by the human will itself, will hardly find any serious opposition, an essential difference becomes very apparent when we come to consider more closely the concept of humanity ; THE MORAL. 7 that is to say, wlien we speak of striving after tlie Ideal of man, what man do we mean ? Do we speak of the man who was formed in God's image, who fell into sin, and thereby became fettered into an abnormal condition and an abnormal development from wliich he cannot fi'ee himself, but from which Christ will redeem him ? Or do we speak of the man whom paganism describes, who is the production of nature alone, in whom the unaided light of reason has emerged in self-consciousness and free-will ; who stands in no relation to any other god than to the god within his own breast, the non-personal reason which is the law of his being ; avIio is his own centre, his own aim, and who on earth must work out only his own kingdom of reason, that of humanity, but not the kino;dom of God ? This is the great point in dispute, and has been so from generation to generation. We speak of the man who was created in God's image. And we propose to speak of the kingdom of humanity as the highest good only in so far as it is redeemed to the kingdom of God and transformed thereby, in so far as it is God who bears sway and reigns in the souls of men with a sovereignty of holiness and happiness ; we propose to speak of virtue as the redeeming power of God's grace in the free-will of man ; of duty as the behests of Christ's love to His followers, which point to the law as our schoolmaster to bring us to Him. But a system of ethics might certainly also be presented with the opposite con- ception of man, though such a system must in our opinion remain ever an unsolved and insoluble contradiction. From the two concepts of humanity may be developed a twofold morality and merely worldly or autonomic morality {morale independajite), in which man is his own lawgiver, and lias his aim within himself ; and a religious or theonomic morality, in which man really acknowledges himself as God's creature, the law of his own being as God's law, and life in God as his highest aim. Since in the present pages it is the man who was created in the image of God — that is to say, with resemblance to the per- sonal God, and whose chief end isunion with God — to whom we refer, we may point out more clearly the difference by inquir- ing as to the factors by which the moral is determined. As the 8 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS moral is the highest and all-embracing unity of human life, in so far as this is the practical aim of free-will, so again this unity rests on the specific nature of the contrasts of which it is the unity. As now the autonomic apprehension of man, or the apprehension of man as his own lawgiver, excludes the relation to God, and thus the contrast between creature and creator, — for human personality here stands only in relation to itself and its equals, and to nature as its assumption and dim origin, — so the requirements of morality are here only regulated by the relation of contrast between personality and nature, and by the internal contrast in personality itself, the contrast between the human individual will and the universally received will of reason, between the actual and ideal will of man. The auto- nomic system of ethics has as factors only human personality (with its inner contrast between the individual and the universal) and nature ; the theonomic system has as its factors human personality, nature, and God. Starting exclusively from the relation between personality and nature, the fundamental concept of the moral mvist be determined as the normal relation of the will to nature, as the sovereignty of reason over the lower appetites and desires, as the harmonious unity of reason and sense, as the diffusion of the impress of reason over entire nature ; and as this problem cannot be solved by an isolated individual, but only by society, the highest good w^hich can be striven after has been determined as a realm of reason in which nature is admitted into the consciousness of man and is organized by man's practical wisdom. This is the view which predominated among the Greeks, whose predilec- tion for an ideal of beauty agreed well with it, since they loved to contemplate the good as the beautiful, the moral personality as the living self-produced work of art. But relation to the living God has no place here. There does indeed appear in Plato a gleam of suspicion that man was formed in the image of God, since he teaches that man ought to strive after likeness to God, and that as God has arranged all things according to ideas, so the wise endeavour everywhere to fashion the ideal in the crude natural substance. But of an actual relation to God there is here no mention ; and the likeness of man to his Creator remains nothing more than the glimpse of an idea. In more recent times, when through the influence of Christianit THE MORAL, y the conception of luimanity lias bui'st the limits of the ancient world, the contrast between reason and nature, or, as reason is only in man under the form of personality, the contrast between personality and nature, comes out in a far more universal and deeper significance than in the distant ages of antiquity. For the more personality becomes conscious of itself in its inner infinitude and spirituality, the more it regards nature as at once a limitation and an instrument of freedom, and the greater becomes the desire to reconcile the contradiction. That this definition of the moral has relative validity can certainly not be denied. It is an important moment in the moral; but if it is given forth- as a perfect system of morality, a fragment is substituted for the whole. When thus the moral has been defined, sometimes as the progressive victory of rea- son over sense (Ficlite), sometimes as the progressive harmony of reason and nature (Schleiermacher, Rothe), a moment has been grasped from which we can advance to a higher ; but we must protest against this being accepted as the fundamental concept of the moral. The true contrast of personality is not the mere contrast between the personal and the non-personal, or nature, not merely the contrast between the ego and the non- ego, between the will and the want of will, but the contrast between personality and personality, I and thou, will and will. That personality is the right contrast to personality may already be seen from this, that the human personality, as self-conscious- ness and self-determination, could not comprehend itself as per- sonality if outside itself there was only a non-ego, or nature. The human ego becomes conscious of itself only by its relation to another ego ; it comprehends itself as willing only by meet- ing with another will, in relation to which it resolves itself to strife or to peace, to love or to hatred. When Fichte said tliat an ego only becomes conscious of itself by opposition to a non- ego, it may be rejoined, that a human ego, which, from its earliest childhood has been excluded from human society, and merely placed in relation to non-ego or nature, even if in a certain sense it arrived at self-consciousness, would only attain a self-consciousness and will like that of Caspar Ilam^cr. The individual human personality, therefore, cannot be con- ceived without a realm of personalities ; and the realm of per- sonalities has not merely for its object that individuals should 10 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. be helpful to each other in bringing nature and the senses under the sway of reason, but it developes from its inner resources, from the depth of soul and spirit, a variety of relations which, though they are modified by human relation to nature and the senses, are yet higher than these. How can the conception of the love of truth, uprightness, mercy, forgiveness, Immility, etc., as resting exclusively on the relation between personality and nature, be developed? The requirement, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," or, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," is evidently hifrher than this, " Tliou shalt make the nature within thee and without thee the instrument of reason," although this last is certainly the condition for the fulfilment of the first. But the first requirement is the highest, because it expresses the relation of the will to another will, and to its own eternal being, whilst the last only expresses a relation to the non-personal. The realm of personality is, therefore, the first and nearest to which the individual personality is directed ; as already every child is placed in contact -with its mother and the family, and through the ego of the mother, and the other personalities by which it is there surrounded, it gradually becomes conscious of itself as possessing a will. In the realm of personality, the individual must seek for his life-task, and here he must find the great fundamental contrast, the harmonizing of which is the problem of self-fTovernment. What is then the highest contrast in the realm of human personality, the contrast in the unity of which all the personal relations of life become moral relations, and manifest the good? The autonomic system of ethics, if it does not with narrow and partial vision stop short at the relation between personality and nature, can only answer to this, that it is the contrast between the human individual will and the funda- mental will of humanity which requires that wisdom, upright- ness, and love shall bear sway in the relations of mankind, the contrast between the actual will encumbered with egoism and the will according to the ideal which alone is socially binding upon men, and to which every individual will stands, by means of conscience, in the relation of dependence and obligation. But with reference to this contrast we observe that it is not a real contrast, not a contrast between will and will ; for the con- THE MORAL, 11 trasts here are only moments, sides of the same thing, namely, of the human will, but not two actual wills. And if we regard human society, or the realm of personality, as a unity, then, according to this view, the whole free life of man, the whole history of the race, can only be considered as the " commercium with itself" of the one human will, a development of the in- finite number of relations between the idea of free-will and its reality, between being and phenomenon, etc. But we cannot stop here. There is a higher factor in this history which will not be ignored. As certainly as human society consists of real personalities, of beings possessing real self- determination, real though limited in dependence, and in a relative signification, life in themselves ; and as certainly as this realm of human personalities is not its own author, but has come into existence, and has developed itself from the natural embryo condition, and thereby bears ineffaceable marks of finite and dependent existence ; so certainly this self-con- sciousness and this independence of will, which only by empty assumption and a mere figure of speech can be deduced from nature, — for their appearance in the sphere of nature is a marvel to nature, a transcendental for the whole concept of nature, — must have been communicated and bestoiced hy a creator v.ho is the pattern and archetype of all personalities. The realm of human personality presupposes an eternal central personality^ or God. The fundamental conception of genuine humanity is not therefore the conception of man as his own god and law- giver, or who, if he has a god at all, has him beyond the stars, and is cut off from every vital relation with him. This is much more the conception of man, changed and estranged from his original condition, that is to say, the conception oi i^agan huma- nity. The fundamental conception of humanity is the concep- tion of man as a free rational being, who is first and foremost a religious being, whose life of free-will in the world presup- poses the relation of dependence on God. The strongest con- trast is not the contrast between human personality and nature, not the inner contrast between essence and phenomenon in the human personality, but the contrast between human person- ality and a personal God, between God's will and man's will, which has an independence given by God, not merely to nature 12 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. and to his neighbour, but to the Creator Himself, who has assiiinecl to the free self-determination of man the task of carrying forward in conjunction with Himself the divine work of creation. The fundamental concept of the moral is therefore the un- constrained unity of man's will and God's will, which signifies that man, in ministering adoration, makes his own person an instrument for the service of God ; that in free devotion to the object of creation, and in conjunction with God, he brings the kingdom of humanity into the kingdom of God, wdiich ao-ain requires that he, as the servant of the Most High upon earth, should make himself the lord of nature. The basis of the moral is the idea of the religious moral, Avhich in its principle embraces the tuJiole of humanity, interweaves the life of man in God with his whole life in the world; and only from this theonomic point of view can we understand the phenomena of good and evil in the life of man, the inmost nature of which falls outside the horizon of the autonomic system of ethics. The assertion is frequently made, that whilst men differ so widely about doctrines of religious belief or dogmas, there is but one opinion with regai'd to the moral, or that which belongs to duty and right, especially to right action. The religious should therefore be considered as the non-essential ; the moral is the main thing, to which we should adhere firmly, and with regard to which, it is said, there is perfect unanimity. But this shallow mode of speech overlooks the fact that the main thing is the man, and that with regard to man and to his destiny great want of unanimity prevails in the world. Certainly where a well-ordered moral condition has been established, moral actions have an outward similarity ; but the actions, or that which is seen, receive their moral character from the motives and disposition of mind which are not seen, and from the view of life which accompanies these, and which must also remain impenetrable by human vision. The same moral act has thus a different quality when it is done from respect for human dignity and for the impersonal law of reason, and when it is done in reverential obedience and love to God. Two individuals may each work enthusiastically in his callin£x, with the ideal of humanity before his eyes ; but the enthusiasm has a very different quality when the final aim kept iu view is in MORALITY AND RELIGION. 13 the one case the sovereignty of human reason, in the other the sovereignty of God. If, however, we determine the religious moral to be the human in its normal condition, a closer development of the relation between the moral and the religious is required. MORALITY AND RELIGION. §5. If union with God is acknowledo;ed as the final aim of human effort, then must it also be acknowledged that this union would never take place if the personal God did not Himself make advances towards man. The initiative to union must proceed from God Himself, who in His revealed word draws near to man in order to offer him union with Himself. Where no revelation is acknowledged, and thus also no living intercourse between God and man, neither can there be any question of union with God, because man then only stands in relation to the divine but impersonal law, but not to the personal God Himself ; and the god of Deism, who sits idly behind the stars, and once for all has abandoned the world to itself and its own law of development, is to be compared with Homer's Zeus, who has departed to Ethiopia. But if the initiative to personal union proceeds from the personal God Himself, then the first relation of man to God is the religious, in which God works in the human soul to prepare it for Himself as a dwell- ing, a relation in which man in his inner being is taken posses- sion of by God. The religious relation is the relation of man's dependence on God ; the ethical relation is the relation of free-will, which, though from the first involved in the relation of dependence, developes itself to relative self-dependence. The first moment in the religious relation is one of passivity^ in which man bears a passive relation to his Creator, cannot avoid being acted upon by Him, cannot escape the reception of the enliglitening and awakening influences which proceed from God's revelation and presence. But this passive relation, which, as such, is only a natural spiritual relation, is perceived on closer consideration tc 14 ON THE CONCEPT OF CIirJSTIAN ETHICS. be receptive and appropriating. For as it depends on man liimself whether he will receive and appropriate to himself the communion with God which is offered to him, there appears already in religion itself, even in the relation of dependence, the ethical factor, or the relation of free-w'ill. Faith, as the expression of conscious personal religion, is not merely the conviction that '^ God is and will be a rewarder of them who seek Him," not merely confidence and rejoicinij trust in God's mercy, but also obedience, or the free sub- mission of the human will to the divine. In faith, therefore, the ethical and the religious are in j)rimilive union. Pre- eminently is this the case with Christianity, which is specially the ethical religion ; that is to say, in it the relation of depend- ence 01) God is maintained along with the most binding relation of free-will and of conscience ; and it is thus opposed to those religions which, with Schlelermacher, we may designate as the aesthetic, in which the relation of free-will is excluded by that of dependence, whose view of life is therefore fatalistic, whilst the ethical religions (Judaism and Christianity) view the life of the world in the light of a belief in providence. But from faith, as the primitive unity of the religious and the ethical, ir developed the ethical iu relative independence, and distinct from the religious. In faith man is united to God, in morality he strives to become so. The realm of aims in which the life of man moves, and the highest expression of which is the king- dom of God, is the summary of both religion and morality, but presents itself under a different point of view to the religious and the moral consciousness. In both of them the whole beine: mirrors itself, but in different modes. To faith the kingdom of God is come already, and its completion is anticipated in hope ; to the moral consciousness, the kingdom of God must first come by the efforts of free-will. Faith possesses the good as a reality, as a divine gift and promise ; for God, who has united Himself with man, is the real supreme good, all His acts and all His gifts are good, and His promises, unlike those of men, are never illusory. The moral consciousness has the good before it as a task and a possible attainment. In faith man feels him- self in the centre of existence, and rests beside the source of his origin. But from faith, which in its essence is in the first instance the receptive relation of love to the God who receives JIORALITY AND RELIGION. 1 5 man and manifests Himself to him, there developes itself the active self-operative love towards God, which not merely remains in the central sphere in contemplation and prayer, but enlarges itself, expands into love to God's creation, to the teeming life of the world, strives to introduce the infinite into ihe finite in the finite relations of life, to accomplish the will of God so that life in the world may become a life in God. Morality and religion are thus not at all one and the same thing, but they are indissolubly associated ; and so long as man remains in this temporal sphere, so long must he also live his life under these two forms, which is outwardly expressed by our days being divided into working days and days of rest. A faith without works is a barren faith ; and a godliness from which the ethical factor is in every respect excluded can only become a mystic absorption in God, a quietism in which man seeks to express the relation of dependence on his Creator by maintaining himself in perfect stillness and inactivity in a state of passivity in order to allow God to work alone in him, a god- liness which can only be consistently carried out from a pan- theistic stand-point, in which the personality of God and that of man are alike denied. A morality, on the other hand, without religion is a false self-dependence, a free-will lacking founda- tion, and therefore also resting on an inner self-contradiction. §6. Whilst religion without morality cannot in our days count upon many advocates, morality without religion finds no lack of such, and ought therefore specially to be the object of our attention. That there is a morality without religion has already been acknowledged in the foregoing pages. To deny it would be to deny a great and universally recognised fact. It is an un- questionable truth that a man's life may be regulated by the mere idea of humanity without the idea of God, by the mere idea of the humanli/ icortliy (jLonestnm\ by that which is seemly for man as a free personality and as the lord of nature, that there is within him a consciousness of what is good and right, and an estimable conduct in accordance with this, without respect to the divine will. We need here only to bear in mind the Stoics, and Kant, and many other instances within our own experience. But the possibility of this fact becomes 16 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. explicable to us, just by man's religious organization. For in order that the relation of religious dependence may be truly of free-will, that the theonomy may be truly /reg theonomy, man must possess a relative autonomy, must have an imparted self- dependence, must in a limited sense be his own centre and his own law. Man must be able to apprehend himself as his own aim, must in a relative sense be able to develope the realm of humanity as his own domain, and along with it to develope morality as his own ; all which he is capable of, since he can regulate his conduct in relation to himself, his fellow-men, and nature by reason, — which is his own law, in so far as its universality and its necessity constitute the very essence of human free-will. For in order that religious morality may exist, man must be careful of developing a worldly morality (the term " worldly" is here employed sensu medio without the secondary signification of sinful) as determining his life in re- lation to himself and the world, without at the same time the relation to God being thereby fixed. But the wider aim and purpose of this relative autonomy and worldly morality is not by any means that it should remain stationary in its self-glorifica- tion as a final result. It is its teleolomc desio;a that man should employ it as means for a higher relation, namely, that of religion ; that he should use it as an instrument for God's Spirit and God's kingdom, — that is to say, that man should hallow this worldly morality by that of religion, should let his autonomy be transformed into theonomy, should find the ultimate principle and the deepest motive of morality iu his religious relation ; that thus he should do all to the glory of God, which would be impossible if he could not also do all to his own glory, and were not in possession of an actual reality, which he might take, though certainly as a " robbery," and appropriate exclusively to himself. If worldly morality is not apprehended merely as a means, as a teleological moment for a higher aim, which alone is absolute in itself, it becomes entirely incomprehensible and inexplicable. Truly, if the light of religion be extinguished, no reason is per- ceptible for leading a moral life in all these finite and temporal relations. Religious morality alone explains that of the world, and from the religious stand-point we comprehend that in their %iormal development theonomy and autonomy, religious morality MOLALITY AND RELIGION. 17 and worldly morality, would be in harmonious unity, because the latter in its relative independence, which was given by God Himself, would acknowledge itself as moment and means for the development and realization of religious morality which proceeds from God, and through the world leads to God and God's kingdom. In our present abnormal development, which is subject to sin, they are separated, and worldly morality pre- sents itself in false self-dependence as man's oion self glorifying morality (in opposition to that operated by God), and claims to be itself the end and not the means. This abnormal condition may be pointed out in history from the very beginning, namely, the fall of man, and is specially the fundamental assumption of paganism. As the heathen in the olden times had a religion, which may be called man's oion revelation in opposition to the revelation of God, a religion which was addressed to the mythical deities of Olympus, but was the expression of the relation of dependence spun from men's poetical visions of the divine ; so paganism, after its awakening from this mythic dream, and having cast away faith in the gods of the poets, and emanci- pated itself from the relation of dependence on these, fixed its foundation in self-consciousness and the autonomy of free-will, and developed its oicn morality, making human self-conscious- ness to be the reECulative norm, and man to be " the aim and object" of all things. This process is repeated also in the Christian world, by an emancipation from the Christian revela- tion, that is to say, when men think they have discovered that Christianity too is a myth, and that the relation of dependence on Christianity was vain and illusory, only befitting the time of the nonaa;e of our race. History everywhere corroborates the assertion that abstract autonomic morality only appears at those seasons when there is also religious decay. It was during the decline of religion in Greece and Rome that the moral philosophers appeai'ed, and, so to speak, they enunciated their new doctrines from the ruins of the temples. And in times in which the Christian religion has seemed to be in a dying condition, the cry has ever been renewed, that morality will come to the rescue, and that now the age of unselfish virtue and pure free-will has arrived. In our own times, which at once show us a wide-spread decay of religion and a be^inninfj of religious revival, there is heard on B 18 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS, one side loud-voiced declamation to the effect that salvation is to be sought for in the purely ethical and the purely human, ■whilst on the other side are calmer voices, which maintain that the true conception of humanity demands that man shall not desire to have morality as his own, but as founded on God and on man's relation to God ; shall not desire to have a rio-htcous- ness of his own procuring, which must ever lack efficacy, but a better righteousness, namely, that of God and the kingdom of God. These calmer voices at the same time recall to memory the fact that Christianity, just by reason of its ethical foundation , its principle of personality, is distant as the poles asunder from the mythical, in which the idea of holiness is entirely absent : that while the mythical in its conception belongs to the pre- historic ages, Christianity came forth, in the midst of the times treated of by history, nay, in the midst of a period of prevailing scepticism and incredulity, with its announcement of a super- natural revelation concerning the salvation of mankind, and therefore must either be received as truth, which " by mani- festation of the truth will commend itself as such to the con- sciences of men," or must be considered as a deliberately planned but clumsy forgery. At the same time these calm voices call attention to the fact that Christianity throughout eighteen centuries has shown itself possessed of the peculiar power of recovering life when apparently almost defunct, — a peculiarity entirely absent in every m.ythology, which when once dead can never be restored, but remains for ever in the realm of shadows; that Christianity has a phoenix-nature, and after every historic death arises anew from the grave ; and that along with the resurrection wdiich Christianity has had in our days, — although many do not believe in this resurrection, — has also arisen from the grave the true conception of humanity in the living and indissoluble union of morality and religion. As the present work is designed to be a contribution in this direction, we add to what has been set forth above, that morality devoid of religion, in so far as it really is morality at all, and is determined by the idea of personality and of human worth, has its significance also in our own day, in opposition to the denial of spirit, to the materialistic and cudemonistic tendencies of the period, as an evidence of the breaking through of free-will into the domain of sensuaHty, and of the victory of the spirit over MORALITY AXD EELIGIOX. 19 tb.e lov/er nature, but that its conception of the dignity of man is far too limited. The true excellence of man is not his own excellence, but that which is giveii him by God in His grace. If man merely endeavours to maintain harmony with himself and his own excellence, he is not in a position to give true unity to his life. In spite of all his efforts he remains fixed in a con- tradiction, for the solution of which he does not possess the means. § 7. The contradiction which lies in a morality destitute of reli- gion will become manifest if we take as our starting-point the old contrast of the Stoics, between those things which are within our power and those which are beyond it (ra e^' '^/xiv and to. ovK e ON THE CONCEPT OF CHKISTIAN ETHICS. because they are principles of reality. But if the representation be not kept within such limits, but from the highest Good as the starting-point in continuous sequence develope the whole ethical system with all the varied forms of the moral, and also at its commencement take up the special organizations of society, it may be satisfactorily accomplished. Only when the entire system of ethics is exhibited on this plan, however high and admirable may be the scientific qualities, the objections of those yet retain their validity who complain that the subjective factor does not receive justice, and has thus to be taken up afterwards (as with Eothe in his otherwise excellent treatise on Duty, in which the law as schoolmaster to bring us to Christ can get no place), and that the whole plan bears the impress of ancient, one-sided objectivity. liothe remarks, that wherever ethics has been treated speculatively, it has always in the same degree been treated as teaching concerning the highest Good, and this con- cept placed foremost. But this is just the question at issue, if the speculative interest, or as we may more minutely define it, the concept of speculation, which is always a theoretic and con- templative interest, ought to be the predominant one in the dis- cussion of the entire subject of ethics, if there is not another interest present which by its paramount importance obliges us to change the order of sequence of the concepts. That is to say, we may examine the subject of ethics from another point of interest than the contemplative. It may be sought for in the purely practical interest, since it is desired that ethics should be life-teaching in the more stringent sense of the term, and must be a system of instruction in immediate concrete connection with life and earthly existence, which is not by any means the same thing as a conception of life in its general outline. It has been said, from a one-sided contempla- tive point of view, that ethics is the most interesting of all sciences so long as it is occupied with questions of general principles, of the various fundamental views of the world and of life, but the most tedious and the most trivial of all when it comes to deal with detail. But where the practical interests are genuine and living, we cannot by any means concur in this sentiment. The practical interest must undoubtedly investigate principles, but its chief consideration is their employment, their application to actual life in its diversity and its copious- THE DIVISIONS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 57 ness. Here it is required that ethics shall place before us not merely a conception of the world and of life, but an image of the moral life, which is lived and carried out under the influence of this conception. It must not merely depict principles and ideals, but the moral life in its development towards the ideal, through its separate concrete forms of reality. But the moral development is first and foremost the development of personality. And not merely does the practical interest require that ethics shall be a representation of this, but moreover it must be a guide and direction towards it, must point out the means which are to be employed for the growth and progress of the moral life, the obstacles which must be overcome and the dangers which must be encountered ; so that it must thus bear a dis- ciplinary and pccdagogic, an educative and training character. Among pagan thinkers we may refer to Epictetus in his trea- tises and his manual (^Enchiridion), since he delineates the practical philosopher as one who will not merely instruct his disciples in generalities by communicating to them ideas, but will assist them, reform and improve them, — make of them philosophers not merely in their views and opinions, but in the whole conduct of their lives. But in the Christian Church we may point to the whole didactic literature from the earliest to the most recent times, to writings like Tauler's work on the Folloiving of Christ's Life of Poverty, Thomas a Kempis on the Imitation of Christ, or Arnd's True Christianity, and many other books of a like character ; for whatever here is given in a purely didactic and hortatory form, ethics should unfold in scientific connection.^ But if we set forth from this practical interest and make the development of personality the predomi- nant consideration, then our starting-point cannot be totality, the world or realm of morality, though of necessity this must be presupposed, but we must begin with the individual personality, and thence proceed to the realm of personalities, of which the individual forms a member. Here, in the realm or total organi- zation of personality, the separate organizations of family, people and state, church and congregation, come under con- sideration as ethical subjects, as individuals included in the great whole, which have their own tasks to fulfil, their difficul- ties to conquer, their crises to pass through, and the development 1 Culmanu, Christian Ethics. 58 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. of which must be regulated ethically ; which forms no barrier to these same organizations being considered from another point of view as portions of the Good, as relatively realized aims, which are moments in the highest Good, in the progress of the kingdom of God on earth. According to this mode of looking at the subject, it may seem natural that, in the narrower signi- fication, practical ethics should begin with the teaching of the imitation of Christ, and from this point go forth into the circles of society. But life iu imitation of Christ presupposes life under the law and sin, in conjunction with the false abnormal development which is its result, and which must be broken off by repentance. If therefore the development of personality is to be perfectly represented, we must take our starting-point from life under the law and sin, and we thus get the reverse order of sequence from that which is required by the contem- plative interest. Being thus of opinion that the t\i'ofold interests of ethics should be satisfied, and that this, in order that the one may not be sacrificed to the other, must be accomplished by a twofold order of thought, in which each preserves its predominant view- point, the subject of ethics divides itself for us into two parts : a theoretical or contemplative part, and a practical. In this sense we may adopt and follow the old division of ethics into a general part and a special, in regard to which it need only be observed, that our special ethics is not by any means a simple subdivision of the general, a mere addition to it or continua- tion of it, but has its independent ground of division, its inde-. pendent structure, in a distinct standpoint. We cannot, however, immediately pass over to the repre- sentation of the ethical view of the world and of life. For before doing so, it is necessary briefly to set forth the postulates, without which Christian ethics neither in one form nor another is possible, and in which it has its basis and its roots. We have, in the foregoing portion of the work, referred to these postu- lates, but we make them now, though with necessary brevity, the subject of particular attention, which we shall take up in the general part. THE GENERAL DIVISION. POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS, THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. §16. « li^^^ONE is good but One, that is, God" (Matt. xix. 17). But God could not be the alone Good, if He were not the perfect personality. "We only acknowledge personality where a being asserts itself as Ego, and maintains itself self-consciously or wills. This is the highest form of existence, and must therefore, when freed from the limitation of the created Ego, be eminently suited to the greatest of beings, if this last be supposed to exist at all. However many attempts have been made to apprehend God as a super- personal being (transcending the conception of personality, because this must be too narrow, too anthropomorphistic), yet all these attempts have only led to the result, that God has been apprehended as a being beneath personality, whether He were represented as an abstract logical being, unconscious reason, blind wisdom, or as a physical being, a blind natural power, or lastly as a union of both, an undefined ideal-real prin- ciple, which altogether is of inferior dignity to the knowing and willing spirit, incapable of furnishing grounds of certainty to a world of self-consciousness and free-will, a world of morality, and unable to guarantee the validity and final victory of the Good. The Good, in the ethical import of the term, is not to be found except in personality, and within its realm ; and if there exists a principle which in the absolute sense is good, if there really is an infinitely worthy, — which is the settled con- viction of the human heart, — this can only be found in an absolute personality, which in the infinite riches of its attributes, G2 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. in perfect union of being and existence, determines itself to be the perfection of free-will, and the aim of its will to be the hif^hest Good. The postulate, without which ethics could not subsist, is therefore the ethical concept of God, which does not exclude the logical and physical, but contains them both as its moments. Perfect goodness has perfect knowledge and power as its attributes. God, the perfect in will, is at the same time the All-wise and All-powerful. It has been asked if the Good is good because God loills if, or if He wills the Good because it is in itself good. The Scotists in the middle ages maintained the first, Plato and Thomas Aquinas the second. With each of these theories great errors have been associated, and the right answer can only be educed from the concept of personality itself. The Scotists say that the Good is good because God wills it, since in His omnipotence He determines what shall be held, valid as good ; but if He appointed the opposite, then that would of necessity be the good also. It is the prerogative of God's majesty, of eternal omnipotence, to determine the Good, and thus God is represented in the same analogy as the ecclesiastical and papal authority of the middle ages, which in like manner decrees what it chooses, and requires this to be acknowledged as good because it has willed so. But in this sense to say that the Good is good because God wills it, is the same thing as to deny God's ethical personality. If omni- potence be placed as the superior power in God, which rules over the ethical as subordinate, which it can determine according to pleasure, we find ourselves actually landed in a physical concept of God. God's personality hovers then over the ethical as an arbitrary despot, and the good loses all necessity, has no intrinsic goodness, retains no absolute worth. In opposition to this view, which degrades the ethical below the physical, appears the theory that God wills the Good because it is in itself good. But with this, also, misapprehensions have not unfrequently associated themselves. That is to say, men often represent to themselves the Good as an idea, which, without God, and independently of Him, is the object of their recognition, or which is the external law or rule, to which they subject their wills. But just as it is contradictory that God should be governed by anything external to Himself, so is it THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. G3 also contradictory to suppose that there can be anything ex- ternal to God possessing an absolute worth, or constituting an absolute aim, since everything which has value has it only for an intelligent will, which determines the value and therein finds its satisfaction, and an aim presupposes a personality which appoints it. The solution of these difficulties must be sought in the conception of personality itself, and the two theories must be recognised as expressing two sides of absolute person- ality. Personality itself in its totality is the Good. God wills the Good because it is good in itself, not as something which is external to Himself, but because the Good is His own eternal essence. God cannot do otherwise than will His essential nature, which constitutes the eternal necessity of good in Plim "in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (Jas. i. 17), and which God Himself cannot change, since it is impossible that His will should decline from His own being. But, again, it may be said that the Good is good because God wills it, not as if there were arbitrariness in God, but because His will alone in truth is good, in so far as He freely actualizes His being. For the idea of personality is not merely to concur, but to originate ; not merely to he the Good, but also to produce the Good. This holds good, with necessary modification, not merely with the human personality, but also with the divine. If God is good only of necessity; if He is, so to speak, only deter- minately and fatalistically swayed by His nature. His being ; if the movements of His will are only forms of a process of nature ; then He is still encumbered by a physical destiny, which pre- vents the perfection of goodness, then His will is indeed the substantially good will, has in itself the contents and the ful- ness of the Good, but lacks the moment of subjective free-will, and with this perfect spirituality. From this view-point we repeat : The Good is good because God wills it, because the Good has only absolute value when it is determined not by necessity but of free-will. And every one who believes in the holy love of God will admit, that this love could not possess an absolute value for us, could not be the object of our incessant prayer and desire, if God only loved from the necessity of His nature, if we might not with perfect truth speak of God's free love, of God's free grace. God is the perfect unity of the etliically neces- sary and the ethically free ; and thus the perfect realization of 64 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. the Good, the eternal origin and prototype for the whole world of created spirits.^ §17. As the perfect realization of the Good, God Is raised above the contrast between the actual and the ideal, in which each free creature finds itself. It is this which is contained in Christ's words to the rich youncr man : " Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but One, that is, God." Not merely from the world of sin, but from the whole world of created spirits, He points to God as in the full signification of the word realli/ good, the source of all goodness in creation. Nay, though He Himself is mediator between God and creation, the express image of God's being, the man if ester of good upon earth, yet in connec- tion with this, He points away from Himself. For so long as He still finds Himself in His temporal condition, and in His estate of humiliation, He must also find Himself to be in contrast between His reality and His ideal. As yet He has not under- gone all trials and temptations ; as yet He has not been able to say, " It is finished ;" as yet He has not returned to the Father. But in God, the alone God, there is no contrast betw'een ideal and reality. His will is not, like that of man, subjected to a "«iM5i" and an "oK'^/ Anthropology, and by the same writer Zur Seckhfrage. THE SOUL'S RELATION TO ITS OKGANISJI. 83 far as it is capable of doing so under the given conditions. Mynster -^ has ah-eady essentially expressed this thought when he says : " There is evidently for the body a schema, a fixed form, according to which the material portions collect and arrange themselves in so far as external obstacles permit it ; these obstacles the power issuing from the interior constantly labours to overcome, and the new material portions, which it incessantly appropriates to itself in lieu of that which is passing away, arranges itself in the body according to the original schema. If this schema or impalpable form did not exist, we could not properly say that man has a body, for the material incessantly changes, but the schema, the real body — not the evanescent flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God — constantly arises afresh in new material." And fur- ther : " It is quite arbitrary only to admit the use of the word soul, after consciousness has been awakened. It is likewise the soul which developes itself, which comes to consciousness ; it is it which appropriates the bodily to itself and fashions it after its own schema." A teleological harmony between the bodily frame of a man and his predomfuant disposition of mind is often observable, especially in the case of highly gifted individuals. The musical genius is thus equipped with a fine ear, and a corresponding apparatus of the nerves. It is related of Mozart, that as a child he became impatient and cried whenever he heard a false note. According to the theory now advanced, he became a great musician not because his fine ear and the nervous system accompanying it were accidentally or by an external mechanism combined with his musical talents, but because this genius already prior to self-consciousness, no doubt under favourable conditions, formed, harmonized, and, so to speak, attuned its chief instrument, namely, the body, incorporating itself thus in accordance with its mental character. A similar agreement between the bodily organization and the character of the mind is exhibited in other spheres : with the philosophic genius, whose brain is formed to be the instrument of severe and continued thought; with the painter, whose eye not merely from exercise but by nature is better fitted than those of 1 The former Bishop of Zealand, who died in 1854. 84 THE ANTHROrOLOGICAL POSTULATE. I other men to observe tints of colour and outlines of material forms ; with the mechanical talent, which even in childhood shows itself skilful in the use of the fingers. No doubt ex- amples of the contrary may be brought forward from experi- ence, — instances where there was a want of harmony between the bodily organization and the mental endowments, where the soul must strive with unfavourable conditions which ap- peared antagonistic, nay, well nigh fatal to success. An in- stance of this is be found in the case of the optician Saunderson, described by Baggesen^ as blind from his birth, who, in spite of the terrible disadvantages of his position, made discoveries, not indeed in regard to colour, but in the science of light. With his inward eye he must have beheld the h'ght, whilst he made use of his other senses, along with his knowledge of mathematics, to furnish him with analogies.^ But these discordances, these disturbances and obstacles, are a problem by themselves, — in the deepest signification also a religious and ethical problem, since we are reminded by the apostolic declaration that the " creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly" (Rom. viii. 20). These examples, however, do not shake our fundamental assumption. That is to say, we by no means deny that the assimilation of the body to the soul (Sjcelens Corporisation), or the soul's embodiment, is subject to more or less favourable conditions which are not within its own power. We only maintain that the soul has the original tendency to form. its body in accordance with its own character, to carry out its schema and the required harmonizing of its bodily instruments, and instinctively to do this with all its might. But we do not say that in every case it is suc- cessful in overcoming obstacles. It is not merely in the ^ Danish poet. 2 J. Baggcscn, Plnlof^opTiic Lefjacy, vol. i. p. 248 : " Saunderson, whose inner eye unquestionably perceived the light, -was able to specify the gra- dations of brightness according to some symbolic analogy of his remaining senses, or altogether through pure mathematics, uninfluenced by the acci- dental colour which he did not distinguish, and this with greater precision than any seeing optician who had put on spectacles coloured red, blue, or green. Saunderson, who was born blind, who had never seen the sun, nor the tiniest drop of dew, never in fact any external mirror of the Almighty, cried out when dying : ' God of Ntivton and of Clarke have mercy on me! ' I cannot write it down without shedding tears." THE SOUL'S RELATION TO ITS ORGANISM. 85 formation of the human body that nature exhibits disorder and irrationality. The point in which it is most generally acknowledged that the human frame is an expression of the mental character, is the physiognomy, especially of the face, in w^hich is perceived a visible index, not merely of the intellectual, but also of the moral being, the inherent qualities of the individual, whether considered as character, or only as individual capacity or pos- sibility of development in a certain direction. But here an important difference appears between the soul of man and the soul of beasts. The soul of the beast, which forms its bod}', is so entirely incorporated with it, that it may in the strictest sense of the term be said, that for instance the body of the wolf or the lamb, the eagle or the dove, is the creature's visible soul. But the human soul is not one and the same with his bodily frame ; the first has an inward infiniteness, an invisible amount of resource which does not come into view. And this is the cause of the uncertainty of physiognomy, since more is contained within the human soul than ever appears. On the other hand, the great charm and attraction of the pursuit is just throuo-h the visible to discover the invisible. And whatever are the objections which, justly or unjustly, are brought for- ward against physiognomy, men still preserve their faith in it, if not unconditionally, at least within certain limits, and its advocates will always be justified in the assertion, that there is scarcely a single individual who can fully and entirely free himself from the persuasion that the countenance is the mirror of the soul, or who is entirely indifferent to the features and the eyes of the person with whom he holds daily and intimate intercourse. If physiognomy be entirely without truth, why do the arts of the painter and the actor stedfastly maintain their hold on mankind, and why are the demands on these not merely for pathognomic but also for physiognomic representa- tions? And how can the desire be explained, which has existed from earliest ages and exists to the present day, to see any person who has been distinguished in any way whatever, whether for good or for evil, — a desire which would be alto- gether meaningless without a belief in the correspondence of the external appearance with the inner being? But the ob- Bervations of physiognomy will obtain an entirely different SQ THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. result according as they are brought to bear on the naturalistic or the ethical conception of humanity. The naturalistic theory, which regards man as only the product of nature, as the animal developed to intelligence, will lay special stress on the many resemblances to the animal world to be observed in the human countenance, — resemblances to the lion, the horse, the dog, the cat, to fishes and birds, — and from these will seek to strengthen its assertion, that mankind had its origin from below and not from above.^ Tlie ethical theory of man, which regards him not merely as the work of nature, but of the Creator, will, on the contrary, through all the intellectual and moral varieties of which the human countenance bears witness, seek to discover the impress of the Creator, or the impress of the good as a possibility, as a tendency which proceeds from the alone Good. We are here reminded of Lavater. However much of what is perishable and untenable may be found in his Physiog- nomic Fragments^ which he wrote for " the promotion of the knowledge and love of mankind," there remains behind as imperishable his ethical conception of man, his theory of man as created in the image of God. He therefore demands that we endeavour to read God's handwriting in every human countenance, because he maintains that no face of man is so hideous that there is not to bo found in it traces of the dignity of human nature and its likeness to God. What Lavater calls God's handwriting we may also call the ideal physiognomy, the physiognomy for which man in the depth of his individuality is designed, and which differs both from the natural or con- genital physiognomy and from the physiognomj' of habit, which has been formed in the course of years through tlie continued action of the man, and which in persons of a high stamp of morality frequently shows us interwoven with it elements of the ideal. According to liis view, this ideal physiognomy becomes perceptible in a striking degree in the case of many dying persons, whose features assume an ineffable expression of refine- ment and beauty, as also after death, and that too in regard to individuals whose character during life had not been marked ^ In reference to these resemblances of the animal world to human coun- tenances, which must have been observed by almost every i^eri-on, see Lotze's Microkosmns, ii. lOS and onwards. THE SOUL'S RELATION TO ITS OEGANISM. 87 by anything extraordinary ; yet when the sufferings and anxieties of this world are past, and the rest of death allows the original handwriting of God to appear, these show us traces of God's glory amid the ruins of decay. But in every living countenance he seeks to read this handwriting, even through many obscurities and veilings ; and he has often succeeded in tracing it in men sunk in depravity, as an evidence that these were destined for something far better than what they had made themselves in reality, or than what they had actually become. With regard to Lavater's physiognomic efforts, which of course also embraced the physiognomy of character or habit, it may with justice be said, that in its application many exag- gerations, mistakes, and confusions between the essential and the accidental found place. It may be maintained with reason, that physiognomy will never attain to a science, much less, as Lavater himself unfortunately enough expressed it, to the rank of an exact science like that of mathematics ; and this for the obvious reason, that uo individuality can be perceived and comprehended through general definitions and abstract rules, to which science is confined, but can be grasped only by intui- tion, by an immediate and individual glance, which at the same time must be able to separate between the accidental and the essential. Nevertheless Lavater is essentially in the right, even if the system as a whole be rejected, and if by the side of a great amount of accurate observation much may be pointed out which is not accurate. He is in the right in maintaining that human individuality is of one 'piece, and is not composed of two separate independent parts, and that the soul forms for itself its bodily expression, though under certain limitations in which there is an indefiniteness, which indefiniteness Lavater did not sufficiently take into account, and thereby gave Lich- tenberg occasion for his celebrated persiflage on physiognomy. He is right in this point, — and in it he stands forth as one of the great representatives of humanity, — that every person, even the most insignificant, is an eternal individuality^ or genius. The connected observation not merely of the actual attainment of the individuality, but also of its inmost essence, of the fet- tered genius within the man, insight into the twofold being of our kind, the actual and the ideal, the traces of which he sought in the human countenance — it is this which belongs to the im- 88 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. perishable in Lavater. If naturalistic and pessimist physiogno- mists, who fix their eyes exclusively on the actual life of man, assert, that when we except a small number of handsome faces, a small number of intellectual faces, and a small number of genial faces, of which last, however, not a few border on the sheepish, there remains a preponderating number of human countenances ugly, stupid, and indicative of inward depravity, melancholy and pitiable to behold, wearisome and monotonous ; nay, when Schopenhauer declares that individual faces bear the impress of such vulgarity and stolidity that one wonders that any person is content to go abroad with such an exterior, and does not prefer to wear a mask ; we by no means contest the relative truth contained in this theory, for in our opinion there are many human countenances, in which by sin the handwriting of God has been well-nigh obliterated or written over by the scribblings of worldliness. But even if Lavater's view should be in danger of declining into optimist illusions, yet unques- tionably it is right when it asks, if the reason why so few liuman faces are to be found which are fitted to awaken interest should not be sought for partly in a want of the faculty of observation, partly in a want of benevolence? Lavater's view of mankind, whether as a physiognomist he is correct in details or not, is the ethical, just because he always inquires about the possibility. It is this which makes the most insignificant person interesting to him. The merely pessimist physiognomist's view of mankind is on the contrary immoral, deterministic, and fatalistic, because it closes its eyes to possibility, and looks exclusively to actual achievement. The immortal soul in Lavater's v.ork, in spite of the ephemeral character of his system, is the spirit of philanthropy with its great impulses, which through an inexhaustibility of turnings seeks to open our eyes to the fettered genius within man.^ ^ For iustance in the 79th Fragment: " When a neglected youth or boy meets thy glance, alas ! that brow was marked by God to seek and to find truth. In his eye rests wisdom undeveloped ; ou his lips trembles a spirit, which entreats thee to loosen its bonds and set it free. His mind and hia hands are fettered. Priest and Levite pass by on the other side — but not so thou ; look at what he is, and what he may become ! " This appeal recurs again and again, and thus he passes over into ethics. [MicheUen translates a different passage from this as his footnote, and it THE SOUL'S RELATION TO ITS ORGANISM. 89 §24. Man's eternal indlvicluaHty, the basis of his character and his faculty, is 2;iven him by his Creator and determined unalterably beforehand ; no human being will ever be able to attain a higher degree of perfection than has been planned in the possibiUties of "his existence, although all men, both in regard to will and talent, are destined to be in the image of God, and in so far to the same state of perfection. To one, two pounds have been entrusted, to another five ; and he who has the two may gain other two, he who got the five, other five, each thus in proportion to the original gift. But the development from possibility to actual achievement may be more or less normal or abnormal, productive or unproductive, as w^ith the slothful servant, who dififeed a hole in the earth and hid his lord's money. This then, the ethical development of personality, must be effected through the natural individuality, which is determined by bent and disposition, feeling and temperament, and in which the in- tellectual tendency and talents move instinctively in the dawn of feeling. The natural individuality is from the first relatively changeable. AVe say relatively, for there is a fundamental impress which remains unalterably the same from birth to death, a natural determination, an innate disposition which the man must carry along with him throughout all the stages of life, and from which he can no more separate himself than he can separate himself from his own Ego, which remains the same under all change, the same in the old man as in the child. We may thus contemplate the temperament or the natural dis- runs thus : — " For instance Physiogn. Fragments, 2nd Essay (Leipsic and Winterthur, 1776), page 28 and onwards : ' The most wicked, depraved, worthless man is still a man, and of necessity a denizen of God's world, and capable of a darker or clearer perception of his individuality and indispen- sable requirements. Oh, brother man, look at what is present there, not on what is lacking. Humanity, in all its distortions, is still always humnnity, ivorthy of admiration. No man ceases to be a man, even when he appears to sink far below the dignity of manhood. So long as he is not a beast (and as little as a beast can become a man can a man become a beast), ro long is he capable of improvement and perfectibility. Behold what may be brought out of it ! ' This appeal occurs frequently, and it is just this through which he proceeds to ethics. (SeeLavater's Biography hj Bode- manu, p. 230. Selections of beautiful passages from Fragm. 79, new edition.)"] 90 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. position in the organization of soul and body, which disposes the individual to certain feelings and emotions of the mind, to a certain manner of assuming the duties of life, earnestly or liglitly, energetically or calmly and passively. Yet the natural individuality is plastic and susceptible of modification. It is not at first mature and finished, but rather to be compared to a rough sketch, an outline, which must be further filled in, and which may be developed either for better or for worse, in harmony or in opposition to the ideal, the prototype which the man bears wdthin himself ; which harmony or opposition is the source of the individual's blessedness or misery. The life of a beast is the necessary unfolding of its individuality ; and all that a beast does, it does because it is so formed once and for all. But with regard to man, the requirement is made that he shall form, overcome, rule, and modify his natural individuality into an organ of personality ; that is to say, not the abstract per- sonality, but that which has been determined from eternity as the character of the individual. §25. The psychological primary forms in which the development of personality is effected, whether this be normal or not, show themselves in the first place as assimilation and production^ as appropriation and producing, forming energy. But of these two, assimilation is the most important, and specially demands our attention, because all activity is conditioned by it. As- similation is not merely a physical, but moreover a mental process, on the normal execution of which the health of the spiritual existence depends. It begins with us all as a process of nature. As we find ourselves corporeally in an atmosphere which is sometimes purer, sometimes less pure, but which we cannot avoid inhaling, so also in the spiritual and intellectual. We breathe in the atmosphere of our age, the atmosphere of our surroundings, and receive from our earliest years a multitude of traditions, ideas, examples, which unconsciously and un- observed we transmute into our own. Incessantly these mental influences flow in on us. From childhood we are nourished not merely by bodily but also by mental food, and the health of the soul as well as that of the body is affected by the material which we receive and assimilate. The assertion of the THE SOUL'S PvELATION TO ITS ORGANISM. 91 materialists, that man is what he eats, contains a far deeper truth than they themselves are in a condition to perceive. As, now, the atmosphere which we inhale, the mental foods which we employ, are of a very mixed character, and contain heavenly, earthly, and demoniac elements, divine and human, transitory and imperishable, hence appears the necessity of a mental separation (excretion) of the useless, hurtful, and pernicious materials, and especially the necessity of a mental as well as a bodily system of dietetics. "What the beasts do instinctively in only appropriating to themselves that which is fitted to be serviceable, men must perform with consciousness and free-will. And what at first is only a process of nature must pass over into a jDi'ocess of ethical appropriation and corresponding separation or excretion of the deleterious matter. The more culture and civilisation advance in the %vorld, the greater the abundance and variety of mental food produced, so much the more important becomes the requirement to be careful about appropriation. With justice the present age is vaunted on account of its abundant opulence in learning and science ; but is it not an alarming idea, how thoughtlessly and carelessly the great majority of persons swallow this mixture of mental food, give up their mind to the varied impressions without making dis- tinction between pure and impure ? How frivolous, for instance, many persons are in the choice of their reading, allowing entrance into their mind to all and sundry, opening wide the portals of their souls, so that all the fowls under heaven may lay their eggs there ! Not first in the Levitical law, nay, but in Paradise, was man directed to discriminate in the choice of his food, since he might eat of the tree of life, but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not as if he must not know the evil, but he must not eat of it, must not assimilate it, must not change it into his own fxcsh and blood, which he was to do with the fruit of the tree of life. We mav here also recall the circumstance that in the Gospel Christ names Himself the bread of life (John vi. 51) ; an expression which must be taken in its most real sense, since He thus offers men, who have only access to impure and mixed food, not merely His teaching, but Himself as the right, pure, and heavenly food. For as is apparent in every relation of love, personality alone can serve for the nutrition and refreshment of personality. 02 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. AVhat man appropriates to himself or assimilates, lie must work out and perfect by his own exertion. We have said that the man is what he appropriates, but we may also say that the man is what he does. For in action he displays what he has really made his own, what power it has gained in his being, if he has really chano;ed it into his own flesh and blood (in succum et sanguinem), or if it has remained lying within him as un- digested substance. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matt. vii. 16). As appropriation is the condition of action, so also is action on the other hand the condition and means of appropriation ; for only through action can appropriation be perfected. We are here again reminded of the words of Christ, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish Plis work" (John iv. 34). Tlirough His working the work of the Father, His constant submission to the will of the Father, in which He does nothing of Himself, but everything by the Father, He draws to Himself the heavenly, nourishing, and fructify- ing powers, — He is filled, so to speak, with the Father, — the eternal Word assumes form in Him. The same holds true in a i^eneral psvcholomcal sense of us all, that throu2;h our continued activity we acquire influences and powers from the intellects, ideas, and powers in whose service we engage, and to which, during our action, we devote ourselves, whether the mental food we thus procure prove perishable or imperishable, quickening or life-destrovinff, fertilizincr or causing; sterility in the inward being. Vv^e may therefore also say, the man is or becomes more and more like to what he loves, or to that to which he devotes his service. For man was not made to live for himself alone, but to live also in and for mankind, and in the deepest significa- tion of the term to live for God and for God's kiuiidom. Without love man cannot exist ; love he must, whether he will or not, though the object of his affection may be of very different characters. He cannot help, also, serving the universal powers which use him as their instrument; nay, finally, he must serve God or the world, or endeavour, that which none can accom- plish, to serve two masters. To the contrasts mentioned before must therefore now be added that also between egoism and love, selfishness (wliich seeks to exalt one's own) and self-denying de- votion, as fundamental forms for the development of personaHty. In the unity liere described of appropriation and productive THE SOUL'S RELATION TO ITS ORGANISM. 93 energy, of assimilation and excretion, of self-seeking and self- devotion, the soul fashions for itself its body, its instrument in a new and higher sense than that mentioned before ; for now it is no longer in a preconscious but in a conscious state. What we receive by appropriation and assimilate into our own being becomes in the closest sicrniflcation our own. Our deeds not merely leave a stamp on the outer world, for this is often soon obliterated, but more specially they leave behind them an enduring impress on our minds, verifying the Scripture, " And their works do follow them" (Rev. xiv. 13). The powers in whose service we have placed ourselves impress on us their mark and seal, and these we must bear. This more or less complete possession of our inward being is as closely united with our Ego as our outward body is, and we may therefore describe it as our inward, spiritual, and intellectual frame or body. Man labours incessantly to form both his outward and his inward frame. The outward body is fashioned as instru- ment and expression of the personality, and assumes in many ways an impress of the moral or immoral (the physiognomy of character — characteer 2^^>^/siognomiet) ; the inward or mental frame is fashioned by the perceptions and maxims of the soul, its affections and its aversions, efforts and achievements, its passions and its fancies, — by everything which through the process of life becomes the individual's own property, and by repetition and habit its second nature. Though from time to time a change may occur in the mental food, yet the essential inward character remains. We all work at this inward frame whether we are aware of it or not. Incessantly we spin, weave, and knit our inward garment, which, unlike our outer garment, can never be cast aside, because it is interwoven with our Ego, and in it our soul, our will, shall be arrayed, when, after laying down the material body, it shall enter eternity. Everything will then depend on the material of which we have fashioned our inward organism, on the spiritual power to which our Ego has devoted its service, and for what kingdom we have been ripening. The view here stated, that the soul itself fashions its inner organism or its inward frame, is to be found already in several of the old mystics and theosophs, who had a great idea of assimilationj of the import of mental appropriation and nutri- 94 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. tion, to which also the doctrine of the sacraments, particularly that of the Lutherans, must be held to point. In Rationalism the processes of assimilation and of nutrition have been entirely ignored ; and without the feeding and nourishing of the soul all must issue in mere producing, acting, working, which must therefore be barren and unfruitful. A deeper psychology and theology must lead back to the truth of the old doctrine founded on Scripture. (Examine specially the parables in Scripture which represent the kingdom of God under the figure of a feast.) BENT OR INCLINATION AND FREE-WILL — SIS. §26. The destiny of man is shadowed forth in human desires and inclinations. The bent or inclination is the inmost nature of the created, finite, and limited being, striving for development. It is the created life itself which relates itself to itself as its own special aim. As blind v/iW, the inclination stirs and moves itself in the natural ground of personality, and drives forward the development of personality, because it wishes to be received into the seeing self-conscious will, and thus necessitates this last to determine itself, i.e. to fix its choice between the varied attractions of the inclinations. With bent or inclination there is always associated a deficiency, a want, which is sought to be removed by the satisfaction of the former. The permanent satisfaction of the bent or inclination is called a good ; and as many things may be enumerated as good for man, so also may we speak of many bents, inclinations, or desires. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction is associated with the feeling of pleasure or disgust, which may rise to affection or emotion of mind. The inclination itself, through longing or desire, may mount to passion. There have been disputes about the subdivisions of impulse or inclination, and there are some wdio have maintained that there is but one indispensable impulse in man as in every living being, namely, that of self-preservation. Thus Spinoza, who determines essential impulse as the effort of every being to pre- IMPULSE AND FREE-WILL. 95 serve existence (cippetitus unius ciijusgue rei in suo esse per- severare). This may be accepted if by self-preservation we understand the unhindered development of all the moments of the life of personality. AVe may then, in relation to the for'^- going, name as essential impulses, that of appropriation and that of production. And as man can only develope himself in harmony with his being, can only maintain his personal exist- ence when he not merely lives to himself, but also lives as a link of the entire chain for that which is different from and more than himself, we may further name as essential impulses, that of egoism and that of love (the autopathic and the sym- pathetic), though they cannot be abstractly separated from each other, since they are to each other as manifestations of the same life. Yet these oppositions may be included in a higher one, because all depends on the principles of appropria- tion and production, and the kindred nature of the aims of self- interest and those of affection. The classification of impulses must proceed from the good things or benefits towards wdiich the impulses are directed. And as the human life of personality has the twofold destiny of a life in God and a life in the world, we name as the deepest, all-embracing, essential impulses of human nature, the worldly impulse, or the impulse to life in the world, its dignity and pleasure, which embraces all relative goods, and the impulse of God's kingdom, or the life in God's kingdom as the highest good. God and the world are the highest universal powers which stir in human nature, and through the corresponding impulses make man their instrument. For although the world is God's world, yet in a modified sense He has permitted it to have life in itself. He has bestowed a relative independence and self-dependence on it as being other than God ; and this principle of the world's independence and the world's autonomy aims at establishing its sovereignty in man and through him by means of these impulses. As man is appointed to be God's representative on earth, so too is he the representative of the world and its autonomy, which in him comes into consciousness ; and it is this twofold character in his destiny which man in a normal manner must bring into unity. The deepest contrast in the elements of man's nature is there- fore not the contrast between mental and physical, between sympathetic and autopathic, but between sacred and secular, or 96 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. loorldlrj. Every other classification of impulses has the defect of making no clear distinction between the principal spheres in which the life of man seeks its development. Both the worldly impulse and that of God's kingdom has its autopathic and its sympathetic side, and each of them strives after both appro- priation and production. §27. The worldly bent or impulse is the inclination to a complete and entire life in the world, to a harmonious, self-satisfied worldly existence, which we designate by the term happiness. It determines itself more closely as impulse and desire after appropriation of the world, appropriation of the world's goods, whether this be souMit in external things, in the relations of human society, or in the realm of thought (for instance in the pursuit of arts and sciences). Through the appropriation of the world is sought not merely an outward possession, but the actual enjoyment, in which worldly possessions are assimilated as food, satisfaction, fulness for the life of the individual. But as the worldly impulse incites man to appropriate to himself the goods which are given to him and prepared for him, so it also urges him to production, to take the world as material out of which he may fashion and build for himself a new world, towards which he may relate himself in the same manner as to his body. Both in regard to external nature and to social rela- tions this impulse appears in the individual, in however narrow a sphere, to arrange, fashion, and determine his surroundings in accordance with himself, his temper, mode of thought and will, which is very conspicuous in the inclination to rule and guidance, sovereignty and encroachment. Thus it appears as though the worldly impulse were purely egoistic or autopathic, employing everything as means for the individual. Yet such is not the case. The higher the object of appropriation, the greater its intrinsic w^orth, the loftier the aim of production ; the more do the impulses of appropriation appear to be com- bined with the disposition to acknowledge this object for its own sake, its value in itself, with the disposition towards devo- tion, towards placing itself in a ministering relation in regard to it. The impulse to life in the world may in the form of self-devotion urge man to set his life on an idea, as is abun- IlirULSE AND FKEE-WILL. 97 clantly shown by history both in politics, arts and sciences, dis- coveries and inventions. It expresses itself also as the impulse of morality, as an impulse to subject the will to a higher norm or rule ; and the energetic working in the service of the idea becomes itself a principal moment in the happiness. But the worldly impulse as such has its aim in the world, and does not lead us bevond the horizon of the consciousness of the world and of ourselves, although in a certain sense this may be also termed an infinite horizon, namely, in so far as ideas are im- manent principles in the world. The impulse towards God does not aim after happiness, but after blessedness, the full and perfect life in God and in God's kingdom, for which life in the world is only the lower, minis- tering basis, the means by which the life of bliss may obtain more abundant substance and fulness. The impulse of God's kingdom leads man beyond the world, incites him to seek his centre not in himself, or in the world, but in God. In the world as the summary of relative goods, man cannot find full contentment, but only in God, the highest Good. The impulse towards God is the impulse to the appropriation of God — appro- priation of God in His revelation, His word. His gifts, the workings of His grace, His power in creation — as the only suitable and imperishable food of the soul. More especially it determines itself as an impulse of production for the kingdom of God's sake, to make of the human an instrument for the divine, to make humanity a dwelling for God and for His Spirit, an effort requiring a deeper appropriation of the world than is demanded by the mere worldly impulse. The autopathic and the sympathetic, self-esteem and love for others, are closely combined in the relation to God. The individual desires bliss, therefore he seeks to appropriate to himself God in His gifts, that God may become his possession, his own. But this appro- priation is impossible without the unconditional devotion and sacrifice of the individual's own will. Thus faith is an act of the highest appropriation, and at the same time an act of deepest devotion. Thus prayer is at once appropriation of God and sacrifice to God. Thus every action which is wrought in God is a work of appropriated grace and of man's free efforts. And inseparable from the impulse of devotion with the ardour of love is the impulse to obedience, or conscience. For con- 98 THE ANTHROrOLOGICAL POSTULATE. science is not merely consciousness or knowledge, but also bent or inclination, a living prompting of nature, a desire and necessity in tlie inner part of man urging him to obey God, in reverence to submit himself to His holy will, to respect every- thing which bears the impress of this will, this supernatural authority, its law, its ordering of human life. As the con- science also has an immanent side from which it may be con- sidered as man's own voice, a worldly mode of thought may deny its supernatural character ; but such a view has always man's own inmost consciousness opposed to it, conscience wit- nessing to the eternity of the individual, and the relation to God, elevated above all worldly relations, as the fundamental relation of man. Conscience incites man to set aside self- interest, nay, to sacrifice property and life, for the cause and will of God ; and not the less is it the deepest impulse of self-pre- servation which urges the man to care for his true well-being, that lie may not, even if he could thereby gain the whole world, injure his own soul.^ But with man, impulse is not, as with beasts, irresistible and absolute in its government. Man has faculties of consideration and reflection; he can ponder on his impulses, and estimate their significance in the light of self-consciousness and divine revela- tion, in the light of God's holy commandment, the contents of which are not merely the good as an idea, but as divine will. How far impulses shall become governing motives, in what relation the}'' shall stand towards each other, which impulse shall become predominant, all this rests from the first on man's free, self-conscious will. Where free-will determines and acts, and thereby actualizes its possibilities, there first begins the ethical as such. §28 If the development of the human race had been normal, then the worldly impulse w'ould have been subject to the impulse to God's kingdom, life in the world would have been the subser- vient prop and support of life in God, the ideal of happiness in its qualified significance would have been subordinated to the ideal of bliss as the unqualified or absolute. There would then have existed upon earth a condition of justice, in which every- 1 Sibbem, Psychology, 2d edition, p. 326. siK 99 tiling would have been in its proper place, in wliicli man would have prized every good according to its real worth, and thus have loved God above all else. But after sin entered the world the relation was changed, and a universal condition of injustice was introduced, in which the really subordinate has assumed the position of superiority. It is the characteristic of the human race in its present condition, that the worldly impulse is the predominating, that the impulse towards the kingdom of God is repressed and fettered, and that with so strong a chain, that the normal relation between life in God and life in the world can only be restored by redemption. Man would not be the world's master as God's servant, but allowed himself to be seducec' into wishing to be its master in his own right. In disobedienct* he forsook the relation of service towards God, and thereby he sank into a false dependence on the world and on himself : " for whoso exalteth himself shall be abased." The characteristic feature of man in the condition of sin may be designated as worldliness (which is no longer to be under- stood sensu medio), — a condition, a habitus, a course of life in which the relation to God, though assuredly not absolutely removed, is disturbed and weakened ; in which life in the world is developed at the expense of life in God. Man has become a man of the world instead of a man of God, a child of the world instead of a child of God, a citizen of the world without right of citizenship in heaven. Both appropriation and pro- duction give evidence of this. His appropriation is predomi- nantly appropriation of the world, and he feeds not only his body but also his mind essentially wdth worldly matter, assi- milates only worldly food, whilst his capacity for receiving what is holy is blunted ; and in order that he may be brought to receive and appropriate to himself divine things, and partake of imperishable food, some powerful awakening is generally necessary. His producing energy is essentially directed towards worldly aims and interests, fields and merchandise, wdfe and children (Luke xiv. 16 and onwards), politics, art, and worldly science ; but to work for God's kiugdom he is too slothful and unfit. His devotion is only devotion to the world. He may indeed set his life on an idea, may bring sacrifices for ideal aims, but he has no sacrifice for the living personal God, towards whom he does not stand in any personal relation. 100 THE AKTHROrOLOGICAL POSTULATE. Although he believes on God as the God of the race, yet he does not know Him as his own God ; and although the con- sciousness of God and religious emotions may momentarily appear, yet the relation to God forms no determinate factor in his life. Whilst he carefully developes his worldly talents, he is generally quite passive in regard to the perfection of his reliirious endowments, althoutrh conscience often reminds him of his obligations, and he resembles the slothful servant, who hid the talent entrusted to him in the ground. But incessantly he chases after earthly ideals of happiness, mere relativities, which he imagines to be the absolute, and to which, in spite of the numerous disappointments which he has already encoun- tered, he still continues to knit the greatest hopes for himself and for the world. This is repeated not merely in the life of some individual?, but also in that of nationalities, entire com- munities, nay, even in that of the human race. The expression of historic worldliness is paganism, by Avhich we would under- stand not merely ancient paganism, but also the paganism which developes itself in the midst of Christianity. The characteristic of worldliness is seen from first to last in the religions of paganism, the divinities of which are only personified powers and energies of the world. It is seen in its philosophy, in those pantheistic systems which acknowledge no other God than the universe. It is seen in the practical mode of thought corresponding to pantheism, which may be adopted without any philosophy, and which only considers the individual as a link in the whole race, — only gives significance to the indivi- dual in consideration of what he may become in the world, what position he may come to hold in the community, in tlie nation, but has no thougiit of the eternity of the individual, his destiny to live his life for God. The characteristic mark of worldliness is seen, lastly, even in that worldly morality which is destitute of religion. We repeat it, to guard as far as possible against misunderstanding, that we do not deny its relative value in a world which now is as it is. But every serious reflection on this point must, on the presumption of a livinii God, lead to the acknowledo;ment that there must be something wrong with a world in which religion and morality can be disjoined, and that this points back to a falling away from God. SIN. 101 "Within the wide domain of worldliness is found an endless variety of individual character ; and at all times there is here a relative difference between good and evil, honesty and dis- honesty ; between such men as have a desire for salvation and an aspiration after it, and such as know not even the desire, but only sink deeper in worldliness ; between such as are not far from the kingdom of God, and such as are far from it. But even the sin present in worldliness we describe as the union of the false love of the world and the false self-love in separa- tion from God. Whether v/e consider the phenomenon of sin in men who are called sinners above others, and we plunge into the annals of crime, or into sketches of life in our own time setting forth the decay of morals, or into revolutionary and anarchical circumstances, where all bands are loosed, and the passions, which are at other times restrained by the laws of society, — for we always stand on a volcano, — burst forth un- checked; or if we contemplate sin in those men who are virtuous above other men, or in the great multitude who exhibit to us what has been called the average of human morality ; or if we, as is indeed indispensable to our accurate perception of it out- side of us, trace its manifestations in our own life ; in all these different researches we are always led back through multifarious diversities to this fundamental phenomenon : the want of faith in God, worldly desires, and dependence on the good things of this world, egoism, which wraps us up in our own interests, and in accordance with its nature has boundless demands. As sin had its origin in the desire of man to be master, without at the same time beine; willing to be God's servant, and thus arose in dis- obedience to God ; and as sin in the human race is the continu- ance of this disobedience ; so egoism must be adjudged, as the subjective moment of worldliness, to be the prime mover in the kingdom of sin, because it is the selfishness in itself reflected, which in reference to the love of the world has the higher spirituality. Indeed it is to be remarked that human egoism is not like the egoism of the fallen spirits, from the very begin- ning a direct hostility and rebellion against God ; it does not attempt to take heaven by storm ; rebellion was not, in fact, man's aim, but only the inevitable condition on which the forbidden fruit which tempted him could be enjoyed: thus man is not opposed to God, but only wishes to use and rule over the 102 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. world witliout God. Not the less is this false independence and usurpation of authority, therefore, disobedience, which consti- tutes sin as such. Human egoism also developes itself the more it advances and increases, till it attains the Titanic and Promethean character, till it becomes the man of sin, seating itself in God's place, and desiring to be worshipped as God (2 Thess. ii. 4). It was self, his own will, which man wished to enjoy in the forbidden fruit. It must not also be over- looked, in this milder view of the fall of man, that he allowed himself to be deceived into the expectation, that by the use of the forbidden fruit he should himself become as God, should himself become the centre of the world (Eritis siciiti Deus). §29. As man is a being composed of soul and body, egoism may develope itself as either predominantly physical or predomi- nantly intellectual. In the first case, man sinks in self-degra- dation heloio the position and dignity which God bestowed on him, sinks down into matter : in the other, he elevates himself by a false self-exaltation above his sphere, and seeks to take to himself a higher place and dignity than God has appointed him. Here is verified in its deepest import the saying : Medium temiere heati, — blessed are they who remain in that middle position assigned to them by God, and who thus remain in God, as the centre of their existence. This false self-degradation and false self-exaltation, sensuality and arro- gance, are both fundamental forms of sin. In sensuality he who ought to be the lord of nature becomes its slave ; the more he devotes himself to the lusts of the flesh, the more dependent he becomes on the body ; for this last, which ought to be the tool or instrument of the soul, is emancipated to a false in- dependence, so that instead of obeying its rightful sovereign it tyrannizes over it. It is this carnality, emancipated to a false autonomy, to which the apostle refers, when he speaks of the law in his members which takes man captive, so that he cannot do the good which he would (Rom. vii.). And inas- much as this carnality exerts a pressure on the life of the soul, it has led Platonists, and also ascetics, into the error of regard- ing the bodily condition in itself and essentially as evil ; whilst evil has its seat in the will, which, fallen away from God, has SIN. 103 sold itself to the flesh, and materialized itself. In false self- exaltation, in the lust of dominion, the pride of knowledge, and an imaginary intellectual perfection, in which he dreams him- self a god, man soars to aerial and unreal heights, where all safe footing is absent, and whence he must infallibly topple over. Although this spiritual arrogance, which may even go so far that the man would wish to have no body, because this reminds him that he is a finite creature, and though in an airy idealism he may seek to reason away the whole material world, though this arrogance and sensuality are opposed to each other, yet they are always found together, and there is no individual who sins exclusively in the one direction. As it is the soul which has sinned, and as the soul is twofold in its nature, having a spiritual and a carnal side, so must the human Ego exist at the same time in sinful spirituality and in sinful carnality. The whole man must become impure, but the impurity in each region corresponds with its own nature. If therefore the great majority of men sin in the direction of sensuality, giving the reins to naaterial impulses, yet nevertheless arrogance has a place in their being, and shows itself when opportunity occurs. And although, on the other hand, many may sin in the supermaterial and spiritual direction, still the fleshly appetite slumbers in the being of all, and reveals itself in one or other of its forms. When the soul desires to fix itself exclusively in a false spirituality, it is driven by necessity over into sensuality, and vice versa. For it is the destiny of the soul to exist in unity of the mind and body ; and as this harmonious unity has been destroyed by sin, it must exist in a false, discordant unity. Accordingly the history of asceticism, monachism, and parti- cularly of spiritualism, affords many examples of men who had determined to soar above the bodily state, and had devoted themselves to a so-called pure spirituality in which they be- lieved themselves to be raised above sensual impulses, and which they have also succeeded for a considerable period in maintaining, but who have suddenly plunged into the grossest sensuality from an overwhelming rebellion of the lowest impulses {le saint et la hete). On the other hand, experience shows that men who have materialized themselves, and given themselves over to licentious pleasures and debauch- 10-4 THE AKTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. eries, wliicli they will not forsake at the call of conscience, are constrained to form for themselves a tlieorrj in excuse and justification of their evil practice, and are thereby driven into a region of false and lying spirituality, and become theoretic materialists, atheists, and mockers at religion. This passage from sinful spirituality to sensuality, and vice versa, is strik- ingly set forth in those two imperishable forms which, like Prometheus in the verse of the ancients, take their place among real personages, Faust and Don Juan. Faust begins in a false spirituality, in the arrogance of knowledge, in self- exaltation above the limits of humanity ; and from this he sinks down into sensual love, lust, and passion, as an evidence that man is not merely mind, but also soul, and as soul, cannot rend himself asunder from the world of sense. Don Juan, on the other hand, begins in sensual lust and passion, and he is thereby impelled by an inward necessity into the realm of thought, when he insolently impeaches the retributive justice exercised against himself, — an evidence that the soul, however desirous it may be to do so, cannot get quit of the mind, and that it is in the region of intellect that its ultimate destiny shall be accom- plished, in accordance with its relation to God. But what poetry and history exhibit to the imagination in great ideal shapes, is shown to us in daily life in a multitude of minor prosaic forms. In characterizing arrogance and sensuality as the funda- mental forms of sill, we must remark, in order to guard against misapprehension, that we take the conception of arrogance in a wider sense than that in which it is often employed, since arrogance is frequently limited to the relation towards other men, whom the arrogant are disposed to overlook and despise. Althouo;h this is a strlkinir feature in the sin of arrogance, still it is not the essential characteristic. This is rather to be de- fined as the exalting of self above the limits fixed by God, and thus above justice, above truth, above the law of God, and at the same time without regard to others ; an inward self-exalta- tion in a false estimate of self, because the Ego contemplates itself and its belongings as reflected in a magnifying glass. It was in such a false mirror that Lucifer and other kindred spirits beheld themselves so great, that they found it beneath iheir dignity to continue the servants of God, nay, even SIN, 105 imagined themselves as equal in inherent majesty with Him, able to contest the sovereignty with the Creator. And in such a mirror, too, man beholds in himself a greatness which increases the oftener he re^rards it. This doctrine will of course be re- jected by many, who will maintain that the self-exaltation and self-glorification here described have no place in the constitution of their inner life. But from this we dissent, affirming that the exaltation of self assumes an infinite number of forms, and only attains these great dimensions under progressive develop- ment, without opposing forces ; and that there is one form of self-exaltation to be found in most people, namely, self-justifi- cation, which may easily subsist along with the conviction that we are all frail and sinful men. For in the mirror which self-justification holds up to man, he sees his faults as trifling blemishes, for which he can easily forgive himself, or which God cannot but forsrive him, since it was the Creator who formed him thus; whilst, on the other hand, he beholds in him- self so many good qualities, that taken on the whole he believes himself to be in the normal condition of his being. This is self-exaltation, albeit unconsciously exercised ; for though the self-righteous man, though the Pliarisee, may take the position of a servant, he yet places himself in relation to God infinitely higher up than God has placed him ; moreover, it must be borne in mind that there are different degrees in the grossness or refinement of self-righteousness, and that the Pharisee may also exhibit himself disguised as a publican, who exalts himself on the ground of his consciousness of sin. On the other hand, we observe that in desin-natino; as the second radical form of sin, sensuality, we did not merely refer to gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery, but also to that negative species of self-indulgence which exhibits itself as indolence and decent inertness, a characteristic to which Ficlite ascribed such im- portance, that he even attempted to deduce from it all sin ; a hankering after ease and comfort, the dolce far niente in which man shirks every toilsome exertion, and will not fulfil his mission. The more strongly sin developes itself as self-exaltation, the more closely does man come to resemble the devil and his angels. It is an ancient belief, that the devil fell through arrogance, and thus became the father of lies. Because he 106 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. kept not his first estate (Jude 6), the place assigned to him by God, he was obliged iu the maintenance of his false posi- tion to fabricate for himself a false theory concerning God, the world, and himself, and to seek to surround himself with other creatures whom he seduced into the same arrogant delusion as his own. Although in the case of men sensual motives may conduce to falsehood, and although from the great misery which sin has introduced into the world earthly wants and necessities may tempt to the employment of lying and deceit, yet it is essentially and originally in self-exaltation that falsehood is generated ; ^ and in falsehood man betrays himself, weaving round himself and others a network of illusions, whilst from this one sin spring dissimulation, infidelity, treachery. And the greater dimensions self-exaltation as- sumes, the more strongly is developed the lust of dominion, until the arrogant Ego, only desiring to employ men as means for its own ends, at last cannot suffer any second person, any iliou, to stand beside itself, and hatred, envy and slander, cruelty, malice, bloodthirstiness, destruction for the sake of destroying, with all their train of horrors, raise their heads. The more sin advances in a sensual direction, the more men resemble beasts. But between swine and demons there is an inward connection. Between these extreme points there is in the realm of sin a middle region, which is occupied by covetousness in its various forms. Covetousness, as essentially the lust of possession, has its root in sensuality, but has, nevertheless, in a certain sense an ideal or transmaterial side. The covetous or avaricious man is the slave of his senses, not however immediately, but only by a relation of reflection, since he is dependent not on the enjoyments themselves, but on their representative^ that is to say, on money. The avaricious man does not give himself up to the actual enjoyment, he subjects himself to great priva- tions, and exhibits great control over his sensual appetites ; but it is his passion to possess the means of gratifying physical wants and desires. It is these means which he heaps together, whilst he never devotes himself to the aim, or the physical enjoyments themselves. These last he loves in abstractor but ^ See Julius ^Miiller, Die Lelire von der Siinde, i. 221. (Clark's translation, vol. i. 136.) SIN. 107 not in concreto. He deifies the representative, but will have nothing to do with the reality. As a rule, the avaricious man is anxious about his future, and is afraid that he may come to poverty in his old age. In order to ward this off, and to sur- round himself with securities against it, he subjects himself to the very thing which he dreads as the worst that can befall — want, distress, and an anxious existence. This incongruity in the relation between the means and the end is evident folly, and from this side of the matter the avaricious man appears a fit subject for the comic w^riter, to whom he has frequently furnished a theme. We must, however, permit ourselves to observe that the comic here is scarcely sufficient to veil the tragic from our sight, and to prevent the loathsome impression of the naked prosaic egoism, which shows us a dead heart clinging to dead matter, as is specially the case in Moliere's HAvare. The marvel is, that avarice in its extreme form is found in old age, in those who stand on the brink of the grave, who cling fast to life, because they cling to gold. The lust of possession assumed a more reflective and demoniac form in Caligula, — the same who wished that the heads of all the Roman citizens were joined to one neck, that he might slake his thirst for blood in one fell stroke, and who delighted in literally wallowing in gold.^ Here there is no aim at physical enjoyment or self-exaltation present. In this gold bath he, so to speak, concentrated all the sensual enjoyments of the world, and instead of devoting himself to this individual pleasure or to that, which already palled upon his taste, he, in symbolic fashion, quaffed them all at once. Here is the union of the beastly and the demoniac which so often appears In the Roman emperors. But covetousness may also show Itself in other forms than that which proceeds from sensuality. It may moreover cast its desires on ideal objects. And here may be specially named ambition, with its offspring vanity, which last flutters low, and has for its element triviality. Ambition, which term we here employ in the sense of craving after honour, inhabits the same middle region as the meaner covetousness described above, but it has come there from the opposite side. Whilst the meaner ^ Suetonii Caligula, cap. 42 : " Saepe super immensos aureorum acervos, patentissimo diffuses loco, et nudis pedibus spatiatus, et toto corpore ali- quamdiu volutatus est." See Sibbern, Psyclwlogy, ii. p. 271. 108 TnE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. or lower covetousness originates in sensuality, ambition pro- ceeds from the mind, from arrogance. But not the mental as such, not the reality of the thing, is the object of desire with the ambitious man, but the appearance of it, the reputation of it, its possession in the opinion of others. It Is his hio-hest aspiration to contemplate his own image as reflected in other men's views regarding him, and to behold this image in as bril- liant colours as possible. Nothing is more Intolerable to him than that this his representation, which is yet not unfrequently very different from his actual being, should In any way be injured or set aside. That which ambition has In common with the lower covetousness, that wlilch is common to all forms of covetousness, is thus the craving after possession of good thinp's, wliethcr physical or mental, yet not the realities of these, but only their representatives. The Apostle John, in warning the disciples against the false love of the world (" Love not the world, neither the things which are in the world"), names as the principal forms of this sin, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life (1 John ii. 16). The lust of the flesh and the pride of life designate the two extreme points of egoism of which we have already treated; and by the lust of the eye is doubtless in- tended that covetousness in different forms, in consequence of wJiich man contemplates what he has, and what he appears in the eyes of the world, and in the contemplation feels an egois- tical pleasure. Some one of these three lusts exists in every man, and they constantly pass over Into one another ; but the principal sources of sin are arrogance or self-exaltation, which is akin to the demoniacal realm, and sensual appetite, which is akin to the realm of beasts. Of these two great sources of sin, arrogance lies deepest, so that very often the man himself is en- tirely unconscious of it, whilst quite aware of his offences in the direction of sense. It is self-exaltation and the illusions bound up with it which Christianity first attacks, because It is neces- sary first and foremost to break down self-rifrhteousness. It begins by making man humble; for only on this basis of humility can there be dealings between man and his God. §30. " All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God " THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 109 (Eom. iii. 23). But where sin is, there also is reckoned guilt. The theory that the human Ego is accountable amounts to this : I myself have done my own deeds, and have not been con- strained to do them by the irresistible necessity of my nature ; no, I have willed them : my deeds, then, are transactions [liand- linger, literally, doings of the hand] executed with will and purpose. And not our deeds only, nay, our whole persanal condition, in so far as this rests on the will, must be accounted for. That we are accountable amounts further to this : that we are answerable for what we have willed, not merely before men, not merely before our own conscience, but before the bar of God's judgment, where we shall give account of the steward- ship of our lives (Luke xvi. 2), and shall be declared just or unjust ; and that we, if we are declared unjust, or among the number of those who have offended the laws of God in His world, are liable to His righteous sentence of exclusion from His presence ; as debtors, servants indebted to their lord (Matt, xviii. 23-25), are under sentence of condemnation if the debt cannot be discharged for us, if there be not " a forgiveness of sins," a remission of the debt with which we are burdened. But the ideas of guilt and responsibility stand or fall with the idea of the freedom of the human will, which now remains to be considered according to its fundamental moments. THE WILL AS FREE AND AS BOUND. §31. What is meant by the will of man being free is, that it has the power, within certain conditions appointed by God, by its own determination to realize its being. We say expressly, within the conditions appointed by God. For human freedom is not, like that of God, absolute, but conditioned, a freedom in created dependence. It is not merely dependent on God and on His holy law, but it is also dependent on nature, — not merely on that nature which is external to man, but on that which con- cerns his own constitution. Human personality is restricted by individuality, natural characteristics not merely physical, but also raentalj which are yiven to the man before all self-conscious- 110 THE ANTHROrOLOGICAL POSTULATE. ness and self-guidance commence, and which may indeed be moulded by the will, but can never be entirely altered ; and in his individuality each man has not only his endowment, but also his limitations. The restricted nature of human free-will appears, moreover, in the fact that man is subject to a develop- ment in time, and that not only his physical being, but also his mental, developes itself from an obscure natural source. This will presupposes impulse and desire ; his self-consciousness un- folds itself from the unconscious, obscure, embryonic abyss. The human soul leads a twofold existence, one clear as day and self-conscious, the other obscure and unconscious, and in its dim abyss it holds some contents which never fully emerge into the light. But the free-will of God is perfect, just because it does not develope itself from an obscure basis, because this dualism between mind and nature, between the self-conscious and the unconscious, between day and night, in God is over- come from all eternity, " because God is a light wherein is no darkness at all." Just on this account — that is, in virtue of the dualism in which man is bound, so that he never obtains full command of his fundamental constitution, and, so to speak, cannot see his own back — has the Creator reserved to Himself power over His creatiire, and in the creation of man has fol- lowed the principle : Divide et impera. For only when man devotes himself adoringly to God, and in faith permits himself to be borne up by the arms of eternal love, does his natural disposition cease to be an imprisoning barrier to him, and be- comes the assisting and supporting basis of his free-will. On the other hand, when man wrenches himself away from God, and determines wilfully to wander his own way and overstep the boundaries assigned him by the Creator, his natural dispo- sition is perverted into a chain on that rock which bears the bound Prometheus. §32. Whilst, however, the Creator has reserved a power to Him- self, He has conceded to the personal creature a relative inde- pendence, " a derived absoluteness." The destiny of man, his ideal being, is liberty itself in its unity with love. We desig- nate this eternal power, or possibility of man to will, as his essential liberty. But in order that this may be realized, man, THE FKEE AND THE FETTERED WILL. Ill whose actual will is at first relatively unconscious, must attain to a consciousness of hiFlindepenclence, his power over himself. / Liberty must therefore determine itself ixs' freedom of choice^ as the ability to choose between two masters, between the principles of holiness and of worldliness, or what is the same thing, as the ability to choose between good and evil, in order that love, through unconstrained, self-denial and obedience, may become realized. Through freedom of choice, which is not restricted to one single moment, but extends throughout a series of acts of choice, the will must stand its test, must be tried and tempted ; whilst evil presents itself to man as a possibility, but which, as a possibility overcome, should serve as a deeper ground for holy love (Gen. ii.). Therefore freedom of choice, or as it has also i been called, formal freedom (because it has not yet produced | its contents), is not perfect freedom, but only a moment therein, has only significance as a passage to the true, the divinely perfect j freedom, because man through his continued development shall thus ever more and more closely unite himself with God, and will no more choose, since liberty and necessity are one in love, which is the freedom of God's children. But whether the de- velopment of the man through freedom of choice be deter- mined normally or not, the character of the human will is always produced by choice. For the character is the radical impress which the will assumes from the series of its acts. However, then, the will may choose, it must always through the choice be adding to its own contents, and thus be assuming the natm-e of those powers to which it devotes itself . Both in good and in evil, and in the endless admixtures of these, which ex- perience shows us, the character is the imprinted will, which not merely is imprinted, but has given and continues to give to itself its own impress. Man is the self-characterizing creature. He alone of all earth's creatures acts not merely according to the inward necessity of his nature, which is also true of plants and animals, but within certain necessary limitations himself draws forth his being, his reality, from the fountam of possi- bility. §33. In its actings the will is determined by motives, or considera- tions of the value of the thing, which set the will in motion_, 112 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. and by incentives or promptings from within to a certain line of action. And as it is determined by motives which set tlie will in motion, so, too, is it by sedatives or quietives which set the will at rest, as e.g. by considerations of the value of the tiling, grounds of re-assurance under the disquietude of passions and affections. Motives and quietives are essentially the same, in so far as they are both grounds of determination for the will. But they point to two opposite movements of the will, since this either determines itself as striving, pursuing, craving, labouring, or on the grounds of suffering and adver- sity, as resigning, relinquishing its aspirations. One does not perfectly understand a human character if one only knows the motives for its actions, without at the same time being acquainted with the quietives, the sources of calm and sooth- ing, by which it allowed itself to be determined under privation and reverses. For example, the character of a Napoleon i. can certainly not be understood at all if only the motives which urged him on his path of military glory be taken into account, without considering also the quietives of which he made use at St. Helena to set his will at rest. The ethical nature of the quietives corresponds, moreover, entirely with the motives of the same individual. But neither motives nor quietives are causes of the will, as if they only were active and the will passive, without any causality of its own. These re|1resentations, whether they tend to motion or rest, become only motives and quietives so far as the will appropriates them and makes them part of itself. What kind of motives or quietives shall affect me, rests on the inmost determination or direction of my will, or if this is not yet stamped on it, on my choice. That in this choice there is a mysterious incom- prehensible point must be admitted. The incomprehensible thing is not that man should choose the good, or determine his course by motives of love, because he thus acts in accordance with his own being and freedom of choice in a teleological and consistent manner, and moves toward his aim, the divinely accomplished freedom. What is incomprehensible is, that man chooses the evil, or determines his course from motives of egoism, because he thus sets himself at strife against his being, and his freedom of choice moves contrary to reason, or absurdly. " It is inconceivable that thou canst act so ! " we say often in II THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 113 daily life. But this expression is true also of the phenomenon of sin itself in the human race. For indeed it may be said, that it is not inconceivable that a sinful will should determine itself after its sinful tendency. But the mystery lies in the first choice ; therefore, as sin had no part in man when formed in God's image, its appearance is most inexplicable in the fall at the commencement of human liistory, but next to this in every subsequent relative fall, in which man has had a relative first choice. For though we may be able to grasp the possibility of the fall, we cannot deduce its occurrence from any necessary ground of reason. Experience shows us, how- ever, that sin, namely that ivhich ought not to be, does neverthe- less actually exist, nay, is become a universal power in human nature. Although the Good is in itself natural to man, yet ex- perience shows that in his present condition it is only by the most strenuous exertion and self-denial, and only by the assistance of redeeming grace, that he is enabled to choose the Good, to deter- mine himself by the Good, and fully to receive it into his will. §34. If the contemplation be fixed exclusively on the conditioned in human free-will, then appears Determinism, which teaches that human liberty is only a concealed necessity. Religious Determinism teaches that the will of man, by the fall, and by the universal and hereditary sinfulness which was thus origi- nated, has become an enslaved will (servum arhitriuni), so that man outside the sphere of grace and redemption cannot do other than sin, and only through the creative influences of grace, to which the will of man is related as a passive vessel, can acrain become free. In Adam we have all sinned, we are branches cf the degenerate tree of the race which can only be restored by a new creation, and Adam's guilt is imputed to us as our own. This religious Determinism, or Augustinism, with justice opposes its antagonist Pelagianism, in so far as this last denies the fall and natural depravity, teaches that man vet maintains his normal condition, regards the individual as entirely distinct from the race and independent of all surround- ing influences and effects, and asserts for him a power every instant to determine his own choice of action. But the un- soundness in this religious Determinism consists in not per- fl 114 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. ceiving the freedom implied in the bondage, and that in the sin of the individual it only sees that of the race, and thereby annihilates all individual and personal responsibility. Doubt- less we cannot overlook the fact that the human individual does not stand alone, but is also a member in the organism of the race, partaker in the sin of the race ; that sin as inherited depravity is an innate natural condition of the individual, and that its development in many respects is dependent on its sur- roundings. But the individual is not merely a member of the race, the central point of his life is in himself in relative in- dependence on the race. For though inherited sin is an innate natural condition, and in so far is not guilt but fate, yet this fate becomes guilt in the will, since the individual does not by any means preserve towards this natural condi- tion the relation of suffering blamelessness, but voluntarily appropriates it to himself and voluntarily produces new sin. And when it is maintained that we cannot do other than sin, the truth in this assertion is only that we cannot be free from sin ; that we, as born in sin, are bound to an abnormal course of life, in which we cannot fulfil the law of God according to its spiritual import, cannot realize the highest Good or the kingdom of God. But it is not true that we are incapable of receiving or rejecting the redemption and emancipation which the gospel of Christ offers to us, and therefore we are personally responsible for our reception or rejection of the offer. We propose the following questions to the experience of our readers : Have we, though not free from sin, yet been forced by our depraved nature to commit such heinous and such numerous offences against God's law as has been actually the case ? Does not inner consciousness tell us that there have been times and seasons when it was in our power to have made a far more strenuous resistance than we did against evil, our pride, our self-indulgence, our sloth and apathy? And have we not known in the heathen world instances of men worthy of our esteem, nay, of our admiration, since in an honest struggle for self-knowledge they have by the energy of their will not indeed overcome the world, they have not been able to redeem themselves, but yet they have made a powerful stand against evil, and in self-denial have vanquished evil inclinations? And would this esteem and THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 115 admiration in any great degree have been yielded by us if we had here contemplated not a struggle for freedom, but only a process of nature ? If this is granted us, then the points in question are conceded, namely the freedom, not absolute but conditional, of the human will, and the reasonableness of indi- vidual and personal responsibility. § 35. But independently of the religious postulate of Christianity with reo-ard to sin and grace, Determinism also appears as a universal philosophic doctrine, which, supporting itself on psychological grounds, with justice attacks its opponent Indif- ferentism, in so far as this teaches that man at every moment has an unconditioned and unlimited freedom of choice {lihertas indiffer entice). According to Indifferentism or Indeterminism the will is never in any sense fixed, but hovers indifferent!}! over all motives. The man has at all times the option of acting differently from what he does act, may independently of his antecedents, when it pleases him, make a new beginning in his life ; from which it follows that the virtuous may at any moment fall off from virtue and resolve to tread the paths of sin and depravity, the vicious at any moment may be capable of soaring to holiness and self-denial. This naive, or rather this shallow conception of free-will, finds its refutation in the actual life of man, and must yield before a growing acquaint- ance with human nature and our own being. For even where man's sin and need of redemption are not acknowledged, still experience necessitates the conviction, that the human will in many ways is determined by the natural individuality of the person, by innate disposition, by former acts, by habit. And whilst, according to the indifferentistic view, every man must be absolutely unreliable, since one cannot know whether he who through a long series of years has exhibited a proved in- tegrity may not to-morrow break through all promises and engagements, life, on the other hand, leads us to conclude that every man whose character we know is, if not absolutely, yet at least relatively reliable, and that in many cases we can judge with overwhelming probability what we ought to expect from him. He who in need would claim assistance from his fellows, does not appeal to the avaricious and hard-hearted. 116 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. but to liini whose benevolence and liclpfiilness are already known to him. And he who purposes with the aid of another to perpetrate a crime does not seek counsel with the man who is distinguished for his incorruptibihty and strict probity, but rather with him who is already an adept in dishonest practices, and has made progress in the art of drowning the voice of conscience. Exactly opposed to this doctrine of the uncondi- tioned indifference of the will, wliich makes impossible every development of character, stands forth Determinism as its counterpart in one-sideduess, since this last teaches the absolute unchangeableness and reliability of human character. This must certainly be described as a standpoint, which in regard to that naive doctrine of freedom gives evidence of a closer acquaintance with human nature and a larger experience of life. Yet Determinism combats the theory opposed to it as a falsehood, and denies undoubted facts in moral consciousness with the object of annihilating indifferentism instead of lead- ing it back to its limited validity. §36. Psychological Determinism proceeds from the law of motives, or from the law that no resolution can be taken without a corresponding motive, which arises from the conjunction of individuality and circumstances. And this idea is further de- veloped by the opinion, that where several motives (or quietives) exist, the will must of necessity follow the strongest ; so that the persuasion common with men, that in many cases they might have acted otherwise than they actually did, is an illusion. Only that which I actually did, could I do, must I do. Scho- penhauer,^ who strenuously maintains Determinism, seeks to illustrate the subject by the following example : ' " Let us suppose a man standing on the street and saying to himself : It is now six o'clock in the evening ; the day's work is done ; I may then take a walk, or I may go to the club, or I may ascend the tower and sec the setting of the sun, or I may go to the theatre, or I may go and visit this friend or that one, or I may run out at the city gate into the wide world and never come home again. All these things are in my own power, I have 1 Artliur Schopenhauer (1788-1866). 3 27ie Tao Fundamenlal Prolkms cf Elides, 2d edit. p. 4. THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 117 perfect freedom to do any of them. Yet now I will do none of them, but equally of my own free-will I will go home again to ray wife." " This," continues Schopenhauer, " is exactly the same as if the water should say: I can heave huge billows (yes, doubtless in the open sea in a storm) ; I can rush furiously along (yes, in the bed of a river) ; I can leap down bubbling and foaming (yes, in a waterfall) ; I can mount like a sunbeam in the air (yes, in a fountain) ; finally, I can boil, and boiling disappear (yes, at 80 degrees of heat on Reaumur's thermo- meter) ; however I will do none of these things, but remain of my own accord in my tranquil dam, smooth as a mirror." As the water can only do any of these things when the exciting causes of one or the other of them are present, so can the man only do what he imagines he is able of himself to determine under the same conditions. So long as the cause is not present it is im- possible to him ; but when this enters, he, like the water, must do it if presented under corresponding circumstances. The man must thus go home to his wife. For this idea, that he could also will all the other things, go to the club, etc., is purely imaginary, meaning only that he might will it if he had not rather willed something else, namely, to go home, if this conception were not for him the stronger motive. In reality he can only do this one thing, and this he must do. Our principal objection to the whole of the foregoing is this, that Schopenhauer regards the human will entirely from the same point of view as the water, namely, under natural neces- sity, and as destitute of personality ; that he regards motives as physical causes, therefore as constraining and necessitating, whilst they are only incentives (disposing, not compelling) ; that he regards every act as the product of the motive and of an individuality not subject to change or modification, whereby the will in the moment of determination and action becomes a mere passive, impersonal point. But the will is not passive and inert. The will may be favourably or unfavourably disposed towards the motives, it may reject the one and resign itself to the other. The defect in Schopenhauer's reasoning is partially concealed by the circumstance that the most of the actions to which he refers in his illustrations are indifferent actions, be- longing to what are called middle things, the ethical character of which can only be understood when we know more intimately 118 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. the individuality and circumstances of life of the man ; and that the one action which he mentions which is not indifferent, namely, to run out into the wide world and never come back again, thus to run away from his wife and his duties, stands here only as a conceit, a play of fancy, which can never come into comparison with going to the club or the theatre. The error in regard to our moral consciousness in this reasoning of Schopenhauer would be more apparent and palpable, if this man standing in the street at six in the evening had found him- self in a serious struggle between motives of duty and of inclina- tion, between motives which proceed from conscience and those which originate in earthly desires or earthly necessities ; for in this case would he first have discovered himself to be seriously placed between an eitlier and an or. For our inmost conscious- ness and moral experience tell us that in the strife between the spirit and the flesh, between duty and inclination, the will may strive to make the motive of duty, to which it finds itself in conscience bound, dominant and prevailing ; it can avoid tempta- tion and resist evil ; can, in order to miaintain its consciousness of duty, gather up all its force ; can summon to its aid encourag- ing considerations so as to bind itself more firmly to the Good (" watch and pray "). We do not say that this power of re- sistance is found at every time and in all circumstances. We might also imagine an example of a man standing in the street at six in the evening and forming the resolution to run out into the wide world away from his wife and his duties, and, in Ills desperation, his moral corruption not being capable of act- ing otherwise, because he is so entirely under the thraldom of sin that his soul has become like water lashed by the storm, so that the motives opposed to duty are no longer impulses, but operate as compelling powers of nature, whilst conscience not the less bestows on him the bitterest reproaches. But what does such a condition indicate ? It indicates that at an earlier point of time he has neglected to resist evil and to strengthen his will by the exercise of the motives of duty, on which account his present corrupted and enslaved condition must be considered as the result of the foregoing series of omis- sions and transgressions. Through the continued practice of sin he has formed for himself in a spiritual psychical sense an organism of sin, an inward body of sin, on which he has THE FREE AND THE FETTERED AVILL. 119 become dependent. That men may sink so deep in the thral- dom of sin that they have no longer any choice, does not dis- prove the assertion that there is a sphere of liberty in which by severe effort we may attain the capability of making the motives of conscience, duty, and honour dominant in our lives, and that we are responsible for whether we have honestly striven or basely shirked the fight. In indifferent actions the formal power of self-determination in the will frequently exhibits itself in a very evident manner. We are reminded of Buridan's often quoted ass, which, stand- ing between two bundles of hay of equal size and excellence, under the postulates of Determinism died of hunger, because equally strong motives drew it on both sides. No man will be such an ass as to starve between two portions of food because he is equally attracted by both, but each individual will make use of his liberty and turn either to the right or to the left, though in itself it is entirely indifferent to him to which side he turns. §37. As the efficacy of the motives is determined by the indivi- duality, as a motive can only obtain influence over me because I am what I am. Determinism may be also expressed in the assertion that every life of man is only the necessary develop- ment of the man's individuality under the given circumstances. " Human actions are only utterances of the special nature of each individual, and as thou art, so thou actest ! A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, and vice versa. However much, then, actions may be modified by circumstances, the essential tendency of the will, its line of sentiment and aspira- tion, its desire and inclination, remain unchangeably the same." Schopenhauer teaches that every individual, by an act which lies before all time, has made himself once for all what he is, and that his life in time, with the whole range of his proceedings, is merely the detailed performance of this pre-existent act. Others who cannot be satisfied with this obscure representation, by which Schopenhauer, following in the path of Kant and Schelling, involves himself in many contradictions, and becomes liable to answer many difficult questions, proceed simply from man's individuality with its intellectual and moral endowments 120 THE ANTHROrOLOGICAL POSTULATE. as being fixed. But all Determinists are at one in the belief that the liuman character is unchangeable. " It is folly," says Schopenhauer, " to think that one can change his own cha- racter or that of others," and he here appeals to universal ex- perience. " We often imagine that we would act otherwise than we have done if we were to come again into the same situation, and just as often we discover that this was a mistake. After the course of many many years we catch ourselves and our old acquaintances at the same tricks as formerly. And although life may teach us that we were mistaken in the means by which we sought to attain our aims, yet the aim continues to be un- alterably the same although we now seek it in another way. From the cradle to the grave man directs himself towards the goal which nature fixed for him, and in which he hopes to find his satisfaction, Ais ^ootZ; and the significance of the Spanish proverb ever holds. What is sucked in with the mother's milk is poured out in the shrouded corpse. With years we only gain this advantage, that we become freed from the illusions which we had entertained regarding ourselves and others, and learn to know both parties better. Towards the end of life it therefore happens as at the close of a masked ball, where the masks and disiiuises are laid aside. We then see those with whom during the course of life we had come into contact with their real faces, and in their true form, learning what they have really been ; but at the same time we discover what we have been ourselves. Time and experience having cleared away our illusions." ^ It cannot be denied that this theory contains a truth which is continued by the growing experience of life. But its value still merely amounts to this, that no man can divest himself of his original nature, which in its essence remains the same from the cradle to the grave, and, moreover, that in our appreciation both of it and of the character we are often mistaken, and only through experience get rid of illusions ; that there are few judges of human nature, few physiognomists of whom it could be said, as it was said by Goethe of Lavater, " If he were not such a good man, it would be unpleasant to find one's self in the neighbourhood of a person who every moment sees through one, and looks into the inmost corners of one's mind," and that ^ Scbopenliauer, p. 2'i9 ; Parerga and Paralipomcna, i. p. 523. THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 121 there are still fewer who know the inmost corners of their own minds. But it is not true that in the original nature of man there is no capacity for moulding and culture, a variety of possibilities which also in entirely different modes may come into development on the way from the cradle to the grave, from the mother's milk to the shroud of the corpse. It is not true that this orifrinal nature cannot at the same time be moulded and fixed by that which is higher than nature. For man's natural individuality is at birth only a first outline, which requires to be fully carried out by further moulding and re- moulding, which do not immediately come of themselves. It is true that we often, after the course of many years, may catch ourselves and our old acquaintances at the same foolish tricks, on the same illusory pursuits, and building the same air-castles as in earliest youth ; but it is untrue that this is not in a great measure our own fault, and that of our old acquaintances themselves, in neglecting the means and assistance which were offered ns to tread in better paths. Tlie truth is, further, that the character is fixed by a succession of actions, that the will, by persisting in sin and worldliness, may frame to itself a false organism, a body of sin, in which it is enslaved and held fast by its own antecedents ; but it is not true that throughout the course of life there may not occur some turning- point in the development of character, in which may take place conversion, a change of mind, and a man rej^enting may break with his past life. Here Determinism encounters a fact which it cannot explain. If the life of man is merely the development of his individuality as fixed by nature, then the world of humanity becomes nothing more than an intellectual animal kingdom ; and as the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox, must each follow its nature and cannot change it, so also the different human individualities will be as little capable as the beasts, of repentance, or of coming into contradiction with themselves. But man is not merely a natural individuality, he is first of all an eternal individuality, formed in the image of God; the individual will stands in relation to the universal, to the being in the divine image, which man must realize in his acting, in the development of his life. That man is a personality implies that there must be ascribed to him essential freedom of will, and the power of self-government in relation to his universal 122 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. being or the Good. The beast never feels any contradiction between Lis individuality and the universal being of his kind. But a man whose individuality partakes of the nature of the tiger or the wolf, and who yields to it, will infallibly experience the contradiction between his individuality and the universal being of humanity, which in conscience urges its demands. A Nero, a Caligula, a Richard the Third, must by their melancholy, their restlessness and inward dispeace, bear witness to the image of God in them, or that they are not mere natural individualities, but individual personalities. Unquestionably we are led by the contemplation of human individualities, and of the great diversities in their innate talents and dispositions, to the acknowledgment, that the idea of fate is here not without application, and that one man, in a moral aspect, is born under a more favourable star than another. Not merely is the one man born and brought up under more favourable circumstances and intellectual influences than the other, but also, apart from this difference, there is a great diversity in temperaments, since some individuals, although all are included under sin, halve relatively good dispositions, are relatively noble, pure, and benevolent, whilst others from birth carry along with them evil dispositions, are impure, malicious, venomous. It is to this inherent difference of nature that Shakespeare refers in King Lear, where Kent, in contempla- tion of the noble, affectionate, self-sacrificing Cordelia, who is so unlike her heartless, abandoned sisters, exclaims: " It is the stars, The stars above us govern our conditious, Else one self mate and mate could not beget Such different issues." Act IV. scene Bd. But how far Shakespeare is from conceiving that Fate, that which nature has fixed, should abolish freedom of will and responsibility, Is shown in another part of the same drama, where these words are put into the mouth of a reprobate : " This is the excellent foppery of the world ! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieveS; and tricksters by spherical predominance; drunkards, THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL, 123 liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on ; an admirable evasion of whore-master man to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star" {Act I. scene 2d). That the poet here refers to the astrological ideas of his age is of no importance to us, it does not change the matter in the smallest degree. For whether we are knaves in consequence of the irresistible influence of the stars, or, as it is termed in our day, in consequence of the power of " circumstances," and of the "situation," which with us takes the place of the con- stellations, of the planets, in combination with the overwhelming impulse of our own nature, we are thus in any case knaves by necessity, which is just what we deny. We assert the successive conquest of the evil dispositions, because, behind the natural individuality, there exists eternal individuality, along with essential freedom of will, and, moreover, the possibility to fight, although the victory can only be won when the redeeming influences of Christianity come into operation. But certainly the power of resistance may be set down as nil where the con- science has not awakened it, and where man is still to be regarded as a mere natural being, as in the conditions of child- hood and of barbarism, as well as in every case where this power, through the individual's own neglect and submission to the thraldom of sin, has been ultimately lost. A Determinism may now also be adduced, which admits essential liberty, but denies freedom of choice. It teaches then that essential free-will is fettered by the natural restrictions of the individual, and can only be realized by a breaking through, a higher natural process, which in some individuals is accelerated by favourable conditions, but in others is retarded by unfavourable conditions throughout the entire course of life. And from this breaking through is explained the phenomena of contrition and repentance, by means of which man breaks with his past life and dies to his earlier existence. But although this Determinism resembles the Christian doctrines of free-will enslaved and regeneration, yet in it the essential liberty which it admits becomes mere seeming, just because freedom of choice is denied. Essential freedom is not merely a higher natural necessity, but ideal self-government. And in order that it may be realized as self-government, self must attain the con- 124 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. sclousness of its own essence, or feel its power to determine for or aiiainst the law of its bein£f. Freedom of choice and essential free-will point mutually to each other. By denying freedom of choice, Determinism denies that man has a history. For the conception of history contains this, that in the course of time something unfinished shall be completed, that something unfixed shall be determined; and it is this critical element in the development of liberty which gives history its interest. §38. The fundamental maxim of Determinism, that all doiuir proceeds from being {Ojyemri sequitur Esse) ; that as thou art, so thou actest ; that as the tree is, so is the fruit ; and that men cannot gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles, — certainly contains a fundamental truth. The general voice has estab- lished this in expressions like these : " From him nothing else could be expected." " I am not the man to engage in the like." " Now it is seen what he is : now he has been found out." But this truth, " As thou art, so thou actest," must, in order that it may not lead to error, be completed by this other : '• As thou actest, just so wilt thou become and continue ;" that is to say, by thy actions, by thy assimilation and thy whole course of operation, thou art thyself determining thy future being, or what shall become of thee. This truth is also confirmed by universal consciousness in such phrases as these : " What a pity that he has not turned out so well as he mio;ht have done !" in which it is implied, that a man by his actions and his omissions may vitiate or repress his natural abilities ; whilst Determinism asserts, that every man becomes all that he can become, and that it is only illusion to complain of the contrar3\ Or in such expressions as this : " He is not at all the same as he used to be : in important points he is now quite different," it may be for better or for worse ; whereas Determinism, on all unlooked- for changes which occur in a man, must restrict itself to saying : *' He is the same that he has always been ; but I have been mistaken in him : now I see what he really is." But a greater authority than universal consciousness is the divine word : *' Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation ;" " Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall ;" — and this pregnant word of the Lord : " Either make the tree good and THE FEEE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 125 his fruit good ; or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt" (Matt. xii. 33) ; for as the Lord here goes on to say that " the tree is known by his fruit," He imphes therein that the nature of the religious and moral tree of life depends on the man's works, through free self-government and action. It is exactly the concept of the development of character, that what had been undetermined shall be determined, that man must mould and set the stamp upon his will, must make his tree of life cood or corrupt. Therefore there occur also in every development of character various turning-points, in which freedom of choice must pass through a crisis, and in which it is specially necessary to watch and pray. In the passage from childhood to youth there occurs a turning-point of this kind of deepest importance, which has already been depicted in the myth of Hercules at the parting highways. When Deter- minism asserts that every character must be absolutely reliable, so that if we perfectly understood a man's inner being we should be able to predict how he would act under certain given circumstances, and predict it with the same security as that with W'hich the astronomer announces beforehand an eclipse of the sun or the moon ; then we must maintain, on the other hand, that although some things may in general be thus reckoned upon, there still remains, as long as man continues in the con- dition of development, a relative unreliableness. This unre- liable element does not appear where life is making its usual round, where the character only expresses itself in the accus- tomed relation, and, so to speak, only reproduces itself in the routine of life. But it shows itself in turning-points where fresh problems arise, and the development of character must pass over into a new stage. Determinism is wont, in support of its doctrine of necessity, to appeal to the case of the dramatic writer, on whom it is inexorably binding to make his personages true to their cha- racter. But it cannot at all be inferred from this that the characters depicted by the drama were from the first complete, or that in their natural disposition they have only one pos- sibility, which, when external conditions admit, they must by inevitable necessity realize. On the other hand, it is demanded of the dramatic writer that he should satisfy in his representa- tions the requirements of both Determinism and of Inde- 12 G THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. terminism. It is required that lie should represent fixed individualities, and that his personages, neither in their utter- ances nor in their actions, should go beyond the compass of the possibilities implied in their individualities ; and these the author must be able to exhibit. It is further requisite that the cha- racters of a drama shovsr themselves as having been moulded by earlier circumstances and actions. But then it is also neces- sary that the dramatist should represent a real development of character, with all its turning-points. And there remains further this indispensable requii'ement, that these turning- points should not simply appear as mere processes of nature, by which the action becomes only a product of the situation and of the power which sways unconditionally in the indivi- dual, but as crises in the free-will itself. Just in those critical moments which the poet presents to our view we have the feeling, that the object of our interest might act otherwise than he does ; that the ideas of guilt, duty, and responsibility are here binding ; that the present moment, the instant period of time, is so important, so full of expectation, because there is here something unfixed and indeterminate, w'hich is now to be determined, — something incomplete, which is now to be com- pleted, — a possibility which rests with the agent himself whether or not he will put it into execution. Where this is not shown and made palpable by the dramatist, the interest is lacking which should engage our sympathy. On the other hand, after the agent has once chosen his course, the poet should then allow the truth of Determinism to appear in its full power, by representing the inevitable consequences of the act. It is this which is so admirably shown in Shakespeare's Macbeth, where Macbeth, after he has yielded to the temptations held forth by the powers of darkness, from which he at first recoiled with shuddering, whilst he declared that he " would go no further in this matter" {Act I. scene 7th), comes more and more under the necessity of working evil, and is hurried on from crime to crime, without the possibility of return. But Determinism appeals not merely to dramatic poetry, but also to tables of statistics. Statistics, which in our day have raised themselves to a position of importance, appear also as moral statistics. And thus Chere are not wanting those who announce, that the science has now advanced so far in the THE FEEE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 127 knowledge of the eternal and unchangeable laws of the universe, that it can predict not merely how many deaths will occur duririg the next year, how many marriages will be contracted or dissolved, but also how many illegitimate births will take place, how many felonies and suicides will be committed, — nay further, at what season of the year these shall happen, in what classes of society, and what instruments will be employed ; and that it may cherish the hope at no distant period of bringing all human concerns under needful control, so that there will no longer be any question regarding the freedom of the will. There are those who listen to these scientific discoveries with " a devout shudder," whilst they, however, submit themselves to the comforting expectation that such theories will work for the advancement of humanity, by introducing a milder spirit into criminal legislation, and making malefactors more the objects of compassion than of punishment. And it cannot be denied that this last consideration in our days finds great sympathy : that both in judicial tribunals and in legislative assemblies a predominant inclination is often shown to regard the grossest offenders as irresponsible, as " knaves by necessity." Moral statistics, which hitherto have only appeared as the statistics of sin and passion, since they do not embrace virtues and right actions, are, however, only dangerous to a doctrine of free-will which apprehends the individual atomically and sepa- rate from the rest of the human species, and which denies the relative value which belongs to Determinism. The statistic information about divorces and female prostitution in the great cities, of felonies and suicides, certainly forms a terrible contri- bution to the history of human sinfulness, to the doctrine con- cerning the enslaved will, and its dependence on the powers of nature — a state of thraldom in which great masses are involved. We are led here by another way, to look down into the abyss before which Augustine stood when he spoke of the mass of corruption (massa perditionis), and a dark shadow overspreads the whole community, where these corrupt individuals are members of the social body. But it is a great error to imagine that in these vessels of corruption and dishonour we behold a revelation of eternal and unchangeable laws of the universe, excluding free-ivilly and claiming a yearly returning sacrifice of victims. If law is at all to be in question, it cannot be spoken 128 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. of as eternal, but only as temporary law, or rather — as it is an evident though frequent abuse of the term to speak of the law of nature, or the law of the universe, where at any rate imiver- saliii/ and necessity cannot be ascertained and authenticated — of a temporary regularity, which is purely empirical, and thus cannot be known as universal and necessary. This temporary regularity rests, on the one side, on the sinful dispositions Avliich at a given time are found in a number of individuals whose free-will is so dominated by the natural impulses and passions, that they live more like beings governed only by nature than like moral beings, so that their mode of action resembles that of the lower animal world ; on the other side, it rests on the circumstances under which they live, whetlier these be poverty and want, or other provocatives to sin, which their will has not force to resist. But all must admit, that the given state of society which exhibits these regularly recurring phe- nomena may in the course of time he changed, and that just by the energy of free-will ; that, for instance, the amount of crime may be lessened by regulations preventing idleness and vagrancy, by moral and religious influences, by improvements in legisla- tion, in education and school management. The Home Mission, which has successfully employed these tables of statistics to ascertain the directions in which its exertions should specially be turned, has here effected not a little. By such moral influ- ences, which aim at strenfitheninff ffood motives, another con- dition of society may gradually be formed, which sufficiently shows that we have not here to do with eternal laws and an unchangeable destiny, but with a regularity founded on tem- porary and changing relations.-^ Further, it must not be overlooked that such statistics, espe- cially those above mentioned regarding future crimes, are still only calculations of probabilities, and only predict the approxi- mate result, since the averages rise and fall from year to year, so that the estimate must always be relative. And, before all the rest, it must be borne in mind that the crimes that are thus calculated on are no evidence at all against the essential liberty of the individuals concerned. TJiey only show that liberty is 1 See Drobisch, Moral Statistics and the Freedom of the Will ; Octtingea, Moral Statistics. ThLs last voluminous work contains extensive and very interesting materials for statistic observations. THE FREE AND THE FETTERED WILL. 129 enslaved, that as enslaved it may be regarded as nature, and so far be reckoned on, and that this enslaved freedom needs redemp- tion. And neither do they in the smallest measure controvert the assumption that, if the individuals in question were placed under the influences of redemption, they would not in the accepted time, in a day of salvation, be able to receive the offered grace. If we examine the confessions made by some of these characters, it cannot certainly be denied that not an insignificant proportion of criminals are Determinists and Fatal- ists, and sometimes cast the blame of their offences on external circumstances and unfortunate positions, sometimes on an inevitable fate, an unlucky star above them, sometimes on their innate individuality : " I have always been so ; it is my nature." Nay, there are those who in the hour of death have declared that, if they could again be set at liberty, they would anew commit the same bad actions as before, and even worse than these, because their nature impelled them to do so ; just as a beast of prey, escaped from its cage, resumes its predatory habits. To such evidence Determinism appeals, and finds its system thereby strengthened. But opposed to this evidence stands a ranse of other witnesses, which show another side of the matter. For there are many who have not merely accused their fate, but in remorse of conscience have acknowledged their cuilt. There are also those who have acknowledged that there was a period in the course of their lives when another and a better way was open to them than that which they pursued, and who have mourned a lost opportunity ; whilst it has also been their earnest desire to be vouclisafed a fresh opportunity to become other and new creatures, if not in this, at least in a future state of existence. And if the avowals of such deterministic and fatalistic minded criminals be more narrowly examined, it will be found that conscience and a sense of guilt, as evidences of essential liberty, not seldom peep throucrh their fatalism. It thus remains that in the doctrine of free-will the two maxims must be combined : " As thou art, so wilt thou act ; and as thou actest (in consequence of the force of assimilation), so wult thou be ; " whilst Determinism holds exclusively to the first maxim, and tells us that through all our actions we only come to the corn-prehension of what we originally and I 130 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. unchangeably are. The category which Determinism ignores is that of possibilities. It acknowledges only physical possi- bility, which it transfers to the ethical world. In the physical sphere, possibility passes immediately over into reality whenever the conditions are observed, as the corn of wheat cannot do other than sprout and grow when moisture and heat are present. But in the sphere of ethics, possibilities do not immediately pass into reality, but are transferred thither by free self-government, ■which is also the powder to repress its possibility. Whilst Determinism ignores this, it teaches that in a given moment there are not two lines of action, but only one, which is possible for a man. This is specially shown in the deterministic con- ception of the history of the Fall, in which it assumes that in the temptation there was but one possibility for Eve, — namely, to allow herself to be seduced, and to bring sin into the world, through which God Himself is made to appear as the author of evil. This repeats itself in every human life. A man who, under the assumptions of Determinism, looks back upon his course of life, will conclude that no circumstance, no scene in his experience, no action, no suffering, no struggle, could have been otherwise than it was ; that it is true wisdom not to give way to vain imaginations and reveries concerning what might have been in place of certain actual occurrences. And it is asserted that this mode of contemplation is a rich source of comfort and tranquillity. Yes, if conscience did not exist ; if we only had one nature instead of twoYlFalT peace and equani- mity for us did not rest on the maintenance of harmony between our two natures, the higher and the lower, and in this of our relation to God and to ourselves ! In opposition to this deterministic assertion, we, from our standpoint, maintain that even the best among us, when they look back on their past lives and make conscientious confession, will acknowledge that there are many things there which not merely should and ought, but also which might have been otherwise ; and in this the fault has been their own. But, no doubt, we cannot press this acknow- ledgment as one can press a physical acknowledgment drawn from sensible experience, or as one can demonstrate a logical or mathematical maxim. For the reality to which the deter- minist constantly refers us, shows us undeniably only what we have done, not what we might have done ; what we have THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. 131 become, not what we miglit have become. The determination of the question here discussed, sifted as it has been times unnumbered, yet recurring from generation to generation, lies in the still region of the possibilities of conscience and of ethics, — possibilities which are higher than the physical and the merely loD-ical ; wherefore also the ultimate decision of this question is of a purely personal nature. THE COSMOLOGICAL AND SOTERIOLOGICAL POSTULATE. THE MORAL OEDEE OF THE WORLD. PROVIDENCE AND REDEMPTION. THE AIM OF HISTORY, AND THE EDUCA- TION OF THE HUMAN RACE. § 39. That the human individual, notwithstanding his sinful con- dition, has yet the possibility of good, would be a contradic- tion, if the economy of the world did not contain conditions for the realization of this possibility. The order of the world which we inhabit is a moral order, in which nature is appointed to be the instrument and means of liberty ; where the law is predominant in history, that what men sow, that shall they also reap, and where every abuse of liberty sooner or later carries with it its necessary and inevitable reaction ; where all that befalls man of prosperity or adversity hides within it a moral substance, which it is the task of man to extract and employ ; where the law of the Good and of conscience is at the snme time the law of the universe ; where all things must work to- gether for good to those who submit themselves under this law, and all must work together for evil to those who resist it. It was specially the elder Fichte who maintained this opinion, whilst at the same time he taught that there is no other God than this same moral order of things, because the conception of a personal God contained difficulties to him insuperable ; and in our own days there are not lacking to him successors, 132 THE COSMOLOGICAL AND SOTERIOLOGICAL POSTULATE. who speak about " God in history," but understand by this only an epitome of the moral laws of the universe. But when this same philosopher teaches that in this government of the world account is taken of every individual human being, nay, that the hairs on our heads are all numbered, he strengthens tliat which he denies. A moral order of the world, where account is not made of each individual, is indeed inconceivable, because the moral world is a world of free individuals, where each has an eternal and infinite value. But that account is made of each individual, and that each has his own special task and his own special conduct of life, is inconceivable without a living, personal God, who is the creator and instructor of these individuals. No ; we affirm not merely a moral government of the universe, with its eternal laws, but a freely acting God, whose providence guides the history of both the race and the individual to its goal; a God who is not merely concealed in the laws of the universe, but enters into personal reciprocal action with these created personalities. "When, in fear of an "arbitrary" conception of God, and desirous that His government of the universe should be acknowledged exclusively in His eternal laws, it has been advanced that it is far better to live in a state where judicious laws reign unrestricted, and enjoy all the protection which is possible, than in one where everything does not rest upon the laws, but much on the will of the monarch, and that the more this last is diminished, and everything is regulated by law, the more perfect is the condition ; and when this theory is applied to the divine state and the divine government, we will not dispute the excellences or defects of the various human forms of state government. But we cannot regard it as an advance in the knowledge of the divine government (civiias Dei), when instead of the living, personal God, there is set up as the object of our worship a mere system of impersonal laws ; or although the idea of a personal God be received, to regard Him in the liiiht of a limited constitutional monarch, or like the cods of the Epicureans, as only a spectator of what goes on in the world, because He has once for all bestowed His sovereifrntv on the powers of the universe ; or altliough it be conceded that the Almighty has not worked once in the creation of all things and then ceased, yet limits His continued operation to " the PROVIDENCE AND REDEMPTION. 133 giving forth of laws," ^ unceasingly preserving order, but yet concealing Himself in His laws, and never revealing Himself. Arbitrary action should certainly be excluded from the concep- tion of the divine will, because this term refers to what is groundless and irrational, nay, to the whims and caprices of a human despot. We conceive of the divine will as a will of eternal wisdom, which has not merely embodied itself in the system of the laws of the universe (the immanent working), but also reveals itself in its diversity from the world (the transcen- dent working) as the Lord of nature and of the course of the world, but always in harmony with the law of its own being, of love and holiness. And we should not be happy at all in a divine state, where there was no relation between man and God ; where we were referred exclusively to laws, but where the divine personality never entered into relation with us ; where God never revealed Himself, never let His face shine upon us ; where thus there w^as no personal relation of love between God and man, and where prayer and the influences of prayer were excluded. Whilst we consider the moral world as the world of providence, we understand at the same time the concept of providence as including that of the world's redemption. As man is fallen, his history bound in sin, and nature itself participant in the results of this spiritual fall, the economy of providence is forced to assume the character of an economy of redemption and regeneration {cecoiiomia scdutis), in which the law was given by Moses, but mercy and truth came by Christ. Tiie highest revelation of God's providence we behold in Him in whom the Eternal Word of the Father became flesh and dwelt among us, the Son of man and the only Son of God, who testifies, " Whoso hath seen me, hath seen the Father ; " in Him who has established reconciliation and redemption, and who has left us an example of true liberty and love; and in this kingdom of God founded by Christ, the highest earthly instrument of which is the Church, where the Lord will be with His people continually through the means of grace and the Holy Spirit; whilst at the same time, as the risen and exalted Saviour, He appears through- out the events of the world's history as the imperishable Sovereign and disposer of time. ^ H. C. Orsted, Aanden in Naturen (The Spirit in Nature), 2cl glI. p. 4?. 134 THE COSMOLOGICAL AND SOTEEIOLOGICAL POSTULATE. §40. The Christian view of the world is opposed to the fatalistic and deterministic apprehension of history, which regards this as a process of physical necessity. This doctrine of neces- sity acknowledges also the necessity of evil, and teaches that all the incidents in the history of the race and of the nations could not have happened otherwise than tliey did, and that it is folly to speak as if any other course of events had been possible. But where the ideas of pro\^dence and of freedom are seriously held, this doctrine of necessity cannot be adopted ; as it also becomes inexplicable whence all the rationality which is actually to be found in history obtained entrance, if historic development be only a logically necessary development and nothing else. The purpose of God must be fulfilled, but the manner in whicli it is brought about is condi- tional on freedom of choice, and in the course of events there is always something incalculable, hypothetical, and problematic. Without this, history would not be a drama, time and the pre- sent moment would be without significance; nothing would be decided in time, but all would be already fixed and finished from eternity. This conditional element in the execution of the divine purpose is expressed by the prophet Jeremiah in this remarkable passage (Jer. xviii. 7-10) : (7) "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it ; (8) If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. (9) And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build, and to plant it ; (10) If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." God's dealings with the human race must be regarded as edu- cative dealings. But education assumes liberty on the part of those who are to be instructed, as on the other side it assumes superior wisdom to that of the disciple in him who is the guide. The will of infinite wisdom does not prevent the fall of man often repeated, but it introduces new and unforeseen develop- ments, by which means the schemes of blind and weak humanity are turned aside, and by a circuitous course are AIM OF HISTORY, AND EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 135 made to fulfil what God had planned. And the process of human development may be considered under the type of the wandering of the children of Israel throuo;h the desert to the promised land, which they attained not by the straightest and shortest road, but only by many circuitous routes, many delays, and many turnings back. (See the author's work, Dogmatih.) §41. Whilst every consideration of history which does not know or which despises the light of revelation, groping in darkness, inquires concerning the aim of history and the significance of the confusion in the occurrences of life, Scripture refers us here to the education of man for the Jdngdom of God, — an idea to which Lessing adverts as the principal view-point in the philosophy of history, and which has also flitted before Herder. Doubtless we are here met by the sceptical objection, that this idea could only have validity if it were always the same indivi- duals who were subjected to this educative process. But in history races change. One race passes away without its education having been completed, passes away half educated and half matured, not to speak of the many who depart entirely uneducated. Another generation appears on the stage of history, and in the course of life leaves it as im- formed as the previous one, and so on ; so that the perfect education of the human race never is achieved. This objec- tion would still only have significance if these changing, constantly succeeding generations were without all mutual connection, if the children and grandchildren were not bound to the parents, and if revelation had not given us its light concerning the future life and the end of all things. But there is a solidaric, an organic connection between the mem- bers of the human race ; and although every generation in a certain sense must begin over again and make its own experi- ences, still there is a tradition, a transmission, an inheritance, a capital of experience, which passes from generation to gene- ration, by means of which the consciousness of the unity of the human race and the intellectual and hearty connection between forefathers and descendants are preserved, and thus the children appropriate and carry on their fathers' lives and 136 THE COSMOLOGICAL AND SOTERIOLOGICAL POSTULATE. acliievements — certainly not alone in wliat is good, but also in evil ; whilst in this same human race, the contrast is ever becoming more apparent between those who voluntarily place themselves under the educative guidance of God, and those who wander in their own way. And according to the glimpse which revelation gives us of the future life and the realm beyond the grave, we venture to believe that there subsists between the generations that have passed from earth to this realm, and that which still remains on earth, a mysterious connection ; so that the strufmles and victories of God's kine;- dom here, have importance and contribute to the perfection of His people yonder. They would not be perfect without us (Heb. xi. 40). And lastly, revelation enunciates most clearly that there is a common goal of perfection for all, and a com- mon judgment, before which at the close of the course all shall be placed, whether they have submitted to God's enlightening and saving grace or have rejected it. §42. Whilst we then hold fast the idea of the education of the imman race, it is not by any means our understanding, that it is the race as a mere general entity which is to be educated. On the contrary, it is individuals which are to be educated, just because the human race is an organization of personal indivi- duals, and the kingdom of God to which they are to be educated is a realm of saved and sanctified individuals. When, in opposition to a view which only regards the race as the actual and permanent, and individuals as evanescent, it has been asserted that history is not changed for the sake of the indivi- dual, we give our assent to the proposition, if only the grave error of our times be not associated with it, of considering individuals atomistically ; forgetting the organic connection, or that indivi- duals, as they are in themselves totalities, microcosms, are thus also links in the great chain of society, in which they are combined solidarically into a common personality, — an individual on a large scale. Accordingly, whilst we abjure the individual- istic onesidedness, we maintain that history is, for the sake of the realm of personality, the realm of love and of freedom, or, in other words, the kingdom of God. A philosophy of history which sacrifices individuals to the AIM OF HISTORY, AKD EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 137 whole, and makes it the aim of history to develope an imper- sonal idea, or, like Hegel's philosophy of history, makes a dialectic process of the general powers of the universe, in which individuals are only disappearing points of transition, cannot in reality attain any aim for history. Since for whom shall the idea and its emotions be an object ? Whom shall all this profit ? And for whom has it value ? When we say that anything has value, there must be a will for which it has value, which finds therein a good, an enjoyment, a satisfaction. This impersonal idea cannot assert itself as an aim, and avow its own unconditioned worth. The great majority of human, evanescent individuals, who are involved in finite and subordinate aims, cannot perceive the idea for which they themselves are only dependent means and instru- ments. There remains at last no one behind who has pleasure and satisfaction from this process of universal history, except the speculative philosopher, who in the moments of thought perceives it. And even he has not found in it a good which cannot be taken away from him. As an individual, he is even himself evanescent. The ideal casts him aside, and proceeds with logical necessity forw^ards in its process, which in its totality benefits no one, and where there is no place for any permanent Good. In contrast to a philosophy of history which, like that of Hegel, determines as its moving principle an abstract idea or thought, we fix on the principle of personality as accomplishing this end. Only in this manner can the historic phenomena both of good and evil be explained, because it is only in the power of this principle that there can be any question of good or evil. This principle is not merely that of Christianity, which requires that the kingdom of God shall come to every man, and ascribes to every human soul an infinite value, seeks the strayed sheep and the lost penny; but it is also that which works itself forward on the territory of worldliness, that which more and more presses itself forward in our days in forms both true and false. The epochs of history must, as F. G. Geiger has demonstrated, be considered as epochs in the development of the principle of personality. But then history must not be considered merely as the history of the world, by which in general is only understood the kingdoms of the world, state his- 138 THE COSMOLOGICAL AND SOTERIOLOGICAL POSTULATE. tory, which is only a particuhir history. If we wish to under- stand liistory in its bearings, we must from the many special histories, from political history, church history, art history, that of trade and industry, and many others, go back to the history of man as the history of histories.^ But the history of man is not merely the history of man in his many worldly re- lations, but before all the rest in his relation to the divine per- sonality, its revelations, its instructive guidance. The end and aim of history coincide with that of man ; and the end of man is super-terrestrial, cannot be attained in any earthly form or condition whatever, because the whole of this earthly existence has only the character of preparation, continues to retain the stamp of patchwork, the unfinished, which under these condi- tions never can be finished. The element of truth in the doctrine of eternal progress {progressns in infinituni) is this, that no ideal can be completely realized under earthly relations ; that there must always be a higher to be sought ; that the true higher, in which rest is to be found, is not under heaven nor on this earth ; that this earthly life, in whatever forms it may show itself, is hampered with an unsatisfied craving. But a beginning and coming fulfilment of this aim of humanity and of human history is found already under the following condi- tions, — namely, wherever the Good, wherever the kingdom of God, is realized in the human soul, wherever personalities are moulded and ripened for the kingdom of God. A higher aim than this does not exist, and cannot be imagined. But then we maintain also, that the aim of history, in the restricted sense in which it is here used, is not realized merely on the stage of the world's history, where the fate of nations is involved, but also in the simple every-day story of an undistinguished life. It is an illusion, which must be combated again and again, that the race has an aim essentially different from that of the individual ; that there can be for the history of the world an aim which is higher than the ethical, higher than the Good and the kingdom of God. Every-day history and the history of the world are only different forms of human history ; and in an order of the world confessedly moral, to desire something higher than the Good is self-contradictory. Every historical event owes its ^ Geiger, Forcldsningar ofver Menniskaii's Historia (Lectures on the History of Mau). AIM OF HISTORY, AND EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 139 intrinsic value or wortlilessness to its relation to the Good ; in making which assertion we by no means forget that this con- cept, as well as that of the kingdom of God, contains an infini- tude of ideal provisions, which are not at all immediately re- ligious : to the importance of its bearing on the progress and perfection of personality and the realm of personality. It is an illusion constantly recurring, that the aim of history lies first and foremost in outward conditions, circumstances, and institu- tions, instead of lying within man himself ( " The kingdom of God is within you," Luke xvii. 21) ; in which assertion it is always forgotten, that outward perfection can only come when the inward state is ripe for it. Again, another illusion in con- nection with the foregoing is, that men exist for the sake of the works which they produce ; as if the works were higher than the men themselves, as if it were our mission to produce works ex- ternal to ourselves, whilst each one of us is called to win the kingdom of God. God desires not merely outward action ; He desires first of all to have regenerate men, prepared for every good work. All human deeds and efforts, all incidents and vicissitudes in the life of the individual, all national revolutions, are in their ultimate significance only means, — stuff and material through which and out of which human personalities may con- struct, mould, and prepare their intellectual and spiritual frame, their imperishable possession, — means not merely for the indi- vidual, but the ripening of humanity for this future kingdom. Human orders of society — the Family, the State, nay, even the Church in its earthly constitution — are only temporary forms, which must be broken down when perfection arrives. As earthly forms, they are types which point to future blessings. God desires a temple of living stones, — a temple which through- out time, though concealed, ever waxes in greatness and extent, but which shall only shine forth in eternal glory and bright- ness when this world is at an end, when the day dawns. That, in the full significance of the term, we should become not blind instruments, but fellow- workers with God in the building of the temple, is our highest earthly destiny. 140 THE ESCHATOLOGICAL POSTULATE. THE ESCHATOLOGICAL POSTULATE. THE END OF HISTORY AND THE COMPLETION OF GOD's KINGDOM. THE ETHICAL FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. §43. The cosmological and soteriological postulate will be classed with the eschatological, or doctrine of future happiness in the realm beyond the tomb ; of the completion of God's kingdom through the final judgment, and the dissolution of this world ; of the new heaven and the new earth, wherein dwelleth right- eousness. The teachinfT of Christianity concernino; the final result of all things, tells us that history has not merely an aim, but also an end: it is not merely opposed to the comfortless contemplation of the course of the world as an endless rotation, in which life becomes, without object and without aim, a con- tinued variation of the theme — " Everything germinates, ripens, and withers away ; " but also of the not less unsatisfying repre- sentation of an aim which is never reached, of a progress in the terminable. However paradoxical the representation of a uni- versal catastrophe may appear, by which the fashion of this world (schema, 1 Cor. vii. 31) shall pass away, to be suc- ceeded by a new one, after which creation longs, earnestly ex- pecting to be redeemed into it, because this form or fashion is that for which it was at first designed (that of righteousness, where all things, visible and invisible, are in their right places), — however paradoxical it may appear to our worldly conscious- ness, limited as it is by the present conditions of sense, and dis- posed to believe that the present arrangement of the world always has been, and always will continue to be, yet every view which does not contemplate this catastrophe is not ethical. The old Northmen, with their myth of Ragnarok, had in this respect a far deeper appi-ehension than many more recent searchers into mysteries, who imagine a history without end, and a goal of perfection which constantly removes further from us as we approach it. For this modern view perpetuates eternally the struggle betw^een the Good and the Evil, perpetuates eter- nally the impure mixture of tares and ^Yheat, and thereby denies RESULT OF HISTOEY, AND COJirLETION OF GOD'S KINGDOM. 1-41 the possibility of the complete victory of the Good and Right- eous, of the kingdom of God ; in other words, it denies that the Good and llighteous, after which we should strive as our hiojhest aim, can at any time in an absolute and unlimited sense be realized. But the Good and Righteous demand in all respects complete realization. Opinions like these, that the history of the loorld is the judgment of the ivorld, that through the lives of individuals there was also a doom, that in our inner being there is a secret reward or punishment, that we are always already sentenced in this life, are only half truths, if intended as the ultimatum with which we are to rest contented when we crave the realization of the Good. Every judgment in time, whether it be in the history of the world or in the history of the individual man, is only a partial judgment, which moreover very frequently is very imperfectly apparent to the man's own con- sciousness. After every historic crisis there remains behind more than one unrectified and even unperceived injustice or grievance — an impure mixture of justice and injustice, of truth and falsehood. Every partial judgment, therefore, points to a future and more perfect one ; and all half-executed judgments to one which shall be final and decisive, by means of which the Good shall attain the realization, the sovereignty which belongs to it. When even theistic philosophers in our days think that Christian Eschatology can be dispensed with, and that repose may be found in the revelation of justice which exhibits itself in this present time, and therefore assume the motto, " The his- tory of the world is the judgment of the world," we perceive herein only the remains of a pantheistic leaven even yet not swept out. It profits little to fix an aim for history, when this is only determined as an ideal for the imagination. The Good is just that which is not merely a subject for the imagination, but which actually exists. §44. The summary of postulates embraced in what has been said may be compared to the soil from which the fundamental prin- ciples of Christian Ethics spring forth, and in which they have their widely branching roots. As the progression continued in history of the kingdom of God, and its final perfection, are con- tingent on the free-will of man, this kingdom determines itself 142 THE ESCHATOLOGICAL TOSTULATE. as the ideal of free-will, the unbroken realization and comple- tion of which must be partly produced in hope, partly waited for and striven after. The will which strives after the king- dom of God, and which is productive, is the will as redeemed and renewed by Christ, which, in dependence and appropriation of Him as Saviour and example, aspires to lead a life in imita- tion of Him, in accordance with the law of God as set forth by Him. On the postulates in question rests the difference between Christian and Pagan ethics. Pagan ethics, in greater part of its forms, is without hope, is without eschatology, and can therefore only determine the highest Good, as something in this earthly existence which still soars upwards, or continues to be an unsatisfied craving. It knows not providence, nor the economy of sin and redemption ; is without a Saviour, and without a pattern : its virtues thence are left to themselves and their own human means. It does not know man as created in God's image, and is therefore very imperfectly acquainted with the divine law, although through the voice of conscience it has a dim perception of the super-mundane character of this law. And as it knows not God the Father, the Almighty Maker, it is fettered in the dualism between mind and matter. As, in what follows, we wish to develope ethical principles in their Christian preciseness, and in their full significance aa normative or law-giving to the moral world and moral life, our explanations are given through the view of life and of the ethical world belonging to Christianity in its relative distinc- tion from the dogmatic. Only from the view-point of eschatology can we fully com- prehend the problems of human life. For only when we know the ultimate object of existence, can we also perceive the aim of human effort. Therefore the summons from ancient times : Respice finem ! " Look to the end ! " For it is according to the final object, according to the ideal which survives all the rest, and is not to be destroyed by any, that all relative ideals must be estimated, and it is according to this that the scheme of life must be planned. It is in the light of these last things, of the ultimate aim for which God designs the guidance and education of man, that God Himself looks down from heaven on human history, on human actions and achievements, on human aspirations after earthly ideals; and therefore Respice THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF ETHICS. 143 jinem! is an admonition which meets man at every turning throughout the Holy Scriptures. It not only under the old covenant calls on men thus, "Remember thy latter end" (Sir. vii. 37) ; but also under the new covenant it reminds us " that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ" (2 Cor. v. 10). The high importance of this all- embracing point of sight is made specially clear from the circumstance, that the coming judgment and the resurrec- tion of Christ from the dead were the first subjects of the apostles' preaching ; as also that Easter, the feast of the resur- rection, is the first festival which was introduced into the Christian Church, because Christianity desired to begin by showing men the result to which it would conduct them, and for which the present life must be the preparation, desired to show them the future blessedness and glory. Christian dogmatics, which is designed as a representation of the facts of revelation in their successive order, begins arch^ologically with the conception of God, the creation, and terminates eschato- logically with the end of all things. Christian ethics, in so far as, under the postulates of dogmatics, it is designed to re- present a practical view of the world and of life in its outline, begins eschatologically with final destine/, or with the highest Good. THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS, AND THE ETHICAL VIEW OF THE WOKLD AND OF LIFE. K THE HIGHEST GOOD. god's kingdom the highest good, salvation and happiness. § 45. The universal concept of the kingdom of God which comes through history, is the concept of a community and an invisible order of things, — a total organization of created personalities, of powers, influences, and gifts, in which God reigns and rules not merely by His power, but also by His world-redeeming and soul-redeeming love and mercy, in which, whilst ransoming His creatures. He makes them partakers not merely in His holiness, but also in the fulness of His love. The kingdom of God, as the highest Good, which already in this present existence is coming, is not merely the sacred realm of liberty and love, but, moreover, the blessed realm in which man finds his last and final satisfaction, or his peace ; is not merely that after which man ought to aspire, because it has a sacred claim on his will, a demand on his activity and self-sacrifice in its service, which cannot be set aside, but besides all this, it is, further, that which from his very nature must be the object of man's deepest longing and desire, the most attractive of objects to him, because it harmonizes with his own inner nature. A good thing is, in general terms, that which man desires and craves, in which his bent or disposition finds its satisfaction, that of which the possession is necessary to his well-being and comfort. We can thus discriminate between physical and mental good things, which only become ethical good things when they are placed in relation to the holy law of will in man, when that which man desires is at the same time that which he oufiht to desire. 147 148 THE HIGHEST GOOD, The hifihest Good mav now be taken in a double sense : that is to say, it may partly be regarded as that which is superior to all other good things (homini supremnm), that which ought to be preferred to all others, — the final Good, in which man finds peace and rest, which he can find nowhere else; partly it may » be considered as the perfect Good {bonum consummatmn), the W epitome of all good things, containing within it the fulness of I all perfection, in which every want is supplied, the desires of all men, nay, of all creatures, satisfied. In both significations j the kingdom of God is the highest Good. It is the one thing j needful, the heavenly pearl, which is to be purchased by the sacrifice of all else {bonum siipremum), because man in its pos- session has obtained essential blessedness or salvation, even if he is obliged to dispense with relative blessings: the one thing needful not merely for the individual, but also for society, which, without the kinn;dom of God and its righteousness, lacks blessedness, even if it be in possession of all earthly good things. But the kingdom of God is also the highest Good as the perfect, the completed Good {bonum consi"oductivity ; whilst the heavenly (the transcendent) kingdom of God is the task or problem for ethical expectation and receptivity, since we should prepare to receive the Lord. But, undoubtedly, it must be acknowledged that the earthly ideal of God's kingdom can alone be realized under great relativity, and that it must not be overestimated at the expense of the heavenly, the eschatological ideal, by which, though in another way and in another form, we should return to the Jewish error concerning an earthlv Messiah. So lonir as the kinn;dom of Sin subsists alono;side of the kincjdom of Holiness, so lono; as the tares are amone; the wheat, so lono; as death reigns in creation, the perfect Good, in the absolute sense, cannot be realized. So Ions as sin and death are not expelled from creation, this earthly existence and all human efforts will continue to retain the impress of the fragmentary, of the separation or splitting into parts of tlie moments. The glory of God's kingdom will, during this stage of existence, continue to have a veiled presence; and even where Chris- tianity in moments is revealed as tlie conquering power of the world, it will in one or other respect be suffering and strug- gling. The highest Good, in its full significance, can only find entrance along with the completed harmony of the world, where the fragmentary has given place to the perfect. We are here reminded of Kant, who determined the highest Good as the unity of virtue and happiness, in a kingdom of free rational beings ; and because he perceived that this con- junction of virtue and happiness which reason demands cannot be realized under the present conditions, where the kingdom of nature does not coincide with the kino-dom of libertv, nor the lav/ of nature with the law of morality, he postulated a future order of things, in which virtue and happiness will be combined in a harmony of the worlds of nature and of liberty. By this 150 THE HIGHEST GOOD. eschatological postulate, with which Kant concluded his philo- sophy, after he had, as he thouglit, in his criticism of Reason, made an end of all theology and dogmatics, he furnishes a proof of his energetic belief in the reality of the Good. For the Good would not be the highest reality, if the natural universe must not at last serve to its glorification, and become the temple of mind and liberty, — if there never enters a harmony of the world, in which holiness is the all-dominant key-note, with which all other notes in creation harmonize, without, as in the present existence, the admission of any disturbing dissonance. But when he determined the highest Good as the unity of virtue and happiness, then, according to our view, the definition must be altered to the union of holiness and eternal happiness or bliss, because virtue and happiness are only relative degrees. Thus, by introducing these relativities into the future w^orld, the highest Good can only be realized in an interminable ap- proximation, in a multiplicity of proportions between happiness and virtue, which brings us back to finiteness and indefinite progress, without our having attained that really infinite or perfect blessedness which can be bestowed upon man by free grace alone. §46. Since we have determined the kino-dom of God as the king- dom of eternal bliss, or, which is the same thing, as the holy kingdom of love in the perfected harmony of the world, it remains to fix more closely the relation between bliss and happi- ness, in order that these terms may not be transposed and mis- applied, and the heavenly be confounded with the earthly. Both words indicate a harmonious existence, a condition satisfactory in itself. But bliss, though it begins in this earthly existence as peace and joy in God, has its true home, its proper sphere, in the heavenly, super-mundane realms, in the new life, where the cosmic relations are qualitatively different from those of the present time, where creation is no longer subject to decay, and where there is no more marrying or giving in marriage : whether we conceive this world to come as the completion of all things, as the state of glory {Bo^a), as the new heaven and the new earth, or imagine it as paradise in the intermediate state. Hap- piness, on the other hand, is limited exclusively to the earth I I I EVERLASTING BLISS AND HAPPINESS. 151 and the present life. Nay, whilst bliss, even if not defined as Christian, must still always be determined as religious, reli- gion is not in and for itself essential to happiness. Happiness (Eudaimony) is an earthly conception (see § 27), is but the idea of perfect well-being and prosperity, without necessarily including relation to God. If we cast a glance on the ethical systems of Paganism, we find that they all occupy themselves in determining wherein the highest Good consists, and how it is to be won, and that most of them give directions for attaining a happy life. But Pagan Ethics is without hope, and happiness is limited to the life on earth, without any reference to that which is to come, or any connection with the personal God. It was not the Cyrenians and Epicureans alone who sought to direct men to a perfect enjoyment of life, to the mind always pleased and contented, burdened with no anxieties. Even the Cynics and the Stoics, although they represented virtue in con- trast to enjoyment, and maintained that the first of these is itself the highest Good, and that nothing further is required, yet lay down a doctrine of happiness ; and their system, more closely examined, may be described as a higher form of Eudai- monism : happiness is their final aim ; in the case of the Cynics, Ataraxy ; in that of the Stoics, Apathy, or the undisturbed tran- quillity of the mind, that inward imperturbability, in which the wise man, being absolutely satisfied within himself, is sufficient to himself, because he has made himself independent of every- thing external, and in which he enjoys the majesty of his inner being. Stoicism and Epicurism both arrive at the same goal, though by different routes. Epicurism desires to make itself independent of desires and necessities, by as far as possible satisfying them all. Stoicism seeks to accomplish the same end by making itself independent of them, by a complete renuncia- tion of their satisfaction, or at least by treating this with perfect indifference : so that Stoicism may be found on the throne and in the hovel, at the splendid banquet and at the anchorite's frugal meal, in external prosperity or under the greatest suffer- ings ; and in all situations it exhibits the same unchanged coun- tenance. But both Epicureans and Stoics desire happiness, or that undisturbed tranquillity of mind, as the highest, or, as the Stoics say, the only Good, which the wise man still holds in pos- session at all times ; nay, even if he be cast into the fiery furnace 152 THE HIGHEST GOOD. of the tyrant Plialaris, he yet maintains liis equanimity. But of a hereafter, of a kingdom which is not of this world, in which the soul can first find true repose, of a future glory from which suffering and death are excluded, there is here no thought or mention. The Christian martyr, on the other hand, when bound to the stake, is not happy, but blessed, that is to say, in the Jiope of the coming glory, which hope does not vanish from before him under present agonies, as history attests in many noble instances. The Cynics have often been compared to the mendicant monks, because both alike reduce the necessities of life to a minimum, in order to become independent of worldly things. But the great difference is, that the Cynics only aspire after happiness, after Ataraxy, which belongs exclusively to the present world ; whilst the mendicant monks aspire after eternal bliss, the im- perishable treasures of heaven. In Aristotle, also, we find Eudaimony as the ultimate aim, that is to say, as a harmonious condition of energy and enjoyment, limited, however, to the present world ; but Plato, whose philosophy is characterized throughout by its supra-mundane tendency, occupies in the ancient world an exceptional position in this respect, that he makes " likeness to God" the final aim of man, and teaches immortality in a future life. According to him, all true philo- sophy consists in a continued dying to this world, and death he considers as a release from the vain show in which we are en- tangled, as an entrance to a higher and purely spiritual form of existence, a life in the world of eternal prototypes (ideals), of which this lower world only exhibits to us the shadows, and in which we shall first come into complete possession of the highest Good, by being ourselves united to it. There is here a conception of blessedness, which, though not the Christian one, is yet superior to Eudaimony, — a transition of the whole present existence into another and higher, in which those who in this present world have seriously sought the divine, come nearer Divinity and its glory than is possible under the conditions of earth ; become independent not merely of the sorrows of life, but even of its joys, which they have ceased to crave ; are ransomed to that perfect liberty in likeness to God which needs no earthly happiness to fill its measure, has not the necessities of which man on this side of time can but partially make him- EVERLASTING BLISS AND HAPPINESS. 153 self independent, whether he seeks to accomplish this by satis- fying these necessities, which is to draw water in the vessels of the Danaides, or attempts to pursue the thorny path of resig- nation. We are here reminded of the dyine Socrates, who ordered a cock to be sacrificed to ^sculapius, the god of medi- cine ; thus expressing in a mythical symbolic manner his con- viction that he was about to obtain a perfect cure, — a state of re-convalescence, as after severe sickness, with its many dis- quieting dreams and delirious imaginations. In the Eleusinian mysteries also, in which immortality is taught, there is to be found a conception of blessedness, since those who were initiated into them were supposed to anticipate the condition succeeding death, after having first been subjected to a series of probations and significant ceremonies. For, in imitation of what it was imagined the soul underwent imme- diately after death, they were obliged to begin by groping in darkness, and with difficulty discovering the way which led to the interior of the temple, whilst distracted by terrible voices, and by flashes of light, which alternately dispelled the gloom and sliowed them hideous forms, calculated to produce the sliuddering and cold sweat of abject fear. But if they sus- tained these trials, there kindled before them at last a tran- quillizing marvellous light, and they attained the green fields and meadows of Paradise, where the sacred chorus-dance was executed, and where they listened to sacred songs, which elevated the soul, purifying it from every earth-born stain. They not only heard holy words of instruction, but found themselves at the same time fascinated by a contemplation of the divine in beatific visions, at the same time comino- into actual relation with purely spiritual enjoyments, and expe- riencing blessedness not as a mere imagination, but as a reality. Thus received into the society of pure and holy men, they beheld the uninitiated and unsanctified multitude far beneath, involved in dense mists, tossed to and fro, and trampling each other ever further down into the morass of matter, racked and tormented by the dread of death, because they would not believe in the eternal Good.^ Here there is a conception of 1 From a fragment of Plutarch's treatise " On the Soul," in Schellings Philosophie der Offenharung, vol. ii. ch. 3, p. 449. Myuster, MiscelL Writbujs, iv. p. luD, and onwards. 154 THE HIGHEST GOOD. blessedness, which is higher than earthly Eudaimony, but lower than Christian blessedness, — an intermediate degree of bliss, which is the highest attainable by heathen consciousness.^ But the idea of happiness may also be associated with that of religion as the union of the heavenly Good with the good things of this world, the combination of happiness and bliss. This combination, however, binds down the religious hope of the future to earth and the present life, and just on this account its ideal of happiness has so many adherents. No doubt the idea would be at once rejected if we should seek to exclude religion and virtue from happiness, and, imitating an assertion of Goethe, should maintain that God, virtue, and immortality might be dispensed with, if, instead of God, we could get gold ; instead of virtue, we could get health, beauty, and geniahty ; instead of immortality in the world to come, we could get a long life upon earth. Such an Ideal of happiness would be found inadmissible. But if we could procure for men God and God's grace along with this world's riches ; give them virtue along with health, beauty, and intellectual endowment ; secure to them the certain hope of a blessed immortality, and at the same time a long and happy life on earth, — then would most of those pious searchers after happiness hold this abundantly worthy of desire, and deem themselves supremely fortunate in its possession. Even although not a few of this class would be more modest in their earthly desires — for the ideal of happiness is infinitely diversified in different individuals — yet what the greater number aspire after, at least in tlie first stadium of their religious course, is just a painless and passionless union of the heavenly and the earthly, in which union there is no cross. Neither can it be said that this ideal is to be unconditionally rejected as that which is maintained by the pure ascetics, who in no sense of the term desire happiness, but only bliss, and regard mortification and suffering as the normal condition of earth. For, not to speak of the Old Testament, which to the fear of God and uprightness joins the promise of happiness, the New ^ It was, according to their description, a true heaven in which the initiated found themselves. The great, all-dominating law of the universe was so just, that it did not deny its heaven to upright pagans, although this heaven was not the actual one, but only such when subjectively perceived, SclielUug onwards from 151. EVERLASTING BLISS AND HAPPINESS. 155 Testament also declares that the fear of God is profitable to all things, both for the present life and also for that which is to come (1 Tim. iv. 8) — that the fear of God is also accompanied by blessings in the present time. And since the Lord Himself has said, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you," He implies that these other things have an inferior value, and are thus not entirely worthless. Unquestionably there is also another word in Scripture, which must be here emphasized, namely, 'Hhat we through much tribulation shall enter the kingdom of God " (Acts xiv. 22) ; by which we are led to the reflection, that the promise as regards the fear of God in the present life also is, that it shall work in us patience under tribulation, and that all things work together for good to them that love God. The experience of life wall also teach every one, that the ideal of happiness is but very imperfectly realized. The opposite of happiness, suffering, whether external or internal, is shut out from the life of no man, in spite of all the precaution of prudence, as an evidence that not happiness, but bliss, as life in God under an entirely different form of existence from the present, is the proper final aim of our being. For a man may be really blessed on the ruins of his earthly happiness, even under pain and suffering, by which blessedness shows its heavenly nature, makes evident that it is not of this world ; and blessed- ness or salvation, which as a heavenly grace has come down to man — for no one can himself procure it, or draw it forth from his own inner being, as he may stoical apathy — returns with him from earth to heaven, there to unfold itself in its true home. Happiness, even if it be preserved throughout a long life, must vanish at all events when death arrives. The earthly elements, the relativities, remain behind on earth ; and only that portion of it which has been fashioned into blessedness, the treasure of faith and obedience, of love and wisdom, which has thus become the soul's possession, is taken up along with him into the heavenly kingdom. §47. The limited character of the ideal of earthly happiness is also shown when we contemplate it from the standpoint of society. From this standpoint the ideal of happiness appears specially 15G THE HIGHEST GOOD. ill the representation of tlie (jolden period, the golden age, ^vhich as paradise lies far behind us, whilst it lies now before ns as the goal of our effort and of our desire. The conception of the golden age is that of a condition of society on earth, in which universal religion and morality are combined with the harmonious development of all the powers of humanity, and with the greatest possible sum of enjoyment and prosperity both for the whole and for individuals, — a condition of outward and inward harmony. The visionary colouring of the golden age is present in the many Utopias which from time to time emerge and constantly recur in representations such as these : that in the golden times the spirit of love and wisdom shall cause war to cease for ever ; that the progress of dominion over nature shall make malignant disease impossible, and teach men the art of prolonging life far beyond its present limits, etc. etc. But looked at apart from the visionary, it may be said that ethics itself, in so far as it unfolds the ideals of human society, the social advantages and the conditions of their attainment, is calculated to produce the golden period, or at least to conduce to it and prepare the way for it, which Plato, from the stand- point of Pagain'sm, has already done in his Repuhlic, his ideal state as the model of a morally harmonious condition of society. The highest religious representation of the golden period, as the perfect exhibition of the supreme Good within these earthly conditions, is the representation of Messiah's kingdom upon earthy which again has its strongest expression in Chiliasm, or in the doctrine of the Millennium, in which the power of evil is bound and cannot express itself as the power of society, and in which God's people, after the many protracted conflicts of the Church, celebrate their great historic Sabbath. The kernel of Chiliasm, stripped of its visionary colouring, is the idea of the earthli/ sovereignty of Cliristianity, — an idea which was especially vigorous and brilliant dunng the first three centuries, in the time of the Church's persecution and oppression, in the time of martyrdom, when the kingdom of God could only be possessed as the one pearl of great price, as blessedness in faith and hope, in the union of hearts with the Redeemer, in the communion of the word and of the sacraments — as blessedness, but not at all as happiness. In contrast to this state of oppression, Chiliasm arises with the EVERLASTING BLISS AND HAPPINESS. 157 thought of Christ's rule in this world, and along with this, universal peace on earth. And, strangely enough, when Christianity becomes the State religion, and thus attains worldly dominion, Chiliasm disappears for a considerable period. Christ's rule on earth, His kingly power, may undoubtedly be understood in very different senses, more or less truly or falsely, spiritually or carnally. But it is essentially this ideal which flits before us, when we demand that the kingdom of God shall develope itself as a total organization, including within it all the objects of human society. It is this which, from the time when Christianity became the State religion, has at least been present to the purpose of all Christian States. And in its perfect development it is the ideal of Christianity as a world- wide union of Christian nations and races in a condition of universal peace and uprightness, in which conflicting forces, in which opposed and naturally hostile national individualities, are combined in the higher unity of faith and love, in which in the universal peace of the world " the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the cow and the bear shall feed together" (Isa. xii. 6). This earthly ideal has certainly its value, but still with the restriction, which belongs to all earthly ideals, that it can never be perfectly attained, but can only flit before our aspira- tion, can only be realized approximately. The golden period is coming, and shall come ; but never under heaven will that point of time be reached, wdien it can be said absolutely that it has come. For sin, and death, and the powers of Antichrist, in- separable from this economy, make this an impossibility. Even if we imagine a moment in the history of the universe in which the ase of fjold bursts forth and the devil is bound, vet in a succeeding moment this will have disappeared : the devil will be once more let loose, and the Church again be suffering and militant. The perfect realization of the kingdom of God, and the complete sovereignty of Christ, shall first appear through a great crisis with the erection of the kingdom of heaven, which is not a realm of happiness, but of supreme blessedness and glory. Happiness, whether it be considered from the standpoint of the individual or from that of society, whether characterized by religion or not — and originally it is not a religious but a worldly conception — can never be found perfect upon earth, 158 THE HIGHEST GOOD. whilst yet its home is exclusively there. Its antagonists — that is to say, suffering, adversity, want, and death — prevent the achievement of the ideal. Therefore this world can never be contemplated as an island of happiness ; yet neither can it be contemplated as exclusively a vale of sorrow, since relative happiness may be found, though even this would be very precarious if the blessedness of salvation had not been revealed. But Christianity teaches us to view both happiness and suffer- ing not as matters of infinite importance, not as that which is man's final destiny, but as interminable destinies which are consonant to this earthly state of existence, because through them, as means of education, w^e are to be fitted for the coming blessedness, for that heavenly life in which we are not merely redeemed from suffering, but also freed from the craving for enjoyment ; because we have become partakers of God's own blessedness, in the liberty of God's children, in which we can dispense with the lower benefits on which we are here dependent. And the heavenly life, as the life in God and in the realms of creation, wdiich God fills with His own presence, is an indis- soluble life (Heb. vii. 16), — a life which is the indissoluble union of its moments, of the divine and the human, the uncreated and created, of energy and repose, of love and contemplation ; ■whilst the present life is constantly exposed to the dissolution and breaking asunder of its moments, which is especially the case with happiness, it being fragile as glass. An optimism which puts happiness in the place of the final or chief end of man, and, closing its eyes to sin and the deficiencies of the present existence, concludes that in this " excellent world " there is no essential risk either to virtue or to happiness, is not less untrue, though far less profound, than a pessimism which puts suffering and death as the final purpose of life, as that for which it is lived. Such a pessimism has in our days found expression in Schopenhauer's theory of unhappiness, in con- sequence of which existence, nay, life itself, is the highest evil, from which individual evils are but offshoots. For, according to this theory, the conception of life is an egoistic will, which is incessantly renewing in itself pain and suffering, as is already exhibited in nature in the suffering animal kingdom, which shows us the spectacle of mutual destruction and torture, but in the highest degree repeats itself in the realm of humanity, EVERLASTING BLISS AND HAPPINESS. 159 where men mutually strive, torture and tread down one another, at the same time tormenting and plaguing themselves. Each of them certainly desires to be happy, yet chases after a soap- bubble, a Fata Morgana in the form of an ideal of happiness, which is never attained, and only leaves behind pains which not the less drive them on to new wishes, new cravings, new illusions. True wisdom, therefore, consists in acknowledging the emptiness of existence, and not allowing oneself to be dazzled by appearances. The ethical task then remains the same as with the Indian ascetics, to die to the wish to live and exist, to will '' nothing," because the will is the source of all sufferings and illusions. The thing most desirable for man, the highest good, is union with " nothing," is liberation from the burden of life itself, is to become again what he was before his birth, namely, non-existent.^ However false and monstrous this theory may be, it has still its relative correctness as opposed to a flat optimism, which has taken no account of the contradic- tions and the wants of life. A more minute consideration of Optimism and Pessimism must, however, be given a little further on. § 48. It is in the hope of the future kingdom of bliss and glory that we work for God's kingdom on earth, assured that we are not drawing water in the vessels of the Danaides. But the kingdom of God on earth can only be realized by a continued strife with Evil, and victory over it as the opposite of the Good. Just as the Good is both that after which man sJwuld strive, and that wherein, from the impulse of his being, he finds his peace, his blessedness, so is the Evil the corresponding opposite. In so far as the Good is considered from the view-point of God's holy law, the contrast between Good and Evil must be defined as that between the normal and the abnormal in conduct and dis- position of mind. In so far, on the other hand, as the Good is considered as a state of realized perfection, as it is considered from the view-point of blessedness, happiness, and the harmony of the world, the contrast appears between the blessings and the evils of life. In general terms, an evil is that which man, in consequence of his nature, cannot otherwise than seek to ^ Die Welt as Wille und Vorstelluiuj (The World as Will aud Appeaxance). 160 THE HIGHEST GOOD. escape, because It hinders and restrains life, produces a dishar- mony in existence. But both physical and mental evils are, like the corresponding goods or benefits, only aesthetic evils (aesthetic taken in the older, general signification, as that which awakens desire or distaste, pleasure or the reverse), so long as they are not placed in relation to the holy law of the will. What is relatively worthy to be desired, and what should conditionally be avoided, is measured by the highest good and the highest evil alone. THE KINGDOM OF GOB AND THE KINGD0:M OF SIN. THE HIGHEST EVIL. § 49. As the Good, considered as the destiny of man, is love to God and His kingdom, the Evil can only be defined as the essential contrast to love, or as Egoism. The Evil is not a mere defect, a limitation, so that the contrast between Good and Evil sliould be only the contrast between the more or less perfect. Evil is moreover a positive, as certainly as the egoistic will takes up a position, sets itself against the Good. The Evil is not a necessary moment of development ; it is that which should not be — that, the presence of which is absolutely unau- thorized in the creation of God, and which should have rested eternally in the night of possibility. It does not consist merely in the sovereignty of the senses over reason, though this is one of the principal phenomena under which it appears ; for the hiHiest and most decided factors of the Good are not reason and sense, liberty and nature, but human will and divine will, human liberty and divine grace. The Evil is sin, a disturbance of the normal relation of the will, not merely to an impersonal law of reason, but to the Creator. And if the good will is that wliicli, in union with God, wills the divine aim of creation, the evil will is the denial and opposition of this aim, and the prose- cution of an opposite aim ; since the egoistic will does not desire that God should reign supreme over all things, but that itself should hold the place of ruler, use and enjoy the world in independence of God. As the kingdom of God does not merely GODS KINGDOM AND THE KINGDOM OF SIN. 1 61 appear in separate individuals, but as a kingdom, so also does Evil, whose kincrdom on earth is alono; with the former, as tares in the wheat. And as, according to the teaching of revelation, the kingdom of the Good has not merely its members on earth, but also embraces the glorified and sanctified souls and spirits departed, and those that were originally holy ; so, too, the kingdom of Evil stretches beyond this earthly sphere, embracing demon souls and spirits, who have their central point in the devil ; and the contest between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of sin on earth is bound up with the contest in the higher world of spirits. This idea of a kingdom of sin has indeed its special difficulty in this, that evil is not organizing, but only disorganizing, and would therefore seem to lack the unity which is necessary for a kingdom. But although Evil is disorganizing, and only has actual existence by disturbing the oria;inal Good ; and though the kino;dom of Evil must be anta- gonistic to itself, in so far as the egoistic wills mutually contest the supremacy ; still, from another side, it is not antagonistic to itself, and possesses a comparative unity, in so far as the egoistic wills all conspire and co-operate against the kingdom of the Good and its realization. By the appearance of Christ, the opposition between Good and Evil amongst men was most fully manifested. For, as the aim of creation here has determined itself as the aim of redemption, the opposition between Good and Evil determines itself as the opposition between the will which submits to redemption and that which rejects and contests it. § 50. If the highest Good may be defined as the unity of sanctified love and blessedness, the highest Evil must be defined as the unity of sin and misery. The highest Evil is sin itself, joined to consciousness of guilt and inward condemnation. It is this evil {swpremum inalmn) which ought to be abhorred by men above every other evil, and which cannot be counterbalanced by the possession of all relative Good. " What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " In truth, it may be said that all men share in this highest Evil, in so far as they are all by sin estranged from God; and they all bear within them the germ of that sickness which must unfold itself in death, if the remedy be not found. Even where L 162 THE HIGHEST GOOD. consciousness of guilt and accusation of conscience have not been awakened, the absence of holy peace and tranquillity receives an indirect testimony, in the inexplicable sadness of which there is a store in every human heart; in the weariness, the feeling of emptiness and desolation in existence, which often assails man whilst in the possession of all external goods, and makes it necessary for him to discover means to pass away time, although never succeeding in his aim ; in which respect Byron has called this tedium or eiinui the mystery of the fashionable world. The mystery is, that men in this life feel miserable separated from eternal life ; and therefore not merely when obliged to struggle with earthly want, but also when in posses- sion of all earthly advantages, they must feel the pressure and emptiness of time ; that the man who has not found the highest good can never obtain any actually present time, but predo- minantly lives either in the past or in the future, whilst by an illusion of the fancy he imagines that what he cannot attain now, he shall reach at some future period, though in reality it never can be his if Time and Eternity are not united for him. But, first, where the consciousness of guilt and the accusations of conscience appear in their terrors, we have the highest evil as such. The highest evil becomes the perfect evil (malum consummatum) when all possibilities of change and improve- ment are exhausted, w'hen the future is lost, when every hope of deliverance is extinguished, and when, in addition to the inward misery, comes a corresponding outward state of woe. Unmitigated evil leads our contemplation away from this world of mixture, where the good and the evil exist together, and where the evil, therefore, cannot be found in its completeness, to the outer realm, to that cosmic region which we call Hell, to the abode of the damned, the entrance to which, according to Dante, has this inscription : " Through me you pass into the realms of woe; Through me to regions of eternal pain ; Through me among a people lost for aye. Justice divine my strong foundation laid ; And love, by wisdom led, the limits drew. V My being was when things create were none, \ Save things eternal ; and such thing am I. Abandon hope, all ye that enter here." ^ Chambers' translation. \ / THE HIGHEST EVIL. 163 This passage is at the same time so remarkable, because the poet causes Hell to be built, not by mere justice, but also by love, since justice is an essential moment even in love, its self- vindication, the maintenance of the justice of love towards those who have rejected it ; by which, in the great discord, he seeks to maintain the harmony of tlie universe. In a relative sense, as a foretaste of the future, unmitigated evil may also be found within these earthly conditions. If the ideal of the perfect good within these conditions is an ethical total organiza- tion whicli exhibits the union of universal religion, morality and bliss, then must perfect evil or Hell upon Earth be imagined as the opposite, as an approximately realized totality of evils. But a totality of evil can only be imagined as a condition of the world, a state of society which finds itself in a universal disorganization and dissolution, in which all bonds are loosened by the destroying power of Egoism, where ungodliness and arrogant denial of the truth, where vice in all forms, reigns in conjunction with the loss of happiness and bliss, inward and outward misery. We have an approximate image of the highest evil on earth — the Roman Empire during its decay — the picture of a vast carrion world, in which evil, impure, and demon spirits have taken up their abode. We may also picture the destruction of Jerusalem, — an exhibition not merely of the most fearful sin, crime, and vain strife against God, but also of a condition in which the community, though pressed by external foes, the instruments of retributive justice, completed its own downfall by furious party struggles within its own bosom. We may recall the period of the reign of terror in the French Revolution. But especially the word of Prophecy leads us to the contemplation of the last age of the world, when the Man of Sin shall be revealed, " who opposeth and exalteth himself against everything which is called God, and the worship of God ; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God " (2 Thess. ii. 4). If the highest Good on earth, viewed from the standpoint of society, is the ideal of a world-wide alliance of Christian states and nationalities in a condition of universal uprightness and peace, the prophetic word would seem to indicate here the highest evil of society on earth to be a universal monarchy, an earthly sovereignty, in which Antichrist, in the form of IG-i THE HIGHEST GOOD. an autocrat, armed with all external power, and supported by the false prophet, by all the means of culture and civilisation, seduces the nations of the earth, brings them to boar his mark, and exerts his disoreaniziurr, all-pervertincp micrlit against everything divine and human. The complete prophetic sketch of the highest Evil, both in the present and the future world, the torments of earth and hell, is given in the Apocalypse, where there is likewise a representation of the highest Good, of the progressive contest and victory of the kingdom of God. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE WORLD. PESSIMISM. OPTIMISM AND §51. But the kingdom of God is not only opposed to the kingdom of sin and of evil ; it is also opposed to the world in the ethical signification of the term. This expression " the world " has in Bible language, besides its application to the content of in- habitants, a special reference to the condition of human society since the Fall, and thus bears a peculiar ethical meaning ; and as material creation shared in the consequences of the spiritual fall, nature in its present condition is also of "this world," that is to say, abnormal in its state and development. Yet this world is still not one with the kingdom of sin and evil, although it certainly is a sinful world in so far as the kingdom of evil has won entrance within it, and by its influence has vitiated it. The nature of this world is twofold in its character, and can neither be absolutely condemned as evil, nor unconditionally applauded as good. It bears the mark of opposing principles (the good and the evil), containing within it antagonistic ele- ments and qualities which can never be reconciled ; thus giving evidence that it is doomed to destruction, in order that it may hereafter arise again in restored harmony of form. Viewed in relation to the other regions of creation, it is a middle sphere, neither Heaven nor Hell, but the vestibule of each. It is a world of sin, of death, of evanescence ; but it is not the less God's world, in which the disturbino; forces are still constantly opposed by creative and sustaining power, and where the mercy GOD'S KIXGDOil AND THE WORLD. 165 of God, outside redemption, has countless witnesses. It is u world destitute of the supreme good, and is so far unsatisfying ; but it embraces every relative good, the relations of virtue and happiness, of ideal and actual excellences, which though in- deed by no means absolute, are yet not worthless, but inter- mediate realities, which have their value. On account of its twofold nature, the world is unreliable and illusory^, so that the thoughtless and inexperienced are constantly deceived and betrayed by it ; but he who uses the world with sound judgment, and within its domain seeks for truth, will find, not indeed the truth as a whole, but precious fragments of it. In its separation from God, the world bears in its bosom an enmity towards Him which testifies to its relationship with the king- dom of Satan ; but, on the other hand, it is susceptible of redemption, and is imbued with a deep longing after the supreme good, showing thereby its relationship with the king- dom of God. Therefore the kingdom of God stands in a double relation to this world, and re£i;ards it from a twofold point of view. On the one side, this world, on account of sin, is opposed to the kingdom of God, and is therefore to be avoided and combated as an evil. " Love not the world, neither the things which are in the world" (1 John ii. 15). "The friend- ship of the world is enmity with God" (Jas. iv. 14). But on the other side the world is appointed to redemption : " For God so loved the world, that He jiave His onlv-beo-otten S ni" ( Jolin iii. 16) : it is capable of receiving the kingdom of God, is a plastic material (Formahile) ; it is fitted to be organized for the kingdom of God. The field is the world (Matt. xiii. 37), a field in which this kingdom of God may be set up ; a household where the relative good is not altogether illusory, but fitted to occupy a right relation towards the supreme good. But with- out the kingdom of God, without the supreme good, this world remains a continual coLtradiction, a fragment which can never become a whole, a harmony which incessantly passes over into discord. From the twofold nature of this world as here pointed out, the opposite statements regarding it found in Scripture are explained. And from this we learn, at the same time, to appreciate the two views of life and of the world Avhich ever and anon recur in the human race — Optimism and Pessimism, 1G6 THE HIGHEST GOOD. §52. Naturalistic Optimism, apart from Ciiristianity, ignores sin and redemption, and is ignorant tliat the woi-ld, by the Fall, has become tlds ivorld ; it assumes that this world still maintains its original condition, when " God saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." The supreme Good has never been lost, the world's harmony has never been disturbed ; the world preserves a normal position, a normal development ; and every- thing viewed from the standpoint of totality is good. The supreme Good is the free self-development of humanity in a world affording all the required conditions. The optimist view of life takes in only the creative and sustaining powers of existence, and shuts out the contemplation of death and dis- order. Evil is considered as only a defect, a limitation, nay, as the condition for life movement and progress ; the supreme Evil is only lack of wisdom, ignorance and barbarism, which are to be overcome by advancing culture. The view of life diametrically opposed to this, which we shall call Pessimism, assumes, on the other hand, either that the world originally, and from the betrinning until now, has been and remains a vale of sorrow, that man was formed for suffering and for a disturbed development of life ; or it admits a golden age in the beginning of history, which has disappeared and given place to a depravity ever on the increase. But its constant complaint is that the supreme Good cannot be found by man in this world, that the supreme Good is but a mere ideal, a thought, an image of the fancy, generated by human desire, and which unhappily man must ever pursue with eagerness ; whilst the realitj' presents to him only the supreme Evil, namely life, and even existence, as an unsolved and unsolvable problem of dissonance, — a painful contrast to the pretensions of the ideal. Christianity is the truth both of Optimism and Pessimism. It is pessimist, in that it teaches that the whole world lieth in wickedness, that man has a lost paradise behind him, that the supreme Good has disappeared, that human life with all its ex- cellences only shows us the ruins of an empire which has been overthrown, since man by the abuse of his free-will has lost his royal dignity on earth. But it is optimist, in that it teaches that it is possible for man to be redeemed and to be reinstated OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 167 in his sovereignty, that the supreme Good is restored in Christ, who has opened again the gates of paradise. If we compare Optimism and Pessimism as they appear in the natural life of man, the last of the two may be designated as the more elevated view, since it unveils the incongruity of the reality with the ideal, which Optimism conceals. Pessimism, in the midst of its errors, has yet a deeper perception than Optimism of the jar in exist- ence ; and just because of this more correct apprehension of the actual condition of the disturbed harmony, it is the constant corrector of the other, troubling the calm of its contemplation. Yet Optimism and Pessimism are near akin, bearing the rela- tion of immediate perception and reflection. They are both found at all times in the human race. For man has an impulse to life, and finds satisfaction and enjoyment in existence, whilst, on the other hand, he bears sin and sorrow secretly in his heart. But with regard to the optimist view of things, history shows that the productive periods of our race are those in which it has predominated. Thus with the Greeks at the zenith of their greatness. For so long as man is conscious of his own creative power, and delights in its exercise, so long is his faith unshaken in the victory of the creative power of existence, — a faith which is well founded, but will only hold its ground when alongside of it stands faith in the neio creation of Christianity. Pes- simism appears especially in the unhappy epochs of history. It may then contemplate the world from the standpoint of virtue, and find that in place of this only vice is seen. We see this in Plautus and the Roman satirists, as Juvenal, whose painting of the morals of his times agrees essentially with the description given of paganism by the Apostle Paul in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and which is certainly not an optimist sketch. Or it may regard life specially from the standpoint of happiness, and discover that human existence is utterly miserable, as the poets have often declared. But all these complaints merge into one, that all is vanity, that the life of man is aimless and meaningless. It is indeed characteristic of pagan Pessimism, that the ethical is more or less dominated by the fatalistic, that the blame of the whole is cast on a mysterious destiny. But yet it approaches more closely to Christianity than does this self-satisfied Optimism ; for " they that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that 168 THE HIGHEST GOOD. / are sick." It is therefore in a moral point of view more in- structive to study the unfortunate periods in history than tlie fortunate, because the former exhibit to us the end of the natural life of man, the moral of the optimist history. And here, too, the saying holds good : Bespice finem. Thus the contemplation of the condition of paganism at the time of Christ's birth is specially instructive, because it shows us the result to which this belief at last conducted through the long course of its history, the total absence of result, the pure nihil- ismus in which the whole terminates. Through sorrow the way is opened to the acknowledgment of sin, and the Pessimism of Christian ethics paves the way for true Optimism. §53. That the Optimism of unrenewed human nature never per- mits itself to be carried through to a conclusion, is testified not merely by the consideration of ancient writers, but by that of the more modern as well ; and we may here take example not onlv from the Greeks, but also from the greatest poet of our own time, from Goethe, who is the interpreter of the bright, joyous life of the world. No one has with such force as Goethe fixed his eye on the creating and sustaining powers of existence, whilst at tlie same time he turned away his glance from the de- stroying powers, or acknowledged their presence only in so far as was inevitable, and ever asserted their impotence against the powers of life. '•' I adore," said he, "that God who has laid such a power of production in the world, that if even but a millionth part thereof come to perfection, the world so swarms with creatures, that war, pestilence, fire, or flood cannot overwhelm it. This God is my God !" By this he indicates his conception of God as the physical, not as the moral. And on this same produc- tivity he fixes his attention in the contemplation of human life ; for however many may meanwhile perish, " there still circulates fresh young blood." The same holds good with the spiritual. After every barren and unproductive period, genius stands forth anew, and pours out its fertilizing stream on the human race. Man is everywhere surrounded by the sources of life and of the renewal of youth, and the poet cries aloud to his contemporaries : '■ Open vour eyes ; ye are not required to search for the good in the far distant ; it is here, if ye will but grasp it. Learn to find / OPTIMISM AND FESS.MISM. 1C9 joy in existence, giving yourselves up to the glory of Nature, and that higher glory of Nature which is revealed through the pro- ductions of genius ; live your life ; extend education and civili- sation beyond yourselves ; draw from the wells, which flow at your feet, if ye will but look round you, instead of closing your eyes in sloth and vain dreaming : do this, and ye shall discover that it is good to be in this world." We certainly do not ignore the truth which is contained in this life-teaching. There is no one who does not require to listen to it, who does not re- quire to open his eyes to the beauties of creation and of human life ; no one who does not require this appeal to contemplate the grandeur of life, not merely in what is most elevated, but also in the minute and lowlv, not merely in the far removed, but also in that which lies nearest to us, and which just on that account is so unnoticed, whether it be the sunbeam which shines in on us in our chamber, or the men w'ho appear to us so com- monplace, but in whom there is yet something original, some ray of eternity, if we have but eyes to perceive it; or it may be the circumstances or the occupation which we look upon as so trivial and unimportant, but of which we might make some- thing useful and important, if we had but energy and love. The question is only, if Pessimism is really excluded by such life-teaching, without the intervention of Christianity, \Ye maintain that all Optimism which is not Christian contains a Pessimism, hidden and repressed it may be, but not annihilated, and that this is the case with Goethe's Optimism. The point with Goethe from which Pessimism may be deduced, lies, in our opinion, in the want of result in his view of life. We will endeavour to show this more clearly. It is acknowledged as an element in the fifreatness of Goethe, that the conditions of mind which he depicts are the portraiture of his own inner being, the different epochs in the development of his own life, and that he freed himself from the overwhelming influence of these by making them the subject of poetic repre- sentation. He is himself Werther, whose unhappy love he has painted in such glowing colours. He is himself Tasso, who lives exclusively in the w^orld of imagination, in the poet's dreamland, and in his artist sensitiveness feels the cold breath of reality touch him painfully. We may add, that he is himself Autonioj the courtier, a contrast to the poet, — these two never 170 THE HIGHEST GOOD. really coming into harmonious unity. He is himself Wilhelra Meister, who yearns for intellectual progress and refinement, and passes through illusion after illusion in this respect, whilst yet his years of study and of travel never can show him this last : Whither ? He is himself Faust, who turns away from the faith and craves the infinite, first in unlimited knowledge, and next in unlimited enjoyment of life, both alike unattainable by him. All these conditions and tendencies depict various epochs in his own life. But whilst these puny ideals, encumbered with illusions, liave one by one disappeared from his view, and can but serve as material for poetic beauty of representation, the question yet arises : What ideal of life remains standincr before hrni, as that wherein he himself and his readers shall rest at last ? What aim in life remains standing before him, which shall not merely furnish subject for verses, but by which life itself shall be cultivated and refined ? We can here only speak of cultivation, progress, human life. But just here appears, on a closer contemplation, what we have before called the want of result in his view of life, or the want of a final object, where, under the seriousness of life, we may find rest, because the human with Goethe is separated from the Christian, and must find rest and satisfaction for itself. We do not assert, by any means, that his view of life is destitute of ethical content. In refutation of this, might be pointed out to us his Goetz, or Tphigenia, or Herman and Dorothea^ where the good, where fidelity and love, are placed before our eyes in such noble forms. These poems, however, a])pear like islands in a lonely sea. The suggestions of an ethical survey of life, which are to be found here, are not carried out elsewhere. On the other hand, there is an important moral moment, which becomes more and more predominant in his writings, namely, resignation and self-denial. It is resignation which is indirectly preached in Werther, who is mastered by the allurements of passion. It is resignation which is preached in Tasso, who, in immeasurable attachment to poetic imageries, makes demands upon reality which can never be fulfilled. It is resignation and self-denial which, under other forms, are enunciated through Wilhelm Meister, who devotes himself to tasks beyond his strength. And it is the same teaching which is set forth through Faust, who seeks to soar beyond the limits of earthly knowledge. But resignation and OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 171 self-denial do not present a final result, in which we can find rest ; when dsprived of our illusory ideas, we must receive in return for them another ideal, and that the true one. But " refinement," " culture," and " human life," are only temporary subjects of interest, which cannot satisfy us as a last and highest aim of existence, a final refuge for the soul throughout its con- flict. Here Goethe's view of life exhibits a great lack of teleo- logy — its want of religion, the want of an ultimate and supreme object after which the life may strive, and according to which it may be ethically planned. The same thing appears in his autobiography {Wahrheit unci DicJitung), in which we only find an extremely interesting, lively, and suggestive development of talent. Goethe's theory of life, like that of the ancients, has its aims entirely in this lower world, concerns itself only about happi- ness and resignation^ whilst salvation and the kingdom of God lie entirely outside. For if the idea of immortality and a future higher life are not excluded from his programme, they play a very unimportant part. According to Goethe, we should live without allowing such considerations strongly to influence us ; we should, like the Greeks, who were his great types of human dignity, have sufficient to occupy us in the present time, and let the future come to us as it may ; we ought, in genuine artistic self-restraint, to lead a healthy, virtuous life, in which we may preserve contentment with existence and with ourselves. There is unquestionably a season when this is possible, especially for the possessors of health, talent, and money. Thus the Greeks could rejoice in existence till overtaken by death under its manifold shapes. But such a scheme of life makes no pro- vision for those amonsi; us who belono; to the unmfted, the poor, those who toil and suffer hardship, those who are in the gripe of sickness or adversity. Here the ethics of Goethe, lack- ing faith, has nothing to offer us except the reiteration of resignation, or it points to Christianity as a beautiful illusion for amiable but weak minds. " For my sweet friend was ill," says he, in reference to Fraulein von Klettenberg, who fur- nished him with the groundwork of his Concessions of a Pure Mind. " And with regard to all that is unhealthy and unsatis- factory around us, with regard to the contrast which appears between ideal and reality, this view of life has nothing more to 172 THE HIGHEST GOOD. tell us, than that we must not make ideal reqnh'ements on realities, but take the world as we find it. Neither does it enh'ghten us as to how we are to preserve that self-satisfaction which Goethe's system of ethics demands, when in our moral efforts we feel ourselves hemmed in by our own nature, and are forced to lament: The good wliich I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." That Goethe, to whom none of these experiences were unknown, and who himself made the distressing discovery that " we constantly fall back again into error," becomes neither pessimist nor Christian, probably is due to the fact that, instead of descending into the sad and inexplicable contradictions of reality, he rather seeks to forget them, so as not to be disturbed in the enjoyment of existence, nay, even diminishes the demands of his ideal. This coming down from the ideal, this sinking to prosaic reality, shows itself also in his Faust. For the same Faust who, in the beginniniT, moves in the hin;hest reo;ion of thought, who yearns after knowledge unlimited, and wishes to penetrate into the deep things of God, ends in the second part of the poem in a rational self-restraint, laying aside his speculative ideals, and at the court of the Emperor works for the public good, by executing dykes and dams to keep out the inroads of the sea, whereby agriculture, industry, and other matters which con- cern the general weal are promoted. In this direction the poet's own ever-increasing realism and resignation of the ideal are mirrored in Faust. That, nevertheless, the want of result in such a view of life, that the inexplicable dissonance in existence has also come to his knowledge, and has made itself felt as a drawback, which forms a contrast to his Optimism, is clearly shown by several of his own admissions ; as when he says, in conversation with Eckermann : " I have always been looked upon as a favourite of fortune ; neither will I bemoan myself or accuse my course of life as unworthy But yet, after all, it has been nothing but labour and trouble, and I may well say that in my seventy-five years I have not had four weeks during which I could enjoy life. It has been the eternal rollinfT of a stone which must be constantly moved afresh." To such admissions may be added also expressions regarding the course of worldly events, which exhibit a very different view of life from those of the optimist, OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 173 nnd in wlilcli he lias expressed tliouglits wliicli every day became more confirmed, as when in his old aiie he savs : " Matters go very ill with us, the inhabitants of so old a region as Europe. Our circumstances are too artificial and complicated, our food and mode of living are not in accordance with nature, and our social relations are destitute of real affection and cordiality. Every one is polite and courteous, but no one has the courage to be natural and hearty ; so that an honest man, with nature in his soul, has a hard lot. One might often wish he had been born in the South Sea Islands, among the so-called savages, in order to enjoy for once human existence pure and without this false flavour." And again : '• When one ponders deeply on the misery of our times, it often seems as if the world were ripening more and more for the last day. Evil increases from generation to ijeneration. For it is not enouaih that we suffer from the sins of our fathers ; we transmit this heritage of woe to our descend- ants, increased by our own transgressions." And again : " Our rural population is certainly in a healthy condition, and it is to be hoped will long continue so, in order to preserve us from total depravity and decay. But go into any of our large cities, and you will be shocked and horrified. Take a walk through the streets wdth a diahle hoiteux or a doctor of extensive practice by your side, and he will whisper in your ear stories which will make your hair stand on end at the thought of the wickedness and misery which pervade human nature and scourge society." " Humanity will doubtless advance in knowledge and intel- ligence, but not in the love or the practice of virtue, and seem- ing progress in the latter direction will not be permanent. I see the time approaching when God will have no longer plea- sure in the human race, and will break in pieces the whole creation in order totally to renew it." ^ It must be admitted that such utterances only come forth from Goethe at rare intervals, momentary sparkles, but they furnish unexceptionable evidence that his Optimism has Pessi- mism in the background, that some other view of life is needed than that of Goethe. ^ From conversations with Eckermanu. Gelzer, German National Litera< ture, 2d vol. pp. 366-67. 174 THE HIGHEST GOOD. §54. The want of result in which Optimism terminates, and which it most commonly seeks to conceal from itself, is, from the first, prominently brought forward by Pessimism as the great, all-embracing, fundamental discovery. Pessimism fixes its glance on the disturbing and destroying powers, and beholds these as the conquering. In nature, it discerns everywhere death in life ; in human affairs, the evil overpowering the good ; in history, the incessant rolling of a Sisyphus stone ; and thence arrives at the conclusion that the life of man is without aim, the last object and intention of existence — nothing. Not the less does it continue to demand an ideal of a world which must be real ; and however otherwise it may be regulated, this world must always be such that the individual can find in it absolute satisfaction. This contradiction, at the same time denyino- the ideal and demanding it, often appears like scepticism, as doubt of the reality of life ; but in the very demand for this reality there lurks a secret belief that it is to be found. Sceptic Pessimism must therefore clear gradually into belief or sink into fatalism. A classical expression of the sceptic Pessimism which may be dissipated by faith, is given us from the standpoint of the Old Testament in the book of Ecclesiastes, the burden of which is : All is vanity ! The Preacher, who is introduced speaking in the person of King Solomon, expresses in these words that life has no aim, no TeXo9, that is to say, no settled aim, nothing in which man can find repose. He has sought wisdom, but it was only vanity and vexation of spirit ; for the wisdom which he found merely exhibited to him the illusions of life, but could not show him one perfect object in which he mio^ht rest as a final aim of existence. Therefore he says, that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, since he only thus per- ceives more and more illusions, whilst nothing is the result, and nihilism is only sorrow of heart. Thereafter he turns to the practical : All here is within his power. He has tasted seem- ing enjoyment, has listened to male singers and female singers, but it ended in vanity. He has executed great projects, but this also was vanity ; for in the course of the world he might expect that those who succeeded him would break down or OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 175 suffer to fall into decay what he had begun. What, then, has a man of all his labour and trouble under the sun ? And as the contemplation of human efforts brings him to exclaim, All is vanity ! so also does the contemplation of human destinies: " There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wicked- ness," and he cannot find in the course of the world any real revelation of just retribution. And what specially strengthens him in his sceptical opinions is, that the life of the human race shows no progress. There is nothing new under the sun, but that which has been before shall be again. When Optimism perpetually glories in the progress of humanity, and perpetually proclaims the golden age, the Preacher reminds us by his earnest declaration, " There is nothing new under the sun," that these highly-vaunted improvements are but repetitions of the old, which is bad, and that the old vanity and the old misery yet continue to abide with the race ; or, in other words, that the fundamental conditions of existence remain the same, and that therefore nothing essentially new can occur. When Optimism thus vaunts the progress which the human race has made in the control of nature, the Preacher refuses to admit this as new, so long as this progress cannot arrest decay and death. When Optimism praises the advance of human know- ledge, the Preacher refuses to admit this as new, so long as knowledge in regard to the highest question remains im- perfect, only a negative wisdom, which may indeed strip life of its illusions, but cannot discover to us a final aim for existence, by which we may take our stand. In order to arrive at anything really new here, neio conditions of existence are requisite, both with regard to the spiritual and the natural. In other words, what the Preacher requires, though he does not express it, is the new creation of Christianity — a new heaven and a new earth. So long as the human race has not attained a share in the blessings of this new kingdom, so long as it has made no progress in essentials, so long does it continue to repeat, no matter how high and developed its forms of culture, still the same round of vanity which the Preacher describes, when he says : "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose : All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full." How little 17G THE HIGHEST GOOD. the heart is filled by the manifold varieties of life, he expresses by saying: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearino;. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is lost cannot be numbered." We have, in this sketch, only repeated that which is the burden of one voice in the book of Ecclesiastes. But along with this sceptical and lamentable voice is heard another full of comfort, makino; known to us that a great and essential change shall have place in these matters, that God Himself will bring every work into judgment (Eccles. xii. 14, xi. 9) ; and herein is the germ of a higher Optimism, which in Chris- tianity is made clear. The same voice says also to us in warn- ins: Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments ! Nay, the Preacher even counsels the man who fears God, seeing the transient nature of this life, to grasp the innocent enjoyments which may come within his reach : Go thy way, eat thy bread with a merry heart ; for God now accepteth thy works. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy vanity ; for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under tiie sun (Eccles. ix. 7, 9). § 55. Fatalistic Pessimism found exalted expression during the period of the Roman Empire. As Rome is the historical type of the kingdom of this world, it has likewise become typical of the self-decav and death in which the kingdom of this world must end. Just because with the Romans the State was the highest Good, just because the political sovereignty of the world was the absolute aim, Rome was overthrown on her attainment of these, because of their finite and purely material character ; for when this material aim was accomplished, there was no further object for human effort. Life had lost its earnestness, and it might reiterate with perfect truth the maxim, " All is vanity." From thence arose the fearful depravity of morals which then became general, and spread over all classes of the community. Thence the immense diffusion of unbelief, which, commencing in the schools of philosophy, in process of time leavened the whole mass of the people with doubts concerning the divine government of the world, whilst nature, destiny, OPTIMISM AND PESSDIISil. 177 fortune, gold, became the divinities which dominated existence. Thence the increasing prevalence of the sentiment that exist- once is exhausted, that life has become old, the weariness and lassitude which then became common. And thence the melan- choly views of life with all nobler spirits, which were penetrated by the secret dread, by the concealed despair of dlscoverinc;. as it seemed to them, tliat the being of man, in all its earthlv majesty and greatness, is without aim and without purpose ; that there is no reality in human consciousness and in human enter- prise ; that with all the abundant means and powers of tliis world nothing can be done, no progress can be made. T!ie superior minds sought refuge in Stoicism, whilst the multitude gave themselves up to Epicurism, which at bottom is a fleeino- from death and annihilation, by drinking of forgetfulness in the enjoyment of the present moment. The fatalistic Pessimism, both secret and avowed, which pervades the consciousness of this entire period of history, could only be burst asunder by the religious-ethical Pessimism and Optimism of Christianity, in its proclamation of sin and redemption. § 56. Fatalistic and sceptical Pessimism has also repeated itself in the most recent times ; and how should it be otherwise, at a ])eriod which has undergone so many social revolutions, and in which faith has been undermined in so many fashions ? The optimist view has indeed also powerfully prevailed in our times, supported b}' the marvellously productive powers of the age, with its widespread cultivation. The later philosophy is pre-eminently optimist, since it has sought to reconcile the contradictions of life, and blend them into unity and harmonv. But not to mention that Kant's philosophy ended with "the radical evil," the philosophic Optimisim of Schopenhauer also broke out into Pessimism and the doctrine of this world's unhappiness, and the same has been repeated in its poetry. AYe have already spoken of Goethe as the mouthpiece of Optimism. We may also reckon among its votaries the ro- mantic school of poets of the nineteenth century, who, having triumphed over the prosaic tendency of the preceding age, intoxicated themselves in the poetic glories of existence, and abandoned themselves to an assthetic enjoyment of the world. 178 THE HIGHEST GOOD. But from this romantic Optimism sprang the Pessimism of Byron. In him and his imitators, down to the present day (we refer here to several of the poems of Lenau, and also to those of Leopardi), the secret sadness of the race got utterance. Though Byron belongs to the school of romance, we believe that we shall most clearly set forth his teaching by comparing him witli Goethe. Both of these great poets admired the other ; but their view of life is diametrically opposed. Goethe conceals the disturbing powers in existence ; Byron freely discovers them. His poetry glows with the most exquisite colourino- ; all the glories of life are mirrored in its depths, but only to show that they bear within them the elements of evan- escence and dissolution. All the ideals of human life shine here in dazzling brilHancy, but only to exhibit the reality in cutting contrast. There is scarcely any human pang which does not find utterance in this poetry, which has also been called the poetry of earthly suffering ; and a Pessimism like it, though it be far from Christian, can only be found in the Ciiristian world, where the infinite craving of personality has been awakened. It is a sceptical spirit, a broken heart, which expresses itself through these verses, a blending of pride and misery, a human heart full of Titanic defiance, and " a human heart in tears" — a heart which feels itself to be unspeakably wretched ; and yet, in spite of all its sinfulness, it asserts its dignity, its readiness to endure self-sacrifice, to act magnani- mously, and its title to arraign before its bar of judgment God and the world. All Byron's heroes are disguised representations of himself. He is himself Cain, who with Lucifer traverses infinite space, where the fallen spirit shows him the relics of extinct worlds, and the Earth as a scarcely distinguishable dot amidst the innumerable spheres of light ; afterwards he descends with Lucifer into the realm of death, in order to contemplate departed generations that had preceded Adam, and his soul is filled with bitterness against the God who only forms in order to destroy. He is himself Manfred, Cliilde Harold, Lara, etc. However rich and varied are his delinea- tions of the external world, there is but one and the same liuman personality, the same heart, the same melancholy and defiant man, though each time presented in different guise, who stands forth in this multiplicity of gorgeously pictured scenes, OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 179 < — on the mountains of Switzerland ; on the boundless ocean, with the starry heavens above it ; in Rome, with the memorials of departed greatness ; by Sestos and Abydos ; in the palm groves of the East, or in the midst of the chequered bustle of modern life : — however o;lorious the external surroundincrs are, yet to declare that the lot of man is sorrow and suffering, deserved and undeserved ; that the being who is most higlily gifted and most susceptible of enjoyment is the unhappiest of all ; that there is in his breast a wound which never is healed, a fire which is never extinguished, a hunger which is never satisfied, a depth which is never filled up ; that he is doomed to seek and to long after a region of glory which he shall never attain. Witli sarcasm and contempt he turns away from society, where he sees only stupidity, meanness, and low selfish- ness bearing sway. In history, the scenes of which he frequently calls up in his journey through the world, he sees the vanished greatness, the faded beauty, which only leave behind the remembrance of their fleeting nature, ruins which awaken notes of lamentation. He does indeed sometimes dream of the golden times as yet to come ; and his enthusiasm for the Greeks has been cited as an evidence that he was positivist in sentiment, that there was an historic aim in which he was eager to co-operate. But, taking him in the whole, it may certainly be said that his faith in his ideal of political freedom was far from being as strong as his contempt for the world, which is much too bad for any ideal of freedom to be realized, any actual progress to be made. The positive, the actual in him, is just his poetry ; the exquisite music is a cry of anguish vibrat- ing from the heart's core. For what he says about the poet applies in fullest measure to himself, that he had formed friend- ships with mountains and with stars, with night and the abyss, and their genii spoke to him and revealed to him their secrets. Not the less was the deepest of all these, that which is expressed in Manfred, that life had become to him " One desert, Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks, Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness." — Act ii. Scene 1, Manfred. This, in connection with his insatiable longing, which embraced 180 THK HIGHEST GOOD. the whole world, the abyss which never can be filled, is the predominating theme, which is repeated in endless variation.^ Goethe and Byron bear relation to one another as the poets of harmony and discord. But human life experiences far higher harmony than Goethe's, just because it experiences far deeper discords than those he will acknowledge. And human life requires a very different interpretation of its discords from that of Byron. Both of these representations of human life have the same defect : in both tlie Christian idea is absent. They are therefore both far behind Shakesjjeare. In Shake- speare we find an historic view of the world, along with genuine Optimism and Pessimism, although it may also be said that the pessimist view is most abundantly developed. Although Shakespeare is by no means the poet of religion, and his writ- ings have no religious tone, still there is with him this great advantage, that his pictures are founded on the assumptions of Christianitv, the influences of which are to be indirectlv traced in the w'hole busy and varied life of the world which he unfolds before us. The Christian idea of sin permeates all his produc- tions. Plis men are no phantoms of the imagination, but real beings of flesh and blood, every one of them evincing that in the flesh dwelleth no good thing ; even his noblest, purest characters, his Juliet and his Desdemona, having imperfections, which influence their fate. They are all included under sin. His poetry also is the poetry of suffering. But yet it is not a lament over the undeserved suffering of man ; for the world of sin corresponds with the world of death and corruption, with human misery and the vanity of earth, as it is symbolically represented in Lear on the heath in the wild night-storm. Here it is not Titanic defiance and bitterness which the poet seeks to impart to us ; but he imbues us with a sacred awe for the divine government of the world, and for the righteous retri- bution which overtakes the guilty, Avhilst the sin of the individual is at the same time involved in that of the race. Doubtless the prominent features in the picture are the light- ning of judgment, the peal of its thunder, and the overthrow T)f human greatness, the divine mercy and long-suffering being meanwhile hidden behind heavy clouds. Yet these nevertheless ^ Compare his confessions in conversations with Medwin. (Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 73.") OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 181 frequently gleam forth, and in some of his Individual dramas, as the Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure^ both of which turn on the contrast between justice and mercy, the law and the gospel play the principal parts. This view of the world is not destitute of aim or result. Although it tells us a^ain and again that all is vanity, that all earthly grandeur, — " The cloud-caiDt towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself ; Yea, all that it inherits, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind ! " yet it tells us also that there are some things which are not in vain, and wherein we may after all find rest, — namely, God and His holy government, His righteous ordering of all events : it tells us that, moreover, in human life are some things not in vain, as faith and loyalty, affection and uprightness (Cordelia and Kent) : in one word, it exhibits to us the morality of religion, which is the only thing that holds its ground amidst tlie fearful changes of human life, the immortal part of man, which is not of this world, and which forms the bond of union between him and the eternity beyond this world. " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep His commandment ! " §57. We have dwelt somewhat more minutely on Pessimism, just because it is only through true Pessimism that we can arrive at true Optimism. We add still furtlier, that as Christian Pessimism finds its corroboration in the actual experience of life, so also its truth is powerfully confirmed by the great phenomena of the trar/ic and the comic. We speak not here of the poetic art, but of the tragic and the comic, as cosmo- logical appointments, as essential conditions of the present world over which we are moved both to lauo;hter and to tears. They both preach the old text : " All is vanity ! " Let us then take first the tragic, and inquire what sort of world, what general condition of the world, does it exhibit to us? Does it not show us a world of liberty, which is at once a world of crime and a world of cruel destiny? — a world which just on the principal points of the moral life exhibits a painful 182 THE HIGHEST GOOD. contrast between the ideal and the reality ? Does it not show us ideal men, who succumb to the complications of the life of free-will ? Does it not show us the overthrow of the magna- nimous, the beautiful, the noble, the good, — a contradiction which can only find its solution in the contrast which Chris- tianity institutes between this world, the course of this world, this present world, and the world that is to come, which last contains the possibility of solution ? The tragic, as the painful contrast between ideal and reality, has in its lower forms a fatalistic impress ; but in the highest forms the fatalistic is changed into the ethical, fate into guilt. The contrast between ideal and reality appears already in nature, and in the relation of nature to man. It oppresses our feelings as a painful contradiction that creation in all its beauty must submit to decay, that the animal world is subjected to such great sufferings, that the powers of nature so often encroach upon human life, that blooming manhood, just at the point where it should most gloriously unfold itself, is blighted by a gnawing worm ; that an unfortunate accident — and the number of unhappy accidents is legion — suddenly annihilates the anticipations of a great future. Tliis feeling still more oppresses us when we see the ideal life of free-will so often struggling, perishing under sickness and bodily suffering, in poverty and want ; when we behold a poet, a Camoens, dying of hunger, and wrapped in an old shroud bestowed in alms, because he had not died possessed even of so much as would have purchased this. (We take this statement from Schach Staffeldt's noble poem on Camoens, where the poet's fate is at the same time denounced as the guilt of the community, the crime of Lisbon.) Yet not merely external fate oppresses us with the feeling above named, but also when we obtain a glimpse of the inner being of men, human individualities ; when we see many noble and beautiful characters perisli, not by external fate, but from an internal mental agony, which is deeply seated in their individuality, their will, their affection, since they are devoured by an inward contradiction, and can- not attain equilibrium as regards their surroundings, so that towards these they are like plants indigenous to a milder region, when transported to a bleak and ungeuial climate. Is it not possible that Goethe meant to express this in his OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM, 183 Wilhelm Meister, when the specially poetic natures, those who love most deeply, as Marianne, Aurelie, Mignon the harpist, all quickly fade in death, whilst the more prosaic and practical individuals live, and pass successfully through all inward and outward changes ? Has the poet consciously or unconsciously sought to make apparent that these poor, sensitive natures could not strike root in earth, and that in order not to succumb under the sufferings, passions, and errors incident to a poetic temperament, there must be a copious addition of the coarser earthly matter? — that for such minds, as Rahel, who held this theory, expresses it in one of his letters, there is no preparation (Anstalt) in this world? In whatever fashion, however, the poet may dispose of it, actual life shows us in many ways that there are such minds, for whom in this world there is no preparation (except that of redemption) ; whilst we cannot avoid the assertion that these mental sufferings are on account of sin, not merely personal sin, but also that of the race, the effects of which, like that of a benumbing prose, are death- bringing to those finer natures which are devoted to an ideal passion. The tragic, in the present course of the world, shows itself more clearly in its ethical significance, in the fact that those who stand high in the moral world, who, armed with mighty power of action, aspire to realize a great ideal, again and again perish through their own crime. It is this form of the tragic which dramatic poetry specially makes its subject (historic tragedy) ; and the history of the world shows us con- stantly the same phenomenon, shows us the destruction of heroes, because these either pursue a merely subjective ideal, or because they wish to carry a real ideal beyond its limits. It is essential to the representations of dramatic art, and en- forced by Aristotle and Hegel, that the tragic hero must have a crime, and that in a tragedy no perfectly good and upright being should be represented as suffering entirely without blame, because this would be too distressing, too wounding to the moral feelings. We will not contest the merely aesthetic validity of this theory. But actual life does not restrain itself within these limits. It shows us in this world the good in itself, the absolutely just, perishing ; shows us that there is a suffering on account of sin, which is not a suffering for personal guilt, but exclusively a suffering for the guilt of others, for the 184 THE HIGHEST GOOD. sin of the nation, for that of the race ; shows us the rejection and crucifixion of Christ by men ; shows us under different forms the verification of the Saviour's words: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee ; how often woukl I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not ! " Under the cross of Christ, on the height of Golgotha, the real nature of the world displays itself. Here the Optimism of the natural man fades, though it is just here that a higher Optimism originates. But the utmost which here appears is this : So stands it in this world ; this is the earthly fate of sacred truth and uprightness ! ^ But the same world which shows us the tragic shows us also the comic. The comic is an indirect testimonv to the validity of the pessimist theory. The comic contemplation of the world views it not as a world of sin, of guilt, of destiny, but as one of folly and fortuitous occurrences. Here is no painful contrast, but one entirely painless, which calls forth in the mind a feeling of pleasvire of quite a peculiar kind. But in its inmost essence the world of folly is the world of sinfulness ; only where there is sin, where freedom has declined from its ideal, can there be folly. Folly, or the intellectual contrast, the intellectual opposition to the ideal, has its presupposition and origin in the ethical contrast, in the contrast of the will to the ideal. We do not attempt here any exhaustive definition of the comic, a ■conception which belongs to the least clearly elucidated, but about which it may safely be asserted that no one will be able to explain it, any more than the tragic, without a thorough acquaintance with sin ; and that lacking this, all that can be attained is mere preparatory and preliminary definition, which is the case with regard to Aristotle.^ In so far as the comic presents itself in human affairs, perhaps no truer explanation of it can be given than that of Vinet in his Studies of Pascal, — namely, that the comic is the naivete of sin : ''Le comique est la ^ Concerning the tragic in existence, compare Daumer, il/v Conversion ; and from the standpoint of Nihilism, the whole of Schopenhauer. ^ For those "who wish to search into the natm-e of the comic, this problem may be specially enunciated : Why do we never find in our Gospel narratives that the Saviour of the world laughed, whilst we more than once find that He wept ? oniMisM AND rEssiMisir. 185 nai'vete du pech^."'^ This definition seizes the comic in its origin^ and it describes at the same time the limits within which the comic apprehension is valid. No one will designate a merely theoretic contradiction to the ideal as comic ; for instance, failure in the solution of a mathematical or philosophical problem. Comic folly must be practical, or have its source in the will. On the other side, no one will call the depraved will comic when it is considered in its essence, when sin is considered as sin, and thus in its terrible seriousness. Onlv as long as sin is veiled in the evanescence of naivete can it become the subject for comic apprehension. Its inmost essence, contradiction to the ethical, the religious, is still concealed or kept back under the aesthetic phenomenon of naivete, and therefore the ethical perception of it may also be concealed or withheld. In whatever forms sin may then present itself, although it be sufficiently reflected, yet in so far as it appears with an addition of simplicity or naivete, in which it unconsciously unfolds and betrays its practical yb//y, this addition will be capable of furnishing material for comic apprehension. It is this which Vinet has so well pointed out in Pascal, who in his Lettres Provinciales, in a sketch border- ing on the dramatic, introduces the Jesuits expounding their own system of morality ; but makes them comic, since he shows their craft and cunning, their hypocrisy and falsehood, com- bined with a naivete, in which they betray themselves. The comic character is thus always encumbered with a certain directness, whilst the comic perception of a matter is the eye to this directness and its illusions. Enjoyment of the comic may therefore be designated an intellectual enjoyment, an enjoyment of a philosophic kind. As now, in the comic contemplation of the world, the ethical consideration is withheld, and as it were suspended, as the comic contrast to the ideal is without suffer- ing, — a contrast which dissolves itself in laughter, — it may cer- tainly be affirmed that the comic view of the world may, above all, be designated optimist. Tragedy brings Pessimism into view ; comedy, on the other hand, exhibits Optimism : for in all dilemmas, difficulties, and dangers, it is apparent that these are onlv imamnarv and to be overcome, that the perils of this life " have no necessity," and that all will come right in the end. But comic Optimism is only apparent — is only, in the strict ^ Eludes sur Pascal, p. 252. 18G THE HIGHEST GOOD. significance of the term, a mere phenomenal superficial Optim- ism, under which the real chai'acter of existence is concealed ; while, on the contrary, this is unveiled by the Pessimism of tragedy. Comic Optimism has moral earnestness, and thereby Pessimism, in the veiled background, as folly has sin in the background, as fortune and the easy play of chance have stern fate in the background ; and it is a shrewd observation, that the comic writer acts wisely in letting the curtain fall at the exact instant when the game is at its height : for if he should carry on his narrative, and show us how it fared with these fortunate beings at a later period of their history, he would infallibly arrive at a time of misery, in which tliere opens a wide field for Pessimism. The more the comic developes itself in its higher forms, the more does seriousness shine through it. If, with J. C. Heiberg, we hold sprightliness, irony, and humour as the three principal forms of the comic, we may then say that comic Optimism appears most unmixed in gaiety, as the directly comic. So, too, with Holberg.^ The world of narrow-minded citizens which he represents in his comedies is most thoroughly a world of naivete, and the great directness with which all these personages are encumbered prevent moral earnestness from exercising a disturbing effect. In irony the serious becomes more prominent. It also brings the nalvetS of sin into view. But whilst gaiety and wit aimlessly let their light sparkle and glitter, irony has a determinate tendency. In irony there is therefore reflexion, and it has its special element in a world of reflexions, where the relations of life are complicated and intermixed. Just because irony has an object, and through the destruction of the manifold illusions desires to quicken the moral sense, will seriousness and the pessimist background often shine through. We named above Pascal in his irony concerning Jesuitism ; we may also here mention Moli^re.^ In common with Holberg, Molifere possesses comic gaiety ; but just because he possesses far finer and deeper powers of reflection, his pieces contain an irony far deeper than that of Holberg, — an irony which often causes one at the most ludicrous passages to be seized with a shuddering earnestness, as is also the case with Hogarth's paintings ; so that ' Danish dramatic writer, 1684-1754, whose comedies Oehlenschlager's masterly hand has introduced into German literature. 2 1622-1G73. OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 187 one at once laughs and shudders in regarding these depths of social depravity; so that behind the comic mask one suddenly dis- covers an entirely different face, the poet's own, which contem- plates this world of folly with pain and indignation, because it perceives it as a world of vice and misery. In humour we have a combination of sportive gaiety and mocking irony. As gaiety does not confine itself to individual matters, but lets its light play over the whole, so too with humour. But this last includes the whole reflexion of irony. In humour, the mind does not soar merely above this or that individual matter, but above the whole world of relativities, above the contrast between the great and the small, the high and the trivial, nay, even over tragic pathos, in so far as human earnestness, even when it embraces the great and the high, is encumbered with a limitation of nawete, a narrowness of perception which causes it to confound the humanly great with the absolutely great, — a limitation by which the heroes of tragedy often show themselves to be encumbered. Thus they maintain the relatively great aim which they pursue, and for which they suffer shipwreck, to be the unconditionally great and important. Humour makes the diversity between great and small fluctuating ; for it possesses a sharp eye for the fact that great and small, the high and the trivial, the deep and the superficial, the touching and the ridi- culous, approach each other nearly, and often pass over into each other: wherefore it is also the union of weening and laughter, of smiles and tears. Undoubtedly this humoristic contempla- tion, which soars above this whole world of relativities, must have its ultimate hold, its last refuge, in something which is not relative, in the absolutely great, — namely, in God. And there is therefore a twofold kind of humour. There is a humour which rests in religion, in faith, arKl which in religious recon- ciliation has overcome Pessimism. In a partial manner this humour often sparkles forth in Luther's letters, and in his TiscJireden (Table-talk). But there is also a humour in which consciousness in this world of tragedy and comedy has not found its refuge in religion, but seeks a final refuge with- out finding one, — an unhappy, shattered consciousness, which vainly craves repose and satisfaction in this world of contrasts, and wliich now, by making evei-ything fluctuating, seeks deliver- ance from the pressure which rests on the mind. An example ISS THE HIGHEST GOOD. of this melancholy humour is that of Hamlet, who endeavours to escape from tiie heavy burden of his soul by indulging in a philo- sophic humour,— a pliilosophy which, in spite of its brilHant and deep thought, is without result, and ends in unsubdued dissonance. Thus both the tragic and the comic — the former directlv, the latter indirectly — bear testimony to the sin and misery of the world, a world needing redemption. Though it has not seldom been asserted that writers or actors of comedy pay homage to an optimist view of the world, yet experience most frequently shows the very opposite. Thus Holberg in his Moralshe Tanker, — a meditation on the miseries of life, and on his own course of existence, which is entirely the reverse of Optimism (lib. iii. epig. 46, p. 369, Eode's ed.). He begins by saying that '♦ the life of man is short in regard to years, but long in reference to the many miseries to which it is subjected. A child comes into the world weeping aloud, by which it would seem to anticipate the many sorrows of its inevitable fate. Among all creatures, indeed, nothing can be conceived more wretched than a new-born child, whose birth-dav, without the help of others, would become the day of its death. For if other people did not stretch forth the hand, and with skill and effort seek to preserve its feeble throb of existence, it could not be regarded other tlian as a masque in an opera or play, tliat only presented itself on the stage to sing a lament, ;ind thereafter disappeared. With all the care which is be- stowed on the preservation of a child's life, it is threatened every day and every hour with death, so that the body in regard to its external delicacy is nothing but a water-bubble, which bursts and disapi^ears on the smallest shock. Dav and nio-ht It must be watched, and, like a fragile glass, be swathed in soft covering; and with difficulty can the nurse, bv sinvlucli lie wished for himself, and for whose sake he has undertaken tlie j)ilgrimage, arrives at the Religious, at the relation to God and to Christ. It is extremely interesting to see him cast aside one worldly disguise after another, that of -Esthetics, Ethics, Irony, Humour, until at last he appears before us in the form which directly expresses the inmost thought, the special aim of his life, the Cliristian-sesthetic, and tells us frankly that all throughout he has been a religious author, and that the whole sesthetic productivity was only a device, though of a peculiar sort, not to deceive men regarding truth, but. Socrates- like, to deceive them into the truth, to betray them into the Christian. Certainly it is interesting to behold him devoutly separate himself from one worldly circle of life after another, and from the threshold looking back an all these circles as stages he has passed, and which have ceased to exist for him, and after having broken down the brido;e between himself and the world, retire into religious isolation, into the fold of com- munion with God, alone, entirely alone with God and his life's model. It may be acknowledged that a vast amount of reflection has been here employed in order to attain at last to this inyisible height of hermit life, amidst the bustle and turmoil of a capital city, and under daily contact with a multitude of men. One could admire it more if it were less sportive and desultory, less disposed to please itself in sophistical sallies and dazzling half- truths, and more combined with dii'ectness and natural truth in sentiment and fancy. In every case we cannot but admire the rich psychological observation, the keen insight, the dexterity in psychological experiment, by which means he has become acquainted with the mysteries of existence both actual and possible, which but few ever know, and fewer still are in a con- dition to express ; which lie has not only discovered in others, but has also detected in his own mind by a self-observation, which thus only can be accomplished in a hermit life, with the sufferings and temptations with which he has also been very familiar. For, as he himself says in his frank communication, he was literally alone in the wide world : wherever he was, before the eyes of all, or in the privacy of a tete-a-tete with his bosom friend, he always wore a mask, so that solitude did not become more solitary in the dead of the night ; he was alone not in the forests of America, amidst their terrors and dangers, SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 227 but in that which caused even the most terrible reality to appear as a relief and mitigation — alone in the company of dreadful possibilities; alone, with almost human speech against him; alone in agonies which have taught him more than one new note on the text of the thorn in the flesh ; alone in decisions in which he would have required friends — nay, if possible, the whole race — as a stay and support ; alone in dialectic uncertainties, contests, mortal anguish, etc. It must he owned that his works contain a rich store of material for reflection on deep psychological, ethical, and religious problems. Bat with all this, it must also be acknowledcred that the real sicrnificance of this diffuse litera- ture does not equal its pretensions ; that though its teaching concerning the individual has been in many respects a corrective to a one-sided universalisrn, yet the corrective itself on all im- portant points requires to be corrected ; that this betraying into the truth harmonizes but little with the essence of Christianity, so that in the contemplation of Kierkegaard's image of Christ we are constantly disturbed by an image of Socrates, which in- cessantly and obtrusively blends with the first ; that this betrayal into truth forms a striking contrast to the noble simplicity of Vinet in his communications concernina; it; for Vinet has nothino- in common with " a spy in the service of truth," but more with a Christian witness to the truth. It must be owned, — and this acknowledgment has already been expressed on various sides, — that though the path lie has chalked out is rich in intellectual wonders, yet the whole of this hermit pilgrimage is misleading, and ends in a distorted view of truth. For Kierkeiiaard, in his strife with universalism, with increasing vehemence puts existence in a negative and opposing relation to the ideal, faith to knowledge, the Christian to the human, the individual to the social ; because to him God is only the God of the individual, not of the Church — Christ is only the Saviour of the individual, Eot of the world ; because the more our author denied the true ideal or the true universal, the more he came under the dominion of a false and merely subjective ideal, established for indi- vidual existence an abstract ideal, to the demands of which submission was imperative, whilst he separated that which God has joined together, free-will and mercy, law and gospel, pattern and Saviour, which shall be shown in its own place. In con- nection with the present subject of consideration, we must, after 228 THE HIGHEST GOOD. having pointed out his position towards universalism, confine ourselves to a closer contemplation of his position towards socialism, or, if the term is preferred, towards sociality. If we have said of Vinet that neither society nor the individual got justice from him, this is true in a far higher sense with regard to Kierkegaard. For with him all the one-sidedness and the defects of individualism may be read, so to speak, in large characters, and as through a natural magnifying-glass. §70. That Christianity is a vast delusion or misapplication of a name may be readily granted to him, with this proviso, that it is so to all those who lack the mind of the Spirit to discriminate between the apparent and the unseen — between those who out- wardly profess Christianity, and those who inwardly belong to Christ. But the question is, What does he think of the Church of Christ, visible and invisible, and of the relation of the in- dividual thereto ? Throughout the whole diffuse literature we look in vain for the idea of the Church. The Church seems for him to appear first in heaven, in the future life, when the individuals, after their personal contests and sufferings, at last come together as a society. Ethical organizations of society on earth lie quite beyond his contemplation, at all events receive no positive determinate significance, and are merely sometimes mentioned as " concretions of individuality." Of a solidaric union between individuals and races of mankind, of history and tradition in the intellectual and organic signification, there is here not the most distant idea. He has only set himself to the task of "I'esisting an immoral confusion, which will demoralize the individual by means of universal Jaananity or whimsical social appointments" (p. 103). He deals himself most fre- quently with the lowest and worst forms of society, — namely, " the multitude " and " the public." " There is one view of life," says he, " which entertains the idea, that where the mul- titude is, there also is truth, — that there dwells in truth an inherent necessity to have the multitude on its side ; there is another view of life which holds, that wherever the multitude is, there is untruth" (p. 90). Again and again he repeats that the multitude, as an ethical and religious Instanz, is a falsehood ; and on this subject he has said much that is both true and SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 229 forcible. But the question is, whether behind the multitude and the public there do not lie other social appointments wliich a teacher of ethics ouirht to take into consideration. Into this question he does not enter, but only wishes to resist this im- moral confusion by, if possible, getting men to be individual by isolating them from each other. " Every human being of earnest mind, who knows what edification means, — every one, whatever else they may be, high or low, wise or simple, man or woman, — every one who has felt the power of edification or God present with them, will grant me unconditionally, that it is im- possible to edify or to be edified en masse; edification yet more than love can only bear relation to the individual, — the indi- vidual, not in the sense of the distinguished and specially en- dowed, but the individual in the sense in which every one ought and can be such, in which he must place his honour, nay, his salvation, on attaining." This remarkable passage in his Bericlde an die Geschichte (Relations to History) deserves special atten- tion, because in it the anti-social tendency of the man comes clearly to light. Because one admits to him the impossibility of edifying or being edified en masse, it by no means follows that one admits that edification has reference onlj/ to the indi- vidual. For to be edified in the assembly of the Church, and along with it, is not at all the same thing as to be edified en masse. What constitutes the Church as such is not the number. The Church may consist of a larger or smaller number of individuals. But what constitutes the Church as such is, that these indi- viduals know themselves to be united, called and associated not by man, not by their own perfection of power, but by the Lord of spirits, who calls and associates them by His word and His sacraments ; and since He unites them to Himself, He unites them mutually to one another. This last fact, that believers know themselves to be mutually joined to each other, because they are united in the same Lord, is inseparable from the true conception of edification. It belongs to edification to be edifiod by the truth, which is determined for all (the universal, catholic truth), in order that I may be confirmed in the faith, which from the beginnino; was committed to the saints, as is testified throuc;h- out all times, under all changes, and professed throughout the different regions of the world. It belongs to edification, that in the faith I am solidarically associated, not merely with con- 230 THE HIGHEST GOOD. temporary believers, but with all the faithful, who throughout far distant ages have been called away from the Church on earth to live in the Church in heaven ; and not merely with these, but also with the yet unborn, who shall be saved through the same faith. It supports and strengthens my faith, that others believe and profess the same ; not as though numbers could be the last instance for that which is truth, but because I am not formed to stand alone, either in things temporal or eternal ; because whilst I am formed for independence, I am at the same time fitted to be a member in one great whole. This moment in edification, the mutual association of believers, is excluded from Kierkegaard's conception of edification, which is only defined as a relation between the individual and God. Following out Kierkegaard's conception of edification, it would be best that the Lord's Supper should be observed separately by each individual. And yet it was instituted by the Lord as a social feast, and it must only be considered as an exceptional case when it is administered to a sinele individual. Alon«: with the true conception of edification, the social conception of the Church is denied at the same time. He overlooks that the truth, which Christ desires should be spread throughout the world, was not from the first confided to an individual, but to a circle of apostles ; that the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost did not descend on one single person, but on those who were with one consent in one place ; and that no individual has received Christ's promise, " Lo, I am with you always," but only in so far as he remains in that association whicii has received the promise. There may, however, develope itself in life a conception of edification which is the opposite extreme to that of Kierkegaard, and by whicli his polemic receives a relative validity. That is to say, if only the moment in edification is realized, that it is a mutual relation between believers and professors, but excludes the relation to the Lord ; if one only apprehends individuals as " members " of the society of the Church, but does not take into consideration that each one has his independent personal signi- ficance in regard to the Lord ; there appears a false socialism in Christianity, in which the individual, the subjective moment, is excluded. There may exist a merely traditional Christianity, in which the individual comforts himself with the consideration that he believes what the Church believes, but without himself SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 231 havincT any personal relation to the Lord : nominal Christianity, and a worship of God, which may well be compared to an edifica- tion en masse ; that is to say, when many are associated without any individual of them having a real relation towards God, and where each one soothes himself with the thought that he shares the faith of the others, and that " we are all Christians," and they mutually guarantee each other to be good Christians, whilst not one of them is so in reality, or at any rate is only so very imperfectly. In such a case it is very justifiable to pre- sent this problem in the midst of Christianity, " how to become a Christian," to divide the multitude, to separate the individual from the mass, to cause the soul as unclothed and in its naked- ness to be presented before God's face for self-examination, according to the requirements of the gospel. What Kierke- gaard as a religious writer has endeavoured to accomplish is, however, neither unheard of nor even very unusual, though not, therefore, the less important and valuable. It is what the Cuurch calls " awakening " or revival. Every Christian revival preacher sets forth the problem " how to become a Christian," and seeks thereby to introduce Christianity among professing Christians, to combat the false sociality of a merely nominal Christianity, and the false security that one is in a state of sal- vation because belonging to the Church, or to the professors of Christianity. Every revival preacher desires to separate the multitude, in order to obtain a hearing from the individual, and bring this last into relation with God. Considered in a purely religious manner, the matter is the same. The difference lies only in the means which are here set in motion, and in the long or circuitous route which is here pursued, in order at last, through successive raaskinsj and unmaskino;, to reach the indi- vidual in a religious and Christian manner. There is more- over this difference, that the true, the real revival preacher, through awakening and isolation, seeks to lead the individual to the congregation, to the associated means of grace, to baptism and the Lord's Supper, whilst with Kierkegaard the Church and congrerration are denied. The difference lies, finally, in the peculiar view which Kiei'ke- gaard entertains of his own generation, and which exerts the greatest influence on the whole manner in which he regards what may be termed his home mission (missionaiy work in the 232 THE HIGHEST GOOD. midst of Christianity). From the very first his activity strikes a pessimist key-note, which on our part, according to what has before been said about pessimism, is not to be unconditionally censured. In a very peculiar sense, he applies the pessimist view to his own times. He not merely tells us that he has never employed the smallest portion of the ability he possesses to express this : that the world is good, loves truth, desires the good, and that the problem is therefore (in the sense of Goethe and Hegel) to satisfy the existing age. On the contrary, he has sought to express that the world, if it is not evil, is indiffe- rent ; " that the demand of the age is always folly and absurdity ; that truth, in the eyes of the world, is ridiculous exaggeration or an entire superfluity ; that the good must suffer " (p. 68). But as regards his own times, he views them as peculiar, as altogether evil, because this age is the age of breakings up, the age of '^ levelling," in which all authority is undermined by insidious reflection, and becomes daily more so. With this view, he considers it only absurd to speak of the sustaining and supporting power of the State and of the Church for the individual. But however comfortless and desolate he finds this age to be, he yet perceives in it a deeper significance, — that, namely, the whole of this great levelling must serve for the development of " the principle of individuality." For, since all concretions of individuals are in process of dissolution and destruction by the firebrand of abstraction, and the only entire one, which remains standing to the last, is that monstrous abstract the " public," the individual must be left entirely to its own resources, and must either perish or seek safety in a reUgious return to God. " For it will not be as formerly, that individuals, when matters became somewhat perplexing to their own dizzied vision, looked to the nearest man of dis- tinction from whom to discover their bearings. The time for that is gone by. They must either be lost in the abstract dizzi- ness of infiniteness, or attain infinite salvation in the reality of personal piety. Many, many will perhaps cry out in their despair, but that will not help ; it is now too late."^ The signi- ficance of the levelling principle is as follows : " It is not from God, and every good man will have moments when he could weep over its forlorn results ; but yet God permits it, and by * En litterair Anmeldelse, S. 109 (A Literary Notice, p. 109). SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 233 this means brings out what is highest in the individual, tliat is, in each person separately. So far is the idea of sociality of the community from being the salvation of the age, that, on the contrary, it is the Shpsis which must give way, in order that the development of individuality may have free course ; since every individual must either be lost, or, prepared by the disci- pline of abstraction, come to itself in communion with God." In these views of society we must undoubtedly acknowledge a fundamental Pessimism, for which Kierkegaard considered that strong confirmation was to be found in the events of 1848. And his last appearance in " The Present Moment," in order to be correctly estimated, must be looked at on this background. The question is only if this Pessimism is Christian or unchris- tian Pessimism. We, for our part, are very far from denying that the age was and is the age of dissolutions ; yet we cannot give up the thought and the hope that it is also the age of re- modellings, even in the relations of society. We cannot also but admit that the sustaining, supporting, and elevating power of society in our days is far inferior to what it was in the fore- going ; that the Church and the State no longer exert the same authority over the individual as they did at an earlier period ; that individuals, as a consequence of the progressive emanci- pation, now stand in far more danger of making shipwreck of their tiny bark on the vexed ocean of society. The danger is so much the greater, because not merely has the authority of in- stitutions suftered, but also those perso)is and those authorities, who by their prominence exert a moral influence in wide circles, have more and more drawn back. In all this, every " serious person " who has thought on the subject must sympathize with Kierkegaard. But from this it certainly does not follow that a Pessimism which is one with absolute desperation as regards the relations of society should be justified. Even if it be admitted that dissolution is the view-point from which society should be exclusively regarded, and that there cannot be here any grounds for expecting a remodelling, still even under the universal dis- solution there must be an organization of society concerning which no Christian can or ought to doubt, — namely, the holy Catholic Church, which has the promise that the powers of death shall not prevail, and which is not at all dependent on the continuance of a State Church, but can very well maintain its 234 THE HIGHEST GOOD existence independently of connection with State or people. Kierkegaard's view of the situation in which the individual is placed reminds one of the position of the Stoics during the Roman decline and dissolution, in so far as the individual was here obliged to seek to help himself by taking refuge in the ethical. In the same manner, the individual under the dissolu- tion of Christianity must seek refuge in the isolated relation to God. But the position of a Christian cannot, under any break- ing up of society, become that of an isolated individual : he will always know himself to be a member of Christ's Church ; and even if the presently existing forms of a State Church sink in ruins, the socializing power of Christianity will produce a new form of Church life. Never in any case will Christianity appear in individuals, loithout at the same time appearing in the form of a society. That the separation of individuals into isolated relation to God cannot be the last and final destiny of man, Kierkegaard himself seems to have had a mismvinor, if only temporarily. Foi', after having in the strongest terms denounced the principle of association, to wdiich he wall only accord validity in relation to material interests, but in all mental relations considers to be an illusion, because it is only strengthened by the numerical, by coherence, wdiicli ethically is enervation and weakness, he goes on : '■'First when the sepa- rate individual in himself has attained ethical stedfastness in spite of the whole ivorld, first then can there he room for speaMjig of association^^ Here, then, he would seem to make admission of the principle of sociality. But in what manner he has ima- gined that this association of individuals in the Christian sense shall be brought about after the Christian Church has been broken up, and the continuity of the historical thread has been severed, he has not told us. It is only evident that the association shall go forth from these powerful individuals, who have helped them- selves in spite of the world, — that the association must therefore be a product of these strong minds ; but in what manner these shall themselves be strengthened is not evident, when the Church as the postulate for individuals has entirely disappeared under the firebrands of levelling and abstraction. We do not therefore express ourselves too strongly, when we Bay that society does not here receive justice. And now the * En Utierair Anmeldelse, p. 108. SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 235 individual ? Into what relation to God is the individual intro- duced who follows this guidance? Isolated relation to God may be one of two things. It may be the mystic-pantheistic relation to God, in which the individual absorbs himself in God, and gives up his individuality. This is not Kierkegaard's theory. And though, in his religious writings, one certainly misses in a high degree the true mystic, yet he is correct as recjards the false, in maintainino- that the consciousness of duty and the consciousness of guilt testify to man's dignity and independence befoi'e God, and make it impossible for the indi- vidual to escape from himself, or pantheistically to relinquish himself. The isolated relation to God must therefore be defined as the ascetic-practical, as a continual exercise of faith, a continued struggle with reason under obedience to the para- dox, a continued exercise of the absurd, and of a practical love to God, which shows itself in obedience and " acts of love " towards separate individuals. But as the individual is cut off from the Church, he is thus also deprived of " the Church's God," deprived of the fulness of the revelation of God. The revelation of God becomes only a revelation to the individual for the purpose of his own salvation, not a revelation to the Church ; for the love of Christ is then only separating, not combining. And from this standpoint there can be no hearty prayer : Thy kingdom come ! If Kierkegaard could have got sight of the idea of " the kingdom," his horizon would also have widened, and he would have perceived a higher and nobler universalism than that which he at first combated. Then would he also, in the history of the world, in the struggles of nations for the ideals of society, have seen more than mere external circumstances and personalities, in which we ask only after the great and remarkable in the human sense, but are led away from the ethical. Then would he also, in the gesthetic, have been able to find more than the merely dissipating and dis- tracting; would have been able in Shakespeare, whom he so much admires, to perceive more than the psychological, — namely, a teaching of universal history, which is nearly allied to that of the highest religion. And before everything else, he would have learnt from the history of revelation, and from the pro- phetic and apocalyptic inspiration of Scripture, that Christianity has not only an individual, but also a cosmical significance ; that 236 THE HIGHEST GOOD. Christ is not merely the model of believers, but the Saviour of the world, — the Head, under whom the whole system of creation must be combined, and that only under this postulate can there be any serious consideration of the relation of the individual to Christ. But in regard to this point, in regard to the relation of the individual to the love of Christ, to the mercy of God in Christ, and in what manner the individual, by allowing himself, according to Kierkegaard, to be betrayed into the truth, is at the same time — certainly much against this writer's original view — betrayed into the objective mercy of God, we must defer discussion to a later chapter. In reply to all that has been urged above, Kierkegaard, however, continues to repeat : " The individual is the category through which, in regard to religion, time, history, the entire race must pass. And he who stood by Thermopyla3 was not so secure as I, who, in order at least to draw attention to the matter, have stood beside this pass — ' the individual.' His aim was to hinder the troops from pressing through the pass ; if they succeeded in forcing their way, he was lost. My object is, to move the many to press through this pass — the indivi- dual ; through which, however, it is to be remarked that no one presses, without thereby becoming the individual." ^ This is very good, and exceedingly well put. But, on our side, we continue to repeat, that all depends on what is the region to which we penetrate through this narrow pass — whether to dry and barren places or to a fruitful land. Therefore we continue to repeat : The individual and the kingdom of God ; or rather : the kingdom of God and the individual. For it is from the kingdom of God that the initiative proceeds, and the connect- ing link between the kingdom of God and the individual is the Church and the means of grace. And he whose ear is closed to the voices of the present age, will hear this resound through- out the moral world, in harmony with the nature of each sphere : Society and the individual. And in all social sufferings of this age traces of this problem may be seen. Ethics can only draw attention to this problem. For, as Kierkegaard very justly observes with regard to ethical problems, " the actual solution is itself an art, a gift which cannot be taught." ^ Synspnnctet for min Forfattervirksomhed, p. 105. (Standpoint for my Autliorship.) II. YIETUE THE IDEAL OF PEESONALITY. CHEIST OUR PATTEKN. §71. The special perfection of the individual, his personal capacity to promote the advent of God's kingdom, the realization of the highest Good, is virtue. But Christian virtue is not the virtue of the old man, but that of the new, and has for its postulate that personality which Christ has not merely emancipated, hut which He has also redeemed and regenerated. In so far as virtue only developes itself on the basis of emancipation, it is essentially limited to the same factors as pagan virtue, to mind and nature, reason and the perceptions of sense, whether the higher of these is defined as combating the lower, or as har- monizing them, and bringing them into unison and accordance with itself. On the basis of redemption, on the other hand, the factors are, free-will and grace. Therefore the difference between Christian and non-Christian virtue goes back to a diversity in the personal existence itself, and in its essential conditions. When contrasted with the personality of antiquity, modern personality, emancipated to free humanity, has a universality and intensity which from the ancient standpoint was impossible. Modern personality in our own day has not merely Christianity, but also the Reformation and Revolution, with all their emancipat- ing effects, for its postulate. It is freed from the national barriers and caste-divisions of ancient times, from the false authoritv of the Hierarchy, from the oppression of political absolutism, 237 238 VIRTUE. It hns come into possession of its human rights, has liberty of thought and of research, liberty of conscience and belief, political and civil liberty ; nay, even many more than these. Thus, on the basis of emancipation, a morality may be developed which is higher than that of ancient times. But what, again, places it in a more precarious position than that of the ancients, is the want of a fixed and definite ideal of humanity, — not merely the want of a fixed ideal of the kingdom of humanity which is to be striven after, but moreover the want of a fixed ideal of personality. Both Greece and Rome have their fixed ideal of personality, which certainly is circumscribed by the limitations of nationality, but just from this derives its plastic impress, its individual type, until it is dissolved by philosophy, — a dissolution in which Sopliists and Socrates also had an important part ; this last by awakening consciousness of the universal, but at the same time indeterminate human. Christianity has its deter- minate ideal of personality in Christ, in the example which the Redeemer has left us. But the man of the present day, who does not receive Christ, lias no determinate ideal of humanity and personality, although he is in constant search of one. It is characteristic of the refinement of our day, that it extols the human and seeks it out under all forms, in times past and present, in the east and the west, in every climate under heaven and among all nations, appropriates it, asserts it, but assumes a critical relation towards its totality. Our con- temporaries admit the validity of all to a certain extent, but allow unconditional validity to nothing ; and were one of these critical individuals called upon to answer tlie question, What, then, is his own ideal, on which he himself unconditionally relies, what it is that he uncondititmally loves, and wherein he puts his last dependence ? he would be puzzled how to reply, or could only give an empty and formal answer. For progress {le pro- gres), which is the indeterminate thought, in which the greater portion work, is only a very misty ideal. The merely emanci- pated, unredeemed personaUty, is therefore doomed to perpetual anxiety and disquietude ; for with all its rich appropriation — what treasures of discovery and experience have come into the possession of the present generation ? — with all this production, and with all its ci'iticism, it bears within it an enormous vacuum, which can only be filled up by faith on God in Christ. THE IDEAL OF PERSONALITY. 239 And just on this account, this personality is not at all happy. Even if it theoretically professes an optimist ideal of the future which shall come through " progress," still its faith in the future is not strong, and it has no living hope. For this it is too critical, knows too many illusions, and has too often been deceived in its calculations. In the individual life of person- ality, the unhappiness of emancipation shows itself in many deeper natures as a painful condition of the inner being. If we could look into the souls of our contemporaries, we should see, under many a calm exterior, torment and suffering, doubt and secret passion, which do not burst forth into bright flame, — modern personality is too reflective for that, — but burn with a slow consuming fire. If these agonies could find words, they would express craving to be delivered from liberty, — a desire for an authority to which they might entirely and unconditionally subject themselves, — a love to which they might unconditionally devote themselves, — an anxiety to attain a position in which, in words somewhat similar to those of the apostle, " That I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God" (Gal. ii. 19), they could say, "By freedom I am dead to freedom, that I might live in the dependence of obedience and love to God." Poets have often depicted the torture and degradation of thraldom, the indignity of the condition of slavery, in the oppression of the people by despotism. They have glorified emancipation by painting the struggle for liberty, through which nations and their heroes have shaken off an unworthy yoke, and with their swords won for themselves free- dom and its blessings. And the social romance of our own day has exalted emancipation by assailing, sometimes with justice, sometimes without it, obsolete institutions, laws, and customs, which have tyrannized over the individual. But however right this attempt is in itself, a far higher aim for the poet is to descend into the depths of the soul, and depict the miseries of freedom, the sufferings of emancipation. Byron has, indeed, contributed richly to this end. But he is too subjective, paints predominantly only his own personality, his own genially aristocratic nature. The poet who would do this in a comprehensive manner must have Goethe's objective vision, but must see by the light of Christianity. A tendency towards this kind of poetry seems to show itself in the imma- 240 VIRTUE. ture and awkward attempt made iu our day to introduce the Keligious and Christian into poetry, which at any rate gives evidence of the perception of the malady, for which Christianity is the cure. The misfortune of emancipation shows itself in our day in another form, namely that already mentioned, that a great multitude of individuals, in the midst of the world of liberty, and under a constant reference to the principle of individuality and individual right, under a restless labour in the service of emancipation, lose their individuality, drowned in society, in the social and political whirlpools which pan- theistically overwhelm them, wash away and obliterate their originality. " Born as originals, they die as copies." The effaced and obliterated being of a large proportion of individuals, the flightiness of others, the restless toil and anxiety at work, joined to disquietude and haste in enjoyment, the never-ceasing criticism, — these peculiarities, which our age exhibits more conspicuously than any other, are evidences that human freedom cannot suffice to itself, but requires to find rest in the just relation of dependence. Only one power in society can free the individual, namely, the Gospel. Here is the unconditional that is sought, and to which the individual can devote itself, ministering and loving. Here is that in which the emancipated, inconstantly tossed personality, with its fluttering thoughts and wishes, may find rest, where it may find foundation, secure footing, support, and maintenance, — the basis of existence. Here is the true personal ideal of humanity in the example which the Redeemer has left us. In opposition to the engulfing power of society, the gospel is an asylum for individuality, where it may constantly receive initia- tion and renewal for the toil and strife of life, for self-eleva- tion, self-sacrifice, and self-devotion, for the true life in and for society ; as, on the other side, it is the same gospel which, through the Church, constitutes the salt which must preserve the whole life of the people from destruction and decay. § 72. "Whether or not we require an example or pattern of morality, that is to say, the spectacle of an individual man who in himself includes all personal perfection, and demands imitation in the life of every otlier man on earth, is a question inseparable CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE. 241 from this, Do we need a Saviour ? Those who are of opinion that man can save himself, will reply that we do not require a pattern outside of us, because we carry within our own inner being an image of humanity (but what ?), which it is the duty of every one to work out specially by his own self-determination. But it is just this postulate which we cannot admit, in the signification in which it is set forth, since we find our view confirmed by the experience alluded to above, and the many contradictory conceptions of the aim and purpose of man's life which are enunciated by philosophic ethics. On the other hand, it is the common experience of all those who have entered into the relation of discipleship with Christ, and have resolved on followino; Him, that only in Christ do we find the essence of humanity — man as he is in God ; and first in Him do we find the comprehension of our own individuality, its distance and separation from God, and its appointment for God. But inseparable from the acknowledgment that Christ is the pattern is also this, that He is the Saviour ; that no one can imitate the example of Christ but he who by faith has found Christ as the Saviour, and by His saving grace is armed with the power to set forth on pilgrimage after His example : so that faith in the gospel is the mother of virtue. If Christ were hut the pattern, and not the Saviour, then His revelation would only be to our condemnation — only be against us, but not for us. It would undoubtedly afford us the spectacle of the perfectly good, of the human embodiment of the moral law in a world of sin. But to the man who in this model sees not also a Saviour, compassionate and ready to forgive, it stands merely as an accusing witness against mankind and against himself. Only when in the model we see the Saviour, can we receive encourage- ment, because the more we feel our infinite distance, the more closely do we feel ourselves drawn into fellowship with Him. Whilst we designate Christ the Saviour and Example, we can also desirrnate Him the Hicrhest Good, in so far as the fulness, of God's kingdom, the futurity of bliss, is included in Him. Q 242 VIRTUE. THE UNPARALLELED IN HISTORY. CHRIST AND GREAT MEN. § 73. The individual who, as Saviour and example, is to be all things to all men, must be the isolated or unparalleled in history, in the human race. He must be like us, must be a true man, subject to a human development of life and human conditions ; for otherwise he could not be our pattern, our Saviour, He must be unlike us ; for otherwise he could not be that One whom we should all imitate, and of whose fulness we must all partake. There are modern " Pictures of the Character of Jesus," which, in the supposed interest of the ethical, lay stress on Christ's true humanity, so as to lower Him, to represent Him as like us, without acknowledging the essential dissimi- larity. But if Christ is to be our Saviour and our example, He must even as a man be unlike us. And the perception of this human dissimilarity between Him and us is the first step in the knowledge of Christ, the way to perceive Him as the only- beo-otten of the Father. That Christ, even as a man, is unlike us, that He as a man is the isolated in history, is a perception which must force itself on ever}^ serious contemplation, whether we fix our view on the work He has accomplished, and the influences which have pro- ceeded from Him, or fix our view upon His person. A naturalistic system of contemplation has desired to assign to Christ a place among " the great men " in the history of the world. But every comparison between Christ and " great men " must lead to the conviction that His greatness is of a totally different nature from theirs, and cannot be explained by the principles of ordinary human nature. We may, whilst fixing our glance on the work of Christ, take our starting-point from Schleiermachor's treatise on the concept of " the great man," whose characteristic he asserts to be, that he exerts a moulding influence on society. By this definition Schleiermacher has the merit of brincrlno; back to its rightful owners the predicate of "great man," which most writers are disposed to distribute with too great liberal it3% If we inquire concerning the scale of historic greatness which must CHRIST AND GREAT MEN. 243 be adjudged to individual personalities, then the great and the small can only be measured and determined by the relation between the individual and society, — by the intellectual power belonging to the individual, and the influences he thereby exerts on the whole. Whilst the cate^orv of the small, the insiiini- ficant, finds its application in those persons who are lost in the mass, in those from whom no special influence on society proceeds, but who rather in their whole mode of existence show themselves as a product of society, since they only mirror back the spirit of the times and of their own surroundings ; we apply, on the other hand, the category of great to the men whose individuality has so much original force, independence, and power, that it stamps society with its impress; nay, that society even appears as the product of such, as the work of their individuality. Between these extreme points are found such persons as develope themselves in a mutual relation be- tween society and their individuality, a reciprocity of productivity and receptivity, of giving and receiving, an interchange of intel- lectual endowments. In this great middle class, which embraces an infinitude of diversities, we find not merely the commonplace, but also the excellent, the distinguished, the prominent, but not the great par excellence. The great men in the highest sense of the term, the heroes, are those who predominantly relate them- selves to society, not as receiving, but as bestowing, and are therefore entitled the benefactors of the people. Though they may receive influences from society, these have no independent significance, becoming only means and material for their own unfettered creative activity. The great man is not merely the genius ; for although this is inseparable from him, yet the genius is by no means always a great man. Shakespeare is a great poet, Raphael and Mozart are great artists ; but on that account alone to call them great men would be a misapplication of terms. It necessarily belongs to the great man that the influence of genius should be inseparable from the influence of the great 'personality, and that he not merely applies himself to one side of human receptivity, not merely works on individual circles of society, but affects society as a totality, by his creative activity calls forth an organization of society, with the whole multitude of circles, powers, and objects. If this view brings along with it the admission that the great :i44 VIRTUE. man cannot be found in the domain of art and science, because these agencies are too narrow and one-sided for him, then doubtless sceptical objections may be brought against it. Thus, to take an example instar omnium, it may be asked if Socrates, the founder of ethics, who, just on account of his personality, exercised so great an influence, ought not to be reckoned among the great? We reply, there are great men who distinguish themselves by an inward greatness, which is not measured by the relation to the historic development of society, but in rela- tion to the ideal of personality, even if, like Socrates, their rela- tion towards it is only one of inquiry ; and by the relation of the individual to the majority of those, never at any time a numerous class, who aspire after personal perfection ; and this internal greatness may be found with men who have no place at all in the history of the world or of the nation, but live an unmarked every-day life. However high we then would place Socrates as a thinker and as a man, however high we may rate the intensive in his greatness, still the extensive, the historic influences on society, which have proceeded from him are pro- portionately small, because his influence has only produced philosophic schools, only addresses itself to the philosophic, and thus to men of a special stamp of mind, and at a determined stage of progress, but has not been able to penetrate a com- munity in all its circles, far less to mould it or create it anew. And even if we should make the boundaries which Schleier- macher in his treatise has drawn indefinite, still we are always brought back to the fact that the highest historic greatness, if it is to be at once intensive and extensive, can only show itself in the domain of the State^ the Church, or of religious society; that great men, in the highest sense of the term, are those who have founded states, or restored those which were decayed, who have caused a new social life to bloom forth amidst ruins ; as also those who have been founders of religion, or religious reformers, and have produced new organizations in the domain of religion. Only on these territories can there be exercised those all-em- bracing influences which penetrate all classes and circles of society. If we then retain the idea of the founding and moulding of society as the characteristic mark of great men, there is here certainly a formal resemblance to Christ. But if we go into a CHRIST AND GREAT MEN. 245 real comparison, the essential dissimilarity appears. The great men of history are, for instance, under this limitation, that their influence is confined to a single nation, or at most to a single portion of humanity, to one individual generation^ which is essentially their work. No founder of religion, with the excep- tion of Christ, has established a world-wide religion. In Christ, on the other hand, we behold an individual man, who in His pei'sonality has a power, whose influences extend over all races of people, under every clime of heaven, throughout all ages. He does not enter into relation with a single portion of humanity, but with the entire race, as not in a merely relative sense, but absolutely as the Giver, — as He who by His religion has bestowed, not on a single generation, but on the whole world, a new form, has established a new development of the world, a new course of the world, a new humanity extending throughout the range of centuries. On Him we cannot bestow the appellation, "the great man." To Him we can only apply the words of the angel spoken to Mary : " He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most Highr But the dissimilarity is still more apparent when we contem- plate Christ's work according to its principle, aim, and means. Every one who acknowledges the principle of causality must, from the vast world-determining influences which have issued, and still continue to issue, from Christ, and with which no other historic influences can be compared, infer a power which infi- nitely exceeds that of all others. But if we inquire concerning the essence of this power, of the principle of Christ's all-power- ful influence, we can only name the W'Orld-emancipating and world-redeeming liberty and love. Christ's historic greatness indicates an inward holy greatness in His personality, through which He is infinitely distinguished, not merely from all who have exerted influences on the history of the world, but also from all who have aspired after personal perfection. The aim which Christ proposed to Himself and carried through, was to redeem not merely His own nation, but the loorld, from the dominion of sin, and by His life to leave behind to latest generations an example for imitation — in fine, to found God's kingdom upon earth, — an aim which none of the great men have ever proposed to themselves, the necessity of which few among them have felt, and which not one individual of their number has beeu 246 VIRTUE. able to accomplish. Not one of them has assumed the task of becoming the Redeemer of the world, not one has grasped the idea of setting forth his own life as an example, which should remain universally valid even to the last generation which shall inhabit the earth. The dissimilarity in aim corresponds with the dissimilarity in the means. For the means by which Christ executes His work lie not in anything external to Him, but only and alone in His personality. Doubtless from every truly great man there proceeds a great personal influence. But, on the one hand, the ethical is here not seldom restrained by an impure intermingling with the natural intellectual power of genius ; on the other hand, this personal influence only appears at the outset of their work, which in course of time developes itself, or comes to an end, independently of their person. But Christ's work is carried on throughout the lapse of ages only in this manner, that not merely His teaching, but His personality, con- tinues to exert its influences on the human soul. As with no other, there is in Christ an indissoluble connection between His personality and His work, and this connection has from the very first stood before Him in the full clearness of consciousness. He desires to redeem the human race to a kingdom of sanctified personalities ; He desires to destroy the old abnormal develop- ment of the world, in order to introduce a new development ; He will remove the world's centre of gravity, which has been displaced by sin, and bring it back to its original position in God. But He can only execute this by Himself, by His own personal self-participation in it, or by transplanting His own personal life into the race. No one can here help Him, or be His counsellor. His work stands exclusively in His person ; and the smallest abnormality In His personal condition and develop- ment would destroy His work entirely. This connection between the highest aim on earth conceivable — the founding of God's kingdom — and His own human individuality, in which He stands as the isolated One in the human race, who must Himself create the new community, embracing all races and all ages, the ideal which His thought has framed, gives Him a greatness which surpasses all human measure. CHRIST AND GREAT MEN. 247 §74. It also belongs to Christ's greatness that He stands forth as the turning-point of the tunes, which does not hold good of any of the heroes of the human race, who are only born for a single generation, and merely in a relative sense can be described as a turning-point in time. Christ was born in the fulness of time, at the time fixed in the counsel of God, when the universal condition of the world was such that the Redeemer and example could be revealed in it, — a condition in which the principles which had hitherto governed the reality were exhausted, in which there had entered a universal decav of religion and morality, and there was need felt for the regeneration not merely of a single people, but of the race, of the loorld. Only in such a condition of the world can the religious moral example be revealed, because only in such a state of the world the need was urgent for the highest undertaking, which altogether was pos- sible in human nature, to found the kingdom of redemption and of regeneration. And as Christ's work rests on His person, He must also develope Himself under relations and surroundings, in which it became possible for Him to exhibit His personal perfection in every respect. "Wliat is true of each one of the great in the human race, that there is a predestined relation between the personality and the circumstances under which it developes itself, discovering in their lives traces of providential dealing, is true in an absolute sense of Christ. He discloses Himself under circumstances which embrace the whole fulness of con- tradictions and contrasts requisite for the complete revelation of the world-subduing and world-redeeming ideal of love and free-will. He found in His nation the combined results of Jewish, Greek, and Roman culture. The great religious opposi- tion between Jew and Gentile met Him in the face. He encountered an over-ripe state of civilisation, which included the whole range of contrasts in human life, contrasts in educa- tion, contrasts in external circumstances, wealth and poverty, despotism and slavery ; and the whole of this great civilisation resting on a foundation, the political, which was in an advanced state of decay, and threatened to sink beneath its own weight. His surroundings showed Him the highest world-historic powers. 248 VIIITUE. political sovereignty and ecclesiastical (tlieocratic), fallen away from God, snnk in the service of egoism. It showed Him the religious life of the Jews petrified into a literal and meaning- less ceremonial worship, in combination with empty political ideals and national self-idolatry (Pharisees, Caiaphas). And by the side of superstition and formality appeared Gentile incre- dulity, the reflective wisdom of the world with all its atheism : with the naturalism which has resolved all religious conceptions into ideas of the natural man, into the course of nature, the usual order of things; with indifferentism and scepticism, whose adherents, weary of the change in human systems and opinions, mockingly incjuired. What is truth? with Epicurism, which addicts itself to no other worship than that of the flesh (Sad- ducees, Pilate, Herod and his court). He found His nation as sheep without a shepherd, the prey alternately of false prophets and of blind leaders. But in the midst of the general depra- vity, which may well be designated a world-wide process of corruption, He found also in the souls of men new germs of life, announcements of a new time, holy expectation and desire. By the side of extreme corruption and obduracy He found the deepest susceptibility for the kingdom of God — poverty of spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness, not merely in the people of Israel, but also among heathens and Samaritans. And in the midst of the miserable and precarious condition of His nation. He found, especially among the younger generation, a circle of men fitted to become His disciples, the stay and sup- port of the time to come, instruments for the extension of God's kingdom in the world. Into this world of contrasts Christ entered, disclosed Himself, and fulfilled the mission of His life. The greatness He dis- played during His pilgrimage on earth was quiet greatness. For in deepest tranquillity, in a remote corner of the world, He completed His work of redemption and atonement, and left behind to the race His example. Only after He, ignored, betrayed, rejected, had died a felon's death upon the cross, and had become invisible to the world, did it become manifest to the world what He had been, and not merely had been, but constantly continues to be for it. THE EXAMPLE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 249 THE EXAMPLE OF FEEE-WILL. SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD. §75. If we turn more narrowly to the contemplation of this calm greatness, and give ourselves up to the impression of His perso- nality, whilst in spirit we wander forth with Him, like the dis- ciples of old, we cannot but receive the conviction that the ideal of free-will in Him was realized. The first thing to which we turn attention is, that His relation to the law of morality is one wholly different from that of other men. In all other men there appears, namely, a struggle, an opposition between God's holy law and their own will, — a discord which, the more con- science is awakened, the more seriously we consider the demands of the law, makes us feel the law as a yoke, a burden, and ^^hich awakens in us a longing desire, a necessity for atone- ment and redemption. There are, indeed, now many who think tliat there is no other relation to the law, that all men must find themselves at this standpoint, even if there be a question of a relative reconciliation and smoothing over of this disharmony in man's inner being, because they assume that all men, even tlie noblest and the best, are sinners. And undeniably, experience shows us the universality of sin in the human race. The longer we live, the more seriously we ourselves strive after moral per- fection, and the more our eyes become sharpened to the require- ments of the law, the more frequently do we experience that those men, whether belonging to a former age or to the present, to whom in our first enthusiasm we had looked up as patterns, because they charmed and attracted us by an appearance of moral perfection, lose their glory, and are degraded to relative greatness, one after the other. It is an experience, which is again and again corroborated, that those whom we call great, noble, and distinguished, in so far as they are to be considered from the view-point of the moral ideal, cannot stand close in- spection, but must be seen from a distance. The more oppor- tunity we have closely to contemplate the life of a conspicuous man, who strives avjer the ideal, the more will we perceive that throughout this life, tnough probably it may be admired by the 250 VIRTUE. beliolders, there vibrates a secret pain, a jarring dissonance, a sigh for peace, a complaint like that of the apostle : " The good which I would, I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I do " (Rom. vii. 19) ; or we hear a confession, which one of these distinguished characters has expressed in these words : " To do anything good is always delightful, to execute anything great is the joy of the gifted ; but to remain sinless, umblem- ished by guilt — alas, how hard, how difficult!" But he who from all these sin-stained patterns will turn to Christ, will find that here is the great Being who needs not to make confession of sin. Here is He who knows not remorse, but only holy sorrow for the sin and misery of mankind, whilst His own per- sonal life breathes freedom and heavenly peace. He does not know from His own experience what it is to remain at the stand- point of the law, to be under the yoke and curse of the law, to feel the struiro-le between the demands of conscience and the actual condition ; and neither does He know from His own experience, what it is to be a man reconciled to God, to have received the forgiveness of sins, and to be admitted to the adoption of sons. He testifies concerning Himself, " Which of you convinceth me of sin? " He summons all to come to Him and learn of Him, calls Himself meek and humble of heart, without thereby wounding humility. His life is described by those who saw Him close at hand, not merely in single im- portant moments, but who daily followed Him, and were with Him in the most diverse circumstances of life. But no critic has been able to point out in His life any sin or inconsistency, to exhibit anything in His word or deed, which lie required to alter. Therefore have those who have so accustomed them- selves to the impure atmosphere of this world, that they do not believe in the possibility of a sinless human life, declared the life of Christ to be a myth. But they have not been able to explain the miracle of such a myth. Neither have they been able to indicate the author or show the possibility of a sinless and holy myth originating in this world of sin. But he who believes in Christ's freedom from sin, has in this belief the commencement of real self-knowledge and knowledge of the world. To believe that Christ is without sin, is certainly the least which can be believed concerning Christ, is the minimum of Christian faith ; for without this boundary lies unbelief and THE EXAMPLE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 251 atheism. But however imperfect a man's knowledge of Christ may be, yet if he receives this smallest article of faith, he has in it a fruitful mustard-seecl, which may develope itself into faith in the Lord of glory. If he believes that in this world of sin and death there appeared One who was without sin, a man who did not come under the law, because His life was the fulfilling of the law ; a man in whose development there was indeed growth, progress from the incomplete to the complete, but no contradiction, no variance between ideal and reality, because at every step of His progress He was what He ought to be ; in His life prior to consciousness, in His childhood, which was thus no sinful natural condition, the disturbing influence of w^hich must infallibly have produced its effects throughout the whole subsequent development, — if he believes this, then he believes the miracle, believes that these laws of nature have been broken through by a higher order of things. To deny this ethical miracle is to deny from the very foundation what is new in Christianity. If Christ, though possessing relative moral per- fection and dignity, took no higher position than that of the law, was in any degree under the yoke and condemnation of the law, then all has continued old. Then we have no Redeemer, and no pattern ; then the ideal of liberty has not been revealed in reality. We cannot press on any one the acknowledgment of Christ's freedom from sin. For Christ's inward greatness reveals itself only to the recipients. But we can urge on every one a great alternative for their decisive choice. For either He, who testi- fied concerning Himself that He was without sin, and who in connection with this matter brought forward a host of wit- nesses, in which He claimed for Himself the position of the Highest, must have been an arrogant visionary, wanting in all self-knowledge, and therefore the chief priests and the Jews have pronounced a righteous sentence on Him ; or in this and in everything else the relations must be as He has said. § 76. But the ethical miracle ascends and becomes greater, when we not merely yield to the impression of the isolated in Christ's position to the law, but also to the isolation of His position in regard to the copiousness and harmony of His being. We discriminate in the life of man between one-sided and liar- 252 VIRTUE, monious characters. Yet in the ordinary life of man there is, in the absolute sense of the term, no such thing as harmonious character. In every human being there is not merely a want of harmony on account of sin, but also a one-sidedness on account of the limitation in his endowments, which prevents him from moving freely on all sides. The character has not perfect equilibrium, so long as it has not by association with others, in the fullest signification, by association with the kingdom of God, been received into a higher harmony. Only in Christ do we behold that perfectly harmonious character which affords inexhaustible fulness to our contemplation. Human life, with the exception of that of Christ, shows us only moral characters, which are disjecta membra, shattered moments of personal perfection, because the moment which is signally present lacks its harmonizing contrast; Avhilst Clirist stands alone in the abundance of harmonious contrasts, which in His personality have their unity. There are thus moral characters, whose energetic virtue is love to society, enthusiasm for the aims and pursuits of public life, but who are far from entertaining in tlie same measure an interest in the relations of individual life, who prefer the ideals of humanity to the actual human individuals. And, vice versa, there are characters whose predominant affection is individual, and who have their special sphere in relation to individuals. In Christ we see the harmonious unity of the universal and the individual love of man. He whose work was to embrace peoples and tongues and races, receives with cordiality every human being who comes in contact with Him and opens his mind to Him. The good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness, in order to search after the one that was lost. We discriminate between masculine and feminine characters. But thouiih in Christ we must acknowledge the highest pre-eminence of manly character, the world-contesting, world-subduing heroism, which at the same time has here this peculiarity, that it bears the consciousness that it must give way for a time, but accepts suf- ferings and death as moments in its work, certain of victory at last ; yet we cannot call Him a masculine character, as in con- tradistinction to the feminine. For the hishest characteristics of womanly virtue are found also in Him — infinite devotion and singleness of purpose, the unruffled serenity of a calm and THE EXAMPLE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 253 gentle spirit, pure and modest feeling in the maintenance of the finest moral distinctions ; and the power peculiar to women of passive obedience, power to bear, to suffer, to forego, in unspeakable loyalty. He is at once the lion and the lamb. There are individualities and characters which have their life predominantly in quiet contemplation, as the philosopher who in thought looks out over existence, in the tranquillity of specu- lation seeks to discover its laws, but does not actively entangle himself in the finite aims, in the strife and turmoil of life, which for him are only a subject for consideration ; or as pre- dominantly an inwardly religious life, as we see with ascetics and mystics, who desire to fall asleep to the world that they may awake in God, — whilst surrounded by the things of time, desire to anticipate eternity. In contrast to these contemplative and mystic natures, we see practical natures, which are exclu- sively devoted to action, have no time for contemplation, because reality is everything to them. But in Christ we behold the marvellous unity of the contemplative and the practical, — the repose of contemplation, the deepest earnestness and ab- straction of prayer, combined with the most energetic activity ; because He, not merely by contemplation, but in deed, nay, by aggression, entered into relation with the actual powers of the world, and in strife with these provoked the catastrophe of His life. Finally, we can discriminate between such characters whose development predominantly bears the impress of an intel- lectual nature, a quiet growth, the so-called beautiful minds, which we most frequently meet in naive, poetic, and artist natures, and in women, whose being makes the impression of a natural harmony (because the dissonance of sin has not as yet come to an outbreak), and such whose life presents the picture of a struggle for liberty, but thus also lacks the beautiful immediateness of the first. In Christ, on the other hand, all is nature : His actions come forth with the impress of a higher natural necessity from His inner being ; and yet all is freedom, clear, self-conscious action. It has been said that nothing great is achieved in the world without passion ; and from this it would follow that we must also ascribe passions to Christ. We, however, deny the truth of the maxim cited, in so far as it demands absolute universal validity ; on the other hand, we maintain that nothing great 254 VIETUE. has been cachieved without entliuslasm. Passion always imph'es a one-sided, enthralled, and unharmonious condition. In passion, a man has sacrificed the moral totality of his being, and only exerts an individual portion — one side of his nature ; he is spell- bound under the despotic sway of a single interest, which usurps the place of the whole. In all passion there is idolatry, and ruthlessly is set aside, sacrificed, slain, everything — not merely the unauthorized, but also the important and deserving, — all for the one idol. We therefore do not ascribe passion to Christ, though just as little do we ascribe to Ilim stoical indif- ference, coldness, and want of feeling. On the contrary, we know and bear witness that Christ lived a life of the deepest feeling, that there moved in Him the most powerful desire after that which was the object of His life (" I am come to send fire on earth ; and what will I if it be already kindled ? " Luke xii. 49) ; and we ascribe to Him, therefore, a holy pathos, holy emotion, but exclude everything unbecoming and one-sided. Although every moment of life was lived by Him in its whole depth, yet He never thus enters into any individual emotion, whether of love or hatred, joy or sorrow, in such a manner as to lose thereby the moral totality of His being. The sympathetic and the autopathic with Him are in perfect harmony. In His devotion to men, both in the universal and individual sense, He preserves the deepest self-possession. He devotes Himself to all, to each ; according to his susceptibility, is accessible to all ; but never, either among friends or foes, neither wdien the world greeted Him with hosannahs, nor in the season of His humiliation, under the scorn of men, and with the cross before His eyes, did He forget His royal dignity, or was false to Him- self. In no condition of His life of emotion do we see the absence of harmony. The Gospels show us, that when one pathos, one emotion, one chord of feeling vibrates, its opposite is always present too, though unperceived, keeping the first within just limitations ; and this contrast generally comes into view before the first chord has fairly died away.^ In the denunciations of woe against the Pharisees, we hear not merely the voice of law and justice, but also the complaint of love unappreciated ; and in His parting lament over the Temple, we hear at the conclusion these words, in which a future comfort ^ See UJhnauu, On ChrisCs Sinless Perfection. THE EXAMPLE OF SELF-GOVERNJIENT. 255 for the unhappy people yet gleams forth : " Ye shall not see me from this time forth, until ye shall say, Blessed is He that Cometh iu the name of the Lord ! " (Matt, xxiii. 39.) He weeps over Jerusalem ; but the note of sympathy, the note of lamenta- tion, in this contemplation passes over into action, whilst He immediately thereafter goes into the Temple to drive out thence the buyers and sellers (Luke xix. 45). In the highest mo- ments of exaltation, when the disciples or the people yield Him praise and acknowledgment, the deepest seriousness breaks forth, the consciousness that the hosannahs of the people shall be changed into the cry, " Crucify him !" consciousness of coming suffering and death, in which even the disciples shall be offended in Him. And, vice versa : from the notes of sorrow and pain break forth gladness, gratitude to the Father for the progress of God's kingdom, and blissful consciousness of victory. When Mary at Bethany anoints Him, He says in holy sadness, " She has anointed me for my burial." But the sadness is changed into glad certainty that the future belongs to Him, and He says: "Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall this which this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her" (John xii. 7; Mark xiv. 9). And as His being is harmonious in itself, so is He also in harmony with everything outside of Him, — except with sin, and the confusion which through sin has entered into the world. For Him there was no original, no discordant contrast between the world of matter, or corporeity, and the world of mind, between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of humanity. The material creation, with the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air, with the ear of wheat which falls into the earth and dies, with the vine and the fig-tree ; human life, witli its mani- fold relations and occupations, with the sower and the shepherd, the bridegroom and the bride, the master and the steward, the merchant and the usurer, the physician and the judge, the captain and the king, — all become to Him types, emblems of that kingdom of God into which He desires to bring men. Every- where He sees the divine unity of thought which permeates, embraces, and binds all things together, both the spiritual and the natural, the visible and the invisible, the earthly and the heavenly, in one vast economy. He has manifested His dignity 256 VIRTUE. in domestic life, in Nazareth, in Cana, in Bethany. He sub- mitted Himself to the orders of the State, and exhorted to render unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's (Matt. xxii. 21). Neither the State with its regulations, nor the family with mother and children, are for Him in themselves unholy ; only sin has in Him its inexorable enemy. But for this cause has He come to redeem the world from sin, and in order that the dissonance produced by sin — which, to the disturbance of their tranquillity, permeates all circles of human life, and every individual soul within them — might be received into His pure and holy heart, in its harmony with itself, that, passing through this dissonance and suffering, through it He might re-establish the kingdom of peace. His view of the world is therefore wholly different from this world's Optimism or Pessimism. For that which completes His liberty, the animating principle in every one of His free actions, is His world-redeeming and soul- redeeming love. § 77. And if, then, contemplation further inquires : Who, then, is He, who so resembles us in our condition as men, who has watched and slept, laboured and been weary, has been tried in all things like as we, and yet is so essentially unlike us in relation to the law of God, so unlike the highly gifted amongst us, by the boundlessness of His endowments, and by that which it is His purpose to achieve in the world, that He stands before us with the impress of the superhuman? — to such an inquiry we know no other satisfactory reply than that which is given us in His own testimony, and in the testimony of His apostles, and which refers us to a peculiar relation of nature and being, both to the human race and to God. He designates Himself the Son of man, that is to say, as man himself, as He who represents human nature not merely in its purity, but also in its perfection and fulness. If the whole human race is a kino-dom of eternal individualities, of immortal souls, then Christ is the central individuality in this organism. One of His apostles calls Him the second Adam, the new man, as the first of a new spiritualized race, under whom the mass or body of mankind shall collect as under the Head, because the numerous human individuals and nationalities, first through SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD. 257 Him come into right organic relation towards each other mutually, and towards God. Just because He came to draw all men unto Himself, to redeem all human talents, and all human wills, to make every one perfect, to help him to achieve the essential aim of life, which is for each to become a man ; just on this account must He come to us not as an individual man, in tliis or that special endowment, this or that special vocation, but as the man, as the point of union of all human talents and all human wills ; just on this account, although He appears in a particular century, and among a single people, His whole revelation bears the stamp of eternity, and is fitted to impress on all times and all races the universal-human and the closest brotherhood, and must find an echo in every human breast, be it man or woman, which is not closed by sin against Him who cometh to His own. The words of Pilate : Ecce homo! Behold the man! receive here their just and true significance. And this is the marvel, that He, as the universal man, does not make the impression of the abstract, uniform, and colourless, the indefinite and misty, but in the Gospels stands before us in all the freshness of the most distinct, most strongly marked individuality, that this human form of bright- ness shows itself before us in an infinite number of individual refractions, an inexhaustible variety of the finest individual traits. §78. But He who is to be the Mediator between God and man, must not merely be in unity with the human race, but also with God. And He who is to be the example of free-will, must not merely show us freedom in its inner harmony and consistency with itself, but also in its unity with God, with the divine love ; must not be merely the son of man, but also the Son of God. It is a great though very widespread one-sided- ness, to regard the destiny of man, as a free moral being, as consisting only in productivity, whilst first of all it must be regarded as receptivity of God. On the power of human nature to receive God, rests the possibility of God becoming man, which already shines forth from the idea of God's king- dom, a kingdom of individuals, which God fills with His real presence. But if this idea is only relatively and imperfectly realized in those human individuals who are members of God's K 258 VIRTUE. kingdom, it is realized in an absolute and unique manner iu Clirist as the Head of this kingdom. In the new Adam, as the Head of the human race, is the central receptivity of God of man's nature. Therefore Christ is not merely, like the prophets, a man favoured of God ; but the divine favour, the divine Charis, in human form, manifesting itself in the form of human liberty. As a true man, Christ is the unity of mind, soul, and body. But whilst every human soul is fitted to become a temple of God, a dwelling for God, formed in a relative sense to be united with God, the soul of Christ is that, among all other souls, in which not only dwells the fulness of humanity, but also the fulness of God, not merely as an inhabitation, which, as with the prophets, had commenced at a fixed period of the soul's self-conscious life (which would presuppose a former condition of sin, or at least a partially developed human existence, which, just on account of its partial or one-sided character, would be incapable of receiving fulness), but as an incarnation, a union of the divine and human, which must be assigned to the preconscious condition, in which the soul itself forms its body, and in which the whole mental resources must already be potentially present. And if we, in our anthropological postulate, have said that in every human soul there is something new, which has not been before, and thus cannot be attributed to earthly parentage, something beyond the natural, which cannot be explained by descent from it, but in which we recognise the divine creative power (the creative moment), this holds good in an absolute sense of the soul of Christ. It is absolutely impossible to imagine this soul as an offshoot of the sinful race. In the birth of Christ itself we stand face to face with the supernatural in the most eminent sense, even though we can say that human nature from the first w-as planned to furnish the conditions for this birth (Mary). But when we consider the soul of Christ as a new creation, the idea of creation here converges into the idea of God's becoming man, of the incarnation of the Eternal Word, just because this soul had not, like the rest of human souls, a worldly independence and special character outside the holy centre of Divinity, but was destined to be the self- manifestation of the holy centre of Divinity^ in the form of human nature. SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD. 259 If we, therefore, in the contemplation of Christ's life, which unfolds itself before us in a progressive human development (Jesus increased in wisdom and favour, Luke ii. 52), are constrained to exclaim : Ecce homo ! Behold the man ! yet we can only say it with truth, when we say also : Ecce Deus I Behold God in human form ! He who hath seen Him, hath seen the Father ! Here is the reflexion of His glory, and the express image of His person. Here is not merely man's love to God, but God's own love to the race of man in human form. The same who designates Himself the Son of man (John iii. 11), and speaks that which He knows, because every one of His assertions is the assertion of His own self-consciousness, originating in inner knowledge and experience, says also that He is one with the Father (John x. 30) ; and He regards His coming to this world, and the whole of His life on earth, as the contimiaiion of His heavenly, superhuman life, in which He had glory with the Father before the foundation of the world (John xvii. 5) ; where He was thus from eternity, and whence He descended to seek and to save that which was lost, to become the Bread and the Fountain of Life for men (John vi. 51). He was in the world in the universal manner as the Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world (John i. 9), before He appeared as that human individuality, in whom dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 9). But although in His individuality He manifests a glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, still His descent to earth, and His life on earth, were acts of self-derogation, self-humiliation. For He had come to bear the sin of the world, to win back through obedience that which had been lost by the disobedience of the first man ; and He was therefore obliged to submit Himself to poverty and temptation, suffering and death. It is this, His free self-humiliation, which the Apostle Paul describes in Phil. ii. 6-8 : " Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man : and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." 260 VIRTUE. THE EXAMPLE OF LOVE AND OBEDIEXCE. THE LOED IN THE FORM OF A SERVANT. §79. lu whatever mode, then, we seek metaphysically to Interpret the words of the apostle concerning Him who humbled Him- self and took on Him the form of a servant, which can only be unfolded in connection with the doctrine of the Trinity, the ethical significance is undoubtedly this : that He brought an unspeakably vast offering of love, and by His entrance into the world of time renounced a glory, a majesty, an equality with God, which belonged to Him in His life of eternity. And although, during His life on earth, the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Him, yet self-abasement, dignity in humiliation, continue to be the characteristics of His life on earth, which was indeed a veiling of glory, which caused the world:y mind to misunderstand and ignore Him. He who is in being one with the Father, has by becoming man entered into an absolute relation of subordination to the Father ; and words such as, " The Father is greater than I " (John xiv. 28), are not at all, as a narrow orthodoxy has suggested, to be taken as regarding only the human nature of Christ, but as refrardino; the whole Christ in humiliation. This subordinate relation is shown especially in this, that His divine and human life of love developes itself under the form of obedience, witliout which it could not be said that He has left us a pattern. And the progressive development of His obedience must not be regarded as thougli Christ had only had one will, namely the divine (not monotheletically, but dijotheletically). In the de- velopment of His divine and human will, the divine and the human moment separate and become distinct, so that the lower can be freely subjected to the higher, and perfect obedience is manifested. (Not my will, but Thine be done !) To Christ, also, a choice was offered. His temptation and contest were no mere seeming. He not only strove against the world, but against the princes of this world, against the demoniac powers, and the devil. The worldly impulse stirred in His nature, and He perceived in Himself the possibility of defection, the EXAMPLE OF LOVE AND OBEDIENCE. 261 possibility of making Himself an earthly, a worldly Messiah, and of winning the riches and glory of this lower sphere, — a Messianic kingdom whiqh was desired by many, who sought the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life ; a possibility which, however, could not be realized in the Only-begotten of the Father, who herein, in contrast to Pro- metheus, would not take the glory of divinity by theft or fraud, but chose to become the Redeemer of the world throu2;h obedience and the cross. He, indeed, showed signs and won- ders, since the fulness of the powers dwelt in Him, and He could pray the Father to send Him legions of angels (Matt. xxvi. 53), but always only in pursuance of His mission as Redeemer ; and the miracle was always ethically conditioned by the aim of God's kingdom, by the will of the Father : every manifestation of power was subordinate to holy love. The highest summit of obedience was shown in the narrative of the agony in the garden, and on the cross, where, in order to complete the work of redemption. He entirely relinquishes the use of this miraculous power, nay, where the suffering reaches the point of feeling God-forsaken, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But this obedience of His v;ould lose its hicrhest significance as a pattern and a prototype, if it were not the obedience of Him who was originally and essentially the Lord of glory. If it was only a man who had tragically become involved in pain and suffering, and had endured the inevitable with moral dignity, we should here undoubtedly have an edify- ing example. But we should miss that perfect ideal of love which we now have in Cinist, when we, in the suffering and dying Redeemer, see the Only-begotten of the Father, who has relinquished the glory of divinity, and submitted Himself to a humiliation which is in direct contrast to His essential dio-nity.^ They who make Christ a mere man, in order, as they say, to do honour to the ethical, the human, weaken and injure the ethical, because they deny to Christ the means and the possi- bility of the highest manifestation of love. The truly ethical, truly human example which Christ has left us, rests on the mysterious basis of the divine in His being, and loses its power, becomes empty and flat, when it is detached from this. ^ St. ^lartin and Fr. Baader : He divested Himself of His divine gloiy, and there remained to Him only the unqutnchahle focus of love. 2G2 VIRTUE. § 80. The ideal of obedience, which is manifested in Christ, is prophetically set forth in the Old Testament, without, however, being comprehended in perfect union with that of love. We refer here to the representation of the Lord's righteous Servant upon earth. This representation implies that the Lord desires to have a work on earth executed by another than Himself, by His servant. The work is the founding of God's kingdom, the kingdom of righteousness, by which redemption is re-established. By the servant we are first led to think of the people of Israel ; for it was appointed to them, in the midst of the unrighteous- ness of the heathen, to work out a preparatory restoration of the true relation towards God. But as Israel itself again and again falls away from the true God, and falls back to the old unrighteousness, the conception of the Lord's servant is limited to the pious and believing^ in Israel, and amongst these in particular to the prophets, who, as the ambassadors of God, through suffering, adversity, and persecution, labour for His righteous cause on earth. But neither can the prophets realize the ideal of God's servant, because none of them lives in un- disturbed communion with God, their intercourse being often interrupted by sin and self-will. Therefore the representation of God's righteous servant can only be referred to a single individual, the Messiah, who in the fulness of time should be manifested to carry forward God's cause to victory. It is this personality of whom the prophet Isaiah speaks, when he says : Behold my Servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth : I have put my Spirit upon Him ; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench, till He have set judgment in the earth (Isa. xlii.). It is the same of whom it is said, that He shall grow up as a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes we are healed. But when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days. My THE LORD IN THE FORM OF A SERVANT. 263 righteous Servant shall justify many ; and He shall divide the spoil with the strong (Isa. liii.). But the representation of the servant of the Lord is inseparable from another representation — that of the Son of God. The rela- tion of servant is the relation of obedience to God ; but the filial relation is the relation of love, the relation of union with God. The same beings who in the prophecies are described as servants of God, are described also as the sons of God. Not only is Israel as an entire people called in the Old Testament the son of God ("Out of Egypt I have called my son "), but the chosen in Israel, the supporters and instruments of God's kingdom, are called the sons of God, the children of God. As the Lord says, ''Behold my servant, whom I have chosen" (Isa. xlii. 1); so He says also (Ps. ii.), " Thou art my son ; this day I liave begotten thee." But in Christ this prophecy first finds its trae fulfilment. For as Christ is the only-begotten among the servants of God, the only one who uninterruptedly preserves obedience, so, too, is He also the only-begotten Son, the Son of God not merely in an ethical, but moreover in a physical sense. Only on the ground of His original being in the Father, only because in essence He is the Son, can He be truly the servant of God on earth, can He fulfil what prophecy can only demand and predict. This fulfilment of prophecy we may express in the words of the apostle quoted above in Phil. ii. 6-8: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; vet He humbled Himself." As the Lord in the form of a servant. He executes God's work on earth in perfect unity of obedience and love, and leaves us thereby a pattern of love. §81. In examining the essential moments in Christ's example of love whilst in the form of a servant, we direct our attention partly towards His inward relation of love to the Father, partly towards His relation of love to the world. As all development of human personality assumes the psychological essential forms, Assimilation and Production, the unfolding of Christ's person- ality took also these forms. In His relation to the Father He appears as assimilating — in unconditional devotion receiving and appropriating to Himself the divine fulness of life. For though from His birth He was one with the Father, yet this 264 VIRTUE. did not prevent what the Gospels show to us, that He constantly stood in a relation of reciprocity — interchange of influence with the Father. In His relation to the world He is active, creating anew, whilst He imparts to it that fulness which the Father has given Him, bestowing on the world the bread of life. And through this activity He not merely continues His appropriation of the Father (" It is my meat to do His will that sent me, and to finish His work," John iv. 34), whilst He draws therefrom the heavenly, the nourishing powers to Himself; but through His working He appropriates also to Himself the world, makes souls His possession, His own kingdom (I know my own, and am known of mine ; neither shall any pluck them out of my hand, John x. 14, 28). Of cleansing and purifi- cation with regard to Him, the pure and sinless One, there can be no mention, as there might with us. On the contrary, His life was a constant sacrifice, a free-will offering and voluntary Buffering, since, in spite of the world's continued and increasing opposition. He desires to redeem men, to abolish sin, and as Redeemer to take away guilt by bearing it Himself. Because He had come to cleanse the world, He had to bring about a Drisis, a separation, a division between the susceptible and the unsusceptible, between the children of light and the children of darkness (" I am come for the judgment of the world, that they that see not should receive sight, and that the seeing should become blind," John ix. 39) ; He had to bring about a crisis in the individual heart, which He desired to awaken to contrition and repentance. He Himself required no cleansing, but in His whole relation to the world He had to keep Himself from its pollutions, to resist all impure influences of this world's spirit and this world's mental atmosphere, and only appropriate to Himself from it that which miiiht become an element in His normal development. As the chief moments of the example of love given us by the Redeemer in His state of humiliation, we therefore set forth this appropriating love in the inward com- munion with the Father, which has its expression in meditation and prayer; that active and passive affection, which has its expression in the whole of His redeeming work on earth. As His love both in regard to the Father and to the world is the love of the Redeemer, His voluntary sacrifice and suffering is everywhere present, though in various ways, whilst it appears THE LOnO IN THE FORM OF A SERVANT. 2G5 in a very peculiar manner in that part of his hfe which we specially call the story of His passion. As His love and obedience ai'e the manifestations of free love to the Father and to men, He thus attains thereby His own personal perfection. The ideal of freedom is realized only through that of love. Through the completion of the Father's work He becomes Himself perfected; and through the continued development of the love, appropriating and devoting, active and passive, in which He becomes the bread of life and the fountain of life for men. He builds to Himself His body in the ethical sense of the term. His outward body, with all its members, He spiritualizes to be the instrument of His holy personality, and He Himself designates His body a dwelling, a temple of God. "Destroy this temple," said He to the Jews, "and in three days I will raise it again. But He spake of the temple of His body," adds the apostle (John ii. 21). He prepares to Himself His inner body, His intellectual, spiritual property, in which all the fulness of His gifts is spiritually glorified and hallowed ; on which account Pie is not merely in a physical but in an ethical sense God's beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased ; on which account God can again raise Him from the state of humiliation, and which is the condition of the miracle of almighty power in His resurrection from the dead, because it was not possible that death could hold Him, whose organism was thus united to God, not possible that God could suffer His Holy One to see corruption (Acts ii. 24-27). And after His resurrection from the dead He continues to construct to E[imself His body in the widest sense of the term, since He, through His continued world and soul redeeming activity, goes on appropriating to Himself human souls, in order thereby to prepare for Himself His organism, or His Church, in which each individual soul is His tool, Christ's instrument, and He Himself by His Spirit the animating principle both in the individual and in the whole, — an agency in the formation of bodies, which shall continue in force till the end of the world, when in the whole extent of the word it shall be manifested that Christ is the head of His lody the Church (Eph. i. 22). But here we pause, still to consider the love of the Redeemer in His state of humiliation. 2G6 VIRTUE. CONTEMPLATIVE AND SUPPLICATIVE LOVE. ACTIVE LOVE. §82. Tlie inner life of the Lord must be to us a mystery, and we can only speak about it according to what the Lord has Himself revealed to us. But all the declarations of the Lord lead us to conceive His relation to the Father to be one of reception and appropriation. The first which here presents itself before us, is His divine-human view of the Father, who has sent Him into the world. Wlien the Apostle John says, " No one hath seen God at any time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him " (John i. 18), we understand that He who is to make known to men that God whom no one hath seen, must Himself have beheld God, and not merely have beheld, but lived in a constantly renewing con- templation of God, and of all things in God. He testifies only concerning those things which He has seen with the Father (John iii. 11) ; and the Father shows Himself to Him not merely in the mirror of nature, human life, and the Scriptures, but directly, in the inward communion of life, in which He is in the Father, and the Father in Him. If we think of the long time which preceded His public appearance, His quiet youth in Nazareth, in the city on the mountain-top with the broad outlook, — this life concerning which we only know that He grew and increased in years and in wisdom, and in favour with God and men, — we may well imagine that it was preponderatingly full of holy meditation and contemplation, in which nature and human life cb.anged before Him into pictures and emblems of the kingdom of God which He bears within Him, and the Scriptures have opened to Him as types and prophecies, which are to find their fulfilment in Himself. Specially conspicuous do we find the contemplative life in the Gospels, where it is related that Christ withdrew into solitude, and spent whole nights in meditation and ])rayer (Luke vi. 12). It recurs fre- quently in the sacred narrative that God's revelations come to the solitary, and that only those who have been alone with God have attained the power to influence society as instruments and ambassadors of God, because receptivity of God can only be CONTEMrLATIVE AND ADORING LOVE. 267 developed in solitude. In solitude the Lord spoke to the prophets, to Moses, to Elias, to John the Baptist ; and thus also the Son in solitude listened to the Father's voice. But this is the difference between the Son and the prophets, that Christ's knowledge of the Father is not associated with a single moment of revelation, an individual vision or ecstasy of mind, a single word of God, which has come to Him, but that it developes itself from His original relation of union with tlie Father, from uninterrupted and undisturbed progressive intercourse with Him. Under this presupposition He who is one with the Father says : I speak to the world that which I have heard from the Father (John viii. 26) ; and, The Son can do nothing but that which He seeth the Father do (John v. 19). And this His relation of only Son, this His inner solitariness, in which the Father is with Him in the deepest stillness of His soul — like an uninterrupted Sabbath stillness — continues throughout His life amonsst men. In the midst of the most excitino; social life, in the most earnest devotion of love to men, He is still the solitary One in the human race, who, surrounded by the deafening voices and the shifting scenes of this world, inces- santly listens to the Father, and contemplates what the Father shows Him. But this filial relation to the Father must be developed and glorified through the relation of service and obedience. The sacrificing, and at the same time critical, discriminating, and limiting relation to the world, begins already in quiet contempla- tion. For, in contrast to that which the Father shows Him, the world displays to Him quite other images, and in obedience He must reject and strive against the false and alluring visions with which the spirit of the world seeks to entice Him. This appears plainly in the story of the temptation in the wilderness, where in solitude Pie fights the great fight, in which He rejects the false worldly ideals of a Messiah, and subjects Himself to the written word, repulsing each assault of the tempter with an *• It is written!" — thereby testifying that He placed Himself under the entire control of the Father, which in Him should find the fulfilment of His word. In this. His obedience in contemplation, there is an analogy to the belief without which He could not be the founder and the finisher of our faith (Heb. vli. 2). For though He beholds the Father and heavenly 268 VIRTUE. things, still He finds Himself in a world which meets Him with a multitude of signs and experiences, which seem to tell Him that His inner visions are fancies, illusions, and that this visible world is the only true reality. His unity with the Father, thus even His view, is not from the beginning what it shall first become, when His personal perfection is complete. It therefore becomes an ethical task for Him, in His state of humiliation, not to regard things visible, but the invisible ; in spite of worldly experience, to hold fast the certainty of Plis communion with the Father, certainty of what He sees and hears regarding Him, in contradiction to all that He sees and hears in the world ; certainty concerning Himself as the Only- begotten (e7&j el/xc), — a task which receives a special signifi- cance in the story of the Passion, where He has the whole world opposed to Plim, where it seems that His whole work is overthrown, and has been founded only on illusion and self-deception. But our Lord's inner life shows us not only the progressive unity of faith and sight, but is at the same time a life of prayer. It is the essence of prayer to be the real and living appropria- tion (assimilation) of God and the divine fulness of life. For he who prays in truth, prays first and foremost for God Himself, for the Spirit of God, for spiritual influences from above. But the prayer of Christ is the prayer of the ^Mediator, the prayer of the Redeemer, in which He appropriates the Father's love to Himself, and to those who are to be redeemed by Him ; and when it is declared concerning Him, that God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power (Acts x. 38), we cannot, in so far as we conceive of His self-conscious life, avoid the infer- ence that He received this anointing in the attitude of prayer. For, that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, that He was the Word of God become man (John i. 1), and that the fulness of God dwells bodily in Him, does not preclude His progressive development, does not preclude the continued communication of power and Spirit from the Father, which also appeared as a special consecration at His baptism, when the Spirit of God came upon Him (Matt. iii. IG). The filial relation in prayer must also be interpreted through the relation of service and obedience. For prayer is only appropriation of God, union with God, contains only its own fuliilment, in so far as it is at ACTIVE LOVE. 269 the same time the yielding tip of the individual will to the divine. All prayer is sacrifice ; but the idea of sacrifice is devotion of our possessions in the highest sense, — devotion of our own will, our self ; and if we could only in prayer accom- plish this sacrifice in a higher degree, we should also receive more. Because Christ in prayer sacrifices His individual will, sacrifices it as an independent will, draws His Father's will to Himself, it becomes possible for the Father to glorify the Son. Thus, it is related in the narrative of Christ's baptism, by which He consecrated Himself to bear the sins of the world, that as He came up out of the water, and prayed (Luke iii. 21), behold, the heavens were opened unto Him, and the Holy Ghost came npon Him ; and there came a voice, saying, This is ray beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. The same is said concerning the transfiguration on the mountain, that as He prayed (Luke ix. 29) He was transfigured before them ; and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment w^as white and irlitterino;. And the same is shown after the sacrificial prayer in Gethsemane. For after that He had said in prayer, Not my will, but Thine be done ! the story of His passion, contemplated by the eye of the spirit, is a progressive transfiguration. § 83. But what the Lord in His inner life sees and hears from the Father, what He there appropriates, He does not reserve for His own exclusive property, but imparts. to the world. From Christ's inner life of love to the Father, from contemplation and prayer, are developed His active, His redeeming and re- generating love to men. If Christ's life had been exclusively a life of meditation and prayer, a resting on the breast of the Father, then He would only have been the ideal of the Mystics and Theosophers. But the God who is revealed in Christ is not merely the God of contemplation, but of determination and action, who desires the establishment of His kingdom in the world. " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God" (Ps. xl. ; Heb. X. 7) : this word of prophecy, which refers to the Servant of the Lord, finds its fulfilment not merely in the sacrifice which Christ brings in prayer, but also in the sacrifice which He brings in His work. " I must work the work of Him that sent me whilst it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work" 270 VIRTUE. (John ix. 4). This consciousness pervades Him, and urges Him to that ceaseless, indefatio;able labour for the kiiio-dom of God. He knows that He has only a short time, that the light shall shine before men but for a brief period (John vii. 35). Therefore He must redeem the fleetino- time. And what a vast amount of labour has He not accomplished during the short period when it was day for Him to work — a period of two or three years ! What an amount has not been gone through in a single day of our Lord's life ! When thus it is related (Mark i. 32 ; Alatt. viii. 16), that in the evening at sunset they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils, and He drove out the spirits by His word, and healed all those that were sick, this evening hour was the close of a day which had been spent in uninterrupted activity in teaching the people, and in going about among them, healing them and doing them good. And this day was followed by another, about the beginning of which we are told, that whilst it was yet dark He arose and went thence into a desert place apart to pray. And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him, and said, All men seek Thee. And He said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also ; for therefore came I forth (Mark i. 35-38). We are here reminded of the prophecy regarding the Servant of the Lord : " He shall not fail nor be discouraged" (Isa. xlii. 4). The great, the colossal in Christ's labour of love, the enthusiastic devotion, in which He does not spare Himself, in order to be able to achieve the work of redemption, exceeds all ordinary conceptions. Not the less is the burden of the work light to Him ; and the ideal stands before our eyes, when we look beyond to the peace of eternity shed abroad upon this work, the tranquillity which mirrors itself in emotion, — the deep circumspection which characterizes His every word, His every deed, during all the conflicts and collisions of public life, — in regard to the masses of the people and popular feeling, — in regard to the disciples, to the adversaries, in contrast to whose deceit and rancour He manifests the simplicity of the dove and the prudence of the serpent, — in regard to men of the most dissimilar grades of education, the most varied conditions of mind. In this His work. His self-sacrificing obedience. His patience was proved in a special manner, not merely by the resist- ACTIVE LOVE. 271 ance of men or by their indifference, but also by their sense- less and worldly demands on Plim. For the multitude desire of Him a sign of His mission entirely different from that which He shows them, — desire a sign from heaven, such a sign as shall make faith superfluous. Even a John the Baptist, no doubt in a moment of temptation, craves that He will lay aside the form of a servant, and in a more conspicuous manner stand forth as the promised Messiah, and usher in the kingdom of God. (Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?) But in unconditional obedience, He continues to perform His work in the form of a servant ; and in contrast to the impatient wishes and requirements of men. He listens to the Father alone. And just because He listens to the Father, and places His life entirely under the divine guidance, He under- stands the times in their relation to the decisions of eternity, which are to be realized in time. His works are always in harmony with the actual relation and the actual circumstances ; for at every moment he knows what is the time in the kingdom of God. He is not surprised, as is so often the case with the great men of history, by any situation. For in reality it is He Himself wlio produces the situation, and is its Master, which specially holds good in the narrative of the Passion, where His adversaries imagine themselves masters of the situation, whilst He fulfils the eternal decree. In no section of His life does He do anything too early or too late ; He knows when His hour is come, and when it is not yet come. He says once to His brethren, who request Him to go up to a feast at Jerusalem in order to make Himself known to the people : " My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready" (John vii. 6). And by this He means to say, that for them, whose life in time was not placed in relation to the Eternal, who had no work of the Father's to accomplish, the various moments, the various periods of time were indifferent, because their works were non- essential, without intrinsic significance. For such, one point of time is as good as another, and therefore the time is always ready for what they wish to undertake. They could appear openly whenever it should be, because they allowed themselves to be guided by the stream of time, but have nothing to reveal which will arouse the opposition of the world. For Him, on the other hand, who has a testimony to bear against the world, 272 VIRTUE. the precise moment has a great significance, because it is deter- mined by its relation to eternity, by its relation to the work of the Father which He has to accomplish. He perceives and employs the moment in its special significance for the king- dom of God, and therefore forestalls nothing in impatience, and neglects nothing in procrastination. § 84. And thus Christ's example presents to us the solution of a contradiction, which recurs aaain and afjain in human life, and which we have already touched upon in the foregoing, but must now more closely elucidate, — the contradiction between the contemplative and the practical life. There is a view of life, set forth by deep and earnest natures, which seeks to maintain that the perfect life is in contemplation alone. For, say they, when man acts, he goes out of himself and of the harmony of his inner being, betakes himself to the diversities and separated interests of life, and subjects himself to the conditions and intricacies of this temporary state. He who has acted is bound to the consequences of his actions, and thus becomes bound to the world, instead of being free from the world. Therefore it is best and happiest for a man not to act, but to remain on the mount of contemplation, to absorb his soul in the Eternal, to live in view of God and divine things : for thus he remains in the unity, in the tranquillity, in which there is the greatest likeness to God; whilst the active man is without the immediate circle of God's felt presence, cannot avoid being entangled in what is worldly, and being soiled by the contact, and thus bringing division into his own being. In opposition to this view of life, there has been repeated from the oldest mystics of the East, down to the latest in the West, this assertion : The happiest condition, that which has intrinsic worth, is to act, to work : for onlv in action does freedom show itself as freedom ; and the iireatest likeness to God is in overcomino the world, and in creating, producing life around about one's self. Each of these views expresses but half the truth. For he who endeavours to live his life exclusively in contemplation, and regards action only as a necessary evil, from which no one can absolutely free himself, will only bear towards God the relation of receiving, appropriating, enjoying. But receptivity, ajjpro- ACTIVE LOVE. 273 pnation, is only the one side of relation to God ; the other side is the working out of that which has been appropriated, not selfishly to reserve it as our own property, but to impart it, to engage in active service, to do God's will, to introduce into the world of time that which God has not held Plimself too highly exalted to create. But, again, it may be said that he who desires only to act, and denies the independent value of contemplation, will soon show a lack of spirituality in this his actinff. For as, on the one side, the love which actuates meditation and prayer has a worth of its own, so, too, it is only through receptivity, through appropriation, that men can become partakers of divine power, and only he who is God- filled can act in harmony with God. The union of this opposi- tion between contemplation and action has been frequently demanded both by systems and by practical life. But this demand is only really fulfilled in the love of Christ, which is at once inward, appropriating love towards the Father, and outward, ministering and imparting love towards men. In his contemplation there is working ; for in contemplation is prayer, and in this is the fruitful germ of action. And in his acting there is contemplation. Just because Christ is the Sinless, the Holy One, He is not torn away from contemplation by action. He does not become by His acting entangled with the world, sullied by the world. That view of life which maintains that he who acts is thereby withdrawn from union with God, would only be true if the acts could not, as the Scriptures express it, •be wrought in God (John iii. 21). He only becomes fettered to the world, and entangled with it by his acting, who seeks to carry out Ids oion will, and who has bound his soul to this or- to that earthly aim. We see this with the most of so-calleclt practical men, who fix their minds on some individual object which they desire to attain, or which they desire to establish. We see it with manv of those who are called the heroes oS' history, whose first and last aim lies in the kingdom of this, world, in the State, in the condition of outward things, which they seek to create by a revolution of the world, or in the condition of things which they desire to preserve (Alexander — Caesar — Napoleon). However admirable these actions are, yet they are still, even if they are impressed with an idea, only wrought in the world, but not in God ; and all these heroes S 274 VIRTUE. ' have this in common, that by their acting they have become world-enslaved and world-entangled. Thus, on the other hand, the mystic view of life has so far validity, that it is better not to act, not to yield oneself up to this distraction of interest, but to remain in harmony on the mount of contemplation. But he whose acts are wrought in God, desires in all of them not to accomplish his own will, but only God's, and nothing else. He places all on the kingdom which is not of this world ; and though he cannot be without finite and relative aims, yet he holds these as though he held them not, — that is to say, that he does not bind his heart to such as his great desire, but is prepared to sacrifice them for the kingdom of God's sake. Traces of such a mode of action are undoubtedly to be found outside the Christian community, and a shade of it is to be found in that mode of acting which fulfils duty exclusively for duty's sake, without craving the earthly fruits of working, whilst the actor lays down his acts and their consequences in the lap of Providence, and just in this way preserves repose of mind, inward harmony. But of Christ alone is it true in the absolute sense, that His deeds are wrought in God. Not one of His acts is done as His own, but all as the acts of the Father, and therefore under all worldly commotion He remains in unity with the Father. During conflicts He is in the " Father's bosom," He is in heaven, as He during His earthly sojourn describes Himself as the Son of man, who is in heaven (John iii. 13). Therefore also in the discourses of Christ, the expression " to do God's will," which He declares concerning Himself, alternates with the expressions, " to see the Father," '' to hear " from the Father. Even in the narrative of the Passion, He is in uninterrupted contemplation, since He comprehends all that befalls Him as the fulfilment of Scripture ; and until His death on the cross, as is evident from the words He uttered there. He remains in unison with the Scriptures, and in consciousness of the eternal decree. ACTIVE AND PASSIVE LOVE. 275 ACTIVE AND PASSIVE LOVE. §85. He went about doing good. He preached the gospel of the kingdom, and healed every sickness and disease among the people. We can thus describe the work of Christ. Yet words and deeds alone did not afford Him admission with men. How little has He still effected, when He stands at the close of His earthly career of activity, as He weeps over Jerusalem, predicting its destruction ! To human eyes, and according to human modes of judging, it must seem that His whole mission has been essentially in vain. Yet there is one impression which He has reserved for men, to awaken them to contrition and repentance, to faith and love ; one means by which He will triumphantly establish the kingdom of God, which cannot be established by prophetic working alone : His own death in unappreciated, in crucified love. His suffering and death proceed from a natural catastrophe, but contain the deepest mystery of the divine decree. The crucifixion is the charac- teristic sign that it is the true pattern and the true Redeemer who is here manifested. For when the true pattern is made manifest in a world of sin, when the ideal from which we have fallen, and to which we must be redeemed, shines in living brightness before us, the revelation will exert not only an attractive, but also a repulsive, influence on the hearts of men. No one has been so much beloved as Christ, and none has been so hated ; and not only the love, but also the hatred, is a mark by which He may be recognised as the Truth. The world, as the world, loves only its own ; but its own is a mixture, the mixture of light and darkness. Therefore the world cannot love pure, holy perfection, — can at the utmost only love it at an infinite distance, but not when it approaches. Therefore Christ has become a sign of contradiction ; for both the multitude and the leaders of the multitude desire a redeemer and a pattern quite different from Him, — desire a redeemer with an accompaniment of worldliness, a pattern with an accompaniment of sin. The world desires neither unmixed truth nor unmixed falsehood, neither pure holiness nor entire 276 VIRTUE. unlioHness, but the blending of both, by which all may come into relativity, which is the element of the world. But Christ was destined to produce the crisis, to call forth the final separation — to cleanse, purify, remove sin. Since Christ, there- fore, is revealed as the Light of the world, worldly natures, which do not desire to renounce this mixture, are seized by terror of the Light {terror liicis), and their antagonistic disposi- tions develope more and more into conscious opposition — to hostility, hatred, nay, to a life-and-death struggle. Not only Christ's word, by which He testifies incessantly against the sin of the world, not merely His works, but even His person, calls forth this hatred ; because His mere personal entrance into the world, His purity and holiness, His love, the majesty and repose which shine forth from His person, have a critical, judging, and depreciating effect on the self-righteous, who are unwilling to submit to Him. This hatred is the human cause of the crown of thorns and the cross. § 86. But again it is said : Oiirtht not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? (Luke xxiv. 26.) The suffering and death have not merely a human cause in the hatred of men, but a divine cause in the decree of eternal love. AYithout suffering and death, Christ could neither have been the Redeemer nor tlie perfect example ; He could not be the Eedeemer and ^Mediator ; could not be the servant of the Lord, in whom is fulfilled : " He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes we are healed ; " could not be our High Priest, Avho brought the true sacrifice for the sin of the world. For what Christ offers on the cross is the Ego, the will, the principle of the world, from which proceeds the whole of this world's dominion with all its glory, — that principle which also stirred in Him, though it never in Him became actual sin. It was that sacrifice which the human race itself could not bring, which He brings in man's stead. But as He without this could not be the Redeemer, so neither could He be the pattern : " He learned obedience through the thincjs which He suffered," says the Scripture (Heb. v. 8). Undoubtedly the whole life of Christ was a life of obedience ; ACTIVE AND PASSIVE LOVE. 277 His will was in every moment in full harmony with the will of the Father. But as He learnt obedience in His temptations, when the prince of this world showed Him the allurements of the world, so too must He also be proved in suffering, in order that His love and obedience might unfold themselves in their innermost depths, might manifest themselves in the greatest sacrifice, the greatest conquest over self. An instance of the manner in which He learnt obedience is given us in the narrative of the agony in Gethsemane : when He prays that this cup may pass from Him, but the conclusion of the prayer is, Not my will, but Thine be done ! the will which He calls His will, and distinguishes from that of the Father, is His natural individual will, but it is not sinful. For it is not in itself sinful, that He, who has exhibited only love and faithfulness, should ask that the cup of hatred, treachery, and defection may be removed from Him ; it is not in itself sinful, that He who alone is inwardly free among the race of Adam, desires also external liberty as the element of His life ; it is not in itself sinful, that He whom the Father honours, and who is come into the world that all should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father, asks that the cup of misconstruction and dishonour may be taken from Him ; or that He, who stands in the full vigour of life, the sole offspring of humanity untainted by disease, should feel a natural repugnance to bodily anguish, a natural repugnance to death. But this is the obedience He must learn — freely to give up these many possessions, the love and gratitude of men, the loyalty of disciples and friends, liberty, honour, life, for the one end for which the Father sent Him — the reconciliation of the world to God, the establishment of God's kingdom. The will which He calls His will, as distinct from the Father's, and the natural impulses of which move in His being, therefore obtain no dominion in Him, reach no act of the will. By the sacrifice of this will, His position in the period of His suffering becomes a continued intensifying of the relation of obedience to the Father and of love towards men ; and this unappreciated, scorned, abused, crucified love, which voluntarily offers itself for those who misconstrue and reject Him, unfolds depths which surpass the power of language to express. 278 VIRTUE. §87. As the contrast between contemplation and action has found its sokition in the example of Christ, so also the contrast between action and suffering. Regarded outwardly, the story of Christ's Passion is the interruption, the disturbance of His activity ; regarded inwardly, it is just the completion of His work. Heathenism, the idea of the natural man I'egarding life, affords no place to suffering. Healthy life expresses itself here only in activity or in enjoyment, in appropriation of the good things of this world : when suffering enters and disturbs this, it is regarded as only a blind and inexplicable fate. To avoid suffering, to escape from it, is the great object striven after ; and where it is inevitable, then to bear it with resignation, and as far as possible to be case-hardened against it in insensibility. The natural man thus regards suffering as that which ought not to existj — a hostile power, which disturbs the beauty and the aim of life. In Christ we behold sufferino; as that which must be. For there is another thino; which oucrht not to be, but which man has brought into existence, — namely, sin and guilt. This, which ought not to exist, must not exist, has nevertheless come into the world, and therefore there must be suffering in order that sin may be removed. When, in the life of Christ, we contrast His sufferings and His working, this contrast can only be received relatively. His whole life may be called a narrative of suffering, and His whole life may be called a narrative of activity. The distinc- tion is only, that in the portion of Christ's history which we in a limited acceptation call the story of His working, His activity is manifest, whilst the suffering is veiled ; whilst, on the other hand, in that portion of His story which in a limited sense we call the story of His Passion, the suffering is manifest, whilst the activity is veiled. In Christ, therefore, activity and suffering- are combined. There is a concealed sufferino", which even from the commencement permeates His activity, — not merely pain on account of the sin of the world, but pain that His redeeming love, which has come to seek and to save the lost, should be misconstrued and unappreciated by men, even by those nearest to Him — by the disciples. There is a hidden suffering? in that continual loveliness in the midst of human "3 ACTIVE AND PASSIVE LOVE. 279 society, where even those nearest Him only so imperfectly comprehend Him. This His suffering becomes more and more apparent in the same measure, as His struggle against the world and the great catastrophe developes itself, until that is literally fulfilled which He spake to the disciples : " Ye shall be scattered, every one to his own, and shall leave me alone ; and yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me " (John xvi. 32). There He stands alone, forsaken by the disciples, with all the powers of the world against Him. As He is now delivered over into the hands of men, and deprived of external liberty, His outxoard activity is also interrupted. Thus it seems that only suffering remains behind, but in this suffering is concealed inward activity. For from the external world He retires to the internal, the invisible kingdom, to secret com- munion with the Father, to the deepest concentration of His will in the will of the Father, preparing Himself as the perfect sacrifice of love and obedience. His soul has travailed (Isa. liii.), it is said in the prophecy concerning the Lord's rigliteous Servant, who was to be delivered for our transgressions ; and this travail of the soul continues to the last moment on the cross. But when, in the narrative of Christ's sufferings, we fix our eyes on this inward travail of the soul, this inward action in suffering, we must beware of supposing that His abandonment of the outer world was absolute, as though He had only mystically introverted His moral vision, and even before death had fallen asleep to the actual world. On the contrary, the Gospels show us that to the last He preserved a lively interest in the surrounding world. And when, in Christ's sufferings, we perceive the fulfilment of the prophetic word : " He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter ; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth " (Isa. liii.) ; we must undoubtedly behold herein a delineation of gentleness and forbearance unspeakable. But we must not apprehend this as a mere passivity in regard to the world from which He suffers. The Gospels show us that the Lord, though His outward action was interrupted and brought to a stand, though He became more and more silent in His sufferings, never ceased such action so long as there existed possibility for it. He shows this by the final witness for truth which He utters before the high priest, before Pilate, — that magnanimous " I 280 VIRTUE, am Ho," whicli from Ilis sufferings continues to resound throughout the liistory of the world. For He will not suffer wrong in the sense of giving up His testimony concerning His own right. He shows this by the testimony which oa the via dolorosa He utters to the daughters of Jerusalem : Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children ! (Luke xxiii. 28.) He shows it by the individual acts of love, which He to the last undertakes in the one great act of love. He had said : "■ I must work the work of Him that sent me, whilst it is day." And the night begins already to close in ; yet He toils on amidst the lengthening shadows. For even on the cross He carries out His work of love towards the repenting thief, and to His mother, whom He commends to the care of the disciple at the foot of the cross. Thus He manifests His example of the indissoluble union of working and suffering. §88. In Christ's perfect freedom, in His perfect love and obedience, which manifests itself in the harmonious union of the moral fundamental principles of life (appropriation, productive action, and suffering), we perceive at the same time the ideal of personal righteousness. For righteous is a designation which we bestow on that personal existence which is in perfect har- mony with all divine requirements and norms or rules, in which the contrasts of personal life are in harmonious accordance, because every moment is in its place, and is kept within its proper limits ; that existence from which all disorder is excluded, and where no single thing is made valid at the expense of the whole. But Christ's personal righteousness manifests itself most perfectly in His suffering ; for only under misconstruction can righteousness as well as love sustain its highest proofs. We may here refer to Plato, who prophetically maintained that when the righteous man should actually be manifested, this would only take place through the greatest sufferings. For as the greatest wrong consists in seeming righteous without being so, on the other hand, the rigliteous, in order to be really perfect, is deprived of all except rigiiteousness, and is placed in the opposite position. Without having done wrong, he must take on himself the greatest seeming of wrong, in order that his righteousness may sustain its test, since he does not allow THE TYPE OF GLORY. 281 himself to be moved by evil report and its consequences, but remains unchanged till death, although throughout his \vhole life he is considered as unrighteous in spite of his integrity. But he will then also be persecuted, scourged, bound to the rack, deprived of eyesight by heated iron, and at last nailed to a stake (2d vol. of the Republic). Although Plato's conception of righteousness is chiefly con- fined to citizen and political uprightness, yet this picture which he has drawn of the righteous man may be regarded as a type, which has found exact fulfilment in the history of Christ. For from the beginning of His work Christ was surrounded by the appearance of unrighteousness, was accused of being an enemy to the law, a foe to the temple, and ends by being reckoned among the transgressors. And in contrast to this, perfect in- justice appears in the semblance of righteousness. For it is the high priests and the rulers of the people, the representatives of justice on earth, who doom Him to death. All is done according to the forms of justice, and in its name. The Just Man is en- veloped in the deepest misconstruction, and even the sincere are in doubt concerning Him. But to the eye of faith there beams forth from the unappreciated, crucified righteous One a light over all Plis surroundings, which shows them as future types of the relation of the world to Him. Caiaphas and Pilate, the people, the disciples, the ignorant daughters of Jerusalem, who wept over Christ instead of weeping for themselves, are found at all times ; and the more we contemplate the course of this world in the light of this history, the more are we persuaded that it repeats itself in every age. But at all times, moreover, there are also to be found repentant thieves, with John and Mary at the foot of the cross. THE EXAMPLE OF DIGNITY. CHRIST IN EXALTATION. §89. Therefore hath God also highly exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ; and that every tongue should confess that 282 VIRTUE. Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. ii. 9-11). In these words the apostle points from the ideal of obedience and self-abasing love to that of triumph and dominion, — to the resurrection of Christ and His ascension to heaven, His seat at the Father's right liand, — to the glorified Redeemer's manifestation at the last day, when it shall be made apparent in an unmistakeable manner that to Him is given all power in heaven and on earth. It is an ancient belief of the human race, that the Good shall at last triumph ; and even among the heathen there is found the expectation of a great personality, a mighty ruler of the world, who must come to introduce into it the times of peace and happiness. But in sacred vision, the ideal of the Conqueror and Ruler, the Hope of Israel, appeared under the image of the Prince of Peace, the King whose dominion shall have no end, and who must reign until He hath put all His enemies under His footstool (Ps. ex. 1). The prophecy is fulfilled in Christ, in His humiliation and His ex- altation. Even in His humiliation Chribt is a Kino;. " Thou sayest that I am a king," says He to Pilate (John xviii. 37). He knows that the kingdom and the power are His, though He stands before Pilate as the mocked and thorn-crowned ; He knows that the future belongs to Him, that the influences which shall proceed from Him shall never cease, but extend to all ages and all races of men ; knows that the nations shall be redeemed and shall be judged by Him. From the commence- ment of His earthly sojourn, every moment of His life has been illuminated by His kingly power and dignity : even in suffering He manifests His royal power in judging and ransoming the world. But He can only be fully revealed as King when He has completed His work as the Lord's righteous Servant on earth. " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into Plis glory ? " (Luke xxiv. 26.) By His ascension to heaven, and His seat at the riglit hand of the Father, He has become the prototype not only of the kingdom of bliss, but of glory. They who deny the marvel of His exaltation, are the same as they who also deny the marvel of His humihation, and who, if they are consistent, deny further that He was without sin. Just as it has often been maintained as an inevitable demand of reason, that unless existence is to contain an eternally unre- CHRIST IN HIS EXALTATION. 283 conciled contradiction, thnt virtuej that the moral kingdom, or more strictly the kingdom of holiness, must finally obtain victory and dominion, after all hostile powers have been thrust out ; so, too, it has been asserted as a necessary demand, that the present separation between virtue and happiness should be reconciled (Kant). Happiness is undoubtedly, as has been before ex- plained, a conception which is only of an earthly and temporal nature. The ideal of earthly happiness was condemned by the cross of Christ, where the disciples were obliged to abandon all hope of an earthly Messiah, and the earthly dominion of the Messiah. But the deep thought, which lies at the foundation of this demand, is the idea of a condition in which life may be lived and enjoyed in its unrestrained fulness, in which all the original cravings of human nature find satisfaction, where the external order of thincrs is in harmonv with the moral kins- dom, where mind and matter are reconciled, where thus the Good is manifested as the all-determining power. In the resur- rection of Christ fi'om the dead is the foundation ffiven for the Christian hope^ the hope of a life of eternal fulness after the anxiety, struggle, and pain of the present, — a state of ^/o?^y, which the risen Saviour shall prepare for His people, where God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any pain, where it shall be fulfilled : " Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men ; and they shall be His people, and He shall be their God " (Rev. xxi. 3—5). But when we behold the prototype of future glory and bliss in the risen Saviour, we do not foro-et that alreadv the Saviour, in His state of humiliation, possesses the essentials of bliss, — namely, that peace and gladness which are inseparable from the consciousness of undisturbed communion with the Father, and the approaching victory. If we now cast a glance back on the general outline of teaching as regards Christ's example, we shall discriminate therein three moments, — namely, that of nature, that of ethics, and that of glory. To the last we assign all that belongs to the ideal of triumph and dominion, and thus also the miracles of Christ, which are foretokens of the coming glory and great- ness of the world. The example of glory is developed from moral example, as the exaltation from the humiliation ; for which reason also, they only will become sharers in the image of His 281 VIRTUE. iilorv, who have followed Him in the humiliation of Ilis form of a servant. The basis of the ethical example is the innate perfection which belongs to Him in consequence of the natural and essential relation in which He stands to God and the human race. DISCirLESHIP. §90. " I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. . . . Abide in me, and I in you" (John xv. 1-4). In these words the Lord indicates what is peculiar in the relation of the dis- ciples towards Him. No human teacher can require from his disciples, that their relation to him shall be constant and per- manent. On the contrary, the human teacher must by his in- struction be constantly rendering the disciple more and more independent of his authority. Neither can a human teacher demand that his disciple sliall remain in personal association with him, in order constantly to draw from thence the support of his life ; for the human teacher must always point away from himself to the truth, which stands high above him and his own personal life. When Christ, on the other hand, describes Plim- self as the vine, and the disciples as the branches, He indicates the discipleship not merely as a permanent relation to Him as the divine teacher, who has the words of eternal life, but as the Eedeemer, from whose fulness they shall uninterruptedly re- ceive. And when He designates His Father as the husband- man, who purges the branches that they may bear fruit. He points to divine providence with its manifold leadings, through which the disciples were trained and moulded for future com- panionship with the Saviour. The difference between disciple- sln'p to Christ and to a merely human teacher has often been illustrated by the contrast between Christ and Socrates. Socrates, the great human teacher, started from the maxim that the Good and the True are developed from man's own inner being, — that all perception is therefore a o^eminiscence^ because man descends into himself, and recalls to mind the contents of his own consciousness. In this respect Socrates desired to assist DISCIPLESHIP. 285 his disciples ; and his system of education showed itself as an intellectual midwifery, by which he would assist the disciples to bring forth real perceptions, real ideas from their own minds, in order that they may thus become independently wise. This is also the normal position on the heathen standpoint, where only the universal truths of reason find consideration, but not divine revelation and redemption. Christ, on the other hand, seeks to impart to His disciples a system of truth which cannot be drawn from their own inner being, a revelation of tliat which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive (1 Cor. ii. 9). And not merely will He impart to them a new understanding, but also a new life, will enable them to live their lives in a manner which cannot be accomplished except in communion with Him. Discipleship to Him becomes therefore, in the deepest sense, one of incessant reception and appropriation. §91. That now the disciples could ahide in Christ, after He was taken away from them, and that we, although centuries have elapsed since Christ sojourned on earth, can enter into disciple- ship towards Him, and have fellowship with Him, — this rests on His resurrection and exaltation, or on the fact of His being the living Christy who, as Lord and Head of His Church, through the means of grace and the Holy Spirit, carries on and perfects the communion between Himself and His people. We must here call to mind the words which Pie spoke to His disciples (John xlv. 7) : " It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." So long as in the outward and material sense they could be His fol- lowers, so long were discipleship and imitation only imperfect. True discipleship and true imitation only began when His actual presence was taken from them, first began with the out- pouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Then the inner communion with Christ first became realized ; then His history was understood by them, and He began to win form icitldn them. Then they began, under the influence of the Spirit, to tread in- dependently the path which their Lord and Master had trodden, reflecting the example which He had left to them. And how- ever peculiar the position of those disciples is, who have also 2SG VIKTUE, outwardly followed the Lord, yet essentially the position of suc- ceeding generations is the same. For it is the constant work of the exalted Saviour, by means of the Spirit, to collect His disciples, and in the Spirit bring the life He led on earth into the presence of men, and within them. The central sphere for the working of the exalted Eedeemer is the Church, and admission to discipleship takes place by bap- tism. Baptism is initiation into the hidden and yet revealed life with Christ in God, initiation into all the mysteries of Christianity. Here also we may illustrate the peculiarity of Christianity by glancing back at paganism. Paganism also had its mysteries, which aimed not merely at communicating to the initiated a higher teaching, but moreover raising them to a more elevated grade of life. Especially do the Eleusinian mysteries, of which we have already had occasion to speak, deserve atten- tion here. They formed a contrast to the public religion, to the religion of the mass, although they did not at all set forth to undermine this, but rather to impart to the initiated an insight into its deeper significance. At the same time, they desired to bestow on him who had passed through all the steps of initiation a higher experience of the Divine, desired to bring him into a closer communion with divinity, to elevate him to a higher grade of existence ; for which reason those who wished to be admitted must first be prepared through exercises of ab- stinence and purification, for only with clean hands and pure heart durst any one approach. These mysteries appear like a shadow of that into which Christ desires to initiate us. But the peculiarity of the Christian faith does not consist merely in the fact that Christ has revealed the true mysteries of sin and free grace, of natural birth and regeneration, of death and of resurrection, — the mysteries of the grain of corn, which is sown in corruption, but is raised in incorruption, — the mysteries of suffering and of glory. The peculiarity of the Christian faith appears also in this, that God's saving grace in Christ was mani- fested for all men, not merely for a single people or a single sec- tion of a people. Therefore the mysteries of Christianity stand in no opposition to the religion of the people, are not limited to a secret society ; but Christianity sets itself in the place of the DISCIPLESHIP. 287 religion of the masses, desires to make itself the pull'ic religion, the religion of the world, according to Christ's own Avords : " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost " (Matt, xxviii. 19). Just because Christ's Church is the univer- sal Church, fitted for all, it becomes the national Church ; and in the national Church baptism remains the baptism of infants, because the child who is brought up under Christian surround- ings and influences, even from the commencement of its natural life, ought to be initiated into discipleship. Whilst now the Christian Church, both in doctrine and worship, observes the most perfect publicity, preaches the gospel in open day, bap- tizes the great national masses, imparts the highest truths to the poor and the young, it may seem that the mysteries are pro- faned. Yet this publicity and universality of the Church is a consequence of the universality of grace and the gospel invita- tion. It is the condescension of divine love that it thus makes its gifts universal, orders it so that much seed falls by the way- side to be trodden under foot of men or devoured by the fowls of the air, that none may be able to say that grace, that the true secret of life, has not been offered to them. And the mystery of grace is also secured through the mystery of free-will : for no one comes to the experience of the secret of Christianity except by the devotion of his own free-will ; or, in other words, the grace bestowed in baptism comes first into exercise through faith, and first by a personal life of faith begins the true dis- cipleship. When Christ says to His disciples, " To 3-ou it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but unto them which are without all these things are done in parables " (Luke viii. 10), this has the same application. To all those who have not yet come to living personal belief, Chris- tianity, Christian doctrine, and Christian worship can only be an uncomprehended, unexplained parable. They stop at the husk without having found the kernel. Though, therefore, the light of Christianity shines before the national masses, who by baptism are admitted into membership with the Church, yet its true essence is hidden from all those who believe not. Thouch the deepest secret of life lies open before all, yet it is like the treasure hid in a field, which must be found ; it is the pearl which must be sought, and for which a man must give all that 288 VIRTUE. he hath. These masses have their prototypes in the Gospels, in the muhitudes which sometimes gather around Christ, some- times forsake Him, and, so to speak, wander to and fro. Tliey have indeed received a general influence, but without having formed a personal relation towards the Saviour. But within these multitudes appears again a smaller, a narrower circle of those who have entered into personal relation with the Saviour, have bound their lives to His. These are the prototypes of the future disciples, who by sanctification have become the real followers of Christ. Only in this sense can there be any question of an exoteric and an esoteric Christianity — a Christianity for the many, and a Christianity for the really initiated. Faith alone makes this difference. The diversities of understanding, of knowledge, have disappeared ; for the means of salvation are the same for the wise and the simple. And just because these individuals, or the regenerate, are only separated from others by faith, are only separated from others because they hold the common religion, not merely as tradition, as something handed down to them by the community, but as their own personal religion, they do not separate themselves from the visible Church, or say that they should form a secret society which occupies a standpoint above the national religion. Secret societies and lodges with a reli- gious aim are, whatever may otherwise be said about them, from the standpoint of Christianity, in which the real mysteries are revealed to all, to be regarded as anachronisms in the spiritual world. Christ's disciples and followers are acquainted with no other mysteries, no other means of grace, than those which are accessible to the many : they are only separated from the many by appropriation. And they who are initiated into appropria- tion understand each other, and receive with meekness this mystery, which, however frequently and clearly it may be ex- plained, " the natural man receiveth not, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14). §93. Althoush faith rests on man's free-will, yet in its first cause it is a work of divine grace ; and we designate this influence of divine crace, which is a necessary condition to entering into personal relation to the Redeemer, as awakening, because the DISCIPLESHIP, 289 man is awakened as from a state of sleep, as from a dream. Even he who from childhood has kept faith in the doctrines of Christianity, requires that for him there should be a period of time when he became awakened, so that he can perceive seri- ously and personally in what his Christianity consists, what it bestows on him, and what it demands of him ; and in a time of revolution, defection, and decay, the greater portion of man- kind wander their own way, and can only be brought back to what they have forsaken by a work of grace. Awakening to the kingdom of God must always be effected by means of God's word concerning Christ ; but in combination with the word, divine grace works also by the outward and inward guidings of providence. If we go back to the first disciples, we find that they were awakened by the preaching of John the Baptist in combination with the signs of the times, emphatically a time of spiritual poverty and impotence, when the existing state of things was worn out and effete, which, with the better minds of the period, especially the better minds among the young, who felt within themselves the powers of the future, must awaken a craving after the hope of Israel, after a new creation of the times. And it has frequently recurred, tliat the spiritual desti- tution of an age has, with deeper natures, been a means of awakening which led them to Christ. Tims, at the time of the Reformation, and thus also at the present, which, both by its outward occurrences, its great revolutions, the sudden overthrow of what in the eyes of man is great, and by its inward strain of thought and sentiment, has awakened in many a craving for a more stable dominion, which should be at the same time a dominion of renewal and rejuvenescence for the nations and for individuals. But if thus the historic dispensations of Provi- dence, which are often administered by the angels of war and pestilence, become means of awakening for the kingdom of God, so, too, do the individual leadings of every-day life assume im- portance in this respect. Among these we may specially name sufferings, adversity, everything which in the life of the indivi- dual awakens consciousness of the vanity of this world ; for which reason they who felt weary and heavy laden were the first to seek Christ. We may think on wearisome sufferings, or on sudden misfortunes, which like lightning strike the life of the individual, as in the case of Luther, when literally a flash of X 290 VIKTUE. ]i(ilitnin