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 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 BY H. MARTENSEN, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF ZEALAND. 
 
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 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</)' rjiuv). This stand-point of so-called pure morality may 
 be sharply defined thus : that I have only to concern myself 
 with that which lies within my own power of action, and thus 
 rests on my own free-wull. I have only to do my duty, and con- 
 sider everything else as indifferent. But in this exclusive 
 devotion to the idea of duty there arises a contradiction if 
 those things which are not in our power are insurmountable 
 limits to free-will, unless the law of the universe is essentially 
 one with the law of morality, unless the power to which human 
 destinies are subjected is itself the ethical, the good power. 
 We maintain that this belief is dimly present in every serious 
 moral effort, and that within it lies the germ of religious 
 morality, though it may be that this germ most frequently finds 
 only an inadequate development. If there are atheists who say, 
 " I do not believe in God, but I believe in my duty," and if such 
 men evidence by their self-denial and self-sacrifice that they are 
 sincere in their belief, then we regard them not as atheists, but 
 as believers in religion, in so far as in their consciousness of duty 
 there is manifestly " an altar to the unknown God." For to 
 believe in duty, and to be ready to sacrifice worldly honour, 
 possession, nay, life itself for the sake of duty, is just to believe 
 in the ethical as the highest reality in existence, which is one 
 and the same thing as believing in the final victory of the good 
 and right over all opposition. Not to believe in this victory is 
 distrust of the power which binds my will : neither is it com- 
 prehensible why I should unconditionally sacrifice myself in the
 
 20 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 service of a power wliicli is unable to carry through its ohject. 
 Unlimited faith in duty, therefore, contains a hidden faith in a 
 moral government of the world, a hidden faith in divine provi- 
 dence, which victoriously achieves the good, and ensures that 
 labour in the service of duty shall not be in vain. No moral 
 activity which is self-conscious can dispense with this faith in 
 the moral government of the world. Therefore we have also 
 seen how Kant and Fichte, who began with a morality which 
 was to be absolutely self-dependent, and in all respects stand 
 on its own feet, end with religious postulates ; because the con- 
 tradiction between moral effort and the course of the world can 
 only be removed when the highest power in existence on which 
 both man and nature are dependent is the ethical power itself. 
 The position of absolute free-will and self-dependence with 
 which they began thus ends in a relation oi religious depend- 
 ence, although this religion is not that of Christianity. 
 
 But the self-contradiction in morality destitute of religion 
 is yet more evident if we contemplate not merely human 
 activity, but also human suffering. For how shall we comfort 
 ourselves when even moral activity is made impossible, or is 
 suspended by pain and sorrow ? The morality which is desti- 
 tute of relio-ion can here afford no other retreat than absolute 
 resignation. In resignation, however, free-will resolves itself 
 into its opposition, a relation of dependence; for in the act of 
 resigning myself I bow to necessity. But if this necessity is 
 only blind fate, the unconscious power of nature, we find our- 
 selves involved in a fresh contradiction. For it is certainlv 
 the most glaring contradiction to the moral dignity of man that 
 free-will should bow to the dictates of nature ; and the contra- 
 diction is not got rid of by saying that free-will though re- 
 signed defies, and in defying withdraws into its inward mde- 
 pendence. For the fatalistic power of nature mocks this free- 
 will anew by annihilating its works, by rendering its future 
 activity impossible, by forcing upon it at last the conviction 
 that labouring to do good is nothing further than the incessant 
 upheaving of a Sisyphus stone. The contradiction can only be 
 explained by religion, when the power from which sufferings 
 come, in the last resort, is God ; when sufferings themselves are 
 but paths to the final triumph of God's kingdom, and the means 
 of discipline for individuals, which Christianity expresses in 
 
 {
 
 MORALITY AND RELIGION. 21 
 
 these words, " For all tilings work together for good to those 
 who love God;" Avhen thus, suffering from constrained depend- 
 ence on nature and destiny becomes the dependence of free- 
 will on the personal God, whose power is the power of wisdom 
 and of love. 
 
 The self-contradiction in morality destitute of religion is still 
 more evident if we consider from another side the contrast 
 between those things which are within our power and those 
 which are not within our power. We have assumed that only 
 external things, happiness and unhappiness, physical and intel- 
 lectual endowments (which are both properly external), are not 
 within our power, but that the will on the contrary is within 
 our power, and that here we are sole governors. But when it 
 now appears that neither is our will within our power, that 
 our will is impotent to accomplish the good to which we are 
 engaged, — when we are constrained to complain, '' The good 
 which I would I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I 
 do ;" when the consciousness of o-uilt discourasjes us in fio-htincr 
 the good fight ; when contrition may indeed fill us with purify- 
 ing pain, but cannot remove the past, and cannot bestow on us 
 the new powers which we require, — what then shall help us ? 
 Indeed, the conclusion appears unanswerable which is specially 
 insisted on by Kant : " Thou onrjJitest to fulfil thy duty, there- 
 fore thou canst, for it would be self-contradictory for the law to 
 demand the impossible." But it is worthy of remark that 
 Kant, who in the sphere of theory has pointed out so many 
 autonomies or contradictions in which the reason of man finds 
 itself necessarily involved, has not gone into this practical 
 antinomy, at least not to its final consequences. " Thou 7nust 
 by virtue of an absolute necessity ; but thou canst not do what 
 thou must do, and art deterred therefrom by another necessity;" 
 which certainly is a paradox for natural reason, but finds its 
 solution and explanation in Christianity. 
 
 Thus it is the teaching of Christianity, that since the en- 
 trance of sin into the world, and its continuance as a sorrow- 
 ful heirloom of human nature, we are not able to achieve the 
 truly good, because we ourselves are not good, because our will 
 is clogged by a natural corruption, and we need help from 
 above to do what we ought to do, or to acquire a really good 
 will. It is the doctrine of Christianitv that we need to be
 
 22 ON THE CONCEn OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 o'egenerated, not merely to receive by grace the forgiveness of 
 sin, and to be acknowledged as just before God, but also, as 
 an apostle says, " to become partakers of the divine nature" 
 (2 Pet. i. 4), which is the alone good; "for none is good but 
 One, that is God" (Mark x. 18) ; and that only in this way 
 can we obtain tlie possibility of even beginning a really moral 
 life, or as Christianity expresses it, a life of holiness, as it is 
 also the teaching of Christianity that the human will, though 
 enslaved by sin, has yet the power to receive or reject the 
 divine aid which is offered to it. It is finally the testimony 
 of Christianity, that the whole development of free-will in man, 
 in order to be normal, must have its foundation in grace, and 
 in an invisible kingdom of gracious operations, and that thus 
 the relation of free-will at every point is regulated by the re- 
 lation of dependence on the God of grace and of redemption. 
 But as the antinomy here referred to, " Thou shalt, but thou 
 canst not," is a practical antinomy which can only be learnt by 
 experience in the inner contest of life, so the solution of Chris- 
 tianity is not merely theoretic but practical, and no one can be 
 persuaded of its validity unless he will himself make the experi- 
 ment in unconstrained submission to the gospel. 
 
 CHRISTIAN MORALITY. CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 §8. 
 
 What is peculiar in Christian morality rests on its religious 
 assumptions. These may all be summed up in the one : the 
 incarnation of God in Christ. Through Christ as the only 
 begotten Son of God and as the Son of man we arrive at the 
 true conception of God and the true conception of humanity, 
 and the contrast between sin and grace, the redemption of the 
 world, and the perfection of the world are revealed to us. He 
 is the Rclio-ious Mediator or the means of man's union with 
 God, the Revealer of God to man, the Propitiator, the Redeemer 
 through whom we are justified before God, and receive the 
 forgiveness of sins and the adoption of chihlren : He is the 
 head of His Church, since, as the risen Saviour in the power of 
 the Holy Ghost, He is with it through His word and His sacra-
 
 CHRISTIAN MORALin'. ^O 
 
 merits. But as the Relio;ious Mediator He is at the same time 
 the Ethical Mediator, or Mediator in man's moral efforts after 
 union with God : "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. xxi. 
 5). These words are fulfilled also in the domain of morality. 
 He reveals the highest good in a form which neither Plato nor 
 Aristotle knew, and breaks through the political and national 
 boundaries of the old world through the ideal of the kingdom 
 of God. He reveals virtue in a form which in the ancient 
 times had only been seen by glimpses, and had been the object 
 of longing desire but not of actual possession. For He has not 
 merely given us instruction, not merely uttered moral precepts, 
 but " He has left us an example that we should follow His 
 steps" (1 Pet. ii.). What the Greeks shadovved forth in their 
 conception of *' The wise man," an imaginary personality in 
 whom the ideal of free-will is realized, and who, therefore, 
 although humbled and despised among men, is a king, although 
 fettered is free, though in poverty is rich, and so on ; what 
 to the people of Israel was shadowed forth in the representation 
 of the " righteous servant of the Lord," who through suffering 
 and hard stru^sle finishes the work of the Lord, God's cause 
 upon earth, — this is fulfilled and manifested in Christ, not merely 
 as an idea, but as a reality. Concerning the moral precepts of 
 the law He has given us enlightenment which was new alike to 
 Jew and Gentile. And as expounder and ensample of the law 
 Pie ceases not to be the Redeemer and Mediator who gives His 
 disciples strength to follow Him. 
 
 On His advent Christ discovered a moral world in the pro- 
 cess of dissolution ; but what is peculiar in Christ's relation to 
 the world is not merely that He is willing to deliver us from 
 that which men call the immoral, but that He will deliver us 
 even from that morality which is onli/ our oion, since this is 
 included under sin ; nay, He will rend us loose from the 
 morality which has its source, its object, and its means in man, 
 in order to raise us to that which has its source and aim in God, 
 and from Him receives power for its realization. Not only tha*^ 
 morality which is destitute of religion is self-righteousness, but 
 every species of it outside the domain of redemption, even when 
 it is religious, is more or less of this nature, since man imagines 
 himself able by means of his own procuring to achieve the 
 normal. " For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and
 
 24: ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 xToiiifT about to establish their oiun rijjhteousness, have not snb- 
 mitted themselves unto the righteousness of God" (Rom. x. 3). 
 We find this not merely in the Pliarisees, whose morality is 
 religious from first to last, only not of the right sort, but also 
 in other theistic forms of belief, where there is indeed faith in 
 the God of creation and providence, but where sin and redemp- 
 tion are ignored, and where man rests on his own powers to 
 accomplish the good ; or, in so far as he perceives his inability, 
 blames his finite condition alone, which he concludes must of 
 necessity have a claim on the divine forbearance, but does not 
 acknowledge sin and guilt in the sense of a supernatural atone- 
 ment being necessary. All those creeds which suppose it pos- 
 sible for human nature by itself to produce the moral, and 
 which we, along with the Church, designate Pelagian, have that 
 conception of Christ which the Church rejects as the Ebionitic ; 
 that is to say, they see in Christ a man like ourselves, though 
 highly-gifted, who to his doctrine added an example worthy of 
 admiration. But they do not acknowledge in Christ the divine 
 mediator who will impart to the human race glad tidings 
 which all need, but which none can procure for himself ; and 
 though they laud His example, they do not acknowledge Him 
 as a type in the sense that He is at the same time the prototype 
 or the absolute ideal. 
 
 Since we thus determine Christian morality as that which 
 developes itself in the relation of dependence on Christ, the 
 question arises : Plow then is it related to the aim of life in the 
 world, or to the worldly circle of life which lies outside the purely 
 relirrious? Does Christianitv acknov/ledije the worth of a 
 worldly morality (we again employ the term " worldly " sensii 
 medio, without the scriptural significance), or does it require 
 that all morality should be immediately religious ? The first 
 must be maintained and the last denied. There is a view 
 vvhich we may designate as the ^[anichean, or at least akin to 
 Manicheism, which teaches that the relation of Christianity to 
 the world is purely negative, woi'ld-denying, because Christianity 
 and the world are absolutely opposed, and no communion can 
 exist between them. But this view leads back to the concep- 
 tion of Christ's person which the Church has rejected as the 
 Docetic, or that which denies the reality of Christ's human 
 nature. For to deny the reality of Christ's human nature
 
 CHRISTIAX MORALITY 25 
 
 contains also the denial of Christ's ability to enter into organic 
 relation with the human nature outside of Him, the denial that 
 Christ and His kingdom can incorporate themselves in the 
 orcanism of humanity. But just this, that Christ can still 
 enter into organic union with the human nature outside of Him, 
 is the evidence that He Himself was manifested in a real human 
 nature and not merely in a semblance of humanity, a visionary 
 body. In contrast to this caricature of Christianity which 
 estab.ishes a deep impassable gulf between man's religious life 
 and his earthly sphere of action, between life in God and life in 
 the world, true Christianity requires that all shall be summed up 
 under Christ as head (Eph. i.), which would be an impossibility if 
 Christianity and the world were a^so/wteZy opposed in their nature. 
 Keal Christianity will not disturb or uproot moral life in its 
 worldly sphere (the family and the state, culture and civilisa- 
 tion), but will hallow it, making it the organ, instrument, 
 means, for the building up of God's kingdom on earth. But if 
 it is really to be an instrument for this end it cannot be 
 fettered and enslaved. Christianity requires free and willing 
 instruments which have a certain independence in themselves 
 and a special domain for their liberty, for only thus can their 
 devotion and obedience possess a real value. Therefore we 
 find, moreover, that the deeper Christianity has struck root in 
 history the more it has operated not merely in redeeming from 
 the power of sin, but also in emancipating man, freeing him 
 from all unworthy and unauthorized external restrictions, helping 
 him to personal liberty, to the full use of his innate talents and 
 endowments, even in the worldly sphere of action, in order that 
 he may become more completely the servant of God on earth. 
 This is just the crown of the sovereign power of Christianity, 
 that it desires to reign over freemen, over servants, who in 
 other respects are themselves masters ; and it can only exhibit 
 its spiritual wealth where there is a free sphere of worldly 
 action, with a multitude of life problems which are not religious, 
 but in which religion may be the animating and enlivening 
 principle, the ultimate and inmost motive of action, and where 
 it may evidence its divine power in an infinitude of operations, 
 not merely direct, but also indirect. Therefore the Christian 
 life must not be confined within the limits of the immediately 
 religious sphere, but also go forth into every-day action. And
 
 26 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 
 
 exjjcrience teaches us that the disciples of Christ may be found 
 in all ranks and conditions, in every human occupation; that the 
 spirit of Christ may be present not merely in the church but 
 in the market, in the artist's studio, in the still chamber of the 
 poet and the philosopher, that it may accompany the mariner 
 across the ocean, and the warrior durinii the tumult of the 
 
 / CD 
 
 battle. The religious has here its seat not in the object but in 
 the subject, in the personality, in the faith, as the great and 
 often silent spring of action and of suffering. 
 
 The relation of Christianity to the world has been pointed 
 out by the Lord Himself in two parables. " The kingdom of 
 heaven," says He, "is likened unto a pearl," in exchange for 
 which a merchant parted with all his possessions ; and the 
 kino;dom of heaven is also likened " unto leaven which a 
 woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole 
 was leavened " (Matt. xiii. 33, 45). The first parable repre- 
 sents the kingdom of God in the purely religious sphere as 
 the one thinfr needful, for which all other thinfrs are to be 
 sacrificed. The second parable represents God's kingdom in 
 its worldly sphere as an all-penetrating, all-transforming prin- 
 ciple. Christianity meets with a moral life in the world, the 
 family, the state, art, science, etc. Into this it sinks down like 
 leaven. As the leaven is diffused in the mass, so will the 
 Christian principle diffuse itself in the life of the world, will 
 not immediately let itself be seen, will only appear indirectly, 
 will be known only in its operations. To fix the attention on 
 one of these parables to the exclusion of the other, leads to 
 a one-sided apprehension of Christianity. If Christianity is 
 contemplated exclusively as the pearl, it then becomes also 
 entirely a world-renouncing asceticism, as we see with monks 
 and pietists, who will only admit the purely religious as valid. 
 On the other hand, if Christianity is contemplated exclusively 
 as the leaven, the independence of religion is denied, and the 
 idea arises that the Church will ere long become superfluous, 
 and be merged in the State, in worldly morality, and in 
 culture. Among the more recent expounders of ethics, Rothe, 
 notwithstanding his unquestionable excellence, can hardly 
 escape censure for a one-sided apprehension of the kingdom of 
 God as leaven, by which the central importance of Christianity 
 does not receive perfect justice.
 
 CATHOLICISM AND PR0TESTAKTIS3V 27 
 
 §9. 
 
 Since Christianity appears under the two great conflicting 
 creeds of Catholicism and Protestantism, a division may be 
 further instituted between Catholic and Protestant morality. 
 The difference in the reliirious doctrines is mirrored in that of 
 their respective codes of morality. In Catholicism the primary 
 relation of dependence on Christ is repressed and put in the 
 shade by the relation of dependence on the hierarchy of the 
 Church, a hierarcliy on eartli (the priesthood) and a hierarchy 
 in heaven (the Virgin Mary and the saints), a host of self- 
 elected mediators between God and man. It was the task of 
 the Reformation to brino- Christians back from this false and 
 illusory relation of dependence, from these false authorities 
 to the true dependence, and thereby to restore true evangelical 
 liberty. The character of the Reformation, at once moral and 
 religious, shows itself in a pregnant manner at the point of its 
 commencement, since it begins as the reaction of the wounded 
 and abused conscience against the misleading of the people in 
 the sale of indulgences, as a solemn protest against the making 
 merchandise of holy things, as e.g. that money, in virtue of 
 the authority of the Church, should take the place of personal 
 repentance, and that that should be offered for sale which 
 can alone be given by the free grace of God, and appropriated 
 by a humble heart and a broken spirit. 
 
 Essentially the return to the true relation of dependence 
 is expressed in the formal and material principle of our 
 Church. From the yoke of human teachino;, from the false 
 traditions of men, it turns back to the original document 
 of revelation, the Holy Scriptures, as the supreme rule and 
 guide in doctrine. Only God's word must have supreme 
 authority in the Church, and every other spiritual authority 
 must be subordinate to this. But the relation of dependence 
 on Christ is not merely an outward relation through the Scrip- 
 tures. We have a living present Christ, who not merely gives 
 His testimony outside of us, in His Church, in His word, and 
 in His institutions, but also within us, in the Christian re- 
 genei'ated personality, in which *• God's Spirit witnesses with 
 our spirit that we are the children of God " (Rom. viii.). 
 
 The cardinal point in the regenerated personality is jiistijica'
 
 28 ON Tilt: CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 tion hy faith. That sinful man may be justified before God, 
 or acknowledged by God as righteous, means, that tlie atone- 
 ment of grace, which is Christ's work, is appropriated by the 
 individual man, that the forgiveness of sins is bestowed on him, 
 and that he is received by God as His child. In justification 
 by faitli alone, and not by works, the relation of deepest de- 
 pendence is one with that of the utmost freedom of wilL No 
 human action can avail to make me rio;hteous in the sitrht of 
 God, or to place me in normal relation to Ilim. No effort of 
 my own, no self-purification, can blot out my sin and my trans- 
 gression. In free and abounding mercy God has forgiven, 
 and man can only act the part of receiver, can only " allow 
 himself to be reconciled with God" (2 Cor. v. 20), can only as 
 hunn-erinii and thirstinn; receive the fulness of frrace which is 
 poured forth on him, can only, as the naked, permit himself to 
 be clothed upon with Christ's righteousness. But this receptive 
 relation cannot find place unless man has trust and confidence 
 in iiraco. This trust or confidence is an act of the most cordial 
 free-will, in the midst of deep and perfect dependence, though 
 it has itself its origin in grace, is the work of grace in the heart; 
 for the natural heart of man does not venture to believe that 
 God could bestow such abundant mercy so disproportioned to 
 the merit and deserving of mankind. Justifying grace is for 
 Protestantism the one pearl of great price, in exchange for 
 which all human justification and all human wisdom must be 
 relinquished. It is opposed to the merely historical faith of 
 Catholicism, which is only an external relation of dependence 
 on Christ through the testimony of the Church ; it is an in- 
 ward personal relation of dependence, the living bond between 
 the human personality and the crucified and risen Christ, 
 through which man in his inmost beinfr is united to the Re- 
 deemer and thence to the triune God. 
 
 It is not, like the faith of Catholicism, satisfied with being a 
 creed, an acquiescence in the teaching of the Church, and a 
 reception of the same ; it requires the total appropriation of 
 the heart by Christ. This was indeed the pearl of great price 
 which Luther found, when in the cloister he had vainly sought 
 peace of conscience by self-imposed penances and laborious 
 exertions, and in the possession of this he became happy and 
 courageous. Justification by faith is not merely a tenet, not
 
 CATHOLICISM AND rROTESTArJTISil. 29 
 
 merely an axiom, but a principle in the highest sense of the 
 term, a living first principle, bearing in itself a whole world of 
 consequences. "What has been called the principle of subjec- 
 tivity, or the principle of personality as belonging to Pro- 
 testantism, is entirely contained within it. It implies not merely 
 the preciousness of the human personality in the sight of divine 
 love, which is not willing that any one should be lost, but also 
 this, that salvation is a matter between man and God, between 
 man and his Eedeemer, that no priesthood, no human autho- 
 rity, dare interpose between man and his God. " Thou must 
 thyself decide it," says Luther, " for thy life is at stake." 
 
 And this evangelical principle of freedom is inseparable from 
 the evangelical principle of equality, that all Christians are 
 alike before God, and that there is here no difference between 
 priests and laity. It is this which is expressed in the doctrine 
 of the universal priesthood of Christians. This is not meant 
 to exclude what the Lord has Himself ordained, namely, a 
 ministry for the proclamation of the word and the administra- 
 tion of the sacraments ; for God is not the God of confusion, 
 but of peace and of order. And as in the Church there may 
 be a diversity of spiritual gifts, so also there may be a diversity 
 of offices. But this it does imply, that all Christians have the 
 same access to God's grace, and that there is no longer any 
 need for a high priest who shall place himself as mediator be- 
 tween God and the people. It implies that all Christians have 
 the same right to become partakers of the means of grace, the 
 same access to Christ's cross, from which no papal or priestly 
 infallibility can debar. It implies that arbitrary exclusion from 
 the visible Church does not of necessity entail exclusion from 
 the invisible. 
 
 From justification by faith is developed evangelical moraliti/j 
 which we may describe as a life of freedom and love by the 
 grace of God. In Catholic morality, the religious basis of 
 which is the obedience of faith towards the Church, obedience 
 to God must be inseparable from obedience to the ecclesiastical 
 law of ceremonies, and an external rule of service is mixed up 
 with evervthing, even with that which is essentially the same 
 as the evangelical practice. There has also, indeed, appeared 
 within the Catholic Church, both in older and in recent times, a 
 tendency to mystic devotion and inward freedom. But this
 
 30 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 too is circumscribed by externality, because the true principle 
 of freedom or justification by faith has not obtained its right 
 position. 
 
 §10. 
 
 Through justification by faith, and through discriminating 
 between justification and sanctification, Protestantism places 
 religion and morality in their normal relation to each other. 
 Real unity is everywhere conditioned by real diversity, real 
 distinction. The Reformation was obliged to introduce a num- 
 ber of radical distinctions between those things which in 
 Catholicism were obscurely mixed together. As it distinguished 
 between the word of God and the teaching of man, the Lord's 
 appointments and man's devices, divine and human right, so 
 also between law and gospel, justification and sanctification, 
 faith and good works. We are justified by faith alone (sola- 
 fide), and not by works, — that is not to say that good works and 
 moral efforts are matters of indifference ; it only means that 
 religion and morality are not one and the same, and ought not 
 therefore to be confounded. Each of them ought to be placed 
 in its right position ; each has its own peculiar power and influ- 
 ence, and should have the honour which belongs to it. I can- 
 not be justified before God by my own exertions, cannot by 
 merit procure the forgiveness of my sins, but only by faith re- 
 ceive it as a gift of grace. Then only has my life found its 
 right commencement, and only when I have a merciful God 
 can I work out my sanctification. Catholicism, on the other 
 hand, confounds justification and sanctification. It says, we 
 are not justified by faith alone, but by faith and good works. 
 But in this manner the religious consciousness does not obtain 
 its rights. 
 
 If the forgiveness of my sins rests on my sanctification, then 
 I must be in continual uncertainty. For in my best actions 
 there is always something which requires forgiveness, and I 
 dare not, therefore, rely on them as making full satisfaction, or 
 as supplements to the merits of Christ : moral effort is an 
 alternation of rising and sinking, of advancing and retreating. 
 I am, in the most favourable case, only in an approximation 
 towards reconciliation. But my certainty of reconciliation re- 
 quires a stedfast and immovable foundation. This is Christ
 
 CATHOLICISM AND FKOTESTANTISJI. 31 
 
 Himself, the perfect One, appropriated by faith. The doctrine 
 of Catholicism, that we are justified by faith and good works, 
 has its foundation in its meagre conception of faith, which, 
 according to it, is a mere enlightenment, a reception of the 
 teaching of the Church ; and it therefore endeavours to supply 
 this deficiency by another principle, active love, sanctification. 
 The Protestant faith is the heart's appropriation of the crucified 
 Saviour who stretches out His arms to man ; it is the lively 
 appropriation of the words : " Sacrificed for you, for thee." 
 The Protestant controversy with good works is not therefore 
 directed against morality itself, but only against a morality 
 usurping the place of faith, — good works which profess to pur- 
 chase what no morality can purchase, man's reconciliation with 
 God. This controversy is not merely in the interest of religion, 
 but even in that of morality itself. By its deeper teaching 
 concerning faith Protestantism establishes the principle of true 
 morality, and thereby proclaims the indissoluble union of re- 
 ligion and morality. For assuredly "good deeds do not make 
 a man pious, but a pious man does good deeds" (Luther). 
 
 Faith is the fruitful mustard seed which developes into a 
 great tree. It is not a mere assent, but as the appropriation 
 of Christ, it is, as Luther says, " the restored will, the upright 
 heart, the new understanding. Faith is not a useless and life- 
 less thins which lies hidden in the heart of a dead sinner. A 
 faith which bears no fruit is not the true faith. Like a tree 
 destitute of leaves or blossom, and which is fit only to be burnt, 
 so also with a barren faith. Faith is not like a dead fly in 
 winter, but is lively and active. It is impossible that it should 
 ever cease to do good works. Neither does faith first inquire 
 if it is imperative to engage in such works, but it anticipates 
 the demand, and is ever busy in its performance."^ Yet 
 Luther would not build his salvation, the forgiveness of his 
 sins, on his good works, but only on Christ appropriated by 
 faith ; on the Redeemer who had already received him in 
 baptism and adopted him into the fellowship of the triune 
 God. 
 
 With this distinction between religion and morality there 
 is closely connected another of extreme importance to the 
 
 ^ See especially Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to tlie Galatians, aud 
 Lis Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
 
 32 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 whole of human society, the distinction between the religions 
 and the tcorldly sphere of action, between purely religious 
 morality and morality in relative independence on religion. 
 This is shown specially in the distinction between Church and 
 State. According to the principles of Catholicism, in which 
 the hierarchical Church identifies itself with the kingdom of 
 God, the State must borrow its authority from the Church ; and 
 thus the popes of the middle ages aimed at an earthly kingdom 
 of God, in which kings and princes were the pontiff's vassals. 
 Catholicism desires a theocracy, a condition of things in which 
 all worldly matters must be placed under the government of 
 the Church, where all Christendom must be one great eccle- 
 siastical state, where all worldly aims must be disposed in refer- 
 ence to the service of religion, that is to say, of the Church, — in 
 other words, where the worldly, the secular, the non-ecclesiastic 
 must be the bond slave of rehVion. With the Reformation 
 this became altered. Tlie same principle of freedom which is 
 inherent in relicrion will now also take form in the various 
 concerns of every-day life. Along with liberty was also diffused 
 in society discriminative justice, and for the second time this 
 word of the Lord received universal sio;nificance : " Render 
 unto Cassar the things which are Ctesar's, and unto God the 
 things whicli are God's," — that is to say, give to the aim of re- 
 ligion what is due to it, but let other aims also have fair play. 
 The State does not require to borrow its authority from the 
 Church, for it is itself a divine institution, though it ought cer- 
 tainly to maintain its connection with the Church and with re- 
 ligion; for the ultimate security of the State lies in religion, since 
 morality and every right sentiment must have its basis here. 
 
 What is here said of the independence of the State is equally 
 applicable to every other sphere of ordinary life. Every pur- 
 pose or design which is grounded on the economy of creation 
 and on human nature must develope itself after its own fashion 
 according to its relative autonomy, the independence given to 
 it by God. Accordingly, tliere must not be merely ecclesiasti- 
 cal art and ecclesiastical science, but art and science have their 
 own special spheres independent of the Church. It is involved 
 in the principle of the Reformation that religion must continue 
 to be the highest, the all-governing, all-penetrating power : but 
 its sovereignty must be that of the Spirit, it must only work by
 
 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 33 
 
 means of the Word and the Spirit, to which it is referred by 
 our Lord, whose kingdom is not of this world. It must not 
 endeavour to maintain God's kingdom by the sword, as Peter 
 sought to do when he smote the servant of the high priest and 
 cut off his ear, in which he was a type of the Romish Church, 
 and of so many of the so-called successors of Peter, who have 
 desired to come to the help of Christ by employing the sword 
 against His opponents, not remembering the -words of the 
 Lord : " Put up thy sword into its sheath." Religion (the 
 gospel) must be the central power in social life ; but in order 
 that it may be the perfect centre, the circles on the circum- 
 ference must be circles of freedom, must in a relative sense 
 have their centres in themselves. Its relation to the forces of 
 ordinary life must not be external and mechanical, but dynamic, 
 since it must inwardly exert its transforming and emancipating 
 influence. We speak here only of the principle, and consider 
 the subject generally ; for with regard to this historical execu- 
 tion there is not a little to remark, and more minute definitions 
 need to be added. The historical reducing to practice of this 
 great principle, which embraces no less than the organic relation 
 between authority and liberty, between true dependence and 
 true liberty in all spheres of life, — for as every sphere of 
 society has its special relation of freedom, so has it also its 
 corresponding relation of dependence, — this cannot be done at 
 once, but requires time and circumstances favourable to its 
 development. Sometimes a spirit of thraldom has found 
 entrance, and during long periods obstructed the unfolding of 
 Protestant principles. Sometimes Protestant liberty has been 
 perverted into libertinism. For there is danger that the re- 
 lative autonomy, which through Protestantism is restored to the 
 purposes of ordinary life, may be taken as an absolute autonomy 
 Then step forth to view morality without religion, and the State 
 without religion. 
 
 If we contemplate social life in the present day from the 
 ethical view-point, we perceive, so long as our observations are 
 confined to the general aspect of things, three principal ten- 
 dencies. Of these, we name first the two following: the 
 evangelical Protestant tendency, wdiich desires to remain on the 
 basis of the Reformation and strives after moral aims, in their 
 connection with religious principle; next, the system of morality 
 
 o
 
 34 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 and of politics, wliich disclaims religion. This last, namely, 
 non-religious politics, is interwoven with the doctrine of the 
 rights of man, brought forward during the last century by 
 Rousseau and by the French Revolution. The timtJi contained 
 in this doctrine is included in the principles of the Reformation. 
 For, from the infinite value of human personality before God, 
 from the conception of the free personality in God, springs 
 also the claim of personal right in the sphere of earthly mat- 
 ters, the claim of civil and political freedom, of religious free- 
 dom, freedom of scientific research, etc., and especially this 
 claim, that no man ought to be merely and barely a means for 
 the benefit of others. But this truth became negative, and 
 practically destructive of the cohesion of society, because liberty 
 tore itself loose from authority, from the true as well as from 
 the false, and acknowledged no other relation of dependence 
 than that which may be established and abolished by the deter- 
 mination of the majority. It is of no use to abrogate false 
 authorities if the true are not set up in their place. Revolu- 
 tion under diverse metamorphoses has continued to go round 
 the world to the present day, and still the wants of society may 
 be thus described, that it cannot discover the right authority 
 towards which it may take up the required position of depend- 
 ence, which means, in brief, that it cannot find its true relation 
 to religion as the highest invisible authority ; for an authority 
 which is only visible and external, cannot aid this generation, 
 and the deepest contrast of our times is the contrast between 
 belief and unbelief. The third great tendency is Roman 
 Catholicism, which has never yet yielded any of the pretensions it 
 asserted in the middle ages, without, however, being able to carry 
 these into execution, and therefore makes its appearance, wher- 
 ever it can, as a genuine reaction. As it has resolutely refused to 
 iearn anything either from the Reformation or the Revolution, 
 which it classes together under the same condemnation, it seeks 
 to bring back the world to obedience to the Church. This is 
 shown in a strikino; manner in the recent declaration of the 
 dogma of the Pope's infallibility, which is doubtless intended 
 to meet the requirement of our day for authority, but which., 
 unfortunately, has set up an authority which does not " by 
 manifestation of the truth commend itself to every man's 
 conscience" (2 Cor. iv.), and in which even those within the
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGMATICS. 35 
 
 JRomisli Church can scarcely believe. It cannot, certainly, be 
 denied that the Romish Church, along with the false traditions 
 of ancient Christianity, has also preserved the true, and that, 
 therefore, it deserves its comparison with the immovable rock 
 (Petra), which stands firm amidst the surgings of bi'oken 
 thraldoms round its base. But neither must it be forgotten 
 that the most violent of all revolutions broke forth, not in a 
 Protestant, but in a Catholic country, and that the Roman 
 Catholic Church, notwithstanding its stability and external 
 authority, was quite impotent to curb or to allay its fury. And 
 since Catholicism has been re-introduced into France, this 
 gifted nation finds itself in a condition of unresolved dualism, 
 inasmuch as it possesses a fair degree of liberty in the sphere 
 of worldly matters, whilst in religion it is fettered, — a dualism 
 which has not proved salutary in times bygone, and can 
 scarcely be expected to succeed better in the time to come.' 
 For an abundant measure of liberty in the sphere of worldly 
 matters, and blind obedience to an external authority in that 
 of religion, are such extremely heterogeneous principles, that 
 they can scarcely subsist together in the same consciousness, 
 and seem inevitably to lead to doubt, denial, and unbelief, even 
 if outward reverence for religious forms be preserved. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGIVIATICS. 
 
 §11. 
 
 In the relation between morality and religion developed above, 
 the relation between ethics and dogmatics is given at the same 
 time. Ethics is related to dogmatics as morality to religion, as 
 the relation of liberty to the relation of dependence. On ac- 
 count of their relationship and essential unity, it w^as long 
 believed that they could be treated under one. But it must 
 certainly be considered as a step in advance, when ethics was 
 
 ^ The German translation of this work by the Eev. A. ^lichelsen bears 
 the following footnote on the passage indicated : " These words were 
 written before the outbreak of the recent Franco-German war ; yet in the 
 latest destiny of France, and in many of the''circuni3tances which occurred 
 during the course of this terrible contest, they find strange confirmation."
 
 3G ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 separated from dogmatics as a distinct study, which was first 
 done in the Lutheran Church by Cahxtus (Calhsen, a native of 
 Slesvig).^ For if ethics be only taken along with dogmatics and 
 distributed among the various portions of this subject, it cannot 
 receive justice, being only treated, so to speak, incidentally. If, 
 on the other hand, it finds within the consideration of doo;matics 
 a satisfactory amount of attention, this can only be effected at 
 the expense of the other, which it must disturb and perplex. 
 Nevertheless, althougli dogmatics and ethics are to be treated 
 as different and distinct sciences, yet the difference between 
 them is only relative. The one always bears testimony for the 
 other, and constantly evinces their twin nature, although dog- 
 matics is the first-born, and thus enjoys a higher dignity. 
 Dogmatics as the Christian doctrine of faith is ethical ; for it 
 treats of a revelation from the personal God, who addresses 
 Himself to the free personality of man. And ethics as the 
 Christian rule of life is dogmatic ; for it treats of a life of free- 
 will, which is lived in faith, and the doctrines of which are 
 erounded in the doctrines of faith. Doo;matics treats of the 
 being and the attributes of God ; of the divine decrees, and the 
 divine execution of these in the works of creation, of providence, 
 and of sanctification, the aim of which is the kingdom of God 
 in the kino;dom of man's free-will. Althouiih dogmatics sets 
 forth that the accomplishment of the divine decree, or the con- 
 stant progress of God's kingdom in the human race, is qualified 
 by human free-will, it nevertheless represents as paramount this 
 divine decree — the final realization of which, in spite of all 
 earthly opposition, in spite of all the aberrations of human free- 
 will, and in spite of the apparently doubtful issue of the conflict, 
 must yet be accomplished — as the fore-ordained purpose of God, 
 which is specially demonstrated in Christian eschatology, wherein 
 the prophetic enunciation of the perfect victory of the kingdom 
 of God is clearly found. Ethics, on the other hand, represents 
 the kingdom of God, or the highest good, in so far as this is 
 the task of man's free-will, and is to be striven after through 
 it. Dogmatics teaches what is, and Vvas, and what infallibly 
 shall be ; ethics, what ought to be, and along with this what 
 ought not to be. In dogmatics we recognise pre-eminently 
 God and His dealings in relation to man and the world, and 
 » Bora 158G, died 1G5G. — Micuelsen.
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGMATICS. 37 
 
 man's dependence on God and these dealings. In ethics we 
 recognise pre-eminently man and his acting in relation to the 
 life-tasks appointed him by God. The teaching of the law of 
 God thus appears both in dogmatics and in ethics. But in 
 dogmatics, the law is specially considered from the view-point 
 of God's revelation and His educative guidance of the human 
 race : in ethics, from the view-point of human action as the 
 obligatory norm or rule for man's will and conduct, or as man's 
 duty which developes itself into a system of duties. Sin also, 
 as the contrast of the good, as that in the life of man which 
 ought not to be, must appear in both dogmatics and ethics. 
 But in dogmatics, sin presents itself especially as an existing 
 derangement, an abnormality in human nature, which, in the 
 beginning of man's being, found entrance through his liberty 
 luider the divine permission, and which unfolds its necessary 
 consequences pursuant to the law of development, to which 
 God has subjected our race in this present world. In ethics, 
 sin presents itself especially as an abnormality in the self-con- 
 scious life of free-will, both of the individual and of society, 
 who have not merely received it as an inheritance, but have 
 themselves, moreover, shared in it. In dogmatics, sin is 
 acknowledged principally as universal depravity in its necessary 
 development : in ethics, it is considered principally in its mani- 
 fold individual instances, both in social life and in regard to 
 each person separately, and, moreover, in its transition from 
 possibility to actual commission by free choice. " God hath 
 concluded them all in unbelief,^ that he might have mercy upon 
 all" (Rom. xi. 32). This is dogmatic. "Let no man say, 
 when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God cannot be 
 tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man : but every 
 man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and 
 enticed" (Jas. i. 13, 14). This again is ethical. 
 
 Also the doctrine regarding the person of Christ must have a 
 place both in dogmatics and in ethics. In dogmatics, how^evcr, 
 Christ is acknowledged emphatically as the Redeemer; in ethics. 
 He is represented as the model for our imitation. Sanctification, 
 too, comes under these two different phases. In dogmatics, it is 
 regarded chiefly from the stand-point of the operations of grace ; 
 in ethics, from that of free-will. " It is God which worketh in 
 ^ Under disobedience in the Danish version of the passage.
 
 38 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 yon, both to will and to do" (Phil, i. 13). This is dogmatic. 
 "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil, 
 i. 12). This is ethical, as the ethical development of sanctifica- 
 tion farther expands this teaching through a multiplicity of 
 virtues. The doctrine concerning Christ's Church appears both 
 in dofifmatics and ethics. But in docjmatics the Church stands 
 forth pre-eminently as God's work, institution, and ordinance ; 
 in ethics, as a human institution, which is produced by the 
 activity of believers in building on the foundation of the divine 
 appointment and institution. " The gates of hell shall not 
 prevail against my Church " (Matt. xvi. 8). This is dogmatic. 
 "Seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the Church" 
 (1 Cor. xiv. 12). " Let all things be done decently, and in 
 order " (1 Cor. xiv. 40). This is ethical. 
 
 § 12. 
 
 Just as dogmatics must have a biblical character, — since the 
 Holy Scriptures are not merely the highest criterion and rule 
 of doctrine, but also contain the fulness of truth, from which 
 Christian thought must constantly draw its supphes, and through 
 which it must constantly afresh be fructified, — the same holds 
 good with regard to ethics. But ethics appears as a distinct 
 science, inasmuch as it places itself in the same primary relation 
 to the Holy Scriptures as dogmatics. To read the Scriptures 
 with a dogmatic eye is not the same thing as to read them with 
 an ethical eye ; and the ethical consideration of Scripture, in the 
 Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, will bring to 
 light matters which a merely dogmatic consideration would not 
 take into account. This is especially the case in regard to the 
 central point in Holy Scripture — the person of Christ. Ethical 
 Christology, which apprehends Christ as our model for imitation, 
 must represent one side of His glory, which is only partially 
 given in dogmatic Christology. But as the ethical Christology 
 presupposes the dogmatic, so it may also come to exercise both 
 a completing and correcting reflex influence upon it. On the 
 other side, a step in advance in dogmatics may have a striking 
 effect on the treatment of ethics. We may here mention an 
 example of some significance. In our own times no small pro- 
 gress has been made in the treatment of Protestant dogmatics in 
 the province of Christian eschatology, or the doctrine concerning
 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGMATICS, 39 
 
 final results, through a deeper comprehension of the course of 
 God's kingdom through history, and its completion : by which 
 means a consideration of the entire history of our race becomes 
 possible, which was not accessible to the theology of former 
 times. Ethics in the days of prevailing orthodoxy took essen- 
 tially as its subject only the life of the individual, under 
 supposition of law and gospel, as the whole doctrine of the way 
 of salvation. It is true that it exhibited also a social teaching, 
 yet only in so far as it treated of the individual forms of society — 
 the family, the State, the Church. On the other hand, it lacked 
 the idea of God's kiucfdom as distinct from the Church ; or to 
 speak more correctly, this idea could not at that time exercise 
 any beneficial influence, as the idea of a divine-human, in- 
 visible-visible organ, embracing human society both in its 
 separate forms and individuals, the course of which through all 
 the generations of our race down to its glorious completion gives 
 the history of man its deepest significance. Only BengeP and 
 Oetinger and their disciples form an exception in this respect 
 araoniist all our older Lutheran theolooians, since their whole 
 religious teaching bears a predominant impress of eschatology 
 and history, and is pre-eminently a theology of the kingdom of 
 God. Since now the idea of the kino;dom of God has again 
 been revived in the dogmatics of our times in an eschatological 
 direction, it cannot and ought not to be without a quickening 
 influence on Christian ethics, which is thereby enabled to de- 
 velope a practical conception of the loorld, which was wanting in 
 the ethics of former times. For it may be described as the most 
 conspicuous deficiency of this system of ethics, that it is without 
 conception of the world and without an historical background. 
 And just as dogmatics must have an ecclesiastical and con- 
 fessional character, so, too, ethics must bring to consciousness 
 the contrast between Catholic and Protestant morality. In 
 accordance with the mode of proceeding in dogmatics, we sliould 
 also in ethics go back to the written confessions of faith of our 
 respective churches, which, how^ever, we can only accomplish 
 here in a much narrower extent than in docrmatics ; because the 
 dogmatic differences in our symbols are treated with far greater 
 minuteness than the ethical. That the relation to Catholicism 
 
 1 Bengel, born 1687, died 1751. Oetiuger, bom 1702, died 1782. Ge" 
 man translation.
 
 40 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 is not merely polemical, lies in the nature of the matter. For 
 as the Evangelical Church, especially in its Lutheran division, 
 bears in its bosom a tendency to genuine catholicity to the 
 universal Christian, evangelical ethics has thus an interest in 
 seeking within Catholicism for evangelical elements and points 
 of agreement, in order to arrive at a deeper comprehension of 
 the moral ; and we need only to recall the mystics of the 
 Catholic Church, and such names as Pascal, Fenelon, Sailer, 
 to be reminded at the same time of an esoteric tendency in 
 Catholicism, from which we — if there still remain behind an 
 idtimate and highest difference — may yet in many respects 
 receive instruction. 
 
 The contrast also between the Lutheran and the Calvinistic 
 creeds cannot but have an influence on the treatment of ethics, 
 although this contrast is of an entirely different nature from 
 that between Catholicism and Protestantism. Immediately to 
 deduce the ethical distinction between the Lutheran and the 
 Calvinistic or Reformed Church from their dogmatic differ- 
 ences, could hardly be accomplished in a satisfactory manner. 
 After all, it will scarcely be possible to express this difference 
 in a single formula. Yet history shows us a characteristic 
 distinctive individuality between the two. Though both stand 
 in common opposition to the external legalism of the Catholic 
 Church ; though they both rest on justification by faith alone ; 
 yet evangelical liberty appears more lively in Lutheranism than 
 in Calvinism, as reflected from the personal characters of the 
 two men, Luther and Calvin, the latter with his sternness and 
 rigorous church discipline bearing the impress of a moral 
 dictator. Speaking generally, the Lutheran communion shows 
 a greater faculty than the Reformed for cultivation of the 
 inner life, whilst the Calvinistic has more energy in acts of 
 outward practical activity ; and, in this respect, we may say 
 that the contrast between Mary and Martha — the Lord loved 
 them both — is mirrored in these two communions. The 
 Lutheran Church has its strength in contemplation, in mysti- 
 cism and theosoph}^, in hymnology, in worship and art ; the 
 Reformed Church has its strength in foreign and home mis- 
 sions, in voluntary associations for Christian objects, such as 
 slave-emancipation, assistance to the poor and the sick, the 
 diffusion of the Scriptures and of religious tracts. Whilst
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGMATICS. 41 
 
 political interests and those of Church organization lie further 
 removed from theoriginal and peculiarcharacter of Lutheranism, 
 Calvinism has displayed great capacity in this respect. In 
 regard to the State, Lutheranism, from the commencement, 
 has had a preference for the principle of monarchy, whilst 
 Calvinism has attached itself to the republican and represen- 
 tative systems. The universal priesthood of believers is 
 acknowledged by both communions ; but Lutheranism maintains 
 the independence of the pastoral office in a deeper sense than 
 Calvinism, which also exerts an influence on the constitutions 
 of the churches. In recent times both communions have 
 approached each other more nearly, — an approach in sentiment 
 and mode of thoun;ht which must be acknowledfjed as a fact, 
 even if it cannot be acknowledged that as yet there is any real 
 union. On both sides it is freely admitted that there is much 
 to be learnt and to be received from the other. Yet frrantincr 
 that the Lutheran Church might receive ethical instruction 
 from the Calvinist, this oucrht not to be a mere imitation of 
 the Reformed practice and institutions, but a free and indepen- 
 dent adoption in harmony with its own individuality and its 
 own historic past. And thus a system of ethics will then be 
 produced on the stand-point of the Lutheran Church, bearing 
 its individual impress, which will distinguish it from a system of 
 ethics proceeding from the stand-point of the Calvinist Church. 
 
 §13. 
 
 But as Christian dogmatics ought not to be merely the repre- 
 sentation of the traditions of Scripture and the Church, but 
 the. scientific discernment of the inner truth of the Christian 
 doctrines of faith, so, too, it is incumbent on ethics to discri- 
 minate Christian good in its intrinsic excellence, and to lay the 
 foundation of moral instruction on the scientific connection of 
 the whole subject. The Evangelical Church acknowledges 
 that what sanctions Christian doctrine to us finally, is the wit- 
 ness of God's Spirit {testiifnonixini spiritus sancti). But this 
 must not be received merely as a witness in feeling and con- 
 science, but also in thought, in so far as the thought of divine 
 wisdom manifests itself to human contemplation. And as in 
 dogmatics we speak of a Christian idea of truth, so also in 
 ethics we speak of a Christian idea of morality, which in the
 
 42 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 believing and regenerated consciousness is a source of percep- 
 tion from which, in co-operation with the dictates of Scripture 
 and the Church, the contents of Christian ethics are evolved. 
 
 But ideas, it will be asked, do they not belong to reason ? 
 And are there other ideas than those given in reason, of which 
 the chief is the idea of the Good in its unity with the True, as 
 the existent in the highest sense of the word, as the absolutely 
 priceless, that fixes the value and position of everything else in 
 the whole universe, and which is therefore the highest object 
 for the human will '? Are there other ideas than the eternal 
 principles of reason, without which we should not be in a con- 
 dition to recognise the True and the Good, when we encounter 
 them in our experience ? We reply : These are the same, and 
 none other than those which are treated of in Christian science. 
 But the difference is, that these ideas without Christianity, and 
 as bare and so-called " pure" ideas of reason, lack the fulness 
 of life and fixity which revelation bestows, and are more or 
 less formal generalities, as also without Christianity they lack 
 their true central-point in the living God. Therefore, in 
 Christian ethics we speak of the same matters as those of 
 which pure reason treats, and yet they are not the same. For 
 the Christian idea of moralitv stands in the same relation to 
 that of pure reason which the positive and concrete holds to 
 the abstract and general. Only the Christian idea of morality 
 possesses the possibility of real progress, because it developes 
 itself by means of the facts of revelation, and in a conscious- 
 ness in which revelation and redemption themselves have 
 become facts, whilst the mere idea of reason has no possibility 
 of a vital progress, althougli it is the necessary condition (^con- 
 ditio sine qua non) for the reception of revelation. 
 
 Of the fructifying power of the Christian idea of morality 
 we may convince ourselves by a glance at the history of the 
 Church, which shows us many forms of Christian morality 
 which have not been deduced from Scripture, as they relate to 
 circumstances which were entirely unknown at the time when 
 the Scriptures were written, and yet their Christianity is 
 genuine. If the Christian idea of morality as an internal 
 source of knowledge be denied, then Christian consciousnes,s 
 must present itself in the character of a mere tabula i-asa over 
 against the letter of Scripture. Thus with sects who receive
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGilATICS. 43 
 
 our Lord's sermon on tlie Mount literally, and not according to 
 the spirit which it breathes ; and, for example, refuse to take the 
 oath of citizens, because it is written, " Let your communica- 
 tions be yea, yea, nay, nay;" as in like manner they also con- 
 sider the profession of arms incompatible with Christianity, 
 because It is written, " If any man smite thee on the right 
 cheek, turn to him the other also." The same holds good of 
 the mistaken conception of Christ as our pattern, in which 
 many persons have imagined that the imitation of Christ meant 
 copying Him outwardly. The relative a loriori in Christian 
 morality in virtue of the witness of the indwelling idea and of 
 the Holy Ghost, must have been clearly perceived by Luther 
 when he says : " If we have Christ, and keep hold of Him, then 
 we may soon make laws, and be correct in all our judgments ; 
 nay, we may even frame a new decalogue, as Paul does in all 
 his epistles, Peter also, but especially as Christ Himself does in 
 the gospel."^ That is to say, if we have the Spirit of God as 
 our life-spring, then we may produce new moral forms, and 
 solve the new problems which life offers us. Nevertheless this; 
 a priori is only to be taken relatively. For if by despising it 
 we arrive at a false and mechanical dependence on Scripture, 
 on the other hand, an exclusive reception of it will land us In 
 an antlnomian relation towards Scripture and the Church. The 
 truth is, that the idea must be developed in living alliance with 
 the positive assertions of Scripture. 
 
 Our stand-point of perception in regard to Christian morality 
 differs, therefore, equally from a supernaturalism, which takes 
 Its stand on revelation to the exclusion of human research and 
 Inquiry, and from a rationalism, which takes its stand on its 
 own power of thought, to the exclusion of faith and revelation. 
 Such a supernaturalism ignores the fact that revelation is 
 exactly conformable to reason, and that reason must be con- 
 sonant with revelation. That Is to say, the fundamental ques- 
 tions of reason must just be those to which revelation gives the 
 reply, and reason, when enlightened by God's Spirit, must always 
 learn better how to inquire and how to comprehend the reply 
 which revelation gives : should there be an absolute opposition 
 between reason and Christian revelation, then must reason and 
 the natural revelation given In reason have another god as its 
 1 Luther's Works. Walch, 19th edition, page 1750.
 
 44 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 source than that of the Cliristian revelation ; or else human 
 nature must be so disturbed by sin, that sin and darkness have 
 become man's substance, by which means human nature cer- 
 tainly would become the absolutely heterogeneous as regards 
 Christianity, and Christianity the absolute paradox for man, 
 which, however, is opposed to Scripture and the doctrine of the 
 Church, and is expressly rejected as heresy by Protestant 
 divines. On the other hand, the rationalism which takes its 
 stand on reason, to the exclusion of revelation, ignores that the 
 natural reason is darkened by sin, and that Christianity holds 
 the same relation towards reason as it does to tlie entire human 
 nature, partly as redeeming, partly as perfecting and developing 
 to perfection. Whilst we thus then assert a certain degree of 
 unity between reason and revelation, this unity cannot be 
 absolute so long as sin still endures ; it contains, therefore, a 
 relative opposition between reason and revelation, an opposition 
 which cannot be perfectly overcome in this ceon, on which 
 account there always continues to be in our perception a tran- 
 scendental, to which knowledge does not attain.^ This is the 
 reason why Christian knowledge never can outgrow the Holy 
 Scriptures and the eternal fulness of revelation therein con- 
 tained, but must constantly again return to it, in order that the 
 subjective consciousness may more intimately embrace the ob- 
 jective Christianity. If our assertion of a relative unity of 
 reason and revelation should shock those whose motto is, Aut 
 Cesar aut nihil, and who demand either an absolute affirmative 
 or an absolute negative, we reply, that relativity is at present 
 the ineffaceable mark of our world, in which, even after atone- 
 ment has been made, and the absolute principle become reality, 
 the insuperable opposition between ideal and actual yet remains. 
 Experience also teaches that a supposed absolute knowledge is 
 no more satisfactory than absolute ignorance. The history of 
 philosophy abundantly demonstrates that the whole of the 
 so-called science of pure reason, in spite of all its pretended 
 absoluteness, is yet in reality very relative, even when it- has 
 endeavoured to fix the boundaries of knowledge, and has de- 
 termined itself to be ignorance. For every new system of 
 philosophy has hitherto commenced with the assertion that 
 reason in the preceding systems had only had a relative self- 
 ^ See Martcnsen's D^ifjinaiics and bis treatise on Faith and Knowledge.
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND DOGMATICS. 45 
 
 knowledfie, and had thus been relatively alien to itself. Tlie 
 fragmentary character of our knowledge is not to be got rid of 
 during this state of existence and under these earthly con- 
 ditions. 
 
 From what has been here said follows our reply to the 
 question, How shall we determine the relation between Christian 
 ethics and philosophic ethics? That there is any real opposition 
 between the two we do not admit, as philosophic ethics may 
 very well be also Christian, and Christian ethics philosophical. 
 The difference here will only be analogous to that between the 
 philosophy of religion and Christian dogmatics. On the other 
 hand, we certainly acknowledge an opposition between Cliristian 
 ethics and non-Christian, or a system claiming to found the 
 teaching of morality on means of its own, independent of 
 revelation. Nevertheless, the relation of Christian ethics to the 
 non-Christian is not merely a relation of opposition, but in a 
 certain sense also a relation of unity. For as the ideal of 
 humanity, to which Christianity seeks to redeem and perfect 
 man, is the same for which human nature was originally de- 
 signed, but the development of which was checked and dis- 
 turbed by sin, there must be, since the disturbance was not 
 absolute, a human ideal common to both Christian and non- 
 Christian ethics. And so, too, the formal moral concepts, the 
 concept of the normal both for individual and social life, of free- 
 will and the Good, of duty and virtue, are the same for Christian 
 ethics as for non-Christian. But the contents are different, and 
 thence the relation of the former to the latter is partly critical, 
 reviewing and correcting, partly completing and perfecting ; 
 whilst it points out that only through Christianity can these 
 general conceptions receive life and completion, attain their 
 true character, and accomplish their just object. Just because 
 Christian ethics must develope the true ideal of humanity, 
 nothing belonging to humanity should be alien to it ; and it 
 should be its task to exhibit the unity of the Christian and the 
 human, that the human which denies the Christian is not 
 genuine humanity; as, on the other hand, it ought to show 
 that the Christian which denies the human is not genuine 
 Christianity.
 
 46 ON THE COXCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 CnRISTIAN ETHICS AND 3I0DEEN HUMANITY. 
 
 § 14. 
 
 The demand here expressed for the union of the Christian 
 and the human, receives in our times a pecuhar significance. 
 The characteristic of tlie age, its leading thouglit and tendency, 
 may be aptly described in the one word, humanity. Although 
 certainly a twofold ideal of humanity exists at the present day, 
 yet the prevailing ideal is the autonomic. It is not by chance 
 that the Promethean myth, from different sides, and in different 
 connections, has, as it were, brought itself into the memory of 
 this generation, with its aspirations after "the human."^ Pro- 
 metheus is a Titan, who holds it for a robbery to be equal with 
 the gods, yet steals fire from heaven. It is he who imparts to 
 men culture and civilisation, arts and sciences. It is he who 
 makes them polished and intelligent, but not pious or benevolent, 
 rather haughty and god-defying like himself. Their knowledge 
 is without the fear of God ; their freedom is without obedience 
 and reverence. While men thus by unlawful means had at- 
 tained civilisation, Prometheus, as the representative of human- 
 ity, was by the command of Zeus, in punishment of his crime, 
 chained to a rock, where an eagle constantly tore out his liver, 
 which as constantly grew afresh. Every third day ^' the 
 winged hound of Zeus" returned to feed upon the freshly 
 formed liver. This liver, which never dies, is a type of the 
 desires and passions which cannot die ; and the eagle which again 
 and again devours it, whenever it has grown afresh, represents 
 the tortures which are inseparable from the desires : Prometheus 
 himself in his suffering is an image of the human ego, escaped 
 from communion with God. With the fetters of necessity, 
 hard as iron, he is bound to the bleak rock of reality, through- 
 out ages devoted to tortures unutterable, from which he is first 
 delivered by Hercules, a son of the gods, who with his arrow 
 slays the eagle and breaks the chain of Prometheus ; in this 
 respect a type and image of the Redeemer, who brings deliver- 
 ance to the sinful and enslaved race of man. Prometheus, as 
 
 ^ Dorner in his YearlooJc of Theology, i. p. 361 ; and H. Marteiisen's 
 W'ork, llecolleciions of J. P. Mjjnster, p. 44 and ouwaids.
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND MODERN HUMANITY. 47 
 
 Sclielling says, is not an idea wliicli has been conceived in the 
 mind of some individual ; he is rather one of those primary 
 ideas which force themselves into existence. It is not merely 
 the genius of the Greeks, — which in this myth gave forth a 
 mysterious shrift, in which it acknowledges itself as free and 
 yet as fettered, because its freedom is not legitimate, whilst at 
 the same time it expresses a hope of deliverance, — it is the 
 genius of mankind which speaks here. For this myth is of 
 universal significance. And in our own day the Promethean 
 myth has found a fresh fulfilment. For in more than one 
 respect the present generation has acquired its great advance in 
 civilisation, its many treasures of science, and its sovereignty 
 over nature, in the Promethean way. It has attained these 
 possessions, according to its own vain-glorious imaginations, 
 through emancipation from belief, from obedience and from 
 love to God ; and its guilt may be described in the words of 
 Isa. xlvii. 10 : " Thou saidst. None seeth me. Thy wisdom and 
 thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee ; and thou hast said in 
 thine heart, I am, and none else besides me." And therefore is 
 this generation in its emancipated freedom at the same time so 
 fettered and given over as a prey to secret pangs and anxieties, 
 and to a weary tempestuous waste in its inner world. Inces- 
 santly it struggles for freedom, and strives in vain to break its 
 fetters by continued efforts after advances in civilisation and in 
 civil liberty. But it can only be redeemed by the way which 
 leads from without to within, only through the Saviour, through 
 the gospel of Christ. 
 
 It is true that we must again and again press the fact, that 
 cultivation, that art and science are not evils, but, on the con- 
 trary, belong to a perfect condition of human existence ; nay, 
 it may even be said that knowledge and refinement are neces- 
 sary conditions for the development of morality and religion, 
 which can only be very imperfectly evolved under circum- 
 stances of barbarism and ignorance, insomuch that Christianity 
 itself implants the germ of refinement where this was before 
 absent. But what concerns modern humanity in this is, that 
 its possession of culture should be legitimate, and be placed in 
 the right position towards religion, which it can only be when 
 man receives his sovereignty from the King of kings as his 
 liege Lord, and is willing to become God's vassal and steward
 
 48 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 upon earth, instead of wishing to be himself sole master and 
 proprietor. This is that process of redemption by which the 
 race shall be delivered from its Promethean tortures ; ^ this con- 
 stitutes the deep mystery which is to be fulfilled in this age. 
 That science is not able to save this generation does not require 
 assertion. But nevertheless Christian science assists in the 
 perception of saving truth. 
 
 And just on this account Christian science must not entertain 
 mere indifference or contempt towards the Promethean humanity 
 of our times, but acknowledge the enslaved moments of truth 
 in this emancipated consciousness of the w'orld, and seek in this 
 the point of union for the Christian. It must also be acknow- 
 ledged that very many among those who stand under the 
 influences of this emancipated humanity have not so much 
 adopted its Titanic sentiments, as they have, without themselves 
 knowing how, become participant in its mysterious sufferings. 
 Many seek deliverance, and would receive it with joy if it 
 could be brought to them ; they seek something new, and know 
 not that this new thing which they desire is Christianity rightly 
 understood. Christianity, which is not, as it lias often been 
 represented, something alien, nay, hostile to human feeling and 
 life ; but, on the contrary, that which can satisfy its deepest 
 craving. Orthodoxy and Pietism have not a little cause to 
 reproach themselves in reference to this worldly humanity, 
 which they have too frequently regarded exclusively as com- 
 posed of ungodliness, emptiness, and vanit}', instead of acquiring 
 the right to utter such a sentence by first instituting a rigid 
 self-examination, and asking themselves if they too have always 
 placed Christianity in the right relation to humanity, and are 
 thus blameless, when those on the opposite side have placed 
 the human in a false relation to the Christian. We will here 
 in particular direct attention to a single point. It cannot be 
 denied that the older theology of our Church, as also the 
 pietistic school and party, have themselves contributed in no 
 small degree to call forth this spirit of free-thinking, by too 
 exclusively fixing the eye on the kingdom of grace, whilst 
 closing it entirely on the kingdom of nature, the primary 
 kingdom of creation, which is the presupposition of that of 
 grace. They were so absorbed in the doctrines of salvation, of 
 i Epb. i. 9 ; Rom. xvi. 25 ; Genu, trans.
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND MODERN HUMANITY. 49 
 
 Christ's special work, that the doctrines regarding God the 
 Father, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, did not 
 receive the attention and elucidation befitting them. The 
 creation was regarded in a partial manner from the view-point 
 of sin and corruption ; and the present life was considered too 
 exclusively as a preparation for that which is to come, whilst it 
 was overlooked, or at least not sufficiently brought forward, 
 that the present life can only in truth be a means for the future, 
 when it is at the same time an object in itself, when life in this 
 state of existence, which has been appointed for us by God, is 
 pursued seriously and with due interest. Doubtless it was set 
 forth in the teaching, that sin is not a constituent part of man's 
 being; that the creation, though disturbed by sin, is still God's 
 work, not the devil's. But these just assertions were not 
 carried out and applied with judgment, and perception con- 
 tinued blind to many phenomena in the natural life and soul of 
 man. A new perception was certainly awakened in the loth 
 and 16th centuries by what may be called the rediscovery of 
 Greece and Rome, and of their respective literatures. But what 
 was then awakened was again extinguished, especially in the 
 17th century, which not unjustly has been termed the Middle 
 Ages of the Protestant Church. The perception of the human 
 awoke first to an extent and with an intensity unknown before, 
 in the great intellectual revolution which took place in the 18th 
 century and still continues in our own. 
 
 This revolution had in many respects the character of an 
 emancipation from Christianity, and assumed a position towards 
 the Church partly hostile and partly indifferent ; in so far as 
 it is contemplated from the standpoint of emancipation, it 
 has received expression in Goethe's famous poem, Prometheus. 
 But although, on the whole, God had become to this race an 
 unknown God, as to the Athenians of old, yet there arose on 
 the spiritual horizon a kingdom of divine ideas in which the 
 human soul recognised its own essence, and which spread sucli 
 a dazzling brightness over this earthly existence, that the 
 present life now appeared to many as so sufficient, that they 
 felt no necessity for a future. The perception of the beautiful 
 was developed by great poets and great artists, and it was dis- 
 covered that there is an enjoyment in the beauties of nature 
 and in the productions of art which has its value, though it is 
 
 D
 
 50 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 not religious. The idea of the Good, of the moral, was interpreted 
 and set forth by men of genius, and it was announced that there 
 is a morality, a consciousness of free-will and submission to the 
 requirements of law and of the ideal, which claims respect 
 although not bearing the stamp of Christianity, The joys and 
 sorrows of the human heart, its secret workings and experiences, 
 the genuine human struggle for life's ideals, were all depicted 
 by poets, and powerfully influenced society. The characteristics 
 of the universal human were scrutinized ; human nature in all 
 ages, under every clime, of every creed, was investigated ; and 
 by the magic lamp of genius were conjured forth from the. 
 realm of shadows, the gods both of the north and south, the 
 Teutons and the Greeks, that these, the natural ideals of human 
 life, might stand in spiritual presence. History was recognised 
 more and more as human history, and along with this historic 
 perception, and as the result of the exigencies of the times and 
 the political revolutions, in which a new political Prometheus 
 was at last chained to the rock of St. Helena, the spirit of 
 nationality, the love of fatherland, awoke. Through philosophy 
 the idea of the True was revived ; human self-consciousness 
 became the test and touchstone of truth in opposition to mere 
 authority ; men became absorbed in the nature and essence of 
 the Ego and self-consciousness, — they searched into the laws of 
 thought and of existence, — they attempted the solution of the 
 great problem of life, and the discovery of this was announced 
 with enthusiasm. Now it certainly may be justly asserted, 
 that much of this was obtained in the Promethean way, and 
 that Christian salvation is not within its range. But because 
 salvation is not found within it, it does not by any means 
 follow that there exist between them no points of contact. It 
 may be said that the whole of this realm of humanity lacks the 
 highest Good because it lacks God. But because a generation 
 lacks the highest good, it does not necessarily follow that it may 
 not possess a relative good. It may be said that the whole of 
 this modern faith in progress and civilisation has within itself 
 an unreconciled contradiction, and that all is vanity ; which is 
 more clearly shown in the fact, that what began so radiantly 
 ended in the materialism of the present day and in prosaic 
 efforts in the service of Mammon, whilst the moral condition 
 in so many various fashions has been undermined. It may be
 
 CHKISTIAN ETHICS AND MODERN HUMANITY. 51 
 
 said, aud for our own part we propose to say it at greater length, 
 that not optimism but pessimism is the view of life suited to 
 the man of intellect who is without God and without Christ in 
 the world. But before we can honestly designate the matters 
 above described as vanity, we must first have appreciated their 
 beauty. The same holds good with the maxim, that all is 
 vanity, as with the declaration of Socrates, that he knew 
 nothing. Such an admission from the lips of an ignorant man 
 would possess little interest or significance ; it only receives im- 
 portance when uttered by a sage, who declares his knowledge to 
 be nothing in comparison to another and higher wisdom ; which 
 was precisely the case with Socrates, who, although in posses- 
 sion of the profoundest erudition of his age, yet confessed him- 
 self ignorant in relation to the higher wisdom of which he was in 
 search. Thus is it also with the maxim, that all is vanity. If it 
 is merely expressed concerning that which in itself is emptiness 
 and illusion, folly and frivolity, the saying is trite and pointless. 
 It only receives its just, its tragic significance, when it is ex- 
 pressed concerning that which in truth is a reality, an actual 
 object of glory in the world, but which in relation to the 
 highest Reality, or God, from whom it has been separated and 
 torn loose, appears only as vanity. But that there is reality in 
 this world, that the kingdoms of this world and the glory of 
 them are not mere vanity and emptiness, is made evident not by 
 pagan writers alone, as in the fable of Prometheus. That which 
 is stolen from heaven is not the empty and the unreal, not foam 
 and vapour, however it may afterwards change into a torment 
 for him who was guilty of the robbery. No, the gospel itself 
 represents it under a beautiful and familiar image, to which we 
 have already referred. It compares the kingdom of heaven to 
 a merchant seeking goodly pearls ; who, when he had found one 
 pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had aud bought 
 that pearl. These possessions which he sold were not mere 
 counters and old rags, but had an intrinsic value, a real worth. 
 Christianity thus ascribes to fallen man in a sinful condition, 
 possessions, wealth, opulence, nay, glory. It is this which the 
 older orthodoxy and the pietistic school ignored, whilst they too 
 frequently represented man in a state of sin as a beggar, stript 
 of every spiritual dignity, and honest and upright only in the 
 very narrowest sense of the term. And how often we still find
 
 52 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 that many good people are too rash in their exclamation, '' All 
 is vanity ! " — for example in philosophy, before they have yet 
 learned to understand the reality which is found there, for 
 which reason their complaint itself becomes vanity and empti- 
 ness. Modern civilisation and progress are, indeed, to each one 
 capable of appreciating them, eminent evidences of the power 
 and wealth which humanity possesses outside of Christianity 
 and the sphere of religion. When it is now said that we ought 
 to exchange everything for the one pearl, that we should 
 forsake all things and follow Christ, this is only one side of the 
 matter. We should forsake worldly-mindedness, and that 
 worldly contemplation of things which considers earthly blessings 
 as the ultimate and the hio;hest. But the other side of the 
 matter is described in the Redeemer's words : "Every one that 
 hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or 
 mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall 
 receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life" 
 (Matt. xix. 29). If we give up these worldly realities for 
 Christ's sake, we shall receive them again in a higher sense ; 
 they shall be restored to us in a higher connection, not merely 
 of contemplation, but of life, so that we know, feel, and ex- 
 perience all these blessings in their true position towards that 
 One who is their living centre, and take our own position 
 relative to the relative, and absolute to the absolute. Nothing 
 of that which belongs to genuine human nature shall be lost, 
 but human life must move around another centre, namely, 
 God, whilst previously it only moved around itself. The task 
 which modern civilisation sets us, we may therefore compare 
 with that which the reformers had to accomplish in regard to 
 the classic humanity of their day, since the relation which they 
 assumicd to it Avas not merely critical and judicial, but also 
 appropriative and developing. 
 
 THE DIVISIONS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 §15. 
 
 The Good, as the subject of ethics, presents itself to our 
 observation, as has been already remarked, under a threefold
 
 THE DIVISIONS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 53 
 
 point of view. Partly as tlie kingdom of God in its perfection, 
 the highest object of our effort ; partly as the personal perfec- 
 tion of the individual, which developes itself in imitation of 
 Christ (virtue) ; partly as the law of God, God's demand on 
 our will (duty). The question then arises, which decides the 
 •whole plan of the system : In what order of sequence are these 
 subjects to be handled? should we first treat of the ethical 
 doctrine of the kingdom of God and human society (the 
 Family, the State, the Church), next the doctrine of the imita- 
 tion of Christ, and lastly the doctrine of law and duty, or take 
 these subjects in the reverse order? There are opposite opinions 
 on this matter, and it is notorious that the most famous writers 
 on ethics of the present day, Schleiermacher, in his treatise on 
 Fhilosophic Ethics, and Rothe, in his work on Theological Ethics^ 
 both demand that the commencement shall be made from the 
 consideration of the highest Good, as the principal and most 
 perfect conception, wdiich requirement must be fulfilled by a 
 thorough examination of the principles on which society is 
 founded ; and when this has been made clear, then first may the 
 consideration of virtue and duty be fitly introduced. Others 
 again recommend the opposite course, that law is the proper 
 subject to take first; since they maintain that the subjective 
 factor in the Good, especially individuality and disposition 
 of mind, do not get their proper position when the subject is 
 commenced by the consideration of ethics in its totality ; that 
 this objective mode of representation is better suited to the 
 ancient teaching of ethics than to the Christian ; that it is 
 a hazardous matter thus to place the subjective, individual side 
 in the shade ; and that it does not answer to shift the law from 
 its just position, since this is the rock of moral teaching, which 
 reaches down to its deepest basis. They point also to the 
 apprehension of our Protestant Church with regard to law and 
 gospel, which requires that we begin with the law, as school- 
 master to bring us to Christ.^ We, for our own part, acknow- 
 ledge the weight which must be laid on this last consideration, 
 and agree entirely in the opinion that it is not judicious to 
 begin with a compendium of social doctrine, which is more 
 
 * Schmid, Christian Moral Teaching ; Palmer, The Morality of Christianitij. 
 In my Sketches of a Sijstem of Moral Philosophy the commencement is like- 
 wise made with law.
 
 54 ON THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 befitting for ancient ethics than for that of Christianity. Not 
 tlie less do we acknowledfje that those who desire to befrin witli 
 the highest Good, or the ultimate object of life, maintain a point 
 of view which is likewise perfectly justifiable, although in our 
 opinion it should be employed in a different manner, and 
 within other limits, so that to us the point in dispute does not 
 assume the form of either — or, but rather of likewise — also. 
 
 In the treatment of ethics there are two interests at stake 
 requiring satisfaction, one pre-eminently theoretic or contem- 
 plative as applied to principles, and the other pre-eminently 
 practical as applied to the concrete forms of existence of the 
 moral. This twofold interest can, in our opinion, only be 
 properly treated by a twofold representation, by means of a 
 twofold range of ideas, each of which has its predominant 
 point of view, so that the fundamental ideals of each will be 
 treated in reverse order to that of the other. When we speak 
 here of a contrast between the contemplative and the practical, 
 it must be constantly borne in mind that we regard this differ- 
 ence as merely relative, and that it is a difference inside the 
 practical, since the whole of ethics is practical. 
 
 The contemplative interest is pre-eminently applied to the 
 objective and vmiversal, to fundamental ethical concepts, in so 
 far as they are principles for the moral world, in which both 
 the individual and society are moments. This interest demands 
 an ethical view of the world in its main outline. But if it 
 require this view of the world, that is to say, a knowledge of 
 the moral world according to its final aim, and also according 
 to the moving power and norm of its free movements, then the 
 highest Good, which is the object of movement, the kingdom of 
 God in its fulness, must be the concept from which we set out ; 
 for this is the determining idea which casts its light over the 
 moral world and moral effort, and without this all the other 
 elements are in darkness or in twilight. The ethical view of 
 the world must lead us to understand the real condition of the 
 world, to appreciate human efforts, to fix the value or the 
 worthlessness of human things. Therefore in setting forth 
 these doctrines, the representation must begin with the abso- 
 lutely perfect, in which we have the scale of measurement. 
 But this we do not require to search for, in so far as we stand 
 on the view-point of Christianityj where it is already given us.
 
 THE DIVISIONS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 55 
 
 The representation of the view of the world and of life in 
 accordance with Christianity, must therefore begin eschatologi- 
 cally, must begin at the end, and proceed retrogressively, or 
 backwards to that which in the order of development is the 
 beginning. That now an exhibition of the world which con- 
 tains the key to the comprehension of history and of the 
 present time (although it is not one with the philosophy of 
 history, which has a far wider compass) has a valid claim on 
 ethics, seems to us beyond all doubt. Whence comes it that 
 so many delineations of ethics, excellent in essential points, are 
 yet on the whole so unsatisfactory ? Is it not because both 
 individual and social ethics stand isolated from the background 
 of the world's life, without connection with history and existence 
 as a whole ; that they show us so little concerning the course 
 of the world, concerning principles and powers which closely 
 suri'ound us and exert a co-operative influence on the whole of 
 our moral development, and just on this account should be 
 brought into consciousness by ethics ? The more strongly the 
 question is agitated in our day, of the relation between the 
 Christian and the human, the more fiercely the contest rages 
 between opposite views of the world and of life, the more 
 necessary does it become that ethics should not shrink from the 
 duty incumbent upon it. In the midst of the ethical system to 
 insert a single paragraph about the ethical view of the world is 
 obviously insufficient. It demands a special and independent 
 representation, which however is not the whole of ethics. It 
 confines itself to the general determining ideas, the ethical 
 universalia, which penetrate and enlighten the whole of the 
 moral world in its concrete forms. Thus far, however, it 
 embraces also the individual, the single personality ; for the 
 moral kingdom is indeed a kingdom of personalities, and the 
 principle of personality the all-governing principle; on this very 
 account it remains not a mere conception of the world, but 
 becomes also a conception of life. For in so far as thei'e is 
 difference between them, the conception of life is the same, seen 
 from the view-point of the individual, as the conception of the 
 ■world is from that of totality. Only the representation referred 
 to always limits itself to the general, to the development of the 
 ethical principles of the world, to the principles and norms of 
 life, which yet by no means are the abstract general, just
 
 5{> 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'^/<i" which has to be fulfilled by a temporal 
 development and effort ; He is not tempted by evil ; His will 
 cannot be altered like that of a man, it is unchangeable, the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. This thought not merely 
 calls us to humility, but at the same time breathes into us hope 
 and consolation. For under the disquietude of life, under the 
 great contrast between the ideal and the real, how tranquilliz- 
 ing the consideration, that there is One who is good ; — that 
 above all the confusion of the world, above the fickle and 
 changing will of man, above folly and sin and misery, there 
 yet exists a wull essentially good, to which belongs power and 
 dominion, a will in itself holy, which throughout all earthly 
 changes and vicissitudes remains the same, throughout eternity 
 maintains fidelity towards itself, neither deceives nor denies 
 itself ! Not because we believe in omnipotence, but because 
 
 1 We refer here to Dorner's striking and able treatise " On the Un- 
 changcableness of God." Yem-look of Thcolo(/y, vol. iii. p. 623 and 
 onwards.
 
 THE ETUICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. 65 
 
 we believe in the Good wliicli lias omnipotence for its minister, 
 can we rest confident that the Good at last shall reign vic- 
 torious. To believe in the Good not as a personal, but only 
 as an impersonal idea, is an incomplete faith. For then it 
 is only we who must realize the idea, and the Good then re- 
 mains a personal question only. But that the good, the 
 hio-hest all-embracing idea, the unconditionally excellent, 
 which assigns its place to everything in existence, to which 
 everything else is subordinate and nothing co-ordinate, that 
 this should be only an unsettled question, and never exist in 
 perfect fulfilment, is to place a contradiction in the highest 
 itself. For the Good is an idea which is not, like abstract 
 truths, indifferent to realization, or that can be satisfied with a 
 partial realization ; but, on the contrary, it demands a realiza- 
 tion which is in all respects complete. But complete realiza- 
 tion of the Good can only be accomplished in a perfectly good 
 will. And it is a deeply-rooted belief in the heart of man, 
 that however much the human will may shift and veer in 
 inconstancy, " there is yet one God, there exists yet one hoi} 
 Will." 
 
 §18. 
 
 But God is not merely perfect freedom, but also perfect 
 love. Love is only present where a being might indeed exist 
 for itself, and yet in unfettered devotion and sympathy desires 
 to exist in and for others. Now it is essential to the concep- 
 tion of personality not to be alone, not to be solitary, but to 
 institute association with other personalities. And the divine 
 personality has created a world of personality, in order to fill it 
 with His fulness. Plato had already said that the Good is not 
 merely in itself complete, but that it is disposed to impart ; that 
 its most obvious emblem is the sun, which not merely makes 
 things visible, but also bestows on them life and warmth and 
 growth ; that the Good is something higher than knowledge, 
 something higher than existence, but that it communicates all 
 this to us, and makes us participant in itself. (Plato on the 
 State^ sixth and seventh books). From the standpoint of the 
 natural world, he has here given us a glimpse of that mystery 
 which is only perfectly revealed in Christ. For in order that 
 we may be able to speak of the love of God, it is indispensably 
 
 E
 
 GQ THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 necessary that this love has communicated itself to ns. The 
 personal God cannot be perceived a priori, but must Himself 
 come forward to meet us. And as He has revealed Himself to 
 us, so ought we to receive Him, and only by His own Spirit 
 seek to understand and conceive the things which God has pre- 
 pared for us (1 Cor. ii. 9). 
 
 §19. 
 
 That holy love is the principle and eternal source of the 
 world, the principle not merely of a spiritual world but of a 
 material v/orld, which exhibits to us entire contrast to the 
 ethical, would be inconceivable, if the holy will of love were 
 not at the same time the will of perfect Avisdom, which is able 
 to manifest itself through a teleologic system of aims and 
 means. And it would likewise be inconceivable if the holy 
 will of love were not also that of poiver unlimited, if a ph}/sical 
 omnipotence did not stand at the bidding of love. In other 
 words, the ethical or the love, which is the essence of God's 
 nature, must have the logical and the physical intelligence and 
 power as its potencies. The three principles to which all reflec- 
 tion on existence returns as being the ultimate, — the physical, 
 the logical, and the ethical, — must in the unity of the divine will 
 be eternally imited as one indissoluble life (^ew^ aKaTaXvTO<i), 
 in which there is a relation of supremacy and of subordination, 
 so that the ethical or love is the subject, the others its predi- 
 cates. It is this which, already with the most perfect clearness, 
 is seen in the first article of the Christian faith : belief in God 
 the Father, Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. For here 
 it is expressly said, that God, as Creator, is the unity of 
 love and power ; and if it is not also expressly said, it is un- 
 doubtedly implied, that almighty love creates with wisdom, that 
 is to say, teleologically, or with certain ends in view. The 
 Christian ethical concept of God is here already in the first 
 article of the creed exhibited in the contrast of its principle to 
 that of paganism, to which the idea of a free creating-God is 
 alien. For either the pagan thought apprehends God as un- 
 conscious nature, which from an eternal germ (a nucleus of the 
 universe) has developed itself through the lower forms of exist- 
 ence to the higher ; or, as has been the case with deeper 
 thinkers, it remains fixed in a dualism between mind and matter,
 
 THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. 67 
 
 between the ethical and the physical. But in both cases the 
 ethical does not receive justice, cannot be determined as in itself 
 jDerfect, and maintains an oppressed existence. 
 
 This is most clearly seen in Plato, just because he, more than 
 any other of the thinkers of paganism, philosophizes in the 
 direction of the ethical concept of God, and remains a witness 
 of its validity, although he only very imperfectly possesses it. 
 For he certainly places the idea of the Good foremost in the 
 realm of ideas, and subordinates all others to it. He certainly 
 acknowledges God and the Good as one ; he designates God as 
 the Father of the Universe, whilst he further adds that it is 
 difficult to find Him, and difficult to make Him known to others 
 when Ave have found Him ; again he says that the Good is self- 
 imparting. But independent of God and outside of Him, 
 whilst like Him eternal, Plato holds that there is a physical 
 essence or chaos, an unformed matter (hyle), as a resisting 
 object for the divine energy. In this matter, from which all 
 the evil in the world is generated as from its ultimate source, 
 God fashions His ideas of the Good, and reveals Himself therein, 
 not as the almighty Creator, but as an artist, an artificer of 
 worlds, a Demiurge. In His demiurgic, constructing, moulding, 
 forming energy, God can only by degrees overcome this prin- 
 ciple, which is not merely ungodly, but opposed to divinity, and 
 is never altogether vanquished. There always remains behind 
 something unconquerable, and incessant must be the struggle 
 betvt^een the divine and the dim hyle, the blind necessity of 
 nature. Nay, in the Thecetetos of Plato, Socrates says ex- 
 pressly, that evil can never be completely overthrown, because 
 there is a necessity (avdyKr)) that there should always be some- 
 thing which is opposed to the Good. That this dualism must 
 have had a powerful influence on the Hellenist's ethical view 
 of the world and of life, may be readily perceived. It is this 
 which spreads a veil of melancholy over the world of sense, 
 brings the thinker to contemplate the body as the soul's prison, 
 the great aim of the wise man to die to the lower sphere of 
 being, and prompts him to prefer the contemplative life to the 
 practical, because that in contemplation we may live in the un- 
 disturbed consideration of mere ideas. 
 
 In opposition to this dualism. Christian teachers have from 
 the beginning maintained that God is the unity of love and
 
 68 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 almiglity power, whilst they also opposed the notion of a mate- 
 rial existence independent of God and antagonistic to Him, by 
 the significant assertion, that God created the Avorld out of 
 nothing. But it is in contrast to the declaration that there was 
 matter independent of God and existing before Him, that this 
 formula must be understood. The nothing out of which God 
 created the world was not, as has been frequently imagined, the 
 absolute nothing, for from it proceeds notliing but the relative 
 nothing. The relative nothing is not that which in no sense 
 of the word exists, but that which, in relation to a higher abso- 
 lute existence, is to be considered and described as a non- 
 existent. The non-existents out of which God has created the 
 world are His eternal possibilities, which are not only logical, 
 but also physical. In these He has both the material whereof 
 He frames the world, and the means and instruments by wdiich 
 He produces them. And we thus take the words of the 
 apostle literally, when he says : " All things are of God " 
 (Rom. xi. 36). 
 
 Whilst thinkers, both in ancient and modern times (J. 
 Bohme, Oetinger, Baader, Schelling, Rothe, and many others), 
 have spoken of an eternal nature or corporeity in God ; and 
 while this conception is ever gaining ground in modern the- 
 ology and the philosophy of religion, yet certainly great errors 
 have often been associated with it. Yet the admission of an 
 eternal nature in God is inseparable from the ethical concept 
 of God ; for only as lord over nature can mind and free-will 
 fully manifest their energy. But it certainly depends on tJce 
 manner in which the relation between the eternal nature and 
 the divine personality is determined, whether we suppose the 
 personality to develope itself from nature as from an obscure 
 cause, over which it gradually acquires the mastery, and thus 
 subject God to a temporal process (as with the earlier Schel- 
 ling) ; or, if we regard the nature in God as appertaining to 
 the eternal, self-conscious love as ministering potency for it. 
 This last is our opinion, which may also be expressed thus, that 
 almighty power from eternity belongs to love as its minister. 
 But the concept of omnipotence cannot be carried through 
 without the concept of an eternal nature. Only let us not 
 blend in confusion the ideas of nature and of matter. Nature 
 is the living impersonal, which is the opposite of mind and idea;
 
 THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. 09 
 
 but is exclusively appointed to be means, organ, instrument 
 for mind and idea, and in its normal condition is exclusively 
 determined by these. Matter is also impersonal, but thrust 
 out from union with the spirit, unpenetrated by it, and resist- 
 ing it. To speak of a nature in God, is therefore not at all the 
 same thing as to speak of a material substance in God. But 
 if the concept of God's omnipotence be carefully considered, 
 it is difficult to perceive how the idea of the eternity of nature 
 can be excluded. If God is really to be apprehended as the 
 absolute will-power, which is a moment in the eternal will of 
 love, then He must also have a dominium, a universe of real 
 forces over which to reign. It is certainly quite true that 
 God created all thincrs bv His word (in regard to which it 
 must be remarked, that the word itself contains the idea of 
 soul and body, and that when we name " the word," we already 
 pass beyond the purely spiritual and ideal) ; and it stands 
 written : " He spake, and it was was done; He commanded, and 
 it stood fast." But this does not prevent that the power of 
 His will, His sovereign will from eternity, must have had legions 
 of forces at command, which come when He bids, and execute 
 what He wills. The Holy Scriptures themselves lead our 
 thoughts in this direction. For when they speak of an eter- 
 nal pleroma, an infinite fulness in God, this idea can only be 
 perfectly comprehended when we grasp not merely a fulness of 
 idea or thought, but also an eternal fulness of power, a totality 
 of physical but supermaterial forces. And as we cannot do 
 otherwise than represent to ourselves this fulness as embracing 
 an infinite variety of powers which are penetrated and 
 enlightened by divine wisdom, it is inadequate, along with some 
 of the ancients, to depict the eternal nature in God as a roar- 
 ing sea, a limitless ocean, as it, on the contrary, being en- 
 lightened by wisdom, must be viewed as a system or as an 
 organization of living forces, which as such is the basis and 
 presupposition of the created world, to which it bears both 
 immanent and transcendent relation. However little the dis- 
 course may here be of concrete conceptions, however fully it 
 may, moreover, be admitted that here we can rather touch on 
 the matter than embrace it, still we are brought back to this 
 theory, if we seriously consent to the oft repeated assertion, 
 that omnipotence is not merely an ideal but a physical (natural
 
 70 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 and essential) attribute of God, and reflect tliat the power of 
 God, of which we so often speak, must include an infinity of 
 power. Materialism and naturalism will always hold their 
 ground in the assertion, that from the mere naked idea, there 
 could never issue a corporeal universum ; that those mighty 
 spheres which roll in heaven's broad arch, the mountains on 
 earth's surface, as the Alps and the Dovrefjelde, could not 
 be brought forth by mere thought or by a will without the 
 producing power, which to God here stands in place of mo.teria 
 prima, and yet were something entirely different from the 
 bare thought or will. If we are then to preserve the ethical 
 conception of God, there appears to be only the choice between 
 a superniaterial nature, physis in God, from whose infinite 
 potentiality all these things may proceed, whenever the divine 
 will commands it, and His plan of creation requires it — or a 
 dualism like that of Plato, which supposes a body of matter 
 equally eternal with God, which gradually, by the power of 
 ideas, became moulded into organic forms, a representation 
 by which the ethical always remains hampered with an 
 impotency. 
 
 That God is not spirit without nature, is testified by the Holy 
 Scriptures on every page. The Scripture knows only the 
 livina;; God. But the living God we cannot imamne otherwise 
 than in relation to nature eternally subordinate to Him. And 
 when the Scriptures speak of God as an indissoluble life 
 (Heb. vii.), we cannot conceive this except as the indissoluble 
 unity of the contrasts of life, of which we only know the 
 contrast between mind and nature, the ethical and the physical. 
 Those portions of Scripture which represent the living God as 
 actively engaged in the concerns of the world, speak of Him 
 throughout in anthropomorphisms. But the truth of the 
 religious anthropomorphism rests upon the nature in God. 
 Earnest piety at the present day will not dispute that God has 
 eyes and ears, hands and feet, " an arm which is not shortened," 
 and will never cease to seek for His finger in the great events 
 of the world, and in the lives of individuals. For although the 
 figurative, the symbolical, is perceived and acknowledged in 
 such descriptions, although everything belonging to the limited 
 condition of the creature must be kept far removed from our 
 idea of God ; yet still it must be maintained, that to all this
 
 THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. 71 
 
 there must be something in God which really corresponds, in 
 other words, that God must have organs of manifestation, in- 
 struments of action. It was this idea which must have hovered 
 before Tertulhan when he ascribed a body to God. " Who 
 will deny," says he, "that God, though He is mind, is also 
 body ? " Nay, he maintains that there is nothing which is in- 
 corporeal, except that which is not ; by which he makes the 
 body an inseparable condition of existence. Although Ter- 
 tullian gave great offence by this assertion, yet his meaning in 
 it was perfectly orthodox, — namely, that God ought not to be 
 conceived as mind without nature, that God must have an 
 organism corresponding to His supermundane existence.^ The 
 Holy Scriptures speak further of God in anthropopathic repre- 
 sentations, ascribing to God human feelings. But to this repre- 
 sentation also we must deny all truth if God is only abstract 
 mind, if there is nothing in God corresponding to that which we 
 call soul in man, which again is not conceivable without an 
 organism. We hold by the belief in the God who has a heart to 
 compassionate our misery ; and when Christ says, " He that hath 
 seen me hath seen the Father," we receive it as perfect truth that 
 such is the appearance of the Father. And what does the figura- 
 tive language of the Scriptures become for us if an idealism and 
 a spiritualism wholly destitute of nature are to be accepted? Not 
 only when the Scriptures speak in parables, but when using 
 plain and literal language, all the most important expressions 
 concerning God and divine things are never abstract-spiritual, 
 but always a union of the spiritual, the ethical, and the physi- 
 cal, which is particularly noticeable in the writings of John, 
 where we find so much reference to the loord, life and light^ 
 death and darkness. We must acknowledo-e that old Oetincrer 
 is in the right when he requires that we shall not by a hollow 
 spirituahzing weaken the force of Scripture and make everything 
 thin and airy, but that we should in a much greater degree 
 than is usual understand the Bible physice, and strive after far 
 more solid and substantial conceptions regarding it. The 
 standpoint of the inspired writers is a spiritual realism alike 
 removed from both spiritualism and materialism, which are 
 continually at war with each other, each constantly obstructing 
 
 1 Tertulliani Advers. Praxeavi, cap. 7 ; De came Christi, cap. 11. Rothe, 
 
 TJieol. Ethik, i. 127. Hambcrger, Plnjsica Sacra.
 
 72 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 the other's progress and success. According to an old metaphor, 
 this airy idealism may be represented as a timid courser rearing 
 at sight of materiaUsm, which lies like an immense block of 
 wood or stone across the higliway. 
 
 The fundamental importance to ethics of what Is here set 
 forth is obvious. Whilst the dualism of Plato brings alonsj 
 with it a contempt for the body, which was considered as 
 the prison of the soul, and incites the thinker to die to the 
 world of sense and turn back to the world of the purely ideal 
 and incorporeal, to the Christian view the visible and bodily 
 world — though at the present time subject to corruption — 
 presents nothing in itself hostile to the spirit, but, on the con- 
 trary, in its normal condition, its true essence, it is the exterior 
 of the spirit and its ready instrument. Tiie highest spirituality 
 is not that which has thrust away from itself all recognition of 
 the visible and bodily, but that whose superior purity and per- 
 fection clothes itself in the bodily, penetrating and enlightening 
 it. The characteristic mark of Christianity is just this, that it 
 is at once the most spiritual of all religions, and nevertheless 
 before all other religions holds the body and the bodily world 
 in high respect. For " the Word became flesh and dwelt among 
 us ; " our bodies are appointed to be the temples of the Holy 
 Spirit ; we look for the resurrection of the body, and with it a 
 new heaven and a new earth : " the end of God's ways is cor- 
 poreity." If in our day the opponents of Christianity speak of 
 it as a spiritualism antagonistic to nature, which fixes a yawning 
 gulf between soul and body, this attack can only prevail 
 against those partially Platonic tendencies which have crept 
 into Christian speculation, or those one-sided ascetic fallacies 
 which were generated in the cloisters of the middle ages ; but 
 it does not strike at Christianity itself. Wlienever Christianity 
 is characterized as abstract spiritualism and dualism, such a 
 description must be declared to rest on indefensible miscon- 
 ception. 
 
 §20. 
 
 God as eternal love is designated in the first article of the 
 creed, the Father, Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, who 
 brought forth the world in order to manifest Himself to it. 
 In the second article He is designated the Son, the Word, who
 
 THE ETHICAL CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD THE ALONE GOOD. 73 
 
 became flesh and dwelt among us as the Saviour of the world ; 
 and in the third as the Holy and Sanctifying Spirit, the per- 
 vading and governing principle of a realm of spirits, but the 
 ultimate perfection of which is glorified corporeity. As Father, 
 Son, and Spirit, as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, God 
 reveals Himself as the perfect manifester of His character. 
 Though our Christian consciousness may only know one God, one 
 eternal Being of love, still we are conscious of the One in Three, 
 and in a threefold manner we address our worship to the One: 
 to the Father, who reigns over us; to the Son, who came down to 
 our world, where He comes to meet with us ; to the Spirit, who 
 works in our inmost soul. The simple faith in Father, Son, 
 and Spirit, which is expressed in the apostolic symbol, has found 
 its wider develonment in the teaching; of the Church re£!;ardin£r 
 the Trinity, and in dogmatic treatises. We here limit ourselves 
 to point out the importance which faith in the triune God has 
 for ethics. 
 
 The admission that God is love leads us necessarilv from 
 God's revelation in the world back to His internal revelation of 
 Himself, or to the inner life of love which God lives within 
 Himself. Whatever definition we may give to love, we must 
 always determine it as a relation between person and person, I 
 and thou, a relation of the closest reciprocity, since love can 
 only be satisfied by love. But if love is really God's eternal 
 essence, then God must also from eternity have possessed a 
 perfect object for His love, and the world cannot be its first 
 and essential object. That is to say, if we suppose that God 
 has no other object for His love than the world, then the exist- 
 ence of the world becomes as necessary as that of God, and 
 creation was then only a necessary requirement of God's nature 
 to produce His complement. His other Ego, namely personal 
 creation. Then there was a time when the love of God was 
 without its object, only possessing it in thought, in possibility ; 
 for the kingdom of God, in which God loving is beloved, has 
 first come forth in the fulness of time, and that point of time 
 still lies in the dim distance, when the kingdom of God shall be 
 perfected and God be all in all. Moreover God must then 
 have required creation for the perfection of His own existence 
 in the relation of love. But God can only be independent of 
 the world if He also without the world and before the world
 
 74 THE THEOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 lived iu the fulness of love, and not merely in longing for the 
 grateful love of His creatures, — a longing which would not 
 differ from a passion, an effort to penetrate through intermin- 
 able obstacles and restraints. God's love to the world is only 
 then pure and unmixed holy affection, when God, whilst He is 
 sufficient to Himself and in need of notJdng, out of infinite grace 
 and mercy calls forth life and liberty beyond His own being, 
 spontaneously submits Himself to a relation of reciprocity 
 between Himself and His creation, and thereby enters into the 
 contrasts of time, nay, in Christ devotes Himself to self- 
 humiliation and suffering in order to found a Idnsdom of OTace 
 and salvation. But this free power of love in the relations of 
 God towards the world presupposes the existence of perfect 
 love, or of love realized within itself the love of the Father and 
 the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is this which 
 forms the proper substance of the Christian doctrine of the 
 Trinity, and gives to it its greatest importance, that God has 
 within His being personal diversities and inward threefold 
 relation of love to Himself, by which also God's relation to His 
 inner mind and will is determined in a threefold manner. 
 (See the Doctrine of the Trinity in the author's treatise on 
 Dogmatics.) Whichever then of the different dogmatic solu- 
 tions of this mystery we may receive, the practical side of the 
 matter is this, that God must have in Himself the eternal and 
 perfect object of His love, must live in Himself a perfectly 
 satisfied life of love- 
 Faith iu the triune God, or, in otlier words, faith in the 
 eternal love as that which not merely at a far distant period 
 shall be realized, or even as an infinite requirement, but as that 
 which is realized in itself, from eternity satisfied and enjoying 
 its own bliss, is the basis of the Christian ethical view of the 
 world, w'hich must proceed from the perfection of Good in God, 
 and cannot be content that God from the beninniniT be con- 
 sidered as existing in the contrast between the ideal and the 
 actual. The representation of the realm of the Good or the 
 kingdom of God, which appears in history as the growing king- 
 dom of love, loses its ethical character and becomes the repre- 
 sentation of a process, necessary even for God, in which He is 
 dependent on man, if as postulate for this ideal, which is to be 
 realized in history, it has not already the eternally realized
 
 MAN FORMED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 75 
 
 ideal, that is to say, the eternal and prototypical realization of 
 love. If therefore Christian doo;maties had not asserted and 
 developed the doctrine of the Trinity, ethics must postulate it 
 in its own interests. 
 
 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 MAN FORMED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. MAN AS A CREATURE 
 POSSESSED OF SOUL AND BODY. 
 
 §21. 
 
 The object of creation cannot be an impersonal nature or 
 universe, which could never satisfy the perfect spirit, but could 
 only be a realm of free-will and of love conceived in its highest 
 perfection. Therefore God created man in His image. " We 
 are God's offspring " (Acts xviii.). These words could not be 
 said of any mere natural creature, but only of the personal 
 creature that calls itself Ego, and is thereby not merely a 
 member of nature, but belongs to the realm of self-conscious- 
 ness and self-government. Whilst the mere creatures of nature 
 move in the circle of nature, man has a Idstory : not only does 
 he live in the present, but also in the past and in the future ; he 
 can go back to the first beginning of things, and can turn his 
 glance towards the infinitely distant horizon whither the aim 
 of his life beckons him. But the idea of personality is in- 
 separable from that of society and of love ; and the personality 
 of mankind is appointed to develope itself into a realm of love, 
 where God, who is love, must be loved in all persons and all 
 things. Man's formation in the image of God must therefore 
 be more closely defined as his fitness for God's kingdom. For 
 the kingdom of God is wherever God is acknowledged, 
 obeyed, and loved by His creatures, and where the creatures 
 love one another in God, where God thus reigns not merely 
 Has power, but by His holiness and love. But in order
 
 76 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 that God's kingdom may really be the kingdom of free love, 
 and also of free devotion and obedience, it is necessary that 
 man should possess a relative independence towards God ; he 
 must, in a certain relative signification of the term, have a 
 kingdom of his own ; he must in a certain sense be master, so 
 that he may in truth become the servant of God. In virtue 
 of his participation in the divine idea, or the eternal thought 
 of wisdom, in virtue of the inherency of reflection and law in 
 his consciousness, he has also the power to build up a realm of 
 morality in relative independence on religion, or his relation to 
 God. By reason of this twofold character in the destiny of 
 man, the great human community divides itself into a multi- 
 tude of circles, which must be separated into their proper 
 relations to each other, of superiority and inferiority. Pluman 
 society must appear as civilised society, since man is destined 
 to employ nature, whether within himself or external to him, 
 as the implements and symbols of the mind: it must appear 
 as the society of mutual love between men, but at the same 
 time as the society of justice ; for whilst love binds men to 
 one another, the idea of justice requires the normal separation 
 of the social relations, so that every relation may be kept within 
 its proper limits. It must appear finally as religious society, 
 as the society of love in God, which must embrace and pene- 
 trate the circles designated above ; and to that last named the 
 others must be subjected in the relation of voluntary subordi- 
 nation. The unity of the kingdom of God and the kingdom 
 of man, conceived in its completeness, is the perfection of the 
 Good, and the fulfilled destiny of man. 
 
 §22. 
 
 It belongs to the idea of personality not merely to find Itself, 
 to be given to itself (to be self-conscious), but also to evolve 
 itself, by voluntary determination to bring its being into action. 
 Man can therefore only be created with endowments abundantly 
 fitting him for the possibility of the moral, but cannot be created 
 as a moral personality in the strict sense of the term, since he 
 himself must co-operate, certainly under divine guidance and 
 assistance, as fellow-worker with God in the perfecting of his 
 being. Moral personality, as that which has made itself what 
 it Is, therefore presupposes personality as that which Is itself
 
 MAN AS A CREATURE POSSESSED OF SOUL AND BODY. ( / 
 
 given. The consideration of the elements of human personality 
 as given, the complete rejoresentation of \Yhich belongs to anthro- 
 pology and psychology, is inseparable from the admission, that 
 they are destined to an entirely different development from 
 mere natural necessity. 
 
 As the creature foi'med in the imasje of God, man is a beincj 
 possessed of soul and body, a union of mind and nature, which 
 is not like the divine life indissoluble (Heb. vii.), but shall only 
 become an indissoluble life in a future, more perfect existence. 
 The mind is the portion of our being superior to sense, which 
 connects itself with the world of ideas and with God, and the 
 element of which is the general and universal ; it is the kingly 
 principle in man, which gives him the stamp of sovereignty, 
 and by means of which he exercises dominion over the earth, 
 and makes discoveries in arts and sciences. According to the 
 Greek pagan theory, the mind is the Promethean in man, re- 
 calling the memory of the stolen spark and the pride of man, 
 the principle which would set itself in the place of the gods, 
 and which is therefore hated of the gods. According to the 
 Christian theory, mind or spirit is given to man by '•' the Father 
 of spirits" (Heb. xii. 9). The body, which, according to 
 the expression of Scripture, is taken from the earth, is the 
 contrast of the mind or spirit, appointed to be its ministering 
 instrument. But the soul is the bond of union between mind 
 and body, and as the union of both, it is twofold, so that it has 
 at once a natural (physical) side — the seat of which, according 
 to Scripture, is in the blood — and an intellectual side. Through 
 the soul, the mind corresponds with the body, and the body 
 with the mind ; and between mind, soul, and body there is 
 constant mutual intercourse, of which every person may be 
 convinced by daily experience. The whole is a sort of living 
 circumvolution, " where the one incessantly locks into the other", 
 the one cannot slip the other, the one demands the other." ^ 
 But the central point is the soul, which is the most human thing 
 in man, or man himself. It is the soul, the immortality, the 
 bliss or the misery of which we principally discuss, which, 
 however, does not prevent us from contemplating the immor- 
 tality of mind and the resurrection of the body, but only as 
 
 ^ Schelling, On the Connection of Nature with the World of Spirits 
 (Clara). Works, i. 9, p. 46.
 
 78 TUE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 something secondary and consequent, •vvhicU must of necessity 
 accompany the immortality of the soul, because the soul requires 
 both as its moments, and if one of these were absent, could not 
 exist in perfection. It is by the qualities of soul that we 
 characterize the ethical personality ; and if we have said that 
 the mind is the kingly principle in man, it by no means follows 
 from this, that the highest which can be said of any man is that 
 he possesses mind, or is intellectual. For the highest destiny 
 of man is not his sovereign relation towards nature, but his 
 relation of love and service towards God and his neighbour, 
 which can only be accomplished in the soul ; and it is the per- 
 fection of the mind to combine with soul, by which, in truth, 
 it first becomes human. That this is so, becomes readily 
 observable from the various works of genius, of which those 
 which are destitute of soul or geniality of temper excite no 
 enthusiasm, however great their other excellences. It is the 
 soul that loves and is loved. For mere genius we have respect, 
 and bow before it ; but we find there no bosom whereon 
 to rest. In the soul, on the other hand, we can place confi- 
 dence, and for it we can conceive affection, and look for its 
 sympathy in return. For it is not like the mind, a purely ideal 
 essence, which is principally directed to theories and gene- 
 ralities ; it is, if we may use such an expression, divested of the 
 ideal stateliness, the abstract character, which is inseparable from 
 pure intellect developed in a one-sided direction. The soul can 
 sympathize both with the intellectual and what is apparent to 
 the senses, the heavenly and the earthly, the infinite and the 
 finite, because it is itself the marvellous central being which is 
 the union of both. And just on this account we feel drawn 
 towards it, and disposed to yield it our confidence. On this 
 account it was necessary that Clirist should have a human soul, 
 because only thus could He have sympathy with our infirmities 
 and draw us to Himself. Human souls destitute of mind cer- 
 tainly exhibit a fallen state of humanity, but the same holds 
 good of human intellect devoid of soul. When the Gnostics, 
 in olden times, divided mankind into three classes — the animal, 
 where the body was the predominant power ; the warm-hearted, 
 where the affections ruled ; and the intellectual, assigning the 
 liighest position to the last, — we can only admit this conclusion, 
 if by the word intellectual (pneumatic) we are to understand
 
 MAN AS A CREATURE POSSESSED OF SOUL AND BODY. 79 
 
 mind united to soul, and animating and elevating it ; but we 
 can by no means consent to receive as the most excellent among 
 mankind the unpractical, body-despising, and soul-ignoring 
 intellectual beings which the Gnostics describe. 
 
 As the faculties of the soul, we generally name perception, 
 sentiment, and will. But of these, icill has the first place. Our 
 will is emphatically our very self, our inmost being. If any 
 would object that the inmost part of our being is sentiment 
 or feeling, we reply, that all feelings, gladness and sorrow, 
 hope and fear, are affections of the will. And if any would 
 object that the Scriptures speak of the heart (or sentiment) as 
 the most essential part of the life of the soul (" Give me thy 
 heart ! "), and of good and evil thoughts as issuing from the 
 heart, we observe, that the heart is the will in its union with 
 sentiment, specially considered from the practical side. 
 
 The superiority of man's destiny to that of all other creatures, 
 his ethical destiny, displays itself not merely in his possession of 
 mind and soul, but also in his bodily frame. Not his upright 
 walk alone, but also the human countenance points him out as 
 the lord of nature, and as the being who has a divine mission 
 to execute on earth. Only in union with his body can man 
 utter loords, by which means he imparts what his own mind 
 and the mind of God communicate to him, and by which he 
 gives things names and takes them in possession. Among 
 those bodily organs which in an emphatic manner suggest 
 man's ethical destiny, we specially name the human hand. 
 For v/hilst the corresponding organs in the lower animals are 
 only adapted for the single purpose of giving support to the 
 body, or of assisting the beast to procure its prey and its food, 
 men's hands are not restricted to such a narrow circle of em- 
 ployment, but are fitted for a free, universal activity. By 
 means of his moulding, fashioning hand, man stamps his im- 
 press upon nature, and founds his sovereignty of civilisation. 
 By means of this implement of all implements, this instrument 
 of instruments, the use of which goes along with his upright 
 posture, he becomes the inventor of many arts. Therefore it 
 may be said with truth, that '' hands are far better than wings." 
 By furnishing man with hands the Creator has clearly indicated 
 it to be his destiny to develope his being by a series of actions 
 {HandUnger, literally hand- doings). For to act is to execute
 
 80 THE ANTHKOPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 plans and determinations. And thougli we may also speak of 
 inward acts, yet the action is only completely finished when the 
 purpose is executed in the outer world, Avhich is principally 
 achieved by means of the hand. With the hand man performs 
 alike his good and evil deeds, his acts of noblest heroism and 
 crimes of deepest dye. Thus he folds his hands in prayer in 
 token that in presence of God he disclaims all self-dependence 
 and self-dominion, and humbles himself under the hand of the 
 Most High. He bestows his blessing by the laying on of 
 hands, and gives his hand to his neighbour in pledge of amity 
 and good faith. Chiromancy, or the art of reading men's 
 characters and destinies by the shape and lines of their hands, 
 which thus declares the hand to be the man himself, may with 
 all reason be designated a fantastic delusion, which should be 
 left to gipsies. But it suggests, however, a correct conception 
 of the specially human importance of the hand, its importance 
 to the entire man. 
 
 TERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY. THE SOUL's RELATION 
 
 TO ITS ORGANISM. 
 
 §23. 
 
 Personality, as the universal human, appears in the form of 
 individuality. As a link in nature, and as a link in the world 
 of spirits, man developes himself into a human race, which is 
 subdivided bv the distinctions between men and women, families 
 
 •/ 7 
 
 and nationalities. Every human personality has a fixed indivi- 
 duality, an inherent originality, by which this single being is 
 distinguished from all others, by which indeed its limitations 
 and defects appear, and must be remedied by association in 
 affectionate intercourse with others, but by which at the same 
 time appear its special endowments, its very oion in the deepest 
 sense of the word. Whilst individuals of the lower creation, 
 belonging only to nature, are merely specimens of species, the 
 human individual is an inscrutable unity, because he is a special 
 form of God's image, fitted for a place in God's kingdom. 
 Although each human being is an offshoot from his parents, 
 and although his peculiarities may be a blending of those of
 
 PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY. 81 
 
 his father and his mother, yet still there is in every one some- 
 thing original, which has not been so before, and which will 
 never be exactly the same again. The perception of this 
 original element in every creature that comes into the world is 
 the truth contained in " creatianism," or the theory that souls 
 are not merely born, but are created. Every man is an eternal 
 individuality framed in the image of God, and bears within 
 himself the possibility of eternal life in bliss ; he is not merely 
 a continuing link in the long series of the human race, a repeti- 
 tion of what has gone before with inherited properties, but 
 moreover at the same time a fresh point of commencement in 
 this series. (See the author's work on Dogmatics, § 74.) Or 
 as it has also been expressed, every man is a " Genius," whether 
 this genius is predominantly productive or receptive (J. H. 
 Fichte). The essential part of the conception of genius is not 
 the creative power, for instance in art, which is only a speci- 
 ality, but the supernatural, immortal, individual existence, 
 which reveals itself in the midst of nature. And to endeavour 
 here to draw a sharp and insurmountable line between the 
 highly gifted and the scantily endowed, would be to introduce 
 a dualism into the human race not less objectionable than the 
 division into castes, or into freemen and slaves. The boundary 
 is here only a shifting one, and the difference between the men 
 to whom we ascribe the great name of genius and the weakest 
 of their brethren, is shown by an infinite number of intermediate 
 and transition links to be only in degree and not in essence, a 
 truth which will obtain more and more acknowledgment the 
 more intellectual cultivation spreads itself over the world, and 
 Christianity, to which every soul of man, without exception, is 
 an immortal soul of infinite value, unfolds its operations. Be- 
 sides, what importance would creative genius have for the 
 world if those who were to receive its revelations were not 
 congenial ? To deny the presence of the eternal individuality, 
 because that in many men it does not show itself by visible tokens, 
 is the same thing as to deny that man is formed in the image of 
 God. And if we admit that every man is capable of being per- 
 fected, fitted for mental growth and progress; if we are constrained 
 to allow that even the most savage and uncivilised tribes may be 
 awakened and developed to culture, morality, and religion ; if 
 we admit that all tribes and nations must be christianized ; how
 
 82 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 can we escape the assumption of the eternal individual possi- 
 bility in the case of every man, a possibility vi^hich cannot have 
 its source in nature, but is in advance of nature, although it 
 may still require many natural conditions for its development? 
 Every man is infinitely richer in his being than in his perform- 
 ance, is infinitely more than he shows himself or can show 
 himself to be. Therefore we divide between his merely natural 
 individuality, given in immediate experience, which is only a 
 basis, a foundation for the higher life, and his eternal or 
 essential individuality, which must be ethically moulded 
 throughout this present time, in order to be perfected in a 
 future state beyond the existino; world. 
 
 Individuality stamps not merely the soul of man, but also 
 his bodily frame. It is not by chance that a certain indivi- 
 duality of soul carries along with it a certain bodily form, for it 
 is the soul which fashions the body. This old idea, which was 
 maintained by G. F. Stahl,^ but afterwards fell into disfavour, 
 is now again recovering its position, and can scarcely be gain- 
 said if kept within its proper limits, if by the soul we understand 
 not merely the self-conscious soul, but the soul antecedent to 
 consciousness in its indissoluble union with the plastic power, 
 or the power to form its bodily frame. We say expressly, io 
 forrn^ not create or produce. For we do not overlook what has 
 been acutely urged during the recent discussion of this matter 
 between J. H. Fichte and Lotze, namely, that in the formation 
 of the human frame, moulding and alteration of materials are 
 necessary, which the soul can never effect, chemical processes, 
 which independently of the soul follow their own laws ; that 
 the soul thus even from the first act of its existence is subjected 
 to conditions, a natural mechanism, which is not in its own 
 power." But we maintain, that as the human body is not an 
 accidental heaping together of matter, but an organized form, 
 it cannot be produced except under the presupposition of a 
 schema, as the ancients called it (a pattern or model), after 
 which it is fashioned. This schema must necessarily be supposed 
 as pre-existing in the soul, which by an instinctive activity, 
 or as Fichte describes it, by a pre-conscious plastic activity 
 of fancy, forms its own body in conformity with it, in so 
 
 1 1660-1734. 
 
 2 J. H. Fichte> 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<mmaZ»?7i), that which 
 comprehends in itself all perfection {omnibus numeris abso- 
 lutuni), the final Good in the sense of the future heavenly glory, 
 in which we contemplate not merely the life of bliss in the 
 middle state, in which the highest Good has not reached its 
 utmost finality, but also on the perfection of all things at the 
 second coming of the Lord, on the advent of the new heaven 
 and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, where the 
 tabernacle of God is with men, and where there shall be no 
 more death, neither sorrow nor crying, for the former things are 
 passed away : that condition in creation in which both faith and 
 hope are at an end, because faith has passed into sight, and 
 hope into fulfilment, and where only love remains behind. 
 
 Although now the kingdom of God as the perfect Good is 
 the eschatological Good, which can only first enter when the 
 form of this world disappears, yet still in a relative signification 
 there may be mention of the kingdom of God as the perfect 
 Good within tiiese earthly conditions as a typical representa- 
 tion of the future, in so far as the kingdom of God is destined 
 to penetrate the natural life of man, to elevate and enlighten 
 human nature, to form the centre, the divine unity in the rela-
 
 GOD'S KINGDOM THE HIGHEST GOOD. 149 
 
 tions of his earthly existence. We contemplate, then, the king- 
 dom of God as the totality, the epitome of ethical good things, 
 \vhicli within these earthly limitations are possible as an all- 
 embracing organization of society, in which every aim of 
 liumanity, both individual and universal. Family, State, Church, 
 Art, Science, are centralized in the one holy aim, which is the 
 ideal of the kingdom of God upon earth. It is this kingdom 
 of God upon earth which, under the postulate of appropriating 
 activity, is the task of ethical 2^'>"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 sin<Wnn; to 
 it, keep it in good humour. Such is the condition at birth 
 and during the tender years of infancy, and so the first act of 
 the tragedy opens." He then goes through what he calls the 
 other acts of the tragedy, until old age, or the last act, where 
 all the ills of life gather together as in a haven of refuge, and 
 the sum of the matter is this, that it has been all labour and 
 trouble: ^^ that the life of man is nothino; else but pain, thoun-h 
 
 O I/O 
 
 the pain differs in its kind; that all the roads are uneven, 
 narrow, and rough, but they all lead to the same goal, which
 
 OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 189 
 
 is death. Lastly, as life begins with weeping, so it also ends 
 with weeping." After which he concludes by saying : '' If any 
 one thinks this description too strong and too tragic, I account 
 him fortunate in that he has accomplished his life with less 
 labour, and got thi'ough the world with a whole skin. I for 
 my part do not think that it is surcharged, for the good days 
 I have had in the world are easily counted. The greater portion 
 of my life has been spent in anxiety, sickness, and the want 
 of all those thino-s which the world calls o;ood." Here we find 
 our great comic writer speaking in accents which remind us 
 of the book of Ecclesiastes. He can only console himself by 
 a f^lance at the life to come : " For if there were no other world 
 after this present one, one must conclude that God had formed 
 man in His wrath, and made him the most wretched among 
 creatures. For though dumb beasts are also subject to misery 
 and death, they are yet free from anxieties of mind ; and just 
 that reason which man has received as his portion distinguishes 
 him in misery from the lower creation, which are not troubled 
 by any evils except those present, whereas their master has the 
 past, the present, and the future evils at once before his view." 
 
 §58. 
 
 It appears from all that has been remarked in the foregoing 
 pages concerning the condition of the world, from the ancient 
 complaint on its vanity, from the tragic and the comic as its 
 essential qualities, that the Optimism of the natural life of man 
 cannot be carried through to the end, because that its Pessimism 
 always bursts forth. But, on the other side, neither can the 
 Pessimism of the natural life of man be carried through, just 
 because the character of the world is a mixture of sood and 
 evil, and not exclusively the one or the other. Pessimism carried 
 out to the end would be absolute despair. But while this may 
 indeed affect certain individuals and particular periods, it is not 
 true of mankind as a whole. Not merely do the creating and 
 sustaining powers continue to react against those of destruction ; 
 not merely do life and the impulse to life and its enjoyments, 
 merely for life's sake and without any wherefore, as with 
 Goethe's shoemaker in Dresden,^ attest constantly afresh its 
 
 ^ The Dresden shoemaker with whom Goethe amused himself in liis 
 student days. — Miciielsen.
 
 190 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 reality : there is, moreover, in the heart of man an ineffaceable 
 feeling of certainty that suffering and death cannot be the 
 ultimate object of life, — an imperturbable hope, which after 
 each mortification arises anew, that in spite of all obstacles and 
 restrictions, a highest Good must yet at last be possible as the 
 portion of humanity, and that there must be possibility for a 
 happy result as regards the whole. We may here refer to the 
 myth of Pandora, from whose box all misfortunes and torments 
 flew forth over the race of man, whilst Hope^ whicli had been 
 added as the gift of mercy, was preserved. Now, Christian 
 Pessimism and Optimism are both merely relative ideas, which 
 will not stand the test of practice and experience, for which 
 reason also most men alternately follow both views entirely 
 according to circumstances ; which may also be expressed thus, 
 that most men live in an unsolved contradiction, which is 
 exactly the fundamental character of this world. Pessimists 
 are to be found who live according to optimist maxims, who, 
 whilst lamenting over this world as a vale of tears, contrive not 
 the less in daily life to make themselves as comfortable as pos- 
 sible, which is notably the case with Schopenhauer, who has 
 written a so-called lower eudaimonistic system of morality and 
 prudence, to which he adheres in practice, in direct opposition 
 to his ascetic "doctrine of unhappiness" (^Unglilchseligkeitslehre) 
 which he developed in theory. Optimists are to be found who live 
 in a pessimist frame of mind ; for whilst, as regards the human 
 race as a whole, they maintain that all is well, that everything 
 in this world goes on exactly as it ought, yet in their own con- 
 cerns, and in their daily circumstances and relations, they are 
 vexed and irritated, complain incessantly over much which is 
 wrong, and which must and ought to be entirely otherwise. 
 Systems of philosophy endeavour to escape this contradiction, 
 but life constantly exhibits it afresh under forms innumerable. 
 Doubtless, also, in the Christian life many inconsistencies 
 appear ; yet it is Christianity alone which makes it possible for 
 man to attain, in the deepest sense, unity in his view of life and 
 in his frame of mind — to combine without self-contradiction 
 Optimism and Pessimism. As Christianity, by awakening con- 
 sciousness of sin and of guilt, awakens the true fundamental 
 pain of existence in regard to which all other sorrows and 
 calamities are subordinate, so it awakens also the true exalta-
 
 GOD'S KINGDOM AND THE KINGDOM OF HUMANITY. 191 
 
 tion over all misery which hallows every pure and innocent joy. 
 In showing us existence in the light of redemption, it shows us 
 the new creation as the completion of the first, gathering up 
 the fragments of this world into a whole whenever the eye is 
 fixed on that structure which is to be erected in the fulness of 
 time, so that all things may be assembled under Christ as their 
 head. And although Christian consciousness only sees the 
 perfecting of the world and of individuals in hope., — and there 
 will thus always be in the Christian mind a tinge of pain at 
 the contrast between the ideal and the reality, a craving for 
 the overthrow of the fragmentary and the substitution of the 
 complete, — yet there is agreement in the inmost being, in faith 
 and in love, which work for the coming of God's kingdom. 
 Aristotle has said that great and noble minds have a disposi- 
 tion to melancholy ; and the truth of this saying is confirmed 
 by history, both in the pre-Christian and the Christian world, 
 because such minds have a perception of the great dissonance, 
 of which the multitude are unconscious. It may be added 
 that it is not by any means to great minds alone that this is 
 applicable, but to every real Christian. But this pain is con- 
 stantly changed into joy, as it is thus expressed in an old Danish 
 song : 
 
 " Aldrig er jeg uden Vaade, 
 Aldrig dog foruden Naade." ^ 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF HUMANITY. 
 REDEIVIPTION AND EMANCIPATION. 
 
 §59. 
 
 A view of life and of the world does not receive its signifi- 
 cance solely from the result it promises to man, nor from the 
 optimist and pessimist prospects it exhibits to us in the pre- 
 sent and the future world, but not less in the fundamental 
 contrast which it presents to man for him practically to 
 overcome, in order that the result may be attained, and the 
 
 ^ " Never am I without grief, 
 Never still without rehef." 
 The commencement of a beautiful series of hymns by old Kiugo, whose 
 " Psalmebog," or collection of religious songs, was published in 1699.
 
 192 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 highest Good be realized through a progressive development 
 of free-will. As this fundamental contrast, we may from the 
 standpoint of Christianity undoubtedly designate the contrast 
 between good and evil, between the kingdom of God and the 
 kingdom of sin. Yet we cannot stop here, for the kingdom 
 of God waires an unconditional w^ir of annihilation ao;ainst 
 the kingdom of sin, whilst life rests upon normal contrasts, 
 which may and ought to be brought into unity. As the 
 normal contrast which also has its validity independently of sin, 
 we cite God's kingdom and the world, in so far as the world, 
 in the conception formed of it, has a relative independence of 
 God the Lord, or more precisely, the kingdom of God and the 
 kingdom of humanity^ because the relative independence and 
 dignity of the world as regards God first attains full expression 
 in man. The relation of contrast and the relation of unity 
 the progressive mutual relation between the kingdom of God 
 and the kingdom of humanity, may be described as the history 
 within history, the inmost kernel both of the history of the 
 world and of the unmarked every-day history of the individual. 
 Throuidi the contrast between the kingdom of God and the 
 kingdom of humanity, the ethical problem within the Christian 
 world has become entirelv different from what it was in the 
 world prior to Christianity, and it is Christianity itself which 
 developes both sides of the contrast. On its entrance into 
 history, Christianity not merely discovers an independent king- 
 dom of humanity, but awakens and calls it forth as certainly 
 as it awakens the principle of personality. For although other 
 conditions may be named for the awakening of this principle, 
 yet Ciiristianity is here unquestionably the essentially operative 
 condition. But Chri.stianity, in awakening the principle of per- 
 sonality, gives also an impulse to the development of all the 
 consequences of personality which are not merely of a religious 
 but also of a worldly nature, embracing man's entire position 
 in the world, and all his relations in which free personality 
 is the centre-point. Just because Christianity aw^akened the 
 universal consciousness of God, it must, at the same time, 
 awaken the universal consciousness of the world, and self-con- 
 sciousness must burst the barriers within which consciousness of 
 the world and self-consciousness were confined. By its teach- 
 in£r of the creation of man in the ima^e of God, and of man's
 
 GOD'S KINGDOM AND THE KINGDOil OF HUilAXITY. 193 
 
 dignity and his appointment to be the sovereign of earth, 
 Christianity has awakened at once the consciousness of the human 
 race and the consciousness of the free individual. For in the 
 ancient world the conception of the human race, so far as it 
 was present, exerted no determinate influence. Human free- 
 dom was bound in national contrasts, the contrasts between 
 Jews and Samaritans, Greeks and barbarians, bond and free, 
 compatriots and friends whom one ought to love, and strangers 
 and enemies whom it was befittina; to abhor. The hioher con- 
 ception of a kingdom or realm of humanity in which these 
 contrasts were reconciled was not known. Neither in the 
 ancient world was there representation of the free individual ; 
 for the individual is only a member of the body politic, or body 
 of the nation, but not free in himself, not independent of the 
 people and the State. If we would understand history, we 
 must pay attention to the fact that Christianity, on its first 
 appearance, plants two commencements, two developments. 
 It plants the germ of God's kingdom, sows the seed of the 
 operations of grace and the gifts of grace, institutes the 
 Church and the concrrecration. It sneaks with divine autho- 
 rity, completes the law, and establishes the divine economy 
 in human society, offering to men God's saving and sancti- 
 fying grace. But it desires to exercise a saving and edu- 
 cating^ influence on bein£i;s who are called to a universal 
 liberty, and who, in a relative sense, have the centre-point 
 of their life in themselves. Therefore at the same time i( 
 plants the germ, sows the seed of an independent kingdom 
 of humanity with the whole affluence of man's natural endow- 
 ments and natural powers, which develope themselves in his 
 worldly relation in culture and civilisation. Whilst the gospel 
 redeems man to the life of personality in God, it fits him, at 
 the same time, for the life of personality in the world. It is 
 this moment of the operations of Christianity, in which all 
 within the bounds of Christendom partake, wdiether believers 
 or unbelievers, whether for Christ or opposed to Him. In order 
 to distinguish it from redemption, we designate this moment, 
 which has so great a significance in the divine plan of educa- 
 tion, as Emancipation^ that is to say, deliverance from the 
 natural and national bonds of the ancient times. Emancipa- 
 tion is only deliverance from cramping barriers, from powers 
 
 N
 
 104 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 of nature and powers of the world, from false traditions and 
 false authorities, through which personal liberty is oppressed, 
 but which are predominantly external to man. It is release to 
 the rights of man, to sovereignty over earth, to the full and 
 unrestricted use of the faculties with which he is equipped, — 
 among others, the faculty of determining himself in relation to 
 that -which is unseen and imperceptible by the senses; nay, to 
 determine for himself even for or against the gospel : freedom 
 for what in our days is usually called " the purely human." 
 Redemption, on the other hand, is not from barriers and par- 
 ticular powers, but from the principle hostile to liberty and to 
 man, which not merely mutually separates men from each 
 other, but also separates them from God, and which is not 
 merely external to man, but within him — even sin in the 
 heart of man. Eedemption makes free to inward communion 
 with God, freedom founded on grace. When Christ says, 
 " If the Son make you not free, then are ye not free " (John 
 viii. 38), it must certainly not be overlooked that emancipa- 
 tion, in the good significance given here, is the work of Christ ; 
 for in that redemption enters history, and stands forth to 
 liberate man's consciousness of God, it bursts at the same time 
 the bonds and fetters bv which consciousness of the world is 
 enchained. But those who are emancipated by Christ, though 
 not at the same time redeemed, are not made free by the Son 
 as the Son, since they are not related to Him as the Being 
 through whom they come unto the Father (John xiv. 6). Those 
 who arc merely emancipated by Christianity are doubtless 
 elevated to a higher grade of humanity, to human dignity and 
 human privilege ; but they are still in their sins, even though in 
 their life there may be a reflection of redemption, for as yet 
 ih&y hdiVQ ov\\y the possibility of I'edemption. The same holds 
 good in regard to society. Enlightened government, marriage 
 and household decency, refinement and science, every commend- 
 able form of life, participate as the times advance in the eman- 
 cipation, in so far as the principle of personality, together with 
 the rights of man contained in this, come into development. 
 But in redemption he only becomes a partaker, who, according 
 to the direction of Cliristianity, places himself under the will 
 and government of God, and allows himself to be penetrated by 
 their sanctifying influences. And therefore Christianity emanci-
 
 REDEMPTION AXD EMAXCIPATION. 195 
 
 pates man to freedom, makes him sovereign over a relatively 
 independent kingdom of the workl, in order that he may in 
 truth be fit to serve. If, in our days, there are many who think 
 that progressive emancipation is the special object of history, 
 and that it is the essential importance of Christianity to have 
 given a world-wide impulse to the free development of huma- 
 nity, and to have introduced great social reforms, there is here 
 eo-reiiious error. For all this is not the object, is not the matter 
 itself, but a means, a condition in order that the matter itself 
 may obtain fit success. Emancipation is not for its own sake, 
 but is a condition necessary in order that men may attain the just 
 relation of subordination, and along with this the just relation 
 of unity with the kingdom of God. For the just relation of 
 service, and the just, the noble relation of love, can only be exhi- 
 bited by him who himself is a master, by him who possesses a 
 dignity of his own, which he may either devote in offering to 
 God, to receive it back from Him ennobled and illumined, or 
 in which he may egoistically settle himself as one who will not 
 serve. By the revelation of Christ, therefore, man becomes 
 anew installed in the privilege of the first Adam to make the 
 earth subject to himself, and to be the lord of creation, in 
 order that thus he may be anew installed in the relation of 
 service to God, anew to be enabled to take the earthly king- 
 dom as God's vassal. The sovereignty of earth, which was 
 lost by the Fall, is now, in so far as this is possible under the 
 conditions of sin, restored to man, in order that he may again 
 be proved by the test of the first Adam. 
 
 §60. 
 
 The contrast here described was unknown to the human race 
 before Christ's advent. In Israel the kingdom of God appears 
 in the national limitation and liberty, is bound under the disci- 
 pline of the law (Gal. iv. 1, 2.) It is, as the apostle says, the 
 state of childhood, in which " the heir differeth nothing from a 
 servant, but is under tutors and governors." Human freedom 
 has certainly this independence towards God, that it may obey 
 or disobey His command ; but human freedom under the theo- 
 cratic constitution of Israel did not possess its own kingdom in 
 contrast to the kingdom of God. If we turn to paganism, we 
 certainly find with the Greeks a beautiful form of the kingdom
 
 106 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 of linmnnity. But the kin£^dom of God was lacking, and this 
 beautiful kingdom of humanity is fettered in the national limi- 
 tation. Not until Christiiinity appeared was there exhibited a 
 universal kingdom of God destined to embrace all kindreds of 
 the earth, and a universal kingdom of humanity, destined to 
 subject even earth itself. History subsequent to Christ's advent 
 shows us not merely the combination of these kingdoms, but also 
 their conflict, since the soul of man repeats the circumstances of 
 the Fall, and like a new Prometheus, desires to found a kingdom 
 of his own, desires to establish himself in his own self-dignity 
 in opposition to the kingdom of God, desires to emancipate him- 
 self not merely from the restraining powers of nature and of 
 the world, but even from the relation of dependence on God 
 and His revelation. 
 
 §61. 
 
 But although the contrast described above was essentially 
 planted on the advent of Christ ; although liberated humanity 
 and the emancipation produced, already bore witness to itself 
 durino- the first asres of the Church, in the expression of man's 
 brotherhood and the equality of all before God, as descending 
 from one blood, in the cosmopolitan in opposition to the mere 
 national, in the elevation of woman's personal dignity, and her 
 release from unworthy thraldom, in the first germs of the idea of 
 slave emancipation, in the demand of religious liberty and the 
 protest against constraint of conscience (it is the right of man, 
 says Tertullian, and comes to every one by nature, to determine 
 what manner of divine worship of God he considers the best^) ; 
 yet time was required before it could attain to develope itself 
 in its consequences as an all-embracing power of society. It 
 holds good with everything that is destined to grow in time, 
 that the beginning should appear most clearly at the end, that 
 the nature and quality of the seed should first be rightly per- 
 ceived when the plant is in flower. And thus it is true in the 
 fullest measure of Christianity, that what it is in its principle 
 and beginning, is developed more and more clearly through the 
 course of time, and becomes most evident towards the close of 
 time. By reason of the world's pagan and depraved condition, 
 
 1 Kumani juris ct naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit, 
 colere. — ^Teutull. ad Scajndam, I.
 
 REDEMPTION AND EMANCIPATION. 197 
 
 the relation of the first Church towards it was predominantly 
 negative, ascetic, denying. Man did not, so to speak, venture 
 as yet to take the world into possession, which by Christianity 
 had been essentially given over to liim. In the middle ages 
 the gospel appeared even as a law which held the people under 
 its discipline, and the times of the Old Testament repeated them- 
 selves. The kingdom of God, in an outward form resembling 
 the theocracy of Israel, appeared as the visible Church, whicli 
 all-prevailing stretches out its educating authority over the bar- 
 barians. The middle ages seem rather to show us the picture 
 of a kingdom of great autliority than one of liberty. But 
 liberty terminates under the disciphne of the Church ; and these 
 influences of emancipation show themselves throughout the 
 whole period of the middle ages in this principle of personality, 
 which also in the worldly relation appears in a variety of forms, 
 in chivalry vatli bravery, fidelity, and honour, in earthly love, 
 in the romantic ideal of happiness which is eagerly sought in 
 the undetermined distance, behind the blue mountains and the 
 golden clouds, and which, although very different from the ideal 
 of bliss itself, yet shows that the ancient barriers are fallen, that 
 human personality has discovered itself in its freedom and its 
 self-appreciation, and advances in a world which has infinitude- 
 for its horizon. Through the Reformation and the circle of its 
 accompanying circumstances, a revolution was brought about. 
 As the kingdom of grace and of the gospel again appears in 
 its purity, so too the kingdom of humanity and of liberty appears 
 in its independence. The Church, which had assumed sove- 
 reignty over the worldly side of life, was brought back to its riglit 
 destination, to the stewardship of the means of grace, to preach 
 the word and dispense the sacraments. The State, with culture 
 and civilisation, now appears in its independence of the Church, 
 developing itself according to its own laws. The mind of man 
 takes itself and its world into possession and knows itself as the 
 world's master. The old world, Greece and Rome, is anew taken 
 into possession. The new world, America, is discovered. The 
 art of printing is invented. Copernicus announces an entirely 
 new theory of the structure of the universe. This development 
 of humanity, by which man both theoretically and practically 
 makes himself master of the world, continues through manifold 
 crises and struggles until our days, when it is repeated in the
 
 198 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 demands of Revolution regarding the rights of man, in recent 
 literature, in the immense progress of natural science and sove- 
 reignty over nature, which appears more and more as the ful- 
 filment of the command — Subdue the earth. Eailways, steam 
 vessels, and the electric telegraph, annihilate the distance of 
 space, and contribute to bring men nearer to each other, so that 
 the same intellectual kingdom may be spread over the whole 
 world. Humanity and freedom are the watchwords of the age ; 
 and riglitbj understood, these demands are sanctioned by Chris- 
 tianity itself. The development of human liberty and culture 
 is founded on man's destiny, and on the divine scheme for his 
 education ; only this is not the ultimate object, but the condi- 
 tion and means for a higher. And in face of emancipation, 
 with its immense development of man's natural powers, the 
 gospel continues to testify : Except the Son shall make you free, 
 ye cannot be freed (John viii. 36). In face of this colossal 
 accumulation of intellectual wealth, amassed from generation 
 to generation, the gospel continues to testify : "Blessed are the 
 poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." For it is 
 the true essence of humanity to thirst after God, to be poor in 
 the midst of its earthly riches, ignorant in the midst of its worldly 
 knowledge. It is the essence of humanity to be an incomplete, 
 fragmentary existence, which can only become complete by 
 being gathered together under Christ. 
 
 And here we assert the deepest contrast in history. For 
 whilst men are more and more emancipated to liberty and in- 
 dependence, more and more establish and extend their own 
 kingdom, and whilst the gospel constantly accompanies them 
 with the same demand with which it entered history, there are 
 laid before men two great alternatives, either — or : either in 
 ministering adoration to allow the kingdom of humanity to be 
 glorified in God's kingdom, or in arrogance to endeavour to 
 found the kingdom of humanity without God's kingdom. These 
 two kingdoms do not rest calmly alongside each other ; but the 
 contrast mounts to opposition and conflict. In so far as the 
 kingdom of humanity is directly and consciously placed in hostile 
 relation to the kingdom of God, in hatred opposing Christ and 
 His gospel, we are led back to the opposition between God's 
 kingdom and that of the devil and his aneels. No attentive 
 observer will deny that in history there occur phenomena which
 
 REDEMPTION AND EMANCIPATION. 199 
 
 point to demoniac powers and demoniac inspirations. In recent 
 times examples may be drawn from the French Revolution, 
 where in the name of humanity the gospel was trodden imder 
 foot, and Reason was worshipped in the form of a prostitute. 
 Examples may also be found in the currents of thought and 
 inspirations which in the year 1848 prevailed in after-dinner 
 speeches and toasts, where men invoked the free spirit, which 
 still belonfjed onlv to the future, but which should make free 
 (emancipate) itself from all powers, both from the actual on 
 earth, and from the imasiinarv which mocked in heaven. 
 
 §62. 
 
 Divine mercv and human free-will, God's kingdom and the 
 kingdom of the devil, — these are the contrasts which make up 
 the content of history. And if we turn to the great question of 
 this historic progress, we must then declare that it is these con- 
 trasts which progress in history to the end of time. That which 
 advances in history is the kingdom of God in its relation to 
 the kingdom of humanity ; it is the kingdom of humanity in its 
 double relation to the kingdom of God. The prayer, "Thy 
 kingdom come," therefore contains the true idea of historic 
 progress ; for in this prayer we also petition that the true king- 
 dom of humanity may come in its unity v.ith God's kingdom. 
 But by the side of the labour to accomplish the object of this 
 petition is found permeating humanity an opposing force, an 
 opposing will, labouring for the establishment of an entirely 
 different kingdom, the kingdom of humanity, as the false king- 
 dom of the universe. Every philosophy of history Avhich does 
 not fix its glance on this opposition is but one-eyed, is only a 
 mere humanist apprehension. When Hegel thus in his Phi- 
 losophy of History says, " The history of the world is progress 
 in the consciousness of liberty" — die Weltgeschichte ist der 
 Eortschritt im Bewusstsein der Freiheit — and goes on to ex- 
 plain this assertion thus, that the Orientals knew that one man 
 was free, namely the despot, that the Greeks knew that some 
 men were free, namely the Greeks, whilst the rest were slaves 
 and barbarians, but that we know that all are free, that man as 
 man is free, and that it is the aim of history to deveiope this 
 universal consciousness of freedom which in principle is given 
 along with Christianity, and to cause it to permeate every circle
 
 200 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 of society ; this is certainly both true and strlkinrr, but quite 
 insufficient for a just comprehension of history. For he has 
 here only described one side of the contrast, — namely, the de- 
 velopment of mere humanity : he has only described emanci- 
 pation. But emancipation with culture and civilisation, which 
 last in our day is set forth as the proper aim of history, and 
 with which it is hoped that the golden age shall dawn at last, is 
 not the perfection of progress. The perfection of progress is 
 the progressive mutual relation between the kingdom of God 
 and humanity emancipated to liberty, to culture and civilisation. 
 And the all-embracing aim of history which should be ever 
 present to our efforts, is the unity of the kingdom of humanity 
 and the kingdom of God, — a unity including the completion of 
 the work of redemption and the work of emancipation, since 
 by emancipation we only refer to that true emancipation from 
 the powers of nature and the unjust powers of the world 
 Ivhich is sanctioned by Christianity itself. 
 
 If we consider historic progress more closely, we find that 
 from ancient times there has been a twofold mode of viewincr 
 it : one optimist, which asserts that the times are growing 
 better ; the other pessimist, affirming that they grow worse. 
 Christianity is the truth of both. The times grow better, not 
 in the signification that the succeeding generation will be more 
 virtuous than that which preceded it, for in every generation 
 virtue must originate as personal virtue in individuals ; neither 
 can it be affirmed in the signification that the succeeding gene- 
 ration will be happier than its predecessors, for happiness is 
 insecure and unreliable ; but they grow better, in so far as the 
 good, even under partial relapses, always comes to more abun- 
 dant development and consciousness, and by the progressive 
 development of culture, refinement, and experience, which is a 
 certain and indubitable progress, obtains a larger variety of 
 means and possibiHties for its manifestation. The times grow 
 worse, inasmuch as evil also, under partial defeats and over- 
 throws, yet attains greater development, and assumes more 
 and more an intellectual character, acquiring by culture and 
 refinement new weapons. Historic progress, contemplated as a 
 whole, may be defined as progressive assimilation of the content 
 of existence, both of nature and the intellectual world, progres- 
 sive production and progressive criticism, although there are
 
 REDEMPTION AND EMANCIPATION. 201 
 
 periods in history which pre-eminently pursue one or other of 
 these individual directions. But as assimilation, production, 
 and criticism, by the opposite directions of the Avill, are divided 
 into the service of opposite spirits (in the last instance the good 
 and the evil, Christ and Antichrist), by which the one will 
 have assimilated what the other will have excreted and dis- 
 carded, and vice versa, both the true and the false kingdom of 
 humanity advance through time under an increasing intensify- 
 ing of their principles, which more and more seek to organize 
 themselves ; and more and more the strife of univeral history 
 becomes a great war of principle. As the idea of time, 
 or tempox'ary duration, is inseparable from the idea of the 
 immature, the incomplete, the still imperfectly manifested 
 and awakened consciousness, the absolute separation of the 
 kinirdoms only occurs at the conclusion of history. Durine: the 
 development intermixture prevails. History must therefore be 
 considered from the standpoint of the parable of the tares in 
 the wheat, which both grew together until the harvest, and the 
 close of history is the day of judgment, or the catastrophe, 
 through which the true kingdom of humanity, combined with 
 the kingdom of God, humanity not merely emancipated but 
 redeemed, is set free from the condition of admixture ; and the 
 false kingdom of humanity, which by a progress in the unreal 
 emancipation has become more and more amalgamated with 
 the kingdom of the devil, is thrust out from connection with the 
 good, and is given over to its own egoistic isolation. The end of 
 all things on earth is not therefore eternal peace, as philosophy 
 has dreamed, but the fiercest war between the two camps into 
 which the human race will then be divided. The golden age, 
 which is promised before the last times, can only be conceived 
 as relatively the nearest perfection, as relatively the happiest 
 period which under earthly conditions is possible. But its 
 imperfection is shown in this, that it is evanescent, and bears 
 in its train the last strife of earth. 
 
 The prayer. Thy kingdom come ! may therefore first be 
 accomplished by a series of historical crises, which all attain 
 their completion in the last decisive crisis. And here a parallel 
 is exhibited between the coming of God's kinirdom in reMrd to 
 the race and in regard to the individual man. The more a 
 man understands himself and his own life, the more will he
 
 202 
 
 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 come to the perception that, if tlie kingdom of God is to make 
 progress within him, if true humanity is to be developed in 
 him, it must be on the condition of a continued separation of 
 the good and the evil principle, the influences of which on his 
 inner being are mingled, — a continued process of purification, in 
 which the sinful essence is separated and eliminated. He will 
 understand the period of his own life as a season of grace which 
 has been given to him, not merely for labour and progress, but 
 also for cleansing and purification. He will perceive that the 
 longer the years run on, the more pressing and urgent becomes 
 this inward crisis, and the more it assumes a spiritual character. 
 Only he who has this view in regard to his own life will be able 
 also to understand that of the race ; and in the many outworks 
 and secondary questions of history, and their complicated 
 motion, will not permit himself to be hindered from perceiving 
 the real point at issue. He will be convinced that what chiefly 
 concerns him is not to become partaker in emancipation (as 
 this is not the real matter),but in redemption. 
 
 \'-^ 
 
 GOD S KINGDOM IN REGARD TO INDIVIDUALS. 
 AND INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 § 63. 
 
 Whilst emancipation (both in a good and bad sense) pro- 
 gresses, and redemption diffuses itself, and thus personality 
 comes into fuller development, an increasing contrast appears 
 between the individual and the community, since the individual 
 demands to be acknowledged according to its absolute worth, 
 and the community on its side requires the same. This contrast 
 between the community and the individual, between socialism 
 and individualism, — this contrast, which is conditional to Chris- 
 tianity itself, is by Christianity brought back again to its unity. 
 I By socialism we understand that view and tendency which 
 j places society in the position of the highest and ultimate aim 
 I of ethical development ; by individualism the same thing, but 
 ' ascribed to the individual. Christianity is the unity of both 
 aims. It is the absolutely socializing power, since it seeks to 
 transform all the individual differences of humanity into one
 
 GOD'S KINGDOM AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 203 
 
 great society of love. But, at the same time, Christianity is the 
 absohitely individualizing power, since it will not efface indi- 
 vidual differences, — which would be the same as to abrogate 
 society, — but developes and transfigures them in the unity of 
 love. It desires the totality, " the kingdom," as the ultimate 
 aim of development, and the individual as the ministering 
 means, tool, instrument for the whole ; but just because it 
 desires a kingdom of personaUtt/^ desires a total organization of 
 sanctified individuals, the individual is accounted as the absolute 
 aim in itself, and the whole as ministering to the individual. 
 It is this idea which the apostle expresses in the figure of the 
 body with many members, which are so incorporated that when 
 one member suffers, all suffer, and when one member is held in 
 honour, all the members rejoice in sympathy. The individual 
 is there for the sake of the whole ; but, on the other side, it 
 must be admitted that the whole is there for the sake of the 
 individual. This social aim during earthly existence, in which 
 the tares are mingled with the wheat, in which all organization 
 must incessantly combat with the disorganizing powers, can 
 only be realized under great relativity ; it can only be perfectly 
 accomplished in the fulness of God's kingdom. But an earthly 
 copy of the ideal of God's kingdom may be approximately 
 attained during this temporal development, and should be 
 striven after in all human relations of society, and specially in 
 those fundamental forms which have been appointed by God 
 for earthly development, in the Church, the State, the Famil}', 
 in harmony with the nature of every sphere of society. With 
 the advancing development of the community, the individual 
 must arrive at a fuller life of liberty, and obtain a larger domain 
 for its self-government. But in the same measure must the 
 community be developed to a higher, more complicated organiza- 
 tion and division or articulation. The deeper the principle of 
 personality takes root, the more will the community become 
 dependent on the individual, the more and more will it be 
 constrained to take account of the individual ; but, at the same 
 time, the individual, the freer and more independent it becomes, 
 becomes more and more dependent on the whole. It is to this 
 relation of reciprocity between society and individuals that both 
 nations and persons should be educated, and should educate 
 themselves, through historic guidance. But this can only
 
 204 THE HIGHEST GOOD, 
 
 really be attained in the same degree as both the community 
 and the individual subject themselves to that power wliicli is 
 the absolutely socializing and the absolutely individualizing, 
 namely the gospel. 
 
 § 64. 
 
 The one-sided socialism is found everywhere, in which society 
 in that sense is made the ultimate aim, so that the individual 
 becomes only the means and instrument for society, without 
 at the same time being an object in itself. It appears in the 
 States of ancient times, and we may describe Plato's Repuhlic 
 as socialistic in this sense of the term. It is thus genuinely 
 socialistic, when he desires that children should be taken from 
 their parents and brought up in a State institution, in order that 
 they may not be spoiled by parental indulgence ; or when he 
 proposes that the choice of a partner in marriage should not be 
 free, but determined by the representatives of the State, so that 
 only those men and women should marry each other from whom 
 may be expected the procreation of the healthiest and most 
 virtuous children for the State. But not only in the pagan 
 world does socialism appear, but also in Christianity. Catho- 
 licism is socialistic ; for though in theory it acknowledges the 
 eternal dignity of the individual, and its destiny to eternal bliss, 
 yet the community takes on itself, through the hierarchy, to 
 care for the blessedness of individuals, and holds the individual 
 in a constant state of pupilage and subjection, under a yoke of 
 liuman precepts and decrees. The Inquisition, the stake, and 
 censure are moments in this socialism, the first aim of which is 
 tlie maintenance of the existing society a tout j^riv. The con- 
 fessional state, which binds all citizens to the same profession, 
 and does not tolerate any deviation of doctrine, is socialistic, as 
 it asserts the claim of itself and its decrees to be absolute, and 
 denies the right of personal conviction. But also from the 
 standpoint of liberalism and emancipation, in which liberty so 
 often passes over into thraldom, socialism appears. Thus in 
 the French Revolution, in the Eei^rn of Terror, in which the 
 mere suspicion of cherishing a political sentiment different from 
 those of the men in power brought death, because " the common 
 weal" was endangered by such suspected individuals. Thus 
 also iu that system which calls itself Socialism and Communism,
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 205 
 
 and which, however fantastic and impracticalDle, is yet very 
 worthy of attention as a tendency. It starts from the idea of 
 the human race as the highest, to wiiich the individuals are 
 subordinate, and also from the idea of the perfect equality of 
 men's rights, and thus the equality of those of individuals, 
 as the temporary representatives of the race. On this hasis 
 Socialism desires to organize a great universal economy, a 
 vast community, with organization of labour, with equality in 
 property and enjoyment, equality in information and refine- 
 ment, which, if it could be accomplished, must annihilate all 
 individuality; and though it promises the individual hapjiiness, 
 would subject him to the most frightful tyranny, stretching 
 him on the Procrustes-bed of the system. 
 
 If, however, we look away from the peculiar forms in which 
 the principle appears, and if we inquire what metaphysic forms 
 the basis of this theory, which degrades the individual into 
 the subjected means for society, we arrive at Pantheism, which 
 only regards the universal as the essential, and the individual 
 as the temporary accident. Pantheism, in its application to 
 human society and history, contemplates the individuals of 
 the race only as disappearing drops in the ocean, whilst the 
 ocean itself, in the unbroken motion of its waves, is the actually 
 existing and real. In opposition to this, it is right to bring 
 forward the principle of individuality ; and they who have done 
 so in the spirit of Christianity, and laid down a protest against 
 the social Pantheism of our day, deserve all thanks and ac~ 
 knowledo-ment. 
 
 But there is also a one-sided individualism, an isolation of 
 the individual, which only seeks to be its own aim, without at 
 the same time being a ministering member. Where this indi- 
 vidualism becomes practical and obtains diffusion, it may really 
 have an influence hostile to society. The ideal of individual- 
 ism achieved would be a world of personal atoms, which are 
 mutually attracted and repulsed by each other, but even wh.eu 
 they associate themselves, never can attain further unity than 
 a mere contract of combination, which may be again dissolved 
 at pleasure, because unity and totality, which are presupposed 
 by parts {totura est j^ariibus 2ynus), and which form the mystery 
 of life and organization, are perfectly alien to it.
 
 206 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 §65. 
 
 Individualism may, like socialism, appear in different circles 
 of life, and we may thus speak of a political, an ecclesiastical, 
 and a religious individualism. This relio;ious individualism 
 has in our century unquestionably found its most important 
 and its noblest expression in Alexander Vinet. In opposition 
 to the social Pantheism which would annul everything indivi- 
 dual and concrete, would dethrone personality and make the 
 universal one and all, he with great eloquence exalts the indi- 
 vidual as the actually existing, sets this forth as the object of 
 the work of creation.^ Individuality is the stamp which God 
 liaB impressed on every human being, his own possession en- 
 trusted to him by his Maker, and which he should maintain 
 and protect against the dangers which threaten him on the side 
 of society. For though society Qa society) in one respect is the 
 condition for the development of the individual, and no one can 
 escape from society, yet society has a natural tendenc}^ to efface 
 and obliterate individuality. We are all originals at birth; for 
 in every individual that comes into the world, even in the least 
 gifted and most insignificant, we can perceive an intention of 
 Providence to form a beino; which is different from all others, 
 I and which thus has never existed before. But although we are 
 1 ail born originals, yet most of us die as imitations ; for society 
 (la socUU) has a tendency to rub off peculiarities and produce 
 similarity amongst individuals. The weaker members of the 
 community are brought, by the force of example, by preju- 
 dice and convenience, by the entire legion of social influences, 
 gradually to lose their individuality. They make them- 
 selves mere instruments for the whole, and offer, so to speak, 
 their individuality as a contribution to the great general fund 
 of society, where it disappears as in an abyss. And yet the 
 \ individual, as Vinet again and again urges, is higher than 
 society, because it is destined to relation with God, to a living 
 and direct union with God, to Avhich society is not destined, 
 as it is only indirectly related to God. It is the privilege of 
 the individual, even the lowliest and most insignificant, to 
 
 ^ See, for instance, " Sur rindividualite ct I'mdividualisme," "Du rolede 
 I'individualite dans une reforrae socialc,"' two dissertations contained in his 
 Essais de philosophie morale et de morale religieuse.
 
 SOCIALISM AND IXDlVIDUALISil. 207 
 
 exist for God, to have the capacity of eternal happiness or eter- 
 nal perdition. Not society, but the individual, anticipates a 
 future life, an immortality beyond the grave. And it is only 
 the individual that believes, hopes, obeys, suffers, and loves. It 
 is only the individual who in his conscience is bound and respon- 
 sible, the individual that is the real object of God's attention 
 and of His judgment, the individual who ought to be presented, 
 and is daily presented, before the judgment-seat of the Eternal. 
 It is not to humanity m absiracto, not to society, but to the indi- 
 vidual, that the gospel addresses itself with its requirements and 
 its promises. It is to the individual that God says in His word, 
 "Come now, and let us reason together " (Isa. i. 13). Society 
 (lasociete) is not a being (ten etrc)^ but only an "'arrangement"' 
 between personal beings. Or, seen from another point of view, 
 society is an ocean on which the individual soul is cast forth in 
 a little bark to seek the way through the rough billows to the 
 shores of a new world, where it may land. Both the ocean and 
 the bark are worthy of admiration. The bark, which each one 
 of us is called to steer^, and in which we are to reach the land 
 in yon new world, is our own individuality. Another, not 
 myself, guides the waves, and appoints their way over the great 
 abyss ; but the bark is my own, and the ocean is on account of 
 the bark, not the bark on account of the ocean. For the prin- 
 cipal concern, purpose, object, is that the bark should land; that 
 the human individual, which alone stands in immediate relation 
 to God, and is the special object of the work of creation, should 
 fulfil its destiny. All depends, therefore, on the right steering 
 of the bark ; for as the sea, the fluid element, which is less fluid 
 than air and less solid than earth, has the twofold capacity to 
 bear up the bark or to engulf it, so also with regard to the fluid 
 social element on which individuality is launched. One may 
 founder in the ocean of society as well as on that of the material 
 world, and it would be of little avail to examine on which of 
 the two oceans the most frequent shipwrecks occur. 
 
 This exaltation of individuality expresses certainly a sacred 
 and precious truth, but not the whole truth. No one will thus 
 be able to deny the deep practical truth in the last figure em- 
 ployed, of the individual cast forth on the ocean in his little 
 bark, which is to reach the shore at length. But if we are to 
 speak in figures, we are acquainted with another emblem of the
 
 208 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 voyage of man's life. We are reminded of the gospel picture 
 of Christ with His disciples on tlie Lake of Gennesareth, where 
 the Lord stilled the tempest and the boisterous waves, and 
 guided the disciples unharmed to the shore. In this we have 
 an emblem of the Church, as a ship which sails across the 
 stormy sea of society. In this picture the voyage is made in com- 
 pany with others, who are all united under the same Master. 
 And we are reminded that we, if we hope to land at last, must 
 be in the right ship, and with the right companions, and have 
 the Master on board. This emblem is certainly not less just 
 than the first, and expresses a side of the matter which in 
 Vinet's theory of individuality does not appear. Certainly it 
 too may be taken in a one-sided manner. For if any one should 
 suppose that, because he was outwardly within the vessel of 
 the Church, because he outwardly belonged to the community 
 of the true Church, that therefore he must infallibly land on 
 the shores of bliss, he has fallen into dreadful error. And as a 
 fitting corrective the first emblem may be employed, that each 
 one must embark in the vessel of his own individuality, and 
 pay good heed that he be not swamped by the waves, or, as 
 S. Kierkegaard ^ has expressed the idea, that every man must 
 navigate the sea of this world in his own little kajak. 
 
 Without figure, with Vinet society does not receive justice ; 
 and for this very reason, neither does the individual attain its 
 full measure of what is due to it. However strongly Vinet 
 urges the claims to supremacy of individualism and of person- 
 ality, still he lacks the idea of a kingdom of personality, the 
 idea of a total organization of personalities. Society (Saivfund), 
 the ethical organism, is to him synonymous with the community 
 (Sels/cabel). The French word la sociele has this double mean- 
 ing, so that it can be employed in either sense, whilst a closer 
 consideration must discover here diversity of conceptions. The 
 community {Selskabet) designates only the external, accidental 
 unity of hvanan individuals ; society (Samfundei), when it is 
 contrasted with the community (Selskabet), the inner organic 
 unity. In the community (^Selshahet) individuals appear as 
 independent, without at the same time being memhers of a 
 greater moral whole ; in society (Samfimd) they are only inde- 
 pendent in so far as they are at the same time organic members. 
 
 ^ SiJreu Kierkegaard, a Danisli theological writer of the present time.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 209 
 
 The community (SelsJcahet) is a product of the individual?, to 
 be moulded and brought forth by their mutual relation to each 
 other ; society (Samfundet) is not merely the product, but the 
 postulate of individuals. As now Vinet only views the moral 
 world from the standpoint of the community (SelsJcahet), it is 
 quite explicable that he sometimes depicts la societe as a m.ere 
 " arrano-ement" anions; individuals, sometimes as an "ocean," 
 under which fiiiure he imamnes the whole indeterminate infini- 
 tude of the relations of human life, which in their uninterrupted 
 motion sometimes bear up the individual, sometimes engulf him. 
 And it must be acknowledged, that the more emancipation and 
 the development of freedom, bearing along with them the 
 independence of the human individual, advance with rapid steps, 
 the more also will the community (Selskabet) increase in pov/cr 
 and significance. But the human individual stands not merely 
 in relation to the community (Selskabet), but also to society 
 (Samfundet), to ethical organisms, in which the firm decrees of 
 God bearing sway over man make their appearance, and in 
 which the individual must find not a mere limiting, but more- 
 over a supporting and sustaining power for his inner life. But 
 the conception of ethical organisms lies outside of Vinet's 
 horizon, at most obtains but a passing glance, and remains 
 without results. On this account also the highest idea of 
 Christian ethics, the idea of God's kingdom, has no determin- 
 ing influence. The highest Good is with him only the eternal 
 blessedness of the individual, but not one totality, not one per- 
 fection, in the world's condition, although this idea pervades 
 the Scriptures, shadowed forth in the Old Testament and fully 
 revealed in the New. The future kingdom of glory can, in 
 the light of this theory of individuality, be only regarded as 
 a community of holy and blessed spirits, who individually come 
 together without forming a really incorporated society (Sam- 
 funds legeme). But the Scriptures represent the society of 
 the blessed as a body having many members, of which Christ 
 is the head ; as a temple of living stones, of which Christ is 
 the foundation stone. And if we inquire what is here in 
 truth the principal, the individual limb of the body, the in- 
 dividual stone of the temple, then, without contradiction, it 
 must be answered that not the individual limb, not the single 
 stone, is the most important, but the body and the entire temple. 
 
 O
 
 210 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 The whole is before the parts, which is just the essence of 
 organization. For Vinet, the Church is only a community, 
 which from time to time sporadically moulds itself in this 
 manner : several individuals resolve on fellowship in the 
 worship of God on the gospel basis. But the historical con- 
 tinuity of the Church throughout all the changes of time, the 
 Church as the postulate for individuals, not merely with the 
 word, but also with the sacraments as divine mysteries, by 
 which communion with the Redeemer and the mutual com- 
 munion between believers are preserved, is not a determining 
 power in his ethical theory. 
 
 ToVinet's theory of God's Church and kingdom corresponds 
 his theory regarding " liumanity " {Fhumanite), which he only 
 partly considers as the mass of the human individuals which 
 inhabit our planet, partly as the sum-total of those peculiarities 
 which constitute human nature.^ But humanity is not merely 
 the " mass " of human individuals, it is an organism of indi- 
 viduals, a tree with many branches which all grow on the same 
 trunk. And not merely does humanity embrace the present 
 living individuals inhabiting our planet, but also the past and 
 the future, since these are all members of the same body of 
 humanity ; so that we have not only duties to perform towards 
 the living, but, moreover, towards the dead and towards the yet 
 unborn. And humanity is not merely an ensemhh or sum- 
 total of the qualities abstracted from us to form a general con- 
 ception. It is an idea, a thought of unity, which is realized in 
 a totality of human individuals. In no single individual (with 
 the exception of the central individual, Christ) can human 
 nature be perfectly realized : no single individual can be perfect 
 man. Only the totality of human individuals can actually be 
 so, because in their special qualities they mutually complete 
 each other. 
 
 By the consideration of humanity as an abstract, we are led 
 
 1 Essais de phil. moral. 193 : On peut entendre par humanite deux 
 choses, la masse des hommcs qui peuplent notre planete et I'eusemble des 
 attributs qui constituent la qualite d'homme. Two different things may- 
 be understood by " humanite," — the mass of men who people our planet, 
 and the sum of attributes which constitute the quality of man.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 211 
 
 back to the contests of the scholastics regarding realism and 
 nominalism. Mere realism acknowledges only the universal as 
 the truly existing. Nominalism, on the other hand, acknow- 
 ledges only the individual as the truly existing, whilst the 
 universal is but an abstraction from the individual. The 
 universal has not any existence in itself, but only in our reflec- 
 tion, which forms to itself a common concept. Both are right 
 and both are wrong, for the truth is only the living unity of 
 the universal and the individual. Humanity and the human 
 race exist only in individuals, and individuals are only real in 
 their connection with the race, and in their own place in the 
 kingdom of humanity. Applied to the contrast here con- 
 templated between socialism and individualism, between society 
 and the individual, we may say that all one-sided socialism 
 is exclusively realistic, since it considers individuals as tempo- 
 rary, and makes the universal one and all : individualism, on 
 the other hand, is exclusively nominalistic, since it places the 
 isolated individuals in the position of the only true existences, 
 and degrades society into a mere arrangement between the 
 individuals, but does not acknowledge it as a being (iin etre) in 
 itself. It is well known what exceeding importance the contrast 
 between realism and nominalism had to dogmatics in the middlia 
 ages. But it deserves to be borne in mind that this same con- 
 trast also in the middle ages received its ethical importance 
 principally in the question of the relation of the Church to the 
 individual. Here nominalism maintained the right of indivi- 
 duality in opposition to the one-sided socialism of the Church, 
 and especially towards the close of the middle ages exerted an 
 unfavourable influence on the stability of the Church, for which 
 reason the nominalists have been often applauded as the pre- 
 cursors of Protestantism. The credit thus accorded them is not, 
 however, entirely their due. In reality they were only the pre- 
 cursors of sects in religion, but not of the formation of the 
 Protestant Church. The Eeformation itself went back to the 
 unity of nominalism and realism, as this is given in the Holy 
 Scriptures, the teaching of which on this point we shall here- 
 after discuss. In modern times the contrast of wdiich we have 
 been speaking continues to repeat itself under higher, more 
 developed forms. And although the name does not appear, 
 the present age is predominantly rich in religious, ecclesiastical,
 
 212 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 and political nomiiialists, that is to say, of persons who desire to 
 make religion exclusively the concern of the individual, who 
 would convert the Church into a conventicle, and the State 
 into a joint-stock company. The Christian view, on the other 
 hand, is the higher unity of both opposing theories. It is 
 realistic, or, as we may also express it by a term which lies 
 nearer to modern consciousness, it is universalistic ; for the 
 kincrdom, the totality, is before the individual, which must be 
 recrarded as a link in the series, as a member of the vast body. 
 It is nominalistic or individualistic ; for the individual is not 
 merely a ministering member, but at the same time an infinite 
 object in itself, of infinite value to itself. But what holds 
 (Tood with regard to the kinn;dom of God as the final destiny 
 of the developments of society, holds good also with regard to 
 the lower organizations of society, which typically refer to the 
 kingdom of God. It holds good with regard to every organi- 
 zation of society, a race, a family, that unity and totality only 
 come into actual existence in and with individuals, as, on the 
 other hand, each of these members only exists in and with 
 this unity; that society and the individual, as Baader ex- 
 presses it, mutually guarantee each other s existence. The body 
 does not exist without or by the side of its members ; and 
 just as little have the members any real existence without the 
 body. 
 
 §67. 
 
 The maxim which recurs again and again in Vinet, that the 
 individual is higher than society, is misleading, if it is to be 
 understood as unconditional. For from this it would follov/ 
 that society is only to be tlie means for the individual. It is 
 undeniable that the individual, considered in its eternal desti- 
 nation, does not cease or lose its character of individuality in 
 any of the earthly forms of society ; but that it does not cease 
 in the forms of earthly society proceeds exactly from the fact 
 that it is a member in a society of a higher order, that it is 
 called to citizenship in a higher realm. It does not cease in 
 the family, because it is appointed to be a member of the State. 
 It does not cease in the State, because it is appointed to be a 
 member of the kingdom of humanity, which shall be trans- 
 formed into the kingdom of God. It does not cease in the
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 213 
 
 visible Church, because it is destined for the society of the 
 saints. The truth is, that at every step of the development of 
 the moral world, it is decreed that there shall be a relation of 
 reciprocity between society and the individual, so that they 
 both shall be means and end for one another. That the indi- 
 vidual is higher than society, Vinet grounds on the assumption 
 that only the individual, not society, is the ethical subject. And 
 if the matter really stands thus, that society is without reli- 
 gious and moral subjectivity, then it must certainly be set 
 down as exclusively the means for the individual. Only the 
 individual is immortal, says he : only the individual has a real 
 relation to God. But although it is undeniable that not every 
 form of society has promise of the life which is to come, yet 
 there is one society which has this promise, — the Church of 
 Christ, — that the powers of death shall not prevail against 
 it. It is the view of Scripture, that the congregation is the 
 religious ethical subject, and through time shall grow up to the 
 "perfect man," unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ (Eph. iv. 13). And as the Scripture represents the 
 congregation as a man, so it also represents the congregation as 
 a woman, as the Bride, whilst Christ is the Bridegroom (Kev. 
 xxii. 17). This idea is repeated when the apostle says to the 
 Galatians, iii. 28, Ye are all one (el?) in Christ; and Eph. 
 ii. 15, that Christ hath made Jews and Greeks to be one, and 
 hath made in Himself of twain one new mem. No one can 
 reasonably interpret this and corresponding passages, as if the 
 apostle only spoke here of a summary of qualities, from which 
 he had constructed a personification which had no deeper signi- 
 ficance. He speaks about a common personality, not as a mere 
 collective, but as an organic unity. The Church, as the new 
 man, certainly does not now exist without or by the side of the 
 individual believing members, who have each their individual 
 relation towards God. But since they are all united in the 
 same Lord and the same Spirit, are all united in the same 
 faith, the same hope, the same love, all are partakers of the 
 same general benefits, all are not merely of one (tz^), but to 
 one (el?), although this one as yet is only in its development, 
 and has not attained maturity. They are all one, because only 
 in their totality are they the neio man. That is to say, that the 
 new man is not perfectly realized in any single one of them.
 
 214 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 and without unity each of them is merely a fragment reflecting 
 only a single ray of Christ's image; for only the entire Church 
 can mirror Christ's kingdom. The relation of the individual 
 to God expresses only in a limited, circumscribed manner the 
 relation of love towards God of the new man, which can only 
 be realized in a relation of the whole Church, where all in the 
 diversity of the gifts of grace think and desire one thing, where 
 a common consciousness and a common will inspire all, where 
 a feeling of the wants and necessities of the whole body per- 
 vades each member. Wherever there is a community of real 
 believers, then not merely the individuals, but also the commu- 
 nity, have an actual relation towards God, which is especially 
 evident in that true prayer of the Church, the Lord's Prayer, 
 which is to be used by the congregation to the end of 
 time, and in which each one prays not for himself alone, 
 in his own individual circumstances, but where at the same 
 time one prays as all, and all as one in separate and conjoint 
 association. 
 
 Vinet says, that not society, but the individual, awaits the 
 coming judgment. But we would inquire if there is not a 
 common guilt, a crime of society ; if there are not sins of the 
 Church apart from individual transgressions ; if, for instance, 
 the missives in the book of Eevelation to the seven churches do 
 not pass judgment over the congregations as common person- 
 alities, as communities bearing a common responsibility? And 
 we would further inquire if there are not national sins ; if even 
 in the present time God's righteous judgments do not go forth 
 upon the nations ? The prophets of Israel, from first to last, 
 utter both promises and threatenings to the people. And when 
 Christ wept over Jerusalem, because it knew not the things 
 which should serve to its peace, did He then weep only over the 
 separate individuals, and not over the people as a people ? The 
 divine word tells us expressly, that at the Lord's second coming 
 all " nations " shall be assembled before Him (Matt. xxv. 32) ; 
 that the men of Nineveh, who had repented at the preaching 
 of Jonah, should rise up in the judgment and condemn this 
 "generation," who repented not at the preaching of Christ 
 (Matt. xii. 41) ; that generation shall witness against genera- 
 tion. The contemplation of history, and the contemplation of 
 the circumstances which pass before our own eyes, lead us to
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 215 
 
 the inevitable conviction, that in a nation all the individuals, 
 though in very different degrees, are responsible for the general 
 tone which predominates in the community. The study of his- 
 tory compels us to acknowledge the law of solidarity (all for 
 one, and one for all), or that all have a common responsibility 
 in relation to the duties of life, which have constituted society 
 as such, that all the members are responsible for the body, and 
 thence also sharers in its weal and woe, honour and dishonour. 
 And not merely does this solidarity embrace the present genera- 
 tion, but also the preceding, of whom we are the heirs, and the 
 succeeding, who must inherit from us both good and evil things. 
 How thus, under the mere postulates of individualism, can the 
 joy be explained which we feel in the hope that a better future 
 is in store for mankind, or that a better future is in store for 
 our own country, although we ourselves shall not live to see it ? 
 or the enthusiasm with which a nation fights in a righteous 
 cause, and in which thousands devote themselves on a field 
 of battle for the sake of a future they are not to behold, and 
 looking back to a former period, which they have only beheld in 
 spirit, to the deeds and the glory of their forefathers? What 
 especially does the historic past, in which we had no earthly 
 existence, become to us, and the historic future in which this 
 existence shall have ceased, without this solidaric connection, 
 this inward association among personalities, which in time are 
 far separated from each other, but which form with each other 
 a living unity ? The great law of solidarity is perfectly ignored 
 in a theory of individualism, in which society is only an arrange- 
 ment between personal atoms, and which consequently must 
 deny the conceptions of history and tradition in the intellectual 
 significance of these conceptions. 
 
 §68. 
 
 But just because Vinet does not give society its due, so 
 neither can he do justice to the individual, which he desires 
 to protect from society. It is his great merit that he maintains 
 the inherent dignity of the individual ; but since he overlooks 
 the fact that the individual is ministering member in an organic 
 whole, he at the same time deprives the individual of an im- 
 portant part of the support which it should have in society. 
 He has a sharp eye for the dangers which threaten the individual
 
 216 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 from the side of society ; views society, witli all its infinitude 
 of prejudices and illusions, of seductions and derelictions, as a 
 power whicli, like a vast ocean, will engulf the individual. But 
 the sustaining and supporting power, the educative influence, 
 which proceed from the institutions, traditions, and customs of 
 society, are put by him into the shade. Thus he makes war 
 on State Churches, whilst he ignores their educational im- 
 portance, — ignores the fact that the true Church of indi- 
 viduality, the communion of saints, must be developed from 
 the bosom of the National Church, overlooks the necessity of 
 the individual being educated to liberty, and thereby injures 
 especially the rights of the unlearned, by allowing them to be 
 cast out on the " Ocean," by requiring mature conviction and 
 self-determination from those who are not vet educated. But 
 also in other respects he deprives the individual of its due, 
 since he separates it from an essential portion of the intellectual 
 riches to which it is destined. Consequently the theory of 
 individuality must repress the sympathetic element in human 
 nature, and lead every individual to labour autopathically for 
 his own perfection. It is indeed acknowledged that love 
 towards God and man must be the fundamental virtue of the 
 individual. But the theory of individuality only demands 
 individual philanthropy, love towards human individuals, since 
 these are the only actual existences, but not universal philan- 
 thropy, love towards the nation, fatherland and church, love 
 towards humanity and its ideal aim, and above all, devotion to 
 the kingdom of God which is coming, and is to be perfected 
 througli history. AVe say that the theory which in this age has 
 found its principal religious exponent in Vinet, has no room for 
 all this. With regard to himself, we are very far from saying 
 so. There are few writers whose individuality is so sympatlLetic 
 as his, rich in sympathy for all mankind ; and numerous por- 
 tions of his writings, in spite of his theory, breathe forth a 
 deep universal love. Nay, we may say that it is his love to 
 humanity which has made him so concerned about individuals, 
 and has brought him to combat a uuiversalism in which they 
 stood in danger of being lost. But read his own books, and no 
 one will rei^ret havino; done so.^ 
 
 ^ For example, the already mentioned Essais de pJiilosophie morale, as well 
 as his Eludes evanc/eliques and his Discourd.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 217 
 
 §69. 
 
 What lias been here charged agahist Vinet is true in a 
 greater degree in regard to S. Kierkegaard, wlio, with great 
 talent and powerful one-sidedness, has been with us the advo- 
 cate of individualism. As his support of individualism forms 
 a remarkable episode in Danish literature, we shall dwell at 
 somewhat greater length on the matter, although the principal 
 consideration has been already discussed in reference to Vinet, 
 so that what follows on it may be regarded as an episode in the 
 present work. As with Vinet, the contrast between indivi- 
 dualism and socialism also with Kierkegaard goes back to a 
 higher, — namely, the contrast between individualism and uni- 
 versalism. It thus becomes necessary for the clearer under- 
 standing of the point to return to the consideration of this last. 
 
 By universalism, then, we understand that tendency of mind 
 which places the universal highest. As now the most universal 
 of all things are pure ideas and categories, so philosophic 
 idealism, as panlogism, must be the purest universalism. This 
 theory found, as is notorious, its representation in our day in 
 the philosophy of Hegel. For this philosophy, in Avhich it 
 is carried out in its purity, must change the whole of exist- 
 ence into an ideal realm, a world of ideas. Every form of 
 reality, nature and history, is contemplated only as a form or 
 phase of thought, and religion itself is only valid as a lower 
 form of knowledge, a possession of the absolute in the form of 
 representation, whilst philosophy had the truth in the form of 
 conception. Human personality, human individualities, were 
 only temporary representatives of ideas, or mutes in the drama, 
 which the ideal from eternity performs for itself. For history is 
 in reality not the history of man, but the history of ideas. In 
 combination with this philosophic element there prevailed at 
 that time a poetic, artistic idealism, which, indifferent to the 
 individual value or content of art, puts forward the universal, 
 the beautiful form as the essential, and therefore dwells with 
 equal interest on every work of art, collecting its material now 
 from antiquity, now from modern times, from heaven or from 
 earth, from tiie great or the small, if only the universal or 
 form of beauty be present. The speculative and the gesthetic 
 were for this tendency of mind the highest. Where this is
 
 218 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 consistently carried out, — which, however, is not the case with 
 Hegel himself, for in his idealistic representations there is to be 
 found a not inconsiderable woof of reality, by which means an 
 ambiguity appears, and after a time mystification is inevitable, — 
 consistently carried out, I say, this must also become the highest 
 aim for the individual in the repose of contemplation, to linger 
 in the aerial hall of universalism, with its broad prospects, its 
 logical columns and pillars, its aesthetic pictures from all times 
 and all regions of the earth, — those pictures which, as the ideal 
 transfiguration of reality, are far superior to the immediate 
 reality itself. 
 
 In those days there was also much discussion about the 
 logical, the speculative, and the sesthetic bath, which was 
 sometimes represented as a water-bath in the Heraclitic streams 
 of infinity, sometimes as an air-bath in the eternal and change- 
 less ether of pure idea, just as it was also regarded as the true 
 art of life through the finite to inhale the breath of infinity. 
 In this speculative and sesthetic intoxication about ideas, it 
 had onlv been foro-otten that there was one idea, which had 
 entirely disappeared, namely the religious-ethical idea, which 
 does not rest satisfied with a mere ideal being, a being in 
 thought, but demands existence. Against this univei'salism must 
 therefore come forth a reaction botii from the side of pliilosophy 
 and theology, a protest in the name of ethics and religion, of 
 personality and individuality, the individual both in men and 
 things ; for even the mere knowledge of experience, especially 
 the natural sciences, must make protest against a merely 
 idealistic treatment. Both in the worlds of nature and of 
 mind, the microscopic contemplation is now placed in contrast 
 to the telescopic as applied to infinity, and the sense is 
 developed for the small matters lying close to man, yet often 
 unperceived by him. All depends, however, on the more 
 intimate condition of this reaction, whether the child is to be 
 cast out with the bath, whether universalism in every sense is 
 to be rejected, or whether a higher union of universalism and 
 individualism, of ideal and reality, is to be attempted. We 
 find ourselves here again in the midst of the problem of the 
 middle ages concerning realism and nominalism, but in modern 
 form. The terms in use are certainly quite different ; for 
 what the middle ages called realism we call idealism, and what
 
 SOCIALISM AND IXDIVIDUALISM. 219 
 
 was then designated nominalism we style empiricism. But the 
 matter itself is entirely the same, which may also be seen by 
 the predicates which were employed in the middle ages with 
 regard to the realists, who were called formaUzantes, metapliy- 
 sicanteSj which answers exactly to the idealists of our day. 
 
 In the nominalistic reaction here referred to, proceeding from 
 the essential interest, in so far as this moves in the spheres of 
 ethics and religion, Kierkegaard takes up a peculiar position. 
 He considers it as the misfortune of the age to know too much, 
 and with all this knowledge to have forgotten what it is to exist, 
 and the significance of the term subjectiveness ; that in view of 
 the aesthetic, the speculative, the history of the world, it has 
 forgotten that the main point is to be an individual man ; that 
 the age, by becoming objective, has forgotten that it is the 
 business of every human being to remain subjective. He has 
 therefore made it the aim of his life to promote and carry 
 through the category, "the individual." Should he ask for an 
 inscription on his grave, he desires no other than this : " The 
 individual man." If this category of S. Kierkegaard is not 
 understood by the present generation, he is yet persuaded that 
 it will be understood in time comino;.^ 
 
 In so far as S. Kierkegaard claims this category as a sort of 
 discovery, and admits no other predecessor to himself in it 
 except Socrates, this is only quite correct in reference to the 
 highly individual manner in which he has maintained this 
 category, and which doubtless may be described as a ccttu^ 
 Xeyofievov. Already before him Alexander Vinet had intro- 
 duced the same category, and by his noble eloquence had 
 procured for it a distinguished position in literature. At the 
 time when S. Kierkegaard appeared, individualism was already 
 in full activity by the side of universalism. But in general it 
 may be said that this category, " the individual," is common to 
 all those who, certainly in a far more comprehensive sense than 
 either Vinet or Kierkegaard, desire to uphold the principle of 
 perso7iality, to maintain the personality of God and of man in 
 
 ^ Synspiinctet for min Forfattervirksomlied. En Ugefrem Meddelse Rapport 
 til Historien af S. Kierkegaard, Udgivet af P. C. Kierkegaard, 1859, p. 105. 
 (View-point for the Criticism of my Authorship. A frank Communication 
 regarding the History of S. Kierkegaard, edited by his Brother, P. C. 
 Kierkegaard.)
 
 220 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 opposition to Pantheism. '^ The individual" is the category of 
 nominalism ; and rightly understood, and when all has been 
 heard, — that is to say, when nominalism does not exclude but 
 includes realism, — nominalism is the higher. The individual 
 is higher than the abstract, the personal than the impersonal. 
 Only the individual exists, has actual being (existentia est 
 singulorum, as the scholastics expressed it), whilst the universal 
 has only ideal existence, and only in its union with the individual 
 attains to actual being. "The individual" is the category of 
 Christianity and of Theism. For God also, not indeed in a 
 worldly sense, but in a super-mundane, is the individual, not 
 the indeterminate universal, not the abstract, but the perfect 
 threefold One, which, though comprehending and embracing 
 all the possible and actual, yet in the most decided manner is 
 distinct from the universe. From a former period we may 
 here refer to the antagonism between Leibnitz and Spinosa, 
 because the former, in opposition to the all-absorbing ocean 
 of substance set forth by Spinosa, determines both God and 
 Creation as monads, as individual beings, and causes the 
 universal to be received into the individual. In our times we 
 may refer to Schelling, according to his more recent system, 
 which he has now brouoht into connected order. Whilst 
 Hegel sets forth the universal as the actually existing, and lets 
 this determine its own destinies and itself move to its concre- 
 tions, the later Schelling, in this agreeing with Aristotle, sets 
 forth the individual as the actuallv existing;. Not as though 
 he denied the value of ideas of universal concepts. But the 
 ideal only arrives at participation in actual being, in existence, 
 by becoming the attribute of the individual ; and God is to him 
 the absolute individual Being, who invests Himself with the 
 universal. Whilst Hegel says that it is the universal which 
 individualizes itself, Schelling says that, on the contrary, it is 
 the individual which universalizes itself.^ He inquires whence 
 the universal should obtain the power to individualize itself and 
 put itself into existence, which may also be expressed thus: that 
 not thought as the universal and ideal, but the loUl as the 
 essence of existence, is the supreme principle, which has the 
 power to determine itself and others, lleason is to him only 
 the sum-total, the complete number of the divine possibilities^ 
 ' Von der Quelle der ewigeii Wahrheitai, TVerke 2, Abth. 1, S. 587.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 221 
 
 the circle of the predicates, through wliich the absolute indivi- 
 dual beinfj makes itself intellifrible. Reason, the mere realm of 
 ideas, is, but cannot attain existence except by the Avil]. Besides 
 Schelling, we may also mention Fr. Baader and his determinate 
 Christian Theism ; the younger Fichte, too, who by his theory 
 of personality (which had reference to the teaching of Leibnitz) 
 upholds the individual and monadic as the really actual. 
 
 But that which philoi^ophy seeks for, theology possesses, — 
 namely, in revelation. It is indubitably the metaphysic of 
 revelation, that not the impersonal ideal, but the personal exist- 
 ence — not thought, but will — not wisdom, but love, is the first 
 principle in God; as, on the other side, it tells us that the 
 almighty love only exists and reveals itself in the form of 
 wisdom. And when the Scriptures present to us the kinodom 
 of God as the highest in existence, it undoubtedly tells us that 
 not the impersonal universal, not impersonal ideals, operations, 
 and powers, but the individual personal existences, are first in 
 value ; but tells us likewise that these personal existences can 
 only develope themselves through an organization, which in- 
 cludes a system of ideas and powers. 
 
 It is not meant that all this about existence and idea, 
 about the individual and the universal, is empty and barren 
 metaphysics, which would have no bearing on ethics. On the 
 contrary, it has the most important bearing on the ethical 
 relation of man, and specially imposes on the individual the 
 problem, in the solution of which redeeming grace will assist, — 
 namely, in the effort to express the unity of existence and ideal, 
 of will (love) and apprehension, of individual life and social life, 
 because every dualism here is of evil. Although metaphysical 
 problems like that concerning nominalism and realism may 
 seem to be alien, and far apart from ethics, yet they are still 
 intimately associated with it, because all metaphysical problems 
 gravitate, as it were, towards the ethical, centre therein, and 
 therein find their ultimate determination. And just those 
 ethical categories which show themselves daily, always lying 
 near us, are, when rightly understood, the highest metaphysics, 
 the deepest grounds for speculation. 
 
 Kierkegaard's assertion is therefore perfectly justifiable, that 
 with the category of "the individual" the cause of Christianity 
 must stand and fall ; that, without this category, Pantheism
 
 222 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 had conquerecl unconditionally.^ From this, at a glance, it may- 
 be seen that Kierkegaard oun;ht to make common cause with 
 those philosophic and theological writers who specially desire to 
 promote the principle of Personality as opposed to Pantheism. 
 This is, however, very far from being the case. For those 
 views which upheld the category of existence and personality, 
 in opposition to this abstract idealism, did not do this in the 
 sense of an either — or, but in that of a Loth — and. They strove 
 after unity of existence and idea, which may be specially seen 
 from the fact that they desired system, totality. With Kierke- 
 gaard, on the other hand, during this progressive development, 
 existence comes into more and more negative relation towards 
 the ideal, for which reason he first and last combats speculation 
 and system. It was not his aim to dislodge one speculation by 
 another, one system by another ; he desired a metabasis of an 
 entirely different genus. Directly, no doubt, he only turns his 
 polemics against the system of Hegel. He finds, as has been 
 already said, that the age, in its great knowledge, large aesthetics, 
 and extensive universal history, has forgotten the real signifi- 
 cance of existence and subjectivity. The category of the 
 "individual" interests him, therefore, only in the sense of the 
 individual existing man. He has arrived at the perception that 
 " subjectivity is the truth," — a doubtful proposition, in regard to 
 which it may be observed that there is but one human subjectivity 
 concerning whom it can be expressed, namely, that One who, 
 in the highest sense, may be called " the individual " in human 
 history, and who alone can say, / am the truth ; that great 
 individual, who came into the world to make Himself universal, 
 to impart Himself to all by instituting the holy catJiolic Church, 
 whilst every other human subjectivity can only through Him 
 become -participant in the truth, but can never he the truth. 
 Kierkegaard has discovered that what the age, from its great 
 knowledge and its decline into the objective, specially requires 
 is a Socrates, who, in his apprehension, must be a sort of 
 trainer or guide to Christ. " Socrates ! Socrates ! Socrates ! 
 yea, we may well call thrice upon thy name ; it would not be 
 too much to call upon it ten times, if that could avail aught. 
 Some people are of opinion that the world requires a republic, 
 that it requires a fresh organization of society and a new reli- 
 ^ Synspunctet for miii Foi'fattervirksomhed, S. 110.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 223 
 
 gion ; but no one perceives that it is just a Socrates of which 
 this world, perplexed by its great knowledge, stands in need."* 
 But whilst he now, Socratic-like, turns against speculation, in 
 order '' to make difficulties," and to disperse like vapour this 
 imaginary knowledge, evoking soberness and circumspection, 
 he turns at the same time indirectly — for directly he has never 
 entered on the subject — to combat those philosophical and 
 theological speculations which seek precisely to work out his 
 own category, though in a far more universal sense than he 
 has done. All these views he classes together under the names 
 of " speculation " and " mediation," without in any way per- 
 mitting himself to institute a closer examination into their 
 internal diversities, especially the diversity in the position they 
 assume towards revelation, — a mode of proceeding which does 
 not evince Socratic caution. 
 
 This reckless polemic against speculation, which in so many 
 respects is entirely uncritical, and merely an attack in flank, 
 finds, however, a mitigating explanation in his individual 
 pathos.^ For as there are exhibited to us from different periods 
 of the history of science many examples of persons whose 
 enthusiasm was entirely logical, whose passion was the ideal 
 and the purely scientific, so that in this passion of theirs they 
 insulted the material, and closed their eyes to the actual and 
 its most evident facts (of this the elder Fichte is an instance) ; 
 so, on the other hand, existence and the actual constitute the 
 passion of Kierkegaard, making him regardless of the ideal, 
 which could not but be avenged on existence itself, causing this 
 last to be finally clipped of its fair proportions. 
 
 " Existence," " the individual," '' will," " subjectivity," " un- 
 mitigated selfishness," " the paradox," " faith," " scandal," 
 " happy and unhappy love," — by these and kindred categories 
 of existence Kierkegaard appears intoxicated, nay, thrown as it 
 were into a state of ecstasy. Therefore he declares war against 
 all speculation, and also against such persons as seek to speculate 
 on faith and strive after an insight into the truths of revela- 
 tion : for all speculation is loss of time, leads away from the 
 subjective into the objective, from the actual to the ideal, is a 
 
 * Sygdommen til Doden^ S. 93. (The Sickness unto Death.) 
 ^ The succeeding paragraph is taken from the author's own treatise on 
 Faith and Knowledge (jOm Tru o(j Videii).
 
 224 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 dangerous distraction ; and all mediation betrays existence, leads 
 treacherously away from the decided in actual life, is a falsi- 
 fying of faith by the help of idea. Although he himself is 
 amply endowed with imagination, yet the course of his indi- 
 viduality, throughout the various stages of its development, 
 may be described as a continued dying to the ideal in order to 
 reach the actual, which to him is the true, and which just 
 receives its value from the ideal glories, which must be cast 
 aside in order to attain it. Kierkegaard's deepest passion is 
 not merely the ethical, not merely the ethical-religious, but the 
 ethical-religious paradox ; it is Christianity itself, — such as this 
 exhibits itself to his apprehension.^ Ciiristianity is to him the 
 divinely absurd {credo quia absurdwn), not merely the relative 
 paradox, — namely, in relation to the natural man, ensnared in sin 
 and worldliness, which has been the doctrine of Scripture and 
 of the Church from the beginning, — but the absolute paradox, 
 which must be believed in defiance of all reason, because every 
 ideal, every thought of wisdom, is excluded therefrom, and in 
 every case is absolutely inaccessible to man. Faith is to him 
 the highest actual passion, which, thrilled by the consciousness 
 of sin and guilt, appropriates to itself the paradox in defiance of 
 the understanding, and from which all comprehension, all con- 
 templation are excluded, as it is of a purely practical nature, a 
 mere act of the will. Not the less is everything for him 
 dialectic. But his dialectic is a disuniting dialectic of existence, 
 which developes the relation of the individual to the various 
 spheres of existence, developes specially the internal contradic- 
 tions in the problem of faith, and why it must be believed '• in 
 virtue of the absurd ;" just as, on the other side, it unfolds the 
 incongruity between speculation and existence, in which it is 
 only to be regretted that speculation obtains such an imperfect 
 hearing, and must submit to refutation in forms under which 
 it cannot recognise itself. It may also be complained that 
 existence, particularly the fact of revelation, is so imperfectly 
 exhibited, as that God's becoming man in Christ, or, as lie 
 terms it, ])laying on the word, " God's coming into existence" 
 {Giulens Tilblivelse), wdiich is to him the paradox, is represented 
 as an entirely isolated fact, — a dens ex machina, — without any 
 
 1 With regard to his very defective nou-ethical couceptiou of God, sec tho 
 huthor's woi-k quoted above.
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 225 
 
 connection with the economy of revelation and its universal 
 principles, on which he does not venture, doubtless because 
 he would thus be brought too deeply into the ideal and the 
 objective, and that thus too much wisdom and intellect would be 
 brought into the whole. Only the individual in his personal 
 relation to God is the subject of his interest ; and this existen- 
 tial pathos, which predominates the dialectic, is the guiding 
 view-point for the voluminous authorship of Kierkegaard. 
 
 His great idea is, that " Christianity is a vast deception ; that 
 all these thousands, without anything further, call themselves 
 Christians ; those many, many men, whose far, far greatest 
 number, from all that can be discerned, have their lives in 
 entirely different categories."^ His chief problem is, " how to 
 become a Christian : " — " The Individual. This category has 
 only been employed once before, the first time in a decidedly 
 dialectic manner by Socrates in order to overthrow paganism. 
 In Christianity, on the other hand, it is to be employed this 
 second time to make men (nominal Christians) real followers 
 of Christ. It is not the category of the missionary in regard to 
 the heathen, which he announces to the Christian world ; but 
 it is the missionary's category within Christendom itself to re- 
 introduce Christianity into Christendom." ' This mission he 
 now desires to execute, not after the apostolic example, but after 
 the manner of Socrates, by indirect communications, since he 
 first by a number of pseudonymous productions, which he de- 
 scribes as sesthetic productivity, prepares the way for special 
 religious authorship. It must certainly be acknowledged, that 
 by means of this "diffuse literature" he has contributed in 
 many respects to exercise a preparing and awakening influence, 
 — in frequent instances, has aroused anxiety after the reality of 
 religious impressions. And when on a brilliant worldly back- 
 ground, a background glittering with worldly refinement, there 
 arises a partially ascetic, world-denying prospect, it must cer- 
 tainly be regarded as a very remarkable event. It may be very 
 instructive to accompany him in his solitary wandering through- 
 out its different stages, through the speculative, sesthetic, and 
 ethical regions, which he has traversed along with the border- 
 lands of irony and humour, until he, the individual, after having 
 successively resigned all these earthly joys, at last, along with that 
 ^ Synspunctet for min Forfaitervirksomhed, p. 15. ^ The same, p. 111. 
 
 P
 
 226 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 individual reader, '>vlucli 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<T at his side brought before liim the thought of death 
 and judgment in all its horror. But not only occurrences, sin 
 itself may become a means of awakening. A great lapse into 
 which a man unthinkingly falls, may open his eyes to the weak- 
 ness of his nature, and allow him to look into its abyss; as also 
 the sight of another's fall may awaken the same dread. The 
 prodigal son, Mary Magdalene, Paul in his blind zeal, are last- 
 ing examples. And as suffering and self-caused misery may be 
 the means of awakening, so may also prosperous circumstances 
 produce the same effect. But His richest blessings are bestowed 
 on us by God through men, who become His instruments and 
 messengers to us. Philip, who comes to the Ethiopian eunuch 
 and opens to him the Scriptures (Acts viii.), is here a type. 
 And how many have there not been awakened by the personal 
 relations of life, by a meeting, by contact with such as were 
 already disciples, and whose personality bore testimony concern- 
 ing the Master ! And only to name one of such relations, how 
 many more have been won by their wives, — won, as the apostle 
 saysj without the word, merely by their holy conversation ! 
 
 With the outward leadings of Providence are combined the 
 inward leadings of the mind ; and there are many individuals 
 who are pre-eminently awakened from within. A spiritual 
 phenomenon of frequent occurrence is an inward disquietude, 
 an inexplicable heaviness of heart, which does not allow the man 
 to find rest or satisfaction in anything created ; as it, on the 
 whole, may be said that there is a fund of melancholy in the 
 inmost being of every man, if it does not come forth alike with 
 all. From this disquietude, this melancholy, there is frequently 
 developed a craving for Christ, and a search after Him, from 
 which awakening proceeds, although this craving assumes diffe- 
 rent tints or shades of colour in different people. There are those 
 with whom it predominantly appears as a craving for revelation, 
 the desire to receive an answer to this great question. What 13 
 truth ? under the many disappointments of life, under the self- 
 deceiving of men. There are those with whom it specially 
 appears as a desire after salvation, after reconciliation, to which 
 deepest desire that for revelation must at last conduct, — desire 
 for the forgiveness of sins ; for what does all truth profit me, if 
 I am not myself received of God ? They have felt themselves 
 oppressed by sin, by the burden of guilt ; they have striven after
 
 DISCIPLESHIP. 291 
 
 a moral ideal, but have constantly experienced anew the power 
 of sin. They have bent beneath the rigour of the law, under 
 its stern demands, but have also perceived that the law has no 
 power to bestow a new heart, to give new power and new desire, 
 and therefore they cannot attain to any enjoyment of existence. 
 It is this which we see with Luther in the cloister, where he 
 was at last comforted by the old monk, who pointed out to him 
 the article of the Creed on the forgiveness of sins. Tliere are 
 those with whom this desire of salvation specially appears as a 
 deep craving for love, combined with the feeling of loneliness 
 and desertion in the world, craving for a love to which the 
 heart may unreservedly devote itself, and which, when it becomes 
 conscious of itself, is the desire, under the disquietude and per- 
 plexing cares of this world, to sit under the shadow of the Most 
 High, and to dwell in His tabernacles. Those persons with 
 whom no trace of such a craving is to be found can dispense 
 with Christ. Their hour is not yet come. 
 
 Christian memoirs and autobiographies, which relate in what 
 manner a man, through the inward and outward dealings of 
 Providence, has become a disciple of Christ, has been found by 
 Christ and has found Him, have, if truthfully executed, the 
 highest interest, because they show us the multifarious paths, 
 both as regards God and men, which are yet one and the same 
 path, which all must tread in order to come to Christ. Among 
 Christian autobiographies, the Confessions of Augustine will 
 always rank as the most remarkable. They form the most 
 complete contrast to the famous Confessions of Rousseau, which 
 were given forth from the standpoint of emancipation, and in 
 a brilliant, dazzling, and alluring representation, show us only 
 a tangled web of high ideal effort, and of Egoism in all forms, 
 down to the lowest debauchery, — a mixture of lights and 
 shadows, of half-truths and colossal errors, in which this 
 emancipated man had ensnared himself, and in the description 
 of which he took pleasure, while yet there seemed no outlet 
 from this labyrinth. In the Confessions of Augustine, on the 
 other hand, we see likewise the labyrinth ; but we see, at the 
 same time, the path of the soul to God, so that he may dart 
 through it, — we see the redeemed sinner casting a backward 
 glance upon his sinful life. In the narrative of Augustine's 
 awakening, the inward and outward means co-operate ; the
 
 2^2 VIKTUE. 
 
 craving for revelation and the craving for salvation appear 
 almost equally strong. His unquenchable thirst after truth, 
 which brought him to sift one dogma of Imman leai'ning after 
 another, without being able to find satisfaction ; his unbridled 
 licentiousness, which he in vain souglit to master by his own 
 power, and which brought him to feel his own helplessness and 
 misery, his own condemnation ; the exhortations of his pious 
 mother Monica, the preaching of Ambrosias, the reading of the 
 Holy Scriptures, the examples of perdition around him, a great 
 worldly life sinking into ruins, — all these things worked to- 
 gether, so that at last he could come to Christ, to be plucked as 
 a brand from the burning, and become the great interpreter of 
 sin and free grace to Christendom. But however different the 
 process may appear in different individuals, it is common to all 
 who have been awakened to Christ to experience a feeling of 
 helplessness, a helplessness for which the whole world offers no 
 remedy. It is this helplessness Avhich is described to us by the 
 first Christians, and it is also depicted to us by the last who 
 have communicated to us their condition. It is this which 
 Hamann has represented in his course of life, in which he 
 speaks of the forlorn condition of his existence, in inward and 
 outward poverty, as he was tossed about by passion, which so 
 overpowered him that he often could not draw" breath ; and 
 he prayed God for a friend who might give him a key to 
 his own heart, a clue in his labyrinth, because all human books 
 of learning were to him miserable comforters ; and at last, 
 whilst perusing the Holy Scripture, a veil fell from his under- 
 standing and his heart. And to name a more recent example 
 from our own literature : it is this helplessness which Mynster 
 has depicted in that noted passage of his literary remains, in 
 which he speaks of the sudden dawning of the light which took 
 place within him. Therefore, in every narrative of conversion, 
 it is not the pattern, but the Saviow, which is the first object of 
 the sinner's search. 
 
 § 94. 
 
 But aw^akening must, through conversion, through contrition 
 as fruitful penitence (I will arise, and go to my Father, Luke 
 XV. 18), which is not contrition for this or that individual trans- 
 gression, but a return from the whole preceding sinful existence,
 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST. 293 
 
 from the whole state of enmity to God, a breach with the entire 
 preceding course of development, pass over into regeneration, 
 which is the institution of a new personality. Where regenera- 
 tion has entered, there has grace so taken root in free-will, that 
 it has become the principle of a progressive development of 
 character; whilst the mere awakening, which is still an unsettled 
 condition of craving, cannot induce a moral life, which may be 
 perceived in many of the "awakened," whose lives are not 
 regulated by the requirements of ethics, but who only move in 
 pathological moods and conditions, without attaining consistency 
 and steadiness. We may also express this by saying that 
 regeneration has entered wherever justifying faith, the appro- 
 priating reception of God's grace, has become the principle of a 
 progressive development of character. Regeneration is to the 
 disciples what the inherent ideal was for Christ. With the 
 sinlessness of Christ corresponds the forgiveness of sins. With 
 Christ's fdial relation to the Father, which naturally belongs 
 to Plim, corresponds the adoption of children, which is given us 
 by grace, through justifying faith. From this point is developed 
 the imitation of Christ. 
 
 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. IMITATION AND JUSTIFYING 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 § 95. 
 
 The usual and closest representation of the following of 
 Christ is the representation of a copying, a moulding of the 
 life after that of Christ (imitatio Cliristi). Following after 
 presupposes a path which must be trodden in company with 
 Christ, and thus a starting-point to be left, a goal which is to 
 be reached, and even motion from the starting-point to the 
 goal. The starting-point is faith in Christ; the goal is eternal 
 bliss in the kingdom of God ; the motion is Christian life, in 
 which Christ's example goes before us. As preliminary explana- 
 tion, w^e say, therefore, that the imitation of Christ is a life 
 after His example, and in His poiver. For no one can follow 
 Christ's example, except he who by faith has found Christ as 
 Mediator and Redeemer, and by His saving grace is armed
 
 294 VIRTUE. 
 
 v/ith power to set forth on the pilgrimage after His example 
 (John xiii. ; 1 Pet. ii. 21 ; 1 John ii. 6). 
 
 The imitation of Christ is not a direct copying of Him. For 
 it cannot be the duty of any of His disciples to make himself a 
 Christ, or to achieve the task which He has accomplished. 
 There is but one Saviour and Mediator. Not the work of 
 Christ, but each one his own work, which is appointed to each 
 according to his position in Christ's kingdom and the indi- 
 viduality and special endowments he possesses, is to be accom- 
 plished in the service of his spirit. That which is imitable in 
 Christ, and which we should copy, is therefore that in Him 
 which must continue in all, and take form according to special 
 character and circumstances. We may and ought to discover 
 this, not merely from His life and actions, but also from His 
 loord and commandments to us, because as Saviour and example 
 He is at the same time teacher. Thus Luther so strikingly 
 observes (Walch, xx. p. 253) : " It is not necessary to do and 
 to suffer all that Christ has done and borne ; otherwise we too 
 would have to walk on the sea, and work all the miracles which 
 He has wrought ; then, too, we must abjure matrimony, renounce 
 worldly rule, forsake the field and the plough, and all else that 
 He has given up. For whatever He desired that we should 
 do or suffer. He not merely did and suffered Himself, but also 
 declared hy His i-vord that we should imitate. Therefore we 
 hold no example as binding, not even the example of Christ, 
 unless it agrees with the word of God, which expounds to us 
 what we should follow and what we should not follow." So far 
 Luther. But the sum of Christ's commands to us is contained 
 in that love which in Christ has become a new commandment, 
 partly because it was expounded by Him, partly because He 
 gives us power to perform it. We say then, with the apostle, 
 " Let the same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus" 
 (Phil. ii. 5) ; since by the mind we understand the funda- 
 mental bent of the will, in combination with all the inner being, 
 which has influence upon this, and thus the thought and feeling, 
 in so far as they form a union with the will. But as the 
 mind, at the same time, must be the power to imprint itself in 
 action, thus the representative in Christ, more closely considered, 
 becomes determined as Christ's mode of action; since, though 
 each of His actions bears the impress of the Only-begotten and
 
 miTATION OF CHRIST. 295 
 
 unparalleled of the human race, and so far cannot be Imitated, 
 yet in His actions He must have expressed those universal 
 norms, that universal type, according to which the affairs of 
 God's kingdom are to be regulated. Christian virtue, as the 
 union of the mind and mode of action, in imitation of Christ's 
 example, is at once imitative and original, derived and yet in 
 each individual a new thing, because it is born of the Spirit and 
 of the inmost portion of individuality, because it is the believer's 
 eternal genius, the individual image of God, which by means 
 of redemption, in fellowship witli Christ, attains self-develop- 
 ment. Every man shall be presented perfect in Christ Jesus 
 (Col. i. 28). 
 
 § 96. 
 
 The direct copying of Christ limits its imitation to the reli- 
 gious sphere, to a life in which religion must not merely be the 
 animating sentiment, but also the immediate aim of human 
 action, its immediate content and material. As Christ lived for 
 the religious ideal, unembarrassed by worldly concerns, His 
 followers — thus it is concluded — should also be in the world as 
 He was, and live exclusively for the religious ideal. If we look 
 to the history of Christianity, we must undoubtedly admit that 
 at its foundation the imitation of Christ necessarily appeared 
 predominantly in the directly religious form, as with the 
 apostles and disciples, who forsook everything in order to follow 
 Him, and spread abroad the gospel of the kingdom. But the 
 vocation of missionary cannot be common to all : it is the object 
 of mission work that Christ's Church shall be planted, that 
 God's kingdom shall grow and wax a great tree, spreading its 
 shade over all good human achievement. The highest grade 
 of external likeness to Christ we discover in the martyrs, who 
 witnessed for the truth before the world, were scorned and con- 
 temned, suffered and died, for the sake of their testimony. But 
 whilst true martyrdom is founded in the historic condition of 
 the world and the historic situation, we see already in these 
 early times that false imitation with many who, in fanatic 
 arrogance and vanity, pressed forward to martyrdom, in order 
 thus to attain to perfect likeness to the Lord. 
 
 Another form of this false imitation is monastic life. 
 Certainly those who forsake the world, in order in the stillness
 
 296 VIRTUE. 
 
 of the cloister to follow the example of the Lord, do not aim 
 at martyi'dom, which would be the highest material resemblance ; 
 but in conti'ast with Christians living in the world, they subject 
 themselves to an extraordinary self-denial and renunciation of 
 earthly objects, in order to make their lives in conformity with 
 that of the Lord. They take on them three monastic vows — 
 obedience, poverty, and chastity. Just as the Lord lived Plis 
 life in obedience, so they desire to imitate Him by expressing 
 outwardly obedience in their daily walk, pledging themselves 
 to submit implicitly to monastic rules and the commands of 
 their superiors. Just as the Lord had not where to lay His 
 head, they desire to imitate Him by the endurance of poverty 
 throughout the whole circumstances of their lives ; and as the 
 Lord lived in celibacy, they desire to imitate Him by abjuring 
 marriage and family life, and cutting asunder all the ties 
 which through these bind a man to the world. The whole of 
 this aspiration after material likeness to Christ, which has its 
 seat in the Roman Catholic Church, is founded on a false 
 conception of Christ, and the significance of His coming, and 
 on a false conception of the relation of Christianity towards 
 the human. Christ does not desire only denial of the world, 
 and renunciation of it, but also the ennobling of the world, 
 and its enlifihtenment. Nothinc; human is alien to Him, and 
 His kingdom is compatible with everything except with sin. 
 Real likeness to Christ is therefore not likeness in the external 
 circumstances and employments of life, but likeness to Him 
 in the disposition of the mind — likeness to Christ's loilL This 
 likeness may be found as easily in the lay condition as in the 
 ecclesiastical, as easily with those who bear their cross in 
 secret, as with those who become historic martyrs. For the 
 principal matter is to comply with the will of the Lord, 
 wherever we are placed, and to be what He would have us 
 to be. 
 
 And just here it shows itself, that the ascetic life, in its 
 effort to resemble Christ, comes into great dissimilarity to Him, 
 and turns aside from His example. Christ only developed 
 His own personal perfection, whilst He executed the work 
 which His Father had given Him to do for human society; 
 and in this every Christian should imitate Him, should, in his 
 special calling appointed by society, carry out the mission
 
 IMITATION OF CIIKIST. 297 
 
 given him by God, and after the example of Christ, must be 
 able to say: "Must I not be about my Father's business?" 
 But asceticism as such is only an exercise of virtue, in which 
 the virtue has no other substance than the mere exercise itself. 
 Asceticism allows society to lie entirely beyond it, undertakes 
 no duty for its benefit, but is only occupied with its own 
 blessedness, and with purely formal actions, which are merely 
 preparatory, and which have found graphic expression in the 
 task which is often imposed on young monks : to spend the 
 day in planting sticks in the sand, in order that by this use- 
 less, aimless labour, they may be exercised in self-denial, in 
 obedience, and in patience, but from which they can never 
 succeed in producing any result. In this indifference to 
 society, in this merely formal, unprofitable acting, there is great 
 dissimilarity to Christ. In those conspicuous among ascetic 
 characters, of which Catholicism exhibits to us a great pro- 
 fusion, we must certainly acknowledge a deep sentiment of the 
 nothingness and vanity of worldly life, a frequently visionary 
 love to God, and an admirable energy of will, bordering on the 
 supernatural, in renunciation of the world, and subjection to 
 mortification. This is what — to take an example from the 
 time of the Reformation — we admire in the Abbe Eance 
 (1626-1700), who, remarkably enough, just in France, in the 
 midst of the people who are so often spoken of as frivolous 
 and fond of enjoyment, exhibits to us the highest point of 
 asceticism. After a life of worldliness (in his thirteenth year 
 he published Anacreon) and dissipation, he suddenly perceived 
 the illusory nature of these things, and became penetrated with 
 the sentiment of this world's nothino;ness and the terrors of 
 eternity, exchanged his thoughtless, optimist view of life for a 
 melancholy pessimism, and founded the order of La Trappe. 
 It is this formal energy of will we admire, when the brethren 
 forsake their miserable pallets at two o'clock in the morning, 
 spend a number of hours in prayers and masses, the remain- 
 ing hours in strenuous hard work, without daring to utter 
 one single word, with the exception of this, Memento mori ; 
 when their daily food is the smallest amount of meagi'e fare, 
 and the day closes by each of the brethren spending a short 
 time in digging his own future grive; and this monotonous 
 circuit is repeated in patience and constancy to the last hour
 
 298 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 of life. It is the energy of will in mortification which we 
 admire in Madame Guyon (1648-1717), when, still in youth 
 and distinguished for beauty, in order to exercise herself in 
 self-denial, in order " to hate herself," she scourges herself till 
 the blood comes, voluntarily licks the matter from a sore, 
 mixes her food with wormwood and other similar inm-edients, 
 has sound teeth extracted, and drops melted sealing-wax on 
 her hands. But just as we must wish this will a better content, 
 so we cannot acknowledo;e this frame of mind as evanselical, 
 and must determine that the likeness to Christ is very distant. 
 By this abuse of nature sin is not expelled ; for pride remains, 
 and a false confidence in ascetic practices, in the merit of such 
 exercises. Christ desires that the gifts of nature should be 
 consecrated to God's glory. But in a life devoted to merely 
 ascetic, merely formal exercises, a great many of the inherent 
 endowments of individuality remain unused, because these 
 faculties can only find their employment in the duties of 
 civilised and moral society. It belongs to the shady side of 
 asceticism, that a great multitude of the noblest gifts of nature 
 lie unused, and thus rot away in cloisters. 
 
 §97. 
 
 But whilst we say that what is essential in the imitation of 
 Christ is resemblance in disposition, in will, and not material 
 resemblance ; whilst w'e reject that external copying which is 
 found in false martyrdom, and in monastic life ; and whilst we 
 with the Reformers maintain, that the imitation of Christ may 
 be accomplished in every condition of human life which is 
 founded on the rules of society appointed by God (ordinationes 
 Dei ; Conf . Aug. 1 6), we must at the same time guard against 
 another error, namely, that of supposing that we can resemble 
 Christ in disposition of mind, can have Him as our pattern 
 without uniting ourselves to Him as the Saviour. In opposition 
 to monkish morality, with its denial of the human, there is a 
 false humanism, which will only see in Christ what it calls the 
 purely human, regards Him as the first who manifested that 
 disposition of mind which is really well-pleasing to God, the 
 first in whom the highest ideal of man has been realized. 
 Christ's imitators are then they who, after His example, and 
 through the impulse which He has given, express in their own
 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST, AND JUSTIFYING FAITH. 299 
 
 lives the same disposition, live their lives in the same spirit in 
 which Christ lived, toil and suffer in the same cause for whicli 
 He toiled and suffered, without therefore standing in any 
 relation of dependence to Christ's person, since they believe 
 that they can draw the water of life from the same fountain 
 whence He drew it. Nay, the elder Fichte even says, that if 
 Christ were now to return to earth, it would concern Him but 
 little though His name and person were forgotten, if He only 
 found men enthusiastic in His cause, and labouring for it. 
 This so-called "purely human" view also maintains, that man 
 by his own power can work for the kingdom of God, by his 
 own power can produce the disposition pleasing to God, and at 
 most only requires an example which may awaken the slumber- 
 ing power. But in this manner the adherents of this tenet 
 clearly discover, that they understand nothing of the real 
 nature of Christ's cause, atonement and redemption ; that they 
 know nothing about sin and grace. We by no means deny 
 that in our day there are forms of the religious ethics of 
 rationalism which possess elements of the Christian, by which 
 they may be advantageously distinguished from ancient 
 Paganism ; as, for instance, in contrast to Stoicism, they speak 
 of man's need of the grace of God, of humility and love, of 
 freedom in dependence on God. But as all this is without 
 organic connection with the person of Christ, as the positive 
 in Christianity for them belongs to what shall pass away as 
 unsuited to the culture of modern times, as they will not " eat 
 His flesh and drink His blood," have no desire to be assimilated 
 to Him, these elements become only reflections and shadows, 
 scattered leaves and flowers, which, no longer adhering to the 
 root, have no life-giving power. For " without me ye can do 
 nothing," says the Lord (John xv. 5). There are thus in our days 
 preachers of rationalistic humanity, who have received some- 
 thing of the leaven of Christianity. But the pearl is wanting. 
 
 §98. 
 
 But even in higher and deeper systems of doctrine than 
 those here indicated, in systems which in Christ behold the 
 Only-begotten of the Father, the God-man, there appears the 
 one-sided setting forth of the example, whilst the Saviour and 
 Mediator, though not expressly denied, are yet placed in the
 
 300 VIRTUE. 
 
 shade, and remain inactive. We are broufj-ht back asrain to 
 monastic life, namely to the mystics, who, in a higher form 
 than the ordinary ascetics, seek by means of contemplation to 
 attain likeness to Christ. However hi^h we then rank the 
 mysticism of the middle ages, and however much it may by its 
 deep earnestness have contributed in preparing for the Refor- 
 mation, yet this is a pervading defect with the greatest mystics, 
 Eckardt, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroock. Christ, though the God- 
 man, is to them not the Redeemer, but is predominantly only 
 the example of the mystic union with God, the example of 
 contemplation and prayer, the example of love to men, of 
 patience in sufferings, of dying to sin. It is undoubtedly their 
 merit that they set forth the human side of Christ's being. 
 But they forget that the example only receives its due signifi- 
 cance to us when it is viewed on the ground of atonement. 
 They place themselves beneath the cross of Christ, and feel the 
 deepest sympathy with Him ; they mourn over the sin and 
 misery of the Avorld, and aspire after fellowship in Christ's 
 sufferings ; but they understand by this, that they learn from 
 Christ love and patience in suffering, learn to forgive men and 
 preserve union with God. But although the consciousness of 
 sin is not absent in these mystics, yet the consciousness of 
 fjuilt is so — consciousness of the responsibility, the reprobation, 
 the debt we have by sin incurred : they do not think of their 
 own necessity, and that of the -world, to be reconciled with 
 God ; they do not see in the cross and sufferings of Christ that 
 great sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin, which we must first 
 have appropriated to ourselves in faith before we can think of 
 becoming like Christ. And where the earnestness of conscience, 
 where the feeling of responsibility and duty, of the inviolable 
 demands of God's holiness, makes itself valid, the adherents of 
 this system believe that their acknowledgment of sin and their 
 repentance have atoning power. AVe are here specially re- 
 minded of Franciscus of Assisi, about whom it is related that 
 he constantly poured forth a flood of holy tears, so that at last 
 his sight became weakened by it. The gift of tears is a 
 substitute for the atonement wrought out by Christ. In one 
 word : the mystics lack the great principle of the Reformation, 
 — justification by faith, the appropriation of Christ as our 
 righteousness before God, the Rock of our salvation. How-
 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST, AND JUSTIFYING FAITH. 301 
 
 ever deep a view, then, the mystics have ohtaiued of the signi- 
 ficance of assimilation, of appropriation ; however much they 
 may set forth the passive, i-eceptive side of the inner life, still 
 their chief error consists in the neglect of the principal point 
 of appropriation, since they do not in faith appropriate to 
 themselves Christ as the j^'^'opitiation, and therefore do not 
 rightly appropriate Him, and use the means of grace, which the 
 Redeemer has instituted in His Church for the development 
 of the life of faith. The sacraments and the fellowship of the 
 Church, as an agency of educative grace, which will come to 
 the help of man during his work of sanctification, are regarded 
 by them only with indifference, as belonging to the lower 
 grade, to which the multitude belong. 
 
 But since the mystics thus attach themselves to Christ as 
 the example, but set Him aside as Redeemer and Mediator, they 
 must also forego what the Redeemer alone can give, peace loith 
 God, as the foundation of all genuine moral effort. Their 
 inner life is an incessant alternation between the moments of 
 ecstatic gladness and felicity, and feelings of utter desertion by 
 God, the condition which is " without hope." They lack that 
 peace, that holy equanimity of man's inmost being which 
 springs from being received of God, independent of his feelings, 
 the vicissitude of his inner experiences : sorrow and joy con- 
 stantly succeed each other in their minds, but never to the 
 final destruction of either. They know not that evangehcal 
 frame of mind, which, for instance, appears so glorious in 
 Luther, in whom sorrow on account of the consciousness of 
 sin is transformed into the joy of free grace and appropriation. 
 The mystics are agitated either by a gladness exalted above all 
 anxiety, or by a joyless sorrow, either melted into the highest 
 raptures, or in the most desolate and disconsolate circumstances, 
 instead of which the essentially Christian frame of mind is the 
 combination of true gladness and true sorrow.-^ The mystic 
 one-sidedness in the contemplation of the example, which also 
 in the middle ages was found with others than the genuine 
 mystics, has been graphically described by Luther, who says : 
 " Under Papacy tlie sufferings of the Lord were so preached 
 
 ^ The author's Mesier Eckart ; Dorner, The History of the Development 
 of the Doctrine of Christ's Person, Div. ii. p. 9 (For. Theol. Library) ; 
 UUmann's Reformers before the Reformation, 2 vols. (For. Theol. Library).
 
 302 VIRTUE. 
 
 as to show how His example must be followed. All the time 
 was spent in bewailing Christ and His mother, and all that was 
 sought to be accomplished was to give an affecting picture, and 
 move the people to sympathy and tears ; and he who could do 
 this best was looked upon as the best preacher on the Passion. 
 But we preach the sufferings of the Lord as the Holy Scriptures 
 teach us." He then goes on to show that the sufferings of 
 Christ doubtless are also " an example of obedience, and, like 
 the sufferings of the martyrs, a glorification of God. But 
 besides this, there is also a special reason why Christ suffered, 
 namely, because by His suffering He was to redeem the whole 
 world, to open heaven to us, to bar the gates of hell, and win 
 for us eternal life." In this Luther expresses what through 
 the struggles of His own inner life had become to him irre- 
 sistible certainty, that we must first in faith have appropriated 
 the Saviour to ourselves before we can imitate His example. 
 
 §99. 
 
 In another form, the setting aside of the Redeemer and of 
 justification by faith as here described is to be found in recent 
 times in the religious writings of S. Kierkegaard. Here the 
 Example is set forth not with a contemplative nor with a mystic 
 bearing, but in relation to practical asceticism, in relation to 
 the works of Christianity, and more especially to the sufferings 
 connected with these. Union to Christ's human and divine 
 personality is here represented as a demand to believe the divine 
 paradox, that God became man — to believe against reason by 
 virtue of the absurd. But the significance of this divine miracle 
 is to Kierkegaard entirely merged in Christ's manifestation as 
 the Eo:ample. To follow Christ is with him all in all, when 
 first through a miracle we have attained the perception of the 
 fact, imperceptible to the multitude, in His form of a servant. 
 Kierkegaard desires, as we have explained in the foregoing 
 part of this work, to break down the monstrous illusion of 
 nominal Christianity, that all without further conditions are 
 Christians ; he desires, in opposition to the cheap Christianity 
 of the multitude, to set it at a higher price, to make its demands 
 valid, because men have too long contented themselves with 
 Christ's benefits. His fundamental idea is, that what concerns 
 a man is to live his life as the individual, and that the indi- 
 
 1
 
 IMTTATIOX OF CHEIST, AND JUSTIFYING FAITH. 303 
 
 vidual who is to become a Christian must find himself alone, 
 alone in the whole world, alone face to face with God. AVhilst 
 the mystic at times allows the individual pantheistically to be 
 swallowed up in the depth of divinity, and thereby denies the 
 principle of personality and the ethical, which he in other 
 moments acknowledges, but from the barb of which he escapes by 
 plunging for a time into the pantheistic ocean, Kierkegaard's 
 ethical tendency shows itself in this, that in full earnestness he 
 maintains the individual in his validity face to face with the 
 personal God. He discovers this principally by not, like the 
 mystics, fixing his contemplation merely on man's finiteness and 
 misery, but also seeking in the most earnest manner to awaken 
 not only consciousness of sin, but moreover consciousness of 
 guilt. Religious consciousness of guilt is the strongest practical 
 evidence of the infinite value of human personality. For 
 although man, in the consciousness of his guilt, feels himself to 
 be absolutely unworthy, he is at the same time aware that his 
 guilt has infinite significance to God Himself, who appointed 
 him to everlasting bliss. And this combination of the con- 
 sciousness of guilt with the anticipation of eternal salvation is 
 just the infinite pain of this consciousness. But the more 
 Kierkegaard thus exalts the importance of the individual ; the 
 more earnestly he sets forth the principle of personality and 
 personal relation to God ; the more determinedly he aims at 
 leading the individual to Christ, in order that the individual, 
 by the imitation of Christ, may attain the eternal bliss which 
 by sin and guilt is lost ; the more he urges the consciousness of 
 guilt and the demands of the law : the more must it be felt as 
 a misguiding error, that he only leads the individual with the 
 oppressive consciousness of his sin and his guilt to the example, 
 but not to the Redeemer. The example is torn apart from the 
 ground of reconciliation, and appropriation is therefore entirely 
 set aside by Kierkegaard ; whilst he impatiently hastens on to 
 ascetic exercises and deeds of love, and in indignation over the 
 many, who call themselves Christians without being really so, 
 does not give himself time for the due consideration of Christ's 
 work of love. Of atonement by Christ, of justification by 
 faith, of the sacraments as the means of divine grace for the 
 sinner's forgiveness, nourishment, and spiritual growth, of the 
 iufiueuces of the Holy Ghost through the Church, of the sus-
 
 304 VIRTUE. 
 
 taininfT and supporting povvei" of church fellowsliip for the 
 individual, there is little or nothing to be heard in this system 
 of Christian instruction. Where some ghmpses of this do 
 appear, as it were, in passing, they are not wrought out or 
 digested, the results are not brought forward, so that thus they 
 receive no determining, no absorbing significance. With power 
 the example only is brought forth, and the demands springing 
 from this, especially the demand to follow Christ in His suffer- 
 ings. With power is only brought forth what he calls the 
 paradox of faith, — namely, that God became man in the midst 
 of time, and that eternal bliss is joined to the imitation of this 
 marvellous Example, who by His revelation awakes the offence 
 of the world and of our own hearts. But of Christ's work a 
 very imperfect explanation is given. Christ's work, according 
 to Kierkegaard, is essentially merged in His prophetic office, in 
 the revelation of the absolute witness of truth, who, though He 
 addresses Himself to all, will have nothing to do with the 
 multitude, who only desires to be what He is, the truth to the 
 individual, and who is therefore rejected by the multitude, 
 mocked, and crucified. But of Christ's sufferings as High 
 Priest, of the great sacrifice which He offered for the sin of the 
 world, in order to satisfy divine justice, which we cannot do, 
 whilst the consciousness of guilt craves a satisfaction, an expia- 
 tion of transgression, scarcely any mention is made. Again 
 and again we are told of the sacrifice we ourselves should bring, 
 of the sufferings we ourselves must endure, because in our 
 sufferings v,e imitate the sufferings of Christ. But in this 
 manner we are led back more and more to the ascetic errors of 
 the middle ages, from which the Reformation has delivered us. 
 Although Kierkegaard is opposed to the cloister life and self- 
 imposed penances of the middle ages, yet it is not manifest that 
 his own system, which unquestionably sharpens the consciousness 
 of guilt, yet without admitting the propitiation of Christ as a 
 determining factor in the work of salvation, is aught else but 
 a repetition of the same, in the midst of the Protestant world 
 of the nineteenth century. A life carried out on the views of 
 Kierkegaard, in which consciousness of sin and consciousness 
 of guilt are essential ingredients, in which the believer exists, 
 without this believer having found justifying faith, can only 
 become a life of penitence ; and as consciousness of sin craves
 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST, AND JUSTIFYING FAITH. 305 
 
 propitiation, but the propitiation of Christ is absent, we return 
 to the self-accomplished propitiation, because eternal salvation 
 must be attained by a continued exercise of suffering and self- 
 denial. Undoubtedly we also hear that eternal salvation is the 
 gift of God's free grace and compassionate love. But this 
 grace only comes afterwards in the future life in heaven, when 
 the man first on earth by his own exertion has achieved all 
 necessary preparations. Christianity, on the other hand, 
 teaches us not a grace which only comes afterwards, but a grace 
 which is far in advance for man, — an anticipating grace which 
 comes to meet him, which from his birth receives man in its 
 arms in baptism (which Kierkegaard ended by rejecting), — a 
 grace which step by step accompanies him to the grave, and 
 which, to him who in faith devotes himself to it, becomes sus- 
 taining grace, which alone makes it possible for the man to strive 
 after likeness to Christ. Doubtless Kierkegaard also speaks of a 
 " guidance " in the life of the individual, by which in his own 
 concerns he is brouo;ht to admire the croodness of God, and what 
 the impotence of man can accomplish by Divine assistance. But 
 this guidance is without any connection with the appointments 
 of God's grace in His Church ; and it must certainly appear 
 paradoxical to us, that this same guidance which, according to 
 Kierkegaard's own expression, must have so great a share m 
 his authorship, should through more than eighteen centuries 
 have been completely inactive and indifferent in regard to the 
 greatest phenom.enon in history, to Christ's Church on earth, 
 which throughout these centuries must have appeared as an 
 institution which had failed in essentials, which had admitted 
 the multitude. For us the question can only be, if even this 
 authorship has pointed out to us God's saving grace, which is 
 revealed to all men, has revealed to us the way of salvation, b}- 
 which God will lead all men, whilst He at the same time in His 
 word warns us against all self-elected and self-discovered ways. 
 It is this which we must deny. We do not deny that his 
 religious teacliing may exert a preparing and awakening in- 
 fluence, in many respects may serve to arouse anxiety and 
 earnestness. But in so far as this hermit-sentiment is intended 
 to give us a right view of what it is to become a Christian, and 
 right views of the imitation of Christ, we consider its tenets as 
 containing a deep and perilous mistake. 
 
 U
 
 306 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 It belongs to the experiences of Church history, that if on the 
 one side the infinite demands of Christianity are maintained, as 
 these proceed from Christ's word and example, and on the other 
 side the Redeemer is ignored, and the aids which God has 
 granted to us weak men in the fellowship of the Church and 
 the means of grace are dispensed with, then there is no one who 
 can satisfy these demands. He who earnestly endeavours to 
 order his life in this manner, and as the individual torn apart 
 from the appointments and ordinances which are God's own gifts, 
 will press himself into relation with God, will live his life in 
 this solitary and isolated relation to God, must be crushed by 
 the weight of these demands. It was a belief in the infancy of 
 mankind, that he who had a theophany, he to whom God had 
 shown Himself in direct revelation, must die immediately after 
 the vision, because that the siu-stained could not endure the 
 sight of the holy God, and that the frail earthly form must 
 be rent asunder when touched by the glory of God's holiness. 
 With some modification, we may say that the old proverb, that 
 no one can see God and live, has often been fulfilled in the 
 midst of Christendom in the history of false asceticism. It 
 has often been fulfilled in hermits and monks, who in solitude, 
 face to face with the example of Christ, the glory of whose 
 holiness had burst upon them, have fought the fight of self- 
 denial and renunciation of the world. They have been, as it 
 were, struck by the ideal of holiness in Christ, — so to speak, God- 
 stricken, as when we say that one has been terror-stricken or 
 lightning-struck ; but whilst they have felt themselves anni- 
 hilated and crushed by the glory of this image, they have also 
 felt themselves attracted towards it in love ineffable, in an in- 
 finite aspiration to attain likeness to Him, and thus to reach 
 eternal salvation. The misfortune in this love, the abnormal 
 and dangerous part of this condition, is, that those concerned 
 have only seen the image, without at the same time seeing the 
 Redeemer and His ordinances and means of grace. Their 
 condition has thus been one of passion, a condition in which 
 there is no peace. Hovering between a possibility of eternal 
 bliss and eternal woe, in ecstatic raptures, in transports of unut- 
 terable misery, they have been destitute of that steady fulcrum 
 of the mind, that in which Paul found aid under all difficulties 
 and dangers, and Luther also amid the struggles of his convent
 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST, AND JUSTIFYING FAITH. 307 
 
 life, — justifying faith, — faith which lias appropriated to itself 
 Christ as our righteousness, and which, in spite of all sin and 
 weakness, still knows itself to be accepted by atoning and sin- 
 pardoning grace, knows itself to be placed under the fatherly 
 providential guidance of God, who, whilst He desires that we 
 work out our salvation with fear and trerablinsj, gives at the 
 same time the assurance that nothing except unbelief can 
 separate us from the love of God in Christ. Destitute of this 
 foundation for peace of mind, they have in solitude struggled 
 under incessant self-examination, and efforts to die to the world 
 in order to root out and annihilate sin, which, however, in this 
 earthly existence is never absolutely annihilated ; and in trying 
 to overleap the earthly barrier, and encumbered with a burden 
 which they could not bear, they have often ended in derangement 
 of mind, in despair and horror of themselves. With regard to 
 such it has been fulfilled, that no one can see the example of 
 Christ and live, if he does not see the example in the Redeemer, 
 does not contemplate the holiness through the veil of pitying 
 and forgiving grace. And this will confirm itself in the same 
 degree, as the eye is sharpened to the ideal of holiness which in 
 Christ was exhibited as an indispensable requirement of human 
 nature. Exclusively to gaze at Christ as the example, is to 
 look at Him askance, is not to see Him as He is. Nay, he who 
 onl}^ sees Christ as the example, just on this account does not 
 see Him accurately as the example, does not see the whole depth 
 of Christ's love, — sees Him only as the witness for truth, iDut 
 not in His pitying office of High Priest towards the lost, from 
 vt^hich human love, in imitation of Christ, receives its deepest 
 motives, and through which Christ's command to men, Be ye 
 merciful ! first finds its full significance. Christ says : " He 
 Avho hath seen me, hath seen the Father ! " But the Father is 
 not merely the holy Lawgiver ; the Father is redeeming love, 
 saving and educating grace, who does not demand that the 
 children shall reach the goal at once, but in infinite patience 
 and long-suffering guides them thither step by step through a 
 comprehensive system of education. 
 
 In harmony with the leading doctrines of the evangelical 
 Church, we therefore maintain that, without justifying faith in 
 the Redeemer, His example cannot be really followed ; without 
 the postulate of grace, there can be no mention of Christian virtue.
 
 308 VIRTUE. 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF CHRISTIANITY. IMITATION 
 AS SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 § 100. 
 
 As Christ is revealed as the Righteous Servant of the Lord, 
 who through the ministering relation works out the relation of 
 love, the filial relation to the Father, this must be repeated by- 
 way of invitation in the life of the Christian. It becomes the 
 task of every Christian, in his special position in life, to live as 
 the servant of the Lord, and through this relation of obedience 
 to develope the relation of God's child. Holy obedience and 
 holy love are essential features in the physiognomy of Chris- 
 tian life ; and the further a Christian makes spiritual progress, 
 the clearer will these features appear. They constitute, so to 
 speak, the family likeness which is to be found between all 
 true Christians, at all times and in different creeds. They are 
 to be found in Fenelon as in Luther. Whether we contem- 
 plate apostles and reformers, or Christians who have led a quiet 
 life, unmarked by the world, we always find the relation of 
 servant in unison with the relation of love. This ministerino; 
 love, which is the living manifestation of the power of free-will, 
 since through it free-will attains true independence, we desig- 
 nate as the Christian cardinal virtue. It is essentially love to 
 God, and as union with God, likeness to God. Already Plato, 
 the greatest sage of Paganism, in anticipation of Christianity, 
 declared likeness to God to be the highest summit of virtue. 
 But as God can only be perceived and comprehended by us in 
 Christ, and as we can only love God through Christ, can only 
 attain likeness to God by attaining likeness to Christ, we deter- 
 mine the Christian cardinal virtue more closely as love to God 
 in Christ Jesus. 
 
 It may here be inquired why we do not set forth faith as the 
 Christian cardinal virtue ? AVe reply, Faith is not so much 
 itself a virtue as the mother of all virtues, the root from which 
 they spring. Faith and love are at bottom one. Faith is love 
 itself, in its fruitful beginning, with all the germs of life; for 
 in faith the soul opens to divine grace as the flower which 
 opens its cup to the sunbeam, and the soul yields itself to these
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF CHRISTIANITY. 309 
 
 influences. Whether we determhie faith as the conviction of 
 that which is not seen, or as trust and confidence, it is essentially 
 love to God, which humbly receives and confidently apprehends 
 the divine love, offered and imparted to man. Faith is only 
 justifying faith because it is reception and ajyjjropriation of 
 God's mercy in Christ, appropriation of the gospel, that in 
 Christ we are loved of God, that God in Christ forgives our 
 sins, and receives us as His children. But by faith, as the 
 ground of appropriation, by which the relation of love between 
 God and man comes into existence, independent progressive 
 love is developed in its manifold modes of expression, the love 
 of gratitude and of adoration, sanctifying love, sacrificial love, 
 in which man brings himself and his life as a sacrifice to God ; 
 with regard to which, however, it is to be remarked that all 
 human yielding, working, suffering, is conditional on a con- 
 tinued reception and appropriation of divine grace, so that 
 reception and appropriation are constantly the first, and man's 
 act the second. 
 
 §101. 
 
 Since we have determined the cardinal virtue of Christianity 
 as love to God in Christ, we may also, rightly understood, 
 determine it as love to Christ. As Christ confirms the first 
 and £!;reat commandment, — Thou shalt love the Lord thv 
 God above all things, — He also requires that we should love 
 Himself (Christ) above all things, should forsake all and follow 
 Him, — a demand which Christ could not make if love to Him 
 did not include the perfection of all love. We love Christ only 
 because, in becoming partakers of the grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, we become at the same time partakers in the love of the 
 Father and the communion of the Holy Ghost. Love to Christ 
 is therefore one with love to the triune God in His revelation 
 in the world, but finds in Christ its centre and resting-point. 
 And as it is love to God, so it is also love to men ; for love to 
 Christ is inseparable from love to Christ's work and Christ's 
 kingdom, which embraces the whole human race ; since the 
 whole human race was created and fore-ordained to Christ as 
 the first-born of every creature, fitted to be gathered together 
 under Christ as under the head, and is therefore only rightly 
 acknowledged and loved in Him. And as love to Christ
 
 310 VIRTUE. 
 
 includes love to men, both to individuals and to tlie race, so it 
 includes also true self-love, right self-preservation, and care for 
 the soul's salvation. Love to Christ thus includes, as in an 
 ample storehouse, love to the true ideals of all humanity. It 
 includes love to God as the ideal, since God Himself, union 
 and likeness with God, is the ultimate object for the moral 
 effort of man. It includes love to the ideal of individualitv, 
 since every man is fitted to become perfect in Christ. Each of 
 these ideals can only really be loved through Christ as the 
 Mediator, and in Christ as their uniting centre. 
 
 But, on the other side, it may be said that only when love to 
 Christ embraces these ideals is it perfect love to Him. In the 
 opposite case it becomes particularistic (particxdaristik). To 
 love Christ without loving Him as the Son, as the manifestation 
 of the Father, would be man-worship and idolatry, nay, a kind 
 of Fetishism. Something of such a one-sidedness is seen in 
 several of the hymns of the United Brethren, in which the 
 relation of the soul to Christ, of the bride to the bridegroom, 
 becomes a relation bordering on the sensual, bcnause God the 
 Father is left out of this relation of love, or because it is for- 
 gotten, or not seriously considered, that Christ can only be loved 
 as the image of the invisible God, who guides us to the Father. 
 Another form of this circumscribed love to Christ is to love 
 Him as the Redeemer of the individual, without at the same time 
 loving Him as the Redeemer of the world, as the head of that 
 kingdom in which all the aims of humanity must find their 
 final result. This particularism appears with hermits and 
 ascetics, in monastic life and pietism. A third form, finally, is 
 to love Christ as the founder of a kingdom, from which has 
 issued an infinite number of influences for the training and 
 ennobling of the race ; to extol Christ's historic greatness, nay, 
 to labour for the spread of His Church among the masses, but 
 to set aside the personal, the individual relation to the Redeemer. 
 This tendency, which appears in various tints, sometimes as 
 humanism, sometimes as ecclesiasticism, has unquestionably the 
 appearance of universality, but is nevertheless partial or par- 
 ticularistic, since it overlooks the principal fact, — namely, that 
 Christ's kingdom is the kingdom of individuals, or the com- 
 munity of saints. True love to Christ's kingdom is at once 
 individual and universal, embraces regard to society and the
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF CHRISTIANITY. 311 
 
 individual. But unquestionably it may there be said, that 
 the individual relation — however many one-sided considerations 
 may be combined with it — is still the central relation of dis- 
 cipleship, and that it holds good here that every one is nearest 
 to himself. What is said in Acts xx. 28 to teachers, that 
 they should take heed to themselves and to the entire flock, 
 thus that they should consider their own relation to the Master 
 before that of any other person, applies to every Christian. No 
 one can be able to work for the spread of God's kingdom in 
 society who has not himself received God's kingdom ; and the 
 measure of each individual's activity in religious and ethical 
 significance, is the depth, sincerity, and powder of his own per- 
 sonal relation to the Redeemer. 
 
 § 102. 
 
 The love of the disciple contains the same m.oments as those 
 which we have discovered above in the love of the Lord. As 
 Christ's love, in His inward relation to the Father, is receptive 
 and appropriating, contemplative and adoring love, in His rela- 
 tion to the world it is active and passive love ; so, too, is the love 
 of the disciple, in an imitative manner, and by means of Christ 
 as Mediator. It determines itself as a contemplative love, rooted 
 and grounded in faith, which in contemplation appropriates to 
 itself the Lord, and those things which belong to the kingdom of 
 God, absorbing itself in the divine word which the Lord has given 
 us, hereby at the same time teaching the true contemplation 
 of the world and of self, — a love which has its type in Mary 
 sitting at the feet of the Master, hearing His word, and ponder- 
 ing it in her heart, and in which all theology and theosopliy 
 have their origin. It determines itself, further, as mystic love, 
 or as the love of prayer, which in the most intimate personal 
 fellowship unites itself to the Redeemer, and redeeming love in 
 Christ, in accordance with the Lord's own instructions, prajdng 
 for the good and perfect gifts from above, praying before all 
 else to receive Christ Himself and the Holy Ghost, uncondi- 
 tionally submitting his will to that of his Master. We designate 
 prayer — by which we mean not merely prayer as an individual 
 act, but as a constant frame of mind (" Pray without ceasing," 
 1 Thess. v. 17) — as mystic love ; for there is not only a false 
 pantheistic, but also a true ethical mysticism, without which
 
 312 VIRTUE. 
 
 the religious relation to God is impossible. The true concep- 
 tion of mysticism is the conception of inward communion with 
 God, — a communion in which man not merely seeks God in the 
 outer sanctuary, the visible temple, but in which man himself 
 is the sanctuary and temple : and the principal form of this 
 inward communion is prayer. But neither contemplative nor 
 mystic love is exclusively mere contemplation and prayer in 
 solitude. Neither is it merely in the depths of the Christian 
 soul, in the midst of the occupations and distractions of external 
 life ; but it finds — and thereby discriminates itself from false 
 mysticism — special power and strengthening in the mutual 
 edification of the Church, in Christian social worship, in which 
 the Lord, in a special significance, fulfils His word, '' Where 
 two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be 
 in the midst of them" (Matt, xviii. 20) ; where the life of our 
 Lord is repeated before the congregation in the Gospel lessons 
 of the ecclesiastical year, which are read aloud by the servant of 
 the word; where the prayer and thanksgiving of all find expres- 
 sion in psalms and hymns ; and where union with the Lord 
 reaches its summit in the holy ordinance of the Supper, since 
 we have received His body and blood — assimilate Himself, who 
 gives Himself to us as food for the new man, to an eternal life. 
 Christian love further determines itself as practical^ active love, 
 in which love to men and devotion to the special worldly calling 
 and to the worldly aims of society are hallowed by devotion to 
 the aim of God's kingdom, to the coming of God's kingdom 
 on earth, and in which a Christian unites as in marriage his 
 earthly calling and his heavenly. Practical love determines 
 itself at the same time as sufferinir and forbearinoj love, which 
 through much tribulation enters the kingdom of God, and by 
 sacrifice learns obedience under the cross. 
 
 § 103. 
 
 In the same measure as the love rooted and grounded in 
 faith increases in a disciple of Christ, in the same measure is he 
 led back to the divinely appointed destiny of man, and triumphs 
 over the two false tendencies of human nature: the one, which in 
 a false spiritualism — that of Prometheus and Faust — desires to 
 fly beyond the destiny appointed him by God, as God's servant 
 on earth ; the other, which by the weight of law will draw him
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF CHRISTIANITY. 313 
 
 down below tlie destiny appointed him by God, and materialize 
 him in the thraldom of the senses. He is more and more 
 guided into the centre pointed out to him as the personal union 
 of spirit and matter, of the heavenly and the earthly ; he 
 becomes more and more, in the religious-ethical signification, 
 not merely mind, but soul, since Christ, by means of His Holy 
 Spirit, is the animating principle in him, the centre of his life. 
 Christian love thus forms the direct opposite to Egoism, with 
 lust of the flesh and lust of the eye and the pride of life as a 
 middle form between the two other principal forms, which have 
 the deepest roots. 
 
 To the pride of life, or arrogance. Christian love opposes 
 liumility, which is not merely the deeply felt consciousness of 
 the infinite need of God in which created nature stands (indi- 
 gentia Dei), but also the consciousness of sin, and the infinite 
 distance between man and Christ, who has redeemed him, and 
 by the path of humiliation and humility leads him to an exceed- 
 ing height, to union with God. " He that humbleth himself 
 shall be exalted" (Luke xviii. 14). To the lust of the flesh 
 Christian love opposes chastity or purity (d'yveLo) in the widest 
 sense of the word, which does not show itself in rooting out the 
 employment of the senses, as with the false ascetics, but in 
 watching the boundaries between mind and matter, places the 
 material in the proper relation of subordination to the spiritual, 
 prevents the false independence of the material. To the lust 
 of the eye, Christian love opposes inward independence of 
 eartlily possessions and icorldly honour, by means of which the 
 senses, enlightened by Christ to the perception of heavenly 
 treasures, and thus valuing not things visible but invisible, do 
 not permit themselves to be dazzled by earthly phenomena. 
 In regard to outward wealth, earthly possessions, the Christian 
 knows himself to be the steward of goods entrusted to him, for 
 the use and employment of which he must render account. 
 And in regard to earthly, mere apparent honour, it is a small 
 thing to him to be judged of man's judgment (1 Cor. iv. 3), as 
 the highest matter with him is to have honour with God. At 
 the entrance of Christianity into the pagan world, Christian 
 humility and purity appeared to the heathen as sometliing new 
 and striking, and they became aware that a life of personality 
 unknown before had now its advent on the earth.
 
 314 VIRTUE. 
 
 That monastic life soon changed this humility to a false 
 self-abasement and external obedience ; purity to a spirituality 
 hostile to nature, and contemptuous of the married condition 
 and family ties ; independence on worldly possession, and honour 
 to an external poverty, which, together with dishonour and 
 misconstruction from men, should be aspired after as an aim, 
 and thus become changed into vanity, — such considerations do 
 not lessen the real evann;elical sifrnificance of these virtues, their 
 importance for the development of holiness and bliss. Thej'- 
 will, if rightly understood, continue to be the ascetic cardinal 
 virtues, which — not without, but with, and under guidance of, 
 our actual earthly vocation — may be specially useful in the 
 conquest of sin, to clear av/ay obstacles to the progress of God's 
 kingdom within us, and to promote the reign of love. If we 
 acknowledcre this, then we shall also be able, losino- sight of the 
 errors of monastic life and of Catholicism, to acknowledge Chris- 
 tian universality in the great emphasis which, in the Romish 
 Church, is laid on confession, fasting, and on the symbols of 
 death — the death's head, the hour-glass, the scythe, and other 
 figures, which cry aloud to man, " Memento mori ! " For the 
 specific remedy for curing pride and developing humility is still 
 self-examination and confession of sin. We may add : the con- 
 fession of sin not merely to God, but to some one of ouv felloio- 
 men. It is a deep observation of Pascal's, that in the mere 
 confession of sin to God there is not the energy, not the real 
 humiliation, which there must be in the confession of sin to a 
 fellow-man, who perhaps had before far better thoughts of us, 
 and now beholds us in our native deformity ; to a man who, 
 according to evangelical ideas, does not need to be a priest, 
 but may be a friend (" Confess your faults one to another," 
 Jas. V. 16). The specific means to deaden the lusts of the 
 flesh, and to promote chastity, not merely in the direction of the 
 sixth commandment, but as guardians of the frontier in the 
 whole relation between mind and matter, to maintain thorough 
 purity, is fasting, if this idea be extended to a scheme of 
 dietetics, not merely bodily, but also mental, in which one 
 sometimes denies himself permissible enjoyment in order to set 
 a barrier to the impermissible, and when one in all things 
 exercises a thorough self-control, so as to have all his faculties, 
 his intellectual and bodily instruments, in his own power. (" I
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF CHRISTIANITY. 315 
 
 keep under my body, lest that, after having preached to others, 
 I myself should be a castaway," 1 Cor. ix. 27.) The specific 
 means against covetousness, against the lust of possession in 
 all its varied forms, is, Memento mori ! — the thought of death 
 ( " Thou fool ! this night thy soul shall be required of thee ! 
 Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided ? " 
 Luke xii. 20), the thought of how relative and evanescent are 
 all the honours and possessions of this world, if man makes him- 
 self dependent upon these, vanitas vanitatum ; all of which con- 
 siderations will be further developed in the discussion of special 
 ethics. 
 
 §104. 
 
 In its development In time, Christian love exhibits itself as 
 fidelity. If love may be described as the essence and content of 
 virtue, fidelity may be termed its shape and form, since fidelity, 
 under the temptations and dangers of time, not merely preserves 
 and guards communion with the Loi'd, the blessing God has 
 vouchsafed us, but also moulds and fashions it (the talents 
 entrusted). Fidelity includes vigilance, that eye of fidelity 
 which beholds at once that which is nearest and most distant, 
 watches the situation and the special requirements, the restrain- 
 ing and the furthering. Fidelity likewise includes courage and 
 constancy (perseverantia), which endure in season and out of 
 season, in good times and in bad, until the end ; and in which 
 appears not only courage for the fight, but courage in suffering, 
 God's foster-daughter, as Tertullian calls Patience, which, along 
 with meekness and long-suffering, always accompany God's 
 Spirit when this descends to earth (Whoso endureth to the end 
 shall be saved. Matt. x. 22). In the same measure as love 
 exhibits itself as fidelity and constancy, in the same measure is 
 also realized Christian liberty, with peace and joy in God and 
 our Saviour, which is a reflection of the ideal of liberty and 
 peace, of the calm glory which was already manifested in the 
 Lord in the humiliation. (See Luther's treatise. On the Liberty 
 of a Christian Man.) But Christian liberty is grounded in 
 humility, — in the feeling, By the grace of God I am what I am, 
 — in the feeling of the infinite distance from the perfection of 
 God (" Not that I have already attained, neither am already 
 perfect," Phil. iii. 12) ; and under the contrast between ideal
 
 316 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 and reality, which continues throughout this present time, Chris- 
 tian liberty is a struggle in the hope of the ultimate perfection 
 of God's kingdom. 
 
 The four cardinal virtues of heathen morality — wisdom, up- 
 rightness, sobriety, and constancy — are contained and regene- 
 rated in Christian virtue. Wisdom is born anew in contemplative 
 love. For it is the true conception of wisdom to be the intelli- 
 gence of love, perceiving love, which comprehends its path and 
 its goal. Uprightness is renewed in practical love. For as 
 love is one with obedience and the fulfilment of the law, it does 
 no evil, and in every circle of life performs what is right, com- 
 plies both actively and passively with the rules and demands 
 appointed by God. Sobriety and constancy are renewed in 
 Christian fidelity, whi'^li possesses real sobriety and real con- 
 stancy, because, a thing unknown to heathen virtue, it watches 
 and prays, and because it works in humility and hope. 
 
 §105. 
 
 The development of virtue in the imitation of Christ, from 
 the first imperfect commencement to the various stages of per- 
 fection, we designate with the Scriptures as sanciification, which 
 is at once a work of divine grace, which causes man to progress 
 in holy growth, and a work of toil and strife effected by Chris- 
 tian liberty. Sanctification is the process by which human 
 personality must be liberated from its -profaniUj^ from the thral- 
 dom of worldliness, in which it finds itself without redemption, 
 even in the highest stage of civilisation and culture; by which 
 the life shall be transformed to its true destiny, to be a life in 
 God free from theivorld, a life in the world appointed of God. 
 In the same measure as sanctification progresses, all the natural 
 faculties and gifts are brought into subjection to the new prin- 
 ciple of personality implanted by Christ: the material is placed 
 in normal relation to the mental, the human to the divine, the 
 development of talent to the development of character, the 
 world to the kingdom of God, time and the present moment to 
 eternity; and the various moments of life are brought into 
 harmony. Sanctification progresses through the often-named 
 moments, continued appropriation of Christ, productive activity 
 in the spirit of Cln-ist, and separation, cleansing, and mastery 
 of sin, and that which sin originates.
 
 IMITATION AS SANCTIFIOATION. 317 
 
 This cleansing, which till the close of life continues to have 
 such iireat sirrnificance, must be carried out throuiih the entire 
 domain of personal life ; and there is no circle of this which 
 forms any exception. It must be carried out in contemplation 
 and prayer, in activity and in suffering, in appropriation and 
 use of the world and the things of the world : for everywhere 
 there is still impurity and abnormality proceeding from the old 
 man ; and so far, there must be everywhere in Christian life an 
 ascetic moment as an exercise in virtue, which results in the 
 removal of obstacles, and the employment of means to its 
 advancement. The double character here indicated of the 
 cleansing, breaking down, and the positive developing, forming, 
 and edifying, has also its type in Christ's mode of action in 
 regard to the disciples. For, on the one hand, He frees them 
 from their prejudices and illusions, corrects and purifies them, 
 which He symbolically indicates by the washing of feet (John 
 xiii.) ; on the other hand, He forms them and quickens them, 
 promising them a new and higher productivity (" He that 
 believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow living water," John 
 vii. 38). So also Christ's work in the human race contemplates 
 at once the redemjDtion of the human race, its deliverance from 
 sin, and its new creation and elevation to a higher grade of life. 
 Therefore we may also express the task of life in imitation of 
 Christ thus, that we must die with Christ, and live with Him. 
 Like as Christ died for sin, so must we die to sin and to the 
 world ; and like as Christ has risen from the dead, so should we 
 walk in newness of life. Where one of these appointments is 
 maintained without the other, a one-sided direction of life 
 ensues, of which Church history affords many examples. 
 Ascetic life, monastic life, and pietism afford examples of the 
 one-sidedness first mentioned. The Christian duty of life is 
 here placed exclusively in cleansing from sin, in the mortifica- 
 tion of the flesh, in clvincy to the world ; but concerninf^ the 
 development of human talents and powers by Christ's Spirit, of 
 creative, life-giving effects, there is no mention. There is only 
 the suggestion of a blessed death ; but of a blessed life already 
 in the present time there is no hint. It is only preached that 
 he who believes on Christ shall not be lost ; but not that 
 whoso believeth on Him, out of his belly shall flow rivers 
 of living waters. It is only preached that Christ gives us
 
 318 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 the for£Tlveness of sins, but not tliat He is the bread of life. 
 Opposed to this one-sided ascetic theory of life is that which 
 we may designate as the Hellenistic, because it seeks to com- 
 bine Greek paganism with Christianity. In the early ages 
 of Christianity it appeared specially in the Greek Church, 
 whilst in more recent times it has been exhibited in the various 
 forms in which a heathen scheme of humanity is blended with 
 Christianity. It places sin and redemption in the shade, and 
 regards Christ predominantly as the completion of human 
 nature, as the summit of attainment in the development of the 
 race, from which a new and more perfect development of life 
 shall proceed. The imitation of Christ is there made to consist 
 in a harmoniously progressive unfolding of human nature after 
 His example. The opposition between the old and the new 
 man, between the old development disturbed by sin, the con- 
 sequences of which continue in the life of eveiy Christian, 
 and the new development established by Christ, and which must 
 fight its way forward through the old obstacles, is entirely over- 
 looked. Only where sin is not taken into serious account can 
 we dream the optimist dream of a harmoniously progressive de- 
 velopment, although this ought to stand before us as the ideal. 
 It is not by any means the case that our Christian life can run 
 on in rhythmical alternation of appropriation and producing 
 activity, of assimilation and production : there is further required 
 a constant excretion, the separation of the unwholesome and 
 injurious matter which we bear within us — a continual purging 
 away of the old leaven (1 Cor. v. 7). Although sin, with the 
 lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, 
 with its optimist levity and its pessimist melancholy, with its 
 uneasy, violent, and hasty temper, and its indolent repose, slug- 
 gishness, and indifference, with its daring and its desponding 
 heart, is broken in the truly regenerate, still there are many 
 remnants left behind of this leaven, in accordance with the 
 sinful peculiarities of each. 
 
 During our education for the kingdom of God, the Great 
 Ruler of all things assists us specially in this purging away of 
 the old leaven by sending us sufferings. It also forms part of 
 His vast system of education in this world, that we are so often 
 obliged to work with earthly materials, which resist our efforts ; 
 so often must do coarse work, or insignificant, trivial, unspeak-
 
 THE HIGHEST MOTIVE. 319 
 
 ahly prosaic work ; are so often compelled to sacrifice time and 
 industry and care to things which are so petty and evanescent, 
 that they seem at variance with our high and eternal destiny. 
 These trivialities, this coarse material, has, however, a great 
 ascetic and pedagogic significance, and is designed to break our 
 egoism, especially our spiritual pride, and that we may learn 
 obedience. Bodily sufferings, and the depression that accom- 
 panies them, frequently heavy care regarding the necessities of 
 the body, serve with spiritual natures to separate and evaporate 
 injurious spiritual essences. But assuredly this education which 
 God bestows on us will not complete its work if human self- 
 education is not combined with it. In this must the proving, 
 cleansing, contesting method, like a continual exorcism, go hand 
 in hand with the moulding, positively progressive, forming an 
 eternal individuality or genius. Only thus can the soul gradually 
 be made perfect in the imitation of Christ, forming for itself its 
 inward body whilst in conflict with the disturbing, destroying 
 powers, forming for itself that external perishing body as an in- 
 strument for the spirit, toiling painfully on its invisible wedding 
 garment, through much tribulation gathering together the trea- 
 sure which it is to bring along with it into the kingdom beyond. 
 
 THE HIGHEST MOTIVE. BLESSEDNESS AND DISINTERESTED 
 LOVE TO GOD. THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 
 
 §106. 
 
 A question of pre-eminent importance for every ethical 
 system is the motive or ground of moral actions. In Christian 
 life, grateful love to the redeeming God, who in mercy bestowed 
 on us the beginning of felicity, and who will finish what He has 
 begun in us, is the deepest ground of virtue, to which all other 
 motives may be referred. When unmixed, disinterested rever- 
 ence for the law, for the majesty of duty, is mentioned as the 
 motive of duty (Kant), though we certainly cannot refuse our 
 esteem to this motive, yet neither can we acknowledge it as the 
 highest. For not the relation to an impersonal law, but only 
 the personal relation to God Himself, can produce the most 
 sincere motive to action in the kingdom of personality. Our
 
 320 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 whole Christianity rests on this, that we are heloved of God, 
 that we have received from Him the forgiveness of sins, and 
 are adopted as children of God ; that He Himself in baptism 
 has established His covenant of mercy with us, — a relation of 
 reciprocy, in which He, loving ns, desires to be beloved by 
 ns. From this springs gratitude towards God and the Saviour, 
 which obliges us to new obedience, and v/hich is inseparable 
 from filial confidence and submission to God's will. But the 
 love produced by gratitude does not exclude, but includes, 
 adoring love, which loves God for His own sake. For in what 
 manner should I love God, if I did not also sink in adoring 
 contemplation of His perfection, of Christ's glory, — if the king- 
 dom of God did not stand before me as in itself the perfectly 
 good, the intrinsically precious, quite independently of the 
 benefits which God has bestowed on me individually ? Grati- 
 tude and admiration in union with unlimited trust are the great 
 motives which have incited to all truly Christian actions, as 
 well to the great self-sacrificing achievements on the stage of 
 history, as to the quiet unmarked acts of love. " This I have 
 done for thee, what doest thou for me ? " was the inscription 
 beneath a picture of Christ (Ecce Homo), which made so deep 
 an impression on Zinzendorf . It is the same thought, the same 
 motive ground, in all Christian action. And inseparable from 
 this are adoring love and worship of the depths of God's love 
 in Christ. But in the imitation of Clirist, adoring love unfolds 
 itself on the ground of thankfulness. The deepest, most ear- 
 nest motive, continues to be gratitude towards God in Christ 
 for what He has done for the human race and for me — for the 
 benefits He has bestowed on us. Where this is not maintained, 
 there appears that error which with Fenclon has found its 
 expression in the tenet of disinterested love to God. We are 
 here again reminded of the old mystic path of error, and of 
 more recent pantheistic errors. 
 
 Disinterested love, according to Fenclon, only loves God for 
 the sake of His perfection : thus it is the pure love of adoration, 
 but not for the sake of the benefits He has bestowed on us, in 
 which last case there is always some self-interest {intaret propre), 
 and thus some egoism. No regard to our own felicity should 
 here be the motive, if our love is to be pure and perfect. Not 
 our own felicity, but the honour of God, must be our chief aim.
 
 SALVATION AND DISINTERESTED LOVE TO GOD. 321 
 
 Fenelon does not find fault, if there are men who require the 
 motive of blessedness and benefit, just as no fault can be found 
 with the fact that there are sick people who can only walk by 
 the help of a crutch. But he desires that it should be acknow- 
 ledged that this is an imperfection, a lower position, to require 
 this crutch, this motive to love God, who ouirht to be loved 
 exclusively on account of His own perfection.^ Even if God 
 would not make me happy, even if God would slip me at death 
 and let me sink into the ni^ht of annihilation, still I oufiht to 
 love Him ; for only then do I walk in the w^ay of God, for which 
 not my felicity, but GocVs glory, is the ultimate aim. It is 
 notorious what a shock this teaching of Fenelon caused, and 
 what vexations it drew down upon this noble mind in his con- 
 troversy with Bossuet. But his doctrine, although he sought 
 by various amendments to soften it, will continue to be a shock 
 to the Christian mind desiring to be built up on the foundation 
 of the gospel. For, however sublime it may sound that we 
 should love God with a pure and unmixed love, the conclusion 
 from his teaching is still, as Bossuet also showed, that gratitude 
 towards God, who in Christ has given us the commencement 
 of blessedness, with the promise of its future perfection, is a 
 lower step, which we must leave behind when we go forward 
 to perfection ; and to this the Christian disposition never can 
 attain, because it never through eternity wall be able to forget 
 that it has a Redeemer from sin and death. When Fenelon 
 says that we undoubtedly should thank God, because this is His 
 ivill, but that God's goodness towards us must not be the motive 
 for our love to Him, because love ought to be a pure devotion 
 irrespective of our own good, he has the Apostle John against 
 him, since this last says : Let us love Him, for He first loved 
 us (1 John iv. 19). The truth in Fenelon's teaching is, that 
 there is unquestionably a narrow-minded gratitude, in which 
 the individual is egoistically shut up in himself, without being 
 moved to sympathy by the communication of God's love to the 
 whole creation, and which only rejoices in the gifts, but not in 
 the Giver. The truth is, that love to God ought not to be 
 viewed as a means to procure my blessedness, as if blessedness 
 
 ^ L'amour sans aucun motif de Tinteret propre pour la beatitude est 
 manifestement plus parfait que celui, qui est melauge de ce motif d'interet 
 propre. — Sur le pur Amour. 
 
 X
 
 322 VIRTUE. 
 
 was something wliicli could be enjoyed without God, instead 
 of which, blessedness, which is inseparable from holiness, only 
 exists in relation ivith God. The truth is, that in the inner life 
 there are moments in which gratitude and re^rard to our own 
 felicity do not appear as such, but as though melted and absorbed 
 in the universal element of adoration, like an ointment which 
 is dissolved into perfume. And bliss would certainly not be 
 bliss, if it did not include adoring love, and all the ecstasies of 
 devotion. But it is an illusion, that there can be a real love to 
 God, in which human personality does not also seek and find 
 its own satisfaction, in which man will indeed give his love to 
 God, but will not accept love from God, or at least will onlv 
 accept of God's love for the sake of the glory of God, but not 
 at all on account of his oion Llessedness. The teaching of 
 Fenelon relative to disinterested love towards God contains a 
 partial denial of the eternal validity of human personality in the 
 sight of God Himself. For God has not appointed human 
 personality merely as a means to promote His honour, but at the 
 same time as an independent aim, by appointing it to the fellow- 
 ship of His love. And what is it that we pre-eminently adore in 
 God, and through which God's glory is revealed in the highest 
 degree, except by the free voluntary communication of His love 
 to His creatures, which He impressed with His image, and 
 which He desired to redeem from perdition ? But if my salva- 
 tion is an object to God Himself, then it ought also to be an 
 object to myself, — namely, in the way of His appointment, as 
 His plan of salvation requires. 
 
 We reject, therefore, the tentative assumption that God 
 might let us perish, and that not the less it would be our duty 
 to love Him, because all things are for His glory. For this 
 assumption denies the ethical conception of God, or love as 
 God's essential nature, and sets forth an arbitrary omnipotence 
 as the determining power in God, to whose glory everything 
 shall be done. A wider contemplation, for which there is here 
 no room, would lead us to perceive that the ethical conception 
 of God which Fenelon held is in several points of his system 
 overshadowed by the physical and abstract metaphysical. 
 Here we shall only observe, that this disinterested love to God 
 which Fenelon commends, in which we find ourselves in perfect 
 sclf-forgetf ulness, in which I am no more to myself than to every
 
 SALVATION AND DISINTERESTED LOVE TO GOD. 323 
 
 one else (tout est alors egal, parceqiie le moi est perdu et aneanti, 
 le moi nest pas plus moi qiCautrui), by which I am alike with all 
 the saved in whom God's glory is manifested ; in which the 
 hio-hest condition is that all thank God, but none thank Him 
 specially on their own account, since all only are grateful 
 because God has done all things to His own glory {ce iiest 
 plus pour nous, que nous demandons, ce rCest plus pour nous, 
 que nous remercions. On le remercie d^avoir fait sa volont^ et 
 de setre glorijie lui mSine) ; that this disinterested love is nearly 
 allied to what in the speculative systems is called the unity 
 of human thought with God and the universe, in which the 
 thinker only regards himself as the mere eye from which every 
 individual and personal interest is excluded. It is in reality 
 only pure, which here means abstract contemplation^ but in 
 mystic form ; and just on this account it exhibits itself with 
 Fenelon, as well as with the great mystics of the middle ages, 
 where we have seen it before,^ with that superhuman, heavenly 
 expression, which exerts such a fascinating and enticing power, 
 deceiving even thinkers with the appearance of the religious 
 and ethical, — an angel's head with wings, but without body, 
 hovering about in the clouds and disjoined from actual indi- 
 viduality, separated from real, complete personality, and thus 
 also from the beatinsr heart. But man's relation to God cannot 
 be without heart. 
 
 That in Fenelon there was a great heart, which beat both for 
 his own salvation and that of others, we acknowledge as fully 
 as any one. But however high we may place him as a Chris- 
 tian personality, however willingly we may concede that this 
 theoretical error of his did not exert any disturbing practical 
 influence on himself, but was rendered innocuous b}' his upright 
 faith in God's sanctifying grace, his great practical love to God 
 and men, yet, on the whole, Bossuet must be held as in the 
 right, when he maintains the motive of gratitude and salvation 
 against that of so-called disinterested affection. Our evangelical 
 teachers, who know what we have in the forgiveness of sin, and 
 what is given along with it by God, have likewise determined 
 gratitude towards God as the all-embracing motive of the whole 
 personality, which springs from the relation to God produced 
 by justification, and moves the will to deeds and sacrifices of 
 1 See the author's Meisler Eckardt, Hamburg 1842.
 
 324 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 love (eucliaristic sacrifices; see Mcianclithon's ?oci; desacrificio). 
 They have thus acknowledged the rightly understood motive of 
 bliss : " Let us love Him, for He first loved us " (1 John iv. 19). 
 
 §107. 
 
 The same thing which in the Christian life is the deepest 
 ground or motive for the will, is, considered fi'om another point 
 of view, also the deepest ground of tranquillity, the deepest 
 quietive. In the imitation of Christ, in which we learn to 
 know what are the real necessities and the true calamities of 
 life, we find, under all external and internal tribulations, the 
 surest ground for comfort and serenity in the consciousness 
 that we are beloved of God in Christ, that in Christ He has 
 bestowed on us the forgiveness of sins and the adoption of 
 children, and that nothing can separate us from the love of 
 God in Christ (Rom. viii. 39). The same gratitude for God's 
 undeserved mercy, which moves us to labour and sacrifice for 
 Christ's sake, brings with it also tranquillity and peace, because it 
 rests on faith and hope as its foundation. There is no deeper 
 source of inward calm and serenity than justifying faith, with 
 gratitude to God for His undeserved mercy. And there is no 
 deeper source of unrest and disqaietude to the soul, than tiie 
 feeling of not being beloved of God, not being the object of 
 God's grace, but of being under His wrath, doubting and 
 distrusting the reality of salvation, — a condition which in the 
 Christian life plays such an important part in the narrative of 
 temptations. Where a man can thank God for His unmerited 
 grace, this gratitude is inseparable from unbounded confidence 
 and devotion. The lively consciousness of the unspeakably 
 great gift, which is bestowed on us in Christ, constrains us to 
 be content loith the grace of God, take tip our cross, and folloio 
 Jesus, and thus to exercise a subduing power over the impatience 
 and restless craving of the will, cast down lofty imaginations, 
 and cause the heart to become still in God. From gratitude 
 springs prayer, in which the suppliant yields himself entirely 
 to the will of Him, without whom not a sparrow falls to the 
 ground, with whom the vei'y hairs of our heads are all numbered, 
 and who will make all things work together for good to them 
 that love God. And in gratitude the hope is strengthened, 
 that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 325 
 
 compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. It is 
 this which is expressed with such great earnestness in many of 
 our Lutheran hymns, as, for example, " Befal Du dine Veie, 
 Hvo ikkun lader Herren raade " (Commit thou thy ways, who 
 art guided by God alone), or Brorson's beautiful " Her vil 
 ties, her vil bies !" * (Hei'e we will be silent, here we will wait !) 
 And as grateful love does not exclude, but includes and de- 
 velopes, adoring love, which grows deeper in the knowledge of 
 Christ, and loves God and the Saviour on account of their own 
 nerfection, so contemplative, adoring love also exercises its tran- 
 quillizing power over the mind. For if we really adore God 
 and Christ, and Christ's work and kmgdom, as that Avhich is 
 worthy of adoration in an absolute sense, we learn thereby not 
 to admire as the highest object of admiration what the world 
 admires, not to be astonished at what astonishes the world ; in 
 short, we learn the true 7iil admhxiri. If we adore and worship 
 Christ, we have a defence against all man-worship, all deifying 
 of human persons and human works ; not merely against saint- 
 worship, but also against genius-worship, which in every age 
 repeats itself in the world, — that idolatry which is offered to 
 human genius ; for we know how it will really fare with earthly 
 genius if it shall be measured with absolute greatness. If we 
 admire the kingdom of God, then we shall only have a very 
 limited admiration for the kingdoms of this world, and the 
 glories of them ; and it does not surprise us at all in the course 
 of this world, during the optimist illusions and pessimist 
 lamentations of men, to see again and again the most beautiful 
 and glorious of things, when only of earthly origin, follow the 
 law of decay. " For all flesh is as grass, and the glory of mea 
 as the flower of the field ; but the word of God endureth fof 
 ever" (1 Pet. i. 24). Not as if we could be freed, or desired 
 to be freed, from pain and sorrow over the perishable condition 
 under which creation sighs, or could fail to observe in the ruin 
 and decay of the individual the universal pain of the world ; 
 but over it all Christ raises and comforts us, in the conscious- 
 
 ^ " Her vil ties, her vil bies." S. A. Brorson, who died as Bishop of Ribe 
 about the middle of last century, aud is now considered one of the best 
 hymn writers of the Danish Church, occupies a very similar position in this 
 branch of literature to that held in Germauy by Gellert, his contemporary, 
 who, however, surpasses him in spirituality and poetic fancy. — Michelsen.
 
 326 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 ness of the veiled kingdom of glory, which is coming through 
 these tribulations. 
 
 §108. 
 
 The great religious phenomenon which is known under the 
 name of Quietism, may be described as that partial view of life 
 which sets it forth as the highest aim for personality to be freed 
 from all motives, and only to be regulated by quietives. The 
 soul here desires no longer to be set in motion, but exclusively 
 to be brouglit to rest, to sink into peace, to cease to will. This 
 system of thought appeared In a very peculiar form in the 
 seventeenth century, in connection with the tenet of disinterested 
 love to God, which we have already explained. Its representatives 
 are Molinos (1642-97), Franciscus von Sales (1567-1622), Fran- 
 tisca von Chantal, and Jeanne de la Motte-Guyon (1648-1717). 
 Fenelon felt himself drawn in sympathy to this school of 
 sentiment, became its apologist, and subjected himself to a 
 degree of martyrdom for it, without however on his own 
 account drawing conclusions from its doctrines. For persons 
 who set forth worldly concerns as the highest aim, and through 
 these aspire after happiness, this, like all mysticism, can only 
 appear as a curiosity of Church history. For those who have 
 any experience in the inner life and inner ways of men, it will, 
 on the other hand, remain to all times coming as an error rich 
 in instruction, and constantly recurring under different forms. 
 This error cannot be investigated from the view-point of 
 happiness, but only from that of blessedness. For it rests just 
 upon this, that quietism, in order to bring the will to rest, resigns 
 salvation or blessedness itself. 
 
 According to the quietist doctrine of perfection, disinterested 
 love to God, when it attains fully to penetrate the soul, detaches 
 us from ourselves, brings every wish, every desire into silence, 
 nay, places the soul in a complete passivity, in which it can no 
 more will anything, and is thus liberated from the restlessness 
 of the will. Those who have reached this stage, are every 
 moment of their lives in a worshipping frame of mind ; but in 
 their prayer there is no will of their own, for they pray but one 
 prayer : Thy will be done ! Under all external and every-day 
 circumstances, nay, even under the temptations which concern 
 their outward man, under the trespasses which they commit,
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 327 
 
 and which cannot be avoided, they continue to be in the con- 
 templative, mystic condition. In their inmost being there 
 reigns a dead calm, a reflection of eternity. They are like the 
 Alps, whose summits beam with sunshine under a cloudless 
 sky, whilst storm and tempest roar around their feet. They 
 desire nothing, will nothing, but remain only in humble 
 exjJectatioii (attente) of what God will bring forth, whether 
 internal or external, and they praise God in all. " To desire our 
 soul's salvation," says Franciscus von Sales, " is doubtless good, 
 but it is better to desire nothino; at all. But one thing ought we 
 to seek : the glory of God." " Often have I said to the Lord," 
 says Madame Chantal, " that if it should please Him to assign 
 me my place in hell, I should be content with my lot, if it could 
 serve to His glory." She also says, that in the various perils in 
 which she has frequently found herself in her travels, she never 
 prayed or hoped that He would deliver her, but only that He 
 would on all occasions do that which would serve most to His 
 glory. This pure and unmixed waiting includes holy indiffer- 
 ence {V indifference) J in which everything, whether of internal or 
 external circumstances, joy or sorrow, success or adversity, 
 remain matter of indifference to the soul, because that in all 
 it seeks but one thing, the glory of God. Neither does it more 
 require consolation, for it asks nothing for itself. The uneasi- 
 ness of desires or wishes is quite stilled and silenced. In this 
 holy indifference Madame Guyon exclaims : " I can no longer 
 will anything. Nay, I know not even whether I am here or 
 not." But in this condition there developes the soul's transfor- 
 mation — a dissolving, a melting and absorption into God ; and in 
 this absorption is holy rest {sainte quietude). Here is prayer with- 
 out words, and in this prayer even consciousness and will eventu- 
 ally vanish. Here there is no longer any Ego, for the suppliant 
 has fallen asleep entirely to himself and to the world, and is now 
 asleep in God. Therefore Franciscus von Sales depicts this 
 highest condition or perfect rest in God under the figure of a suck- 
 ing child slumbering on its mother's breast, or under the figure 
 of a statue fixed in its niche — an immoveable existence in God. 
 The great one-sidedness of this school of thought may be 
 elucidated by the false application which is made of the prayer : 
 Thy will be done ! For well may we universally agree with 
 Fenelon when he says : " The sole thing which really belongs
 
 328 VIRTUE. 
 
 to us is our will ; evervthincr else does not beloncr to us. Sick- 
 ness deprives us of health, wealth is dependent on external 
 circumstances, and even intellectual endowments are dependent 
 on the body. The only thine; which is really our own is the 
 will. It is in reference to this that God is jealous (jaloiix). 
 He has given it to us, not in order that we should retain it for 
 our own gratification, but in order that we may entirely and 
 altofTether restore it to Him ao;ain. He who retains the smallest 
 portion of his will for himself, commits a robbery on God. 
 Therefore all our aspirations should centre in this one : Thy 
 will be done ! ^ But according to the teaching of the gospel, 
 this prayer does not imply that we should yield ourselves to 
 God as instruments of His glory, destitute of will, but that first 
 of all we should in faith accept His grace. But of acceptance, 
 of appropriation of God, there can here be no question, as the 
 appropriating believer himself disappears in God, and in no 
 sense of the term will seek his own. The partiality of the 
 Bystem further appears in this, that the prayer " Thy will be 
 done ! " is only taken as a quietive, and not at the same time 
 as a motive. Christ's example shows us, that to Him it was 
 not merely for tranquillity and consolation (as at Gethsemane, 
 where His soul was troubled even unto death), but that the 
 will of the Father was also a motive to Him to accomplish His 
 work, the moving cause of His mighty deeds, His energetic 
 working ; as, in general, in Christ adoring and contemplative 
 love was in harmonious unity with that of action. But especially 
 does it sliow itself false in this, that those who are perfect have 
 got beyond the Lord's prayer, which yet, according to the com- 
 mand of the Lord Himself, is to be employed by His Church 
 to the end of time. He who does not require to offer up the 
 other petitions, does not need to pray for daily bread, for the 
 forgiveness of our sins ; does not need to pray : Lead us not 
 into temptation, but deliver us from evil. He has in this present 
 life got beyond not merely the tvcmt and necessity of misery, 
 but moreover beyond the opposition between sin and grace. 
 It would be impossible that quietism should imagine itself 
 capable of self-elevation to the degree of perfection depicted, 
 if it did not depreciate human depravity. Although it begins 
 with the opposition between sin and grace, this opposition 
 ^ Sur I'existence de Ditu. (Ou the Existence of God.)
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIYE. 329 
 
 changes unobserved into the opposition between the finite and 
 the infinite; and as it desires to soar to a higher point than 
 salvation, it sinks down to the elements of this world, to pan- 
 theism. This "getting beyond" sin and grace shows itself 
 specially in Madame Guyon, when she says that she can no 
 longer pray : Forgive us our sins ! because she loves God in a 
 perfect self-forgetfulness. But the gospel does not teach that 
 guilt should be forgotten, but that it should be remembered. 
 Just in this the defect of holy indifference appears, that in 
 indifference to salvation it also becomes indifference to guilt 
 and transgression. Just this prayer : Forgive us our tres- 
 passes! which ought to be offered daily by every Christian, 
 bears damning testimony not merely against quietism, but 
 against all false mysticism. False mysticism begins with the 
 following of Christ, but on the way it in reality forsakes His 
 footsteps to ascend false heights, where Christ more and more 
 disappears from observation, and there only remains considera- 
 tion of pure divinity. 
 
 In the acknowledgment by our Evangelical Church of justifi- 
 cation by faith, to which we will not again refer lest we weary 
 our readers, we have the right point of junction so as to avoid 
 the mystic path of error. Accepting, appropriating, and grate- 
 ful love to God in Christ, is at once quietive and motive. Or, 
 if we express the matter from the objective side, GocTs mercy in 
 Christ is at once the deepest ground of tranquillity and the 
 deepest ground of action. This evangelical grasp of the subject 
 is powerfully brought out in all our Lutheran hymns, as, for 
 instance, in these lines of Brorson, which contain a brief sum- 
 mary of the whole doctrine concerning the imitation of Christ : 
 
 " Know that thou hast need of all, 
 And laefore Him humbly fall, 
 Seeking in thy Saviour's face 
 To behold His saving grace. 
 Try incessantly to find 
 How to have the Saviour's mind : 
 What He did, do thou also ; 
 He shall give thee strength thereto."* 
 
 1 " Kiender Eders store Vaade 
 I en grundig Ydmighed, 
 I vor Herres Jesu Naade 
 Saenker Eder ganske ned.
 
 330 VIRTUE. 
 
 § 109. 
 
 Allied to quietism is the moral system of Spinoza, which, 
 independently of Christianity, recommends disinterested love 
 to God, not merely as a motive, but also as a quietive, by which 
 we are entirely liberated from ourselves and from the dis- 
 quietudes of time, and attain an imperturbable tranquillity of 
 mind, since we in comprehension devote ourselves entirely to 
 the eternal reason, and become one with it. This unselfish love 
 forms from the very beginning the direct contrast to the love 
 of gratitude in the imitation of Christ. God is here only the 
 impersonal necessity of reason, is only the eternal order of things, 
 the necessary and unchangeable order of nature, in which there 
 beats no lovinc; heart. Man desires no love in return from 
 this divinity, which cannot love, and is quite disinterested and 
 indifferent to the human personality. As little can there be 
 here mention of gratitude towards God, for this divinity has 
 not first loved us, has given us nothing. Both what is beneficial 
 and what is adverse to man come forth of necessity from its 
 unconscious bosom. We do not accept its gifts or its dispensa- 
 tions ; w'e only take the good things which we can obtain, use 
 the portion of them wdiich falls to us by chance, and suffer only 
 the evils which we cannot avoid. Intellectual love, in which 
 we entirely devote ourselves to eternal reason and its immutable 
 laws, seems capable of being depicted as adoring love. Yet 
 we inquire if mere mathematical necessity can be admired, if 
 liberty and personality are not in truth alone admirable ? if we 
 do not admire the exquisite order and regularity of nature, just 
 because we perceive or have a foreboding in this of an intelli- 
 gent power, that is higher than the blind powers of nature — a 
 personal spiritual existence ? In reality, the intellectual love of 
 Spinoza is only the confirmation of the human acknowledgment 
 of the eternal order of reason, and its immutable regularity. 
 The elevated character of the ethical teaching of Spinoza rests 
 essentially on this, that this clear perception of reason not 
 merely becomes to him a motive, but also a quietive : his wdiole 
 
 Laeggcr uophorlig Vind 
 Paa at have Jesu sind, 
 Ilvad lian giorde gibrer efter : 
 Han skal give Mod og Kraefter"
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 331 
 
 system has a tinge of quietism — bringing with it universal 
 resignation and renunciation of the world, and with this the 
 undisturbed peace and serenity of mind so often vaunted by 
 Spinoza. The great proportion of mankind have only partial 
 resignation. They are resigned on this or that individual point, 
 but continue otherwise to hold fast their demands on life, their 
 illusions about a happiness, a temporal good, in which they shall 
 be able to find a true and lasting satisfaction, until they are 
 struck by a new reverse, a fresh stroke of destiny, which again 
 obliges them to be resigned on a new point, and so forth, because 
 they are each time surprised by the unexpected. In Spinoza 
 we find universal resignation, which attracted to him in such a 
 high degree the admiration of Goethe (in the autobiography of 
 this last), because at the beginning, and once for all, he re- 
 nounces the expectation of finding satisfaction in the inconstant 
 and eternally changing, does not desire to retain its finite Ego 
 with its miserable desires, its fears and hopes in opposition to 
 the eternal order of reason, but assumes a relation quite dis- 
 interested and loithout demands towards life, — a relation of con- 
 templative indifference towards worldly goods and ills, which 
 he has discovered to be only apparent goods and ills. That this 
 standpoint has its elevated, its negative truth, must certainly 
 be acknowledged. The same elevated and negative truth we 
 find again in the Indian (Buddhist) ethical system, so highly 
 lauded by Schopenhauer, which places "nothing" as the final 
 determination and real content of life, and teaches that the 
 greater part of mankind are deceived by Maja (appearance, 
 phenomenon), which veils their sight, whilst the sage has rent 
 asunder the veil of Maja, and sees through the illusion, and thus 
 attains exalted contemplative indifference.^ 
 
 But although this quietive may appear very profound, yet it 
 lacks a very essential element, because the highest good, which 
 is here offered in recompense, is also nothing, because human 
 
 ^ See the passage quoted by SchopeuLauer (Parerga and Paralipomenay 
 book i. p. 435) : 
 
 " 1st einer Welt Besitz fiir dicli zerronnen 
 Sei nicht in Leid dariiber, es ist nichts, 
 Und hast Du einer Welt Besitz gewonnen, 
 
 Sei nicht erfreut dariiber, es ist nichts, 
 Yoriiber gehn die Schmerzen und die Wonuen, 
 Geh' an der Welt voriiber, es ist nichts."
 
 
 OOx 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 personality must also regard itself as nothing. The same is the 
 case with Spinoza. Tlie highest good to which he invites us 
 — namely, the clear perception of God, which frees us from all 
 illusions — is, ethicaUy considered, nothing, in so far as the prin- 
 ciple in his eternal order of reason is not an ethical, but only a 
 logical and physical principle. Pantheism may teach us the 
 negative truth, may teach us renunciation of the world and 
 contempt for the world; but it can only tranquillize those in whom 
 the most sacred demands and deepest cravings of personality 
 have been extinguished, or in whom these are not yet awakened, 
 who hitherto have not found themselves in their eternal indivi- 
 dualitv and eternal relation to a hio;her world than this. For 
 ethical personality requires not mere resignation, but comfort, 
 — a compensation of a higher nature, and in a higher order of 
 tilings, for that which it lost in this lower. It cannot give up 
 the demand for salvation. And the more by riper experience 
 we learn not to admire the things of this world, or only to yield 
 to the best of them a very limited and conditional admiration, 
 the more we feel the need of somethiufv which we can admire 
 unconditionally, — a wisdom which does not, like the wisdom of 
 this world, become distasteful when fully sifted, but which unveils 
 to our sight an eternal kingdom, which is absolutely unfathom- 
 able and worthy of admiration. And the more the world 
 bereaves us of one after another of its good things, — youth, 
 health, energy, friends, — the more we feel our need of Him to 
 whom we can devote ourselves with unbounded gratitude, the 
 more we yearn to hear a song of praise which shall rise above 
 all the lamentation of the world, over sin and sorrow and death. 
 In the same measure as the disciples of Christ grow in the 
 peace of God's kingdom, and in adoration of it, in the same 
 measure do they grow also in just indifference for the goods 
 and the ills of this world, nay, learn to sleep amid storms and 
 dangers, after the example of the Lord, who slept during the 
 storm on the sea of Gennesareth ; that type of true quietism, 
 holy rest in the bosom of the heavenly Father, whilst the billows 
 beat over the ship. In the same measure as they grow in peace 
 they grow also in Christian joy, which is not a joy over this or 
 that individual earthly good, and in so far mdy be described as 
 a joy over nothing, but only because it is joy over the one thing, 
 in comparison with which not only is everything belonging to
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 333 
 
 this world nothing, but which at the same time makes all things 
 new, bringing along with it a new universe, joy in the Lord 
 and in His kingdom, joy over eternal life itself. Peace is the 
 indispensably necessary foundation of joy, for which reason joy 
 can never be found without peace, although the converse is not 
 so certain. There are, indeed, those who have spoken of a 
 bitter peace, a peace which casts a slight flavour of acerbity, 
 in which there is still a painful want or a painful memory. 
 And we know the declaration of one who, after having passed 
 through much trouble, deserved and undeserved, turned at last 
 to Christ, and who, being once questioned about the state of 
 his mind, answered, " I have peace, but not joy," — a reply 
 which might be given by many. Yet it may be said that a 
 peace in which there is no joy betokens an imperfect condition 
 in the Christian life, although this condition is to be found with 
 many earnest Christians, who only experience glimpses of joy, 
 moments of gladness ; whereas the apostle says, " Rejoice in the 
 Lord always " (Phil. iv. 4), — thus demanding a constant frame 
 of joyfulness. This last is the normal Christian condition, 
 though towards too many of us it stands more as a goal to 
 which we should approach, than as that which we have already 
 reached, and many find a great obstacle to their attainment of 
 It in their natural temperament. Where Christian life is desti- 
 tute of joy, neither peace nor adoring love has sufficient depth ; 
 or if it has this, then it lacks the right diffusion in the mind. 
 For joy, as the animating sentiment of the presence in the soul 
 of the Highest Good, of the beginning of eternal bliss, is peace 
 itself in its fruit-bearing stage, which diffuses itself more and 
 more over every region of the inner life, sends forth its enliven- 
 ing and cheering beams also to the dark and cold places, dis- 
 sipates care and sorrow, and will allow no corner of the soul to 
 remain in shadow. Peace, as the assurance of reconciliation 
 with God and the forgiveness of sins, is unquestionably the first, 
 the only thing absolutely necessary; and all mention of Christian 
 joy is only vain and idle talk, confounding Christian with 
 worldly joy, where this one thing is absent. But to those who 
 possess the peace of reconciliation, and lament that they cannot 
 feel joyous, it may be said, '• Absorb yourselves more deeply in 
 peace, have more gratitude and more adoring love, and you shall 
 have joy ! "
 
 334 VIRTUE. 
 
 A noble instance of Christian peace of soul is seen in Luther, 
 who so painfully toiled to oljtain it. He is a man of war and 
 strife, yet in the midst of the combat the elevation above the 
 world which peace bestows is in his inmost being; and if it some- 
 times be disturbed by the great temptations which storm around 
 him, he always recovers it by means of his firm faith. And in 
 him peace appears so frequently united with joy. In him we 
 find also the true evangelical indifference towards the good 
 things of this world, even if they are precious to him ; and this 
 sentiment has found great and memorable expression in his 
 hymn : 
 
 " Take they our life, 
 
 Goods, honour, child, and wife, 
 
 Let (JO in Jesus'' name ! 
 
 They have no gain : 
 
 Vaunt they the same, 
 
 GoiVs kingdom ive shall yet retainy^ 
 
 111 this " Let go ! " is expressed that Christian indifference, 
 which does not by any means deny that the sacrifice is painful, 
 but is an elevation above this. And in this " God's kingdom 
 we shall yet retain ! " is expressed the possession and security 
 of a blessing, a peace and a joy in comparison with which all 
 other goods may be viewed with indifference. 
 
 In Fenelon also we see an elevating instance of Christian 
 peace of mind, united with a quiet gladness. For his theoretic 
 error before mentioned, and the narrowness of his creed, is in 
 him practically counterbalanced by the evangelical element in 
 his disposition, and by the true mysticism, to which he is in 
 reality led back, and concerning which the apostle speaks 
 when he says : " He that is joined unto the Lord, is one spirit 
 with Him " (1 Cor. vi. 17). Fenelon is certainly not a giant of 
 supernatural size, is not a great man like Luther. Yet he is 
 a great man, a Christian sage, whose whole personality bears 
 the impress of love, resignation, and peace, which also mirrored 
 itself in his physical appearance, which, as the portraits of him 
 
 ^ " Tage de end vort Liv, 
 Gods, Aere, Baru og Viv, 
 Lad fare i Jesu Navn ! 
 Dem er det ei til Gavn ; 
 Guds Rige vi dog beholde.**
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 335 
 
 show, has entirely the expression of the transmaterial, of intel- 
 lect which has become soul, and in which the light from within 
 beams forth on us. He is not merely magnanimous in bearing 
 great trials and reverses, but also in bearing small ones. It 
 was, indeed, owing to this admirable characteristic that he 
 became acceptable as pastor to so many, his ability to deal with 
 little matters. Christian peace, unattainable by the world, 
 does not merely exhibit itself under extraordinary destinies, in 
 great achievements and in world-renowned contests (as at the 
 Diet of Worms : " Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise ! " which 
 unquestionably forms a striking contrast to Fenelon, who, in 
 humility, reads the Papal condemnation of his teaching from 
 the pulpit), but must also exhibit itself under the daily course 
 of temptations and trials, where withevery-day life — its petty 
 concerns and trivialities — environs us. In this particular, the 
 writings of Fenelon, which reflect his personality, beyond ques- 
 tion soothing in its influence, will always retain a great import- 
 ance, even if we sometimes, from our evangelical standpoint, 
 must apply a corrective. As in all our actions he recommends 
 to us faithfulness in small matters, in order that we may not 
 waste our spiritual possessions by trifling infidelities and 
 neglects, like those who waste their material possessions in 
 trifling expenses, which they do not observe ; so, too, he recom- 
 mends that we should not allow our peace to be disturbed by 
 small vexations and annoyances, by the paltry cares of every-day 
 life, by the senseless fashions of the world, by the folly and 
 malice of men, by which so many allow themselves to be ruined, 
 instead of which all this should be received in part ascetically 
 as stuff and material for our own education, in part as a subject 
 for Christian indifference. Many of his letters on this point 
 are true quietives ; as, for example, when he writes to one who 
 had become impatient over the world, and over the malice of 
 men : " Let water flow beneath the bridges ; let men be men, 
 that is to say, vain, fickle, unjust, false, conceited, and arrogant. 
 Let the world continue to be the world ; thou wilt not be able 
 to hinder this. Let every one follow his disposition and his 
 habits ; thou wilt not be able to subvert them. The shortest 
 way is to let them alone, and bear with them. Accustom thy- 
 self to unreasonableness and injustice. But rest in peace in the 
 bosom of God, loho sees better them thou canst all these evils, and
 
 336 VIRTUE. 
 
 u'ho permits them. Let it be sufficient for tliee without heat 
 (^sans ardeur) to do the little lohich rests on thee, aucl let all the 
 rest be to thee as though it were not." ^ This passage, which 
 undoubtedly is not suited to all or for every situation, may 
 appear to have a tinge of Stoicism, but it contains the truth in 
 Stoicism on a Christian foundation. For it must not be mis- 
 understood as recommending a Christian egoism, an indifference 
 excluding love to men, which lies far beyond Fenelon's train 
 of ideas. If we remain tranquilly in the bosom of God, and 
 really perform the small amount of work which rests on us, 
 this will mean, in the Christian understanding of the statement, 
 that in the position in which we were placed, and with the 
 faculties bestowed on us, we labour for the kingdom of God 
 as our ultimate and highest aim, and thus labour for humanity 
 and the concerns of men, moved thereto by sympathy. But, 
 at the same time, it implies that the folly and baseness of 
 men ou2;ht not to be able to disturb our own communion with 
 the Lord ; and that we must not think by our impatience and 
 heat to be able to alter that which it is not put in our power to 
 alter, — that which the Lord, in His long-suffering, permits and 
 tolerates. It implies that we should have a region in our inner 
 being, where earthly cares and annoyances, earthly disquietude, 
 can find no entrance ; that all that which daily presses on us 
 should come no further than into the outer chambers of the 
 soul, but be refused admittance to the inmost sanctuary, where 
 undisturbed serenity must reign. 
 
 §110. 
 
 The sum of what has been brought out is this : the deepest 
 quietive, the deepest peace and serenity, and at the same time 
 the deepest joy, is to be found only in fellowship with Christ. 
 We know, indeed, that the consolation of the gospel is often 
 abused, that even justification by faith has been used as a 
 sleeping draught, an opiate for the conscience. But this proves 
 nothing against the thing itself. Abusus o'piimi pessimus. 
 All earthly quietives, — as : not to be too scrupulous in regard 
 to our failings, since God is too exalted or too good to call us 
 
 ^ Fenelon, Lettres Spiritnelks : Ne poiut prendre feu sur les dereglemcnts 
 des hommes, mais remettre tout a, Dieu en paix dans raccouiplissemenb de 
 nois devoirs.
 
 THE DEEPEST QUIETIVE. 337 
 
 SO strictly to account ; under reverses, to svibmit to necessity 
 in what cannot be altered ; to rely on the all-effacing power of 
 time, and seek forgetfulness in amusement or in work ; to take 
 the world as it is (namely, in stupid indifference), since we do 
 not know and do not live in another ; to let the world go on 
 its crooked path (whilst we follow in the same track), etc., — are 
 more or less unworthy, or more or less insiijiciejit palliatives, 
 amongst which occupation and steady activity certainly belong 
 to the best. But even the best earthly quietives have no cure 
 for the deepest ache of the human heart. 
 
 Men who cannot yield themselves to the cold and comfort- 
 less principle of resignation, and who know not the peace of 
 Christ, especially such as have remained standing by a system 
 of ethics destitute of religion, and who cannot find satisfaction 
 in its emptiness and dryness, often seek, under external and 
 internal adversity, a quietive in the fine arts. In these, cer- 
 tainly, in a high degree, lie a soothing and restoring power, 
 because they bring us to forget ourselves and our actual exist- 
 ence with all its torments, by charming us thence into a higher 
 world, over which is spread forth a spirit of peace, where all 
 that moves seems surrounded by the repose of Eternity. And 
 undoubtedly art will continue to be a solace to man, although 
 it never can yield him the eternal solace, for which it was never 
 designed. In particular, we may here name music, " die edle 
 Frau Musica," as Luther calls it, and which he himself culti- 
 vated and held in high honour, " because it drives out the 
 devil and makes men joyous." No other art has such an im- 
 mediate power as this, not merely in moving and animating, 
 but also in soothing the mind. Even when it expresses the 
 deepest melancholy, the most earnest and most painful longing, 
 or the storms of passion, still all moods melt in harmony and 
 rhythm and melody, in which every earthly pain has lost its 
 sting, every burden of real life is removed. We feel that a 
 land of delight has come near us, the ideals of which, and not 
 least those of our own hearts, — for every one who listens with 
 imagination, can hear in music his own most hidden desires, 
 his inmost pains and joys, his sorrow and his triumph, — come 
 forth to meet us in unseen resurrection. And although the 
 most of these ideals are unattainable to us in reality, still they 
 sound here in immediate presence in which they can be appro- 
 
 Y
 
 338 VIRTUE. 
 
 priated by us : in which even sorrow and pain, and unsatisfied 
 craving, — as in the symphonies of Beethoven, and in the similar 
 enchanting productions of Mozart, — are assimilated as happi- 
 ness. Thence the contentment and repose of temper, the 
 yielding to the frame of mind induced, the desire to remain in 
 it (Da Capo), which music calls forth. No other art suffers 
 such repetition, and no other so craves repetition, since music 
 just desires it in order that the soul may remain in tune. 
 Even in ancient times it had been perceived that music may 
 not merely be employed as motive, but that it also contains a 
 powerful quietive. This is already apparent in the playing of 
 David on the harp before Saul. For when David played on 
 the harp, Saul was refreshed, and the evil spirit that afflicted 
 him departed from him (1 Sam. x. 23). It was the softening 
 influence of music which the Greeks had in view, when in a 
 figurative manner they spoke of melodies and magic songs, by 
 which even the fear of death can be exorcised, by which the 
 child in the convulsive throes of death can suddenly be stilled 
 and quieted. This soothing, care-dispelling power of music 
 repeats itself from the earliest ages down to the most recent 
 times. No education, no reflection, has been able to weaken 
 its impression. And religious music, where it is not the ideal 
 of happiness, but of bliss, which meets us, has power to raise 
 us on angel wings above earthly want, care, and anxiety. 
 
 The end of the matter, when all has been heard, is however 
 this, that art, in none of its forms, can give us real peace of 
 mind, or true serenity. All art only receives its real signifi- 
 cance in the moral connection of life, in pointing to something 
 higher and better than itself, in beino; a "shadow of good 
 things to come." Its ultimate and deepest import is of a 
 prophetic and eschatological nature, since, by the deliverance it 
 bestows on us in appearance, it becomes to us an evidence of 
 a higher deliverance in reality, which is prepared for us in the 
 coming harmony of the world. But art, merely as art, and 
 without the ethical connection, is only a syren, whose songs 
 transport us to an enchanting dreamland, a Maja, a treacherous 
 sorceress, who deludes us with an appearance of the Eternal. 
 JEsthetic tranquillity is only a temporary peace and reconcilia- 
 tion ; and when we wake from its illusions, and have nothing 
 hijxher and better than art, we find ourselves again in the old
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 339 
 
 misery, on the bare sand-banks of this passing world, frora 
 which we had been spirited away. Only Christ can give us 
 that peace which cannot be taken away from us, since He does 
 not begin by entrancing us into sesthetic illusions, but by show- 
 ing us the reality in all its seriousness and necessity, and that 
 the necessity is far greater and more dangerous than we 
 imagined, because its source is in our own hearts ; but He also 
 says, not in an aesthetic but an ethical sense : " Come unto 
 me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest ! " 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHAEACTER. 
 §111. 
 
 Through the progress of sanctification is formed the Christian 
 character, the personality which more and more receives the 
 impress of the Lord's servant after the example of Christ. The 
 character grows and unfolds itself in the school of reality, of 
 life, and of trial, in the exercise of a calling, in mutual inter- 
 course with others, with society, in contest with the world. 
 Whether the circle be large or small, that which the poet says 
 of character in general, holds good of the Christian character, 
 that whilst talent, especially artistic talent, is formed in stillness 
 and repose, character is formed in the commotion of the world, 
 in conflicts and dispeace. As the character is the unity of the 
 mind and energy to set the mind in action, the perfection of 
 the Christian character rests partly on its purity and power, 
 partly on its fulness and harmony with the example of the 
 Lord. The pure character is the unmixed character (aKepoto^) : 
 no alien powers, but love to God and God's kingdom is the one 
 heart-controlling and will-determining power ; for which reason 
 the progressive purification of the heart is an essential condition, 
 if we would approach purity of character. But to Christian 
 purity of character belongs also purity of motives and principles. 
 As science shows us mixed forms of ethics, in which Christian 
 and Pagan views are associated together, — as, for instance, the 
 ethics of the middle ao;es often exhibit a mixtui'e of the 
 ethics of Christianity and that of Aristotle, — so, too, life often 
 
 1
 
 340 VIRTUE. 
 
 shows us such blended characters, in M-hich Christian and 
 Pagan motives are united without examination. The history 
 of the Church shows us characters with an unconscious tincce 
 of Greek, Roman, or Scandinavian Paganism ; and thus who 
 can deny that the great Popes of the middle ages, a Gregory 
 the Seventh, an Innocent the Third, these mighty and admired 
 characters, are blendings of Christianity and Roman Paganism? 
 For whilst they do battle for the kingdom of God, this last 
 changes in their hands into a kingdom of this world, and they 
 fight for " the Eternal City," which in a new sense they seek to 
 make the mistress of the Avorld. In contrast to these, we see in 
 Luther the purely Christian character, which does not strive 
 after any earthly aim whatever as the highest, but only for 
 God's kingdom alone. Down to the most recent times, life 
 shows us blended characters. There are Christian characters 
 with unconscious tinges of Stoicism ; and it will thus scarcely 
 be denied, that not only in the personality of Calvin, but 
 also in that of Schleiermacher, there was an element of Stoicism, 
 which entered into their view of life, and which is consistent 
 with their dogmatic opinions (the doctrine of predestination). 
 There are others who have a tino;e of Eudaimonism, or of Pao;an 
 Optimism and Pessimism ; and the more mixed the relations of 
 the world become, the more the Christian is placed in relation 
 to the human in its various forms, the more easily may such a 
 blending occur. This is an important chapter, if we are iu 
 earnest about putting off the old man ; for most people will 
 discover that they have been guilty of adopting principles of 
 action springing from an entirely different source from that of 
 Christianity, — principles of Stoicism, Eudaimonism, and mere 
 worldly prudence. Without this purity of temper and motive, 
 neither can the eneriry and stedfastness of the character be of 
 the right kind. For the energy of the Christian character is by 
 no means that energy which at all hazards will carry through 
 any mere earthly aim, but that which fulfils the command. 
 Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. 
 Therefore it belongs specially to the stedfastness of the 
 Christian character not recklessly to employ every means, but 
 only such as are in conformity with a good end. That which 
 in worldly characters is often described as energy is this reck- 
 lessness in carrying out an earthly aim, or firmness in not
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 341 
 
 yielding to any obstacle whatever till the object be attained. 
 But this firmness rests on the fact that the will is enslaved by a 
 particular earthly aim, whilst the Christian character has only 
 fixed its will on the one attainment, that of God's kingdom ; and 
 though it energetically pursues every earthly aim consistent 
 with duty, yet with regard to all such it is prepared to say, 
 with Luther: "Lass fahren dahin ! " (Let it go). Therefore 
 there is a mutual relation between purity of character and 
 its energy. Only the pure will can be really energetic ; 
 for true energy shows itself in carrying out the demands of 
 God's kingdom, not merely striving, but also suffering ; whilst 
 the worldly character only overcomes the world by permitting 
 itself in another and a deeper sense to be overcome by it, by 
 offering up conscience as a sacrifice, and strewing incense before 
 the false divinities. But, on the other side, it may be said that 
 only the really energetic will is truly pure. For a will which 
 is feeble, and in actual working yields to the flesh and to the 
 world, disclaims and renounces its good intentions before the 
 cock crows thrice, can only in a very limited sense be accounted 
 pure. 
 
 But the perfection of Christian character does not rest merely 
 on its purity aud energy, but also on its internal copiousness 
 and harmony, as these in an absolute sense appear in Christ's 
 example. The harmonious is the unity of various, nay, of 
 opposing Moments, and the harmony is therefore determined 
 by the copiousness and manifold character of that which is 
 harmonized. The more varied the individuality is, the more 
 interests not merely individual but also universal it is able to 
 embrace, the more abundant the fulness of the mind, the greater 
 also may the harmony become. There are firm and powerful 
 characters which are but slightly harmonious, because their 
 firmness is mere obstinacy, since they are inflexibly fixed to one 
 interest, at least only move in a narrow circle. But there is no 
 perfectly harmonious character except the Lord Himself. No 
 human character is without dissonances, because not one is 
 without sin. And no Christian character is without dissonances, 
 nay, these only become very apparent in Christian character, 
 although redemption aids their overthrow, and advancing 
 maturity brings with it harmony. The want of harmony in 
 the Christian character rests essentially on tliis, that the will
 
 342 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 lacks power to effect the union of its different Moments, and 
 ■ that there ensues a contradiction between knowlediie and 
 action (The good which I woukl, I do not), which indicates a 
 struggle between the will and its organism, the spiritual as well 
 as the bodily, — a struggle between the higher spiritual life and 
 the natural life of temperament, which the mind is not able to 
 control. 
 
 The frontispiece of the biography of the Princess of Gallitzin^ 
 is a vignette which represents a butterfly laboriously freeing 
 itself from the caterpillar condition, stretching out the only 
 half unfolded wings to tear itself loose from the imprisoning 
 chrysalis, and disencumbered to soar into higher regions. 
 This object, half worm, half winged insect, with partially un- 
 folded wings, is a type of Christian life. Further down we 
 bring it not. We shall all be changed (1 Cor. xv. 52). 
 
 §112. 
 The great variety of Christian character rests on the mani- 
 fold nature of human individuality ; and though the essential 
 Christian type is in all ages the same, still there is the possi- 
 bility of as many diversities of Christian character as there are 
 different human individualities. On this rests also the diversity 
 of the gifts of grace, or Charismen. Age, creed, nationality, 
 are determining factors. The Christian character presents 
 peculiar phases in the early Church, in the middle ages, at the 
 period of the Reformation, and in modern times ; it appears 
 different in Catholicism and Protestantism, different in the races 
 of the north and the south. But the natural temperament of 
 the individual, the psychological organization, is specially influ- 
 ential in determining the pecuharity of the character. Tliere 
 are characters which are predominantly organized in the con- 
 templative, mystic tendency, like the Apostle John and many 
 of the great teachers of the Church, whose energetic productions 
 of thought and whose prayers are their deeds, whilst in a less 
 conspicuous degree they are called to outward action. There are 
 others who are pre-eminently constituted for external activity, 
 as Peter and the other organizers of the Church ; others, again, 
 like Paul and Augustine, who are constituted for a union of 
 
 * Denlcivurdicjkeiten aus dem Lehen cler Fiirstinn A. v. GalUtzin (Memoirs 
 of the Life of Princess A. vou Gallitzin).
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 343 
 
 the contemplative and practical. We find in the domain of the 
 practical a contrast between heroic characters, as martyrs, 
 missionaries, and reformers, and the characters of quiet suffering 
 and resignation, amongst which we have already noted the 
 noble form of Fenelon ; or the contrast between the heroic and 
 those which unfold themselves in silent deeds of love, as Spener, 
 Franke, and many others, both men and women, who in our 
 own day have laboured in the service of Home Missions. 
 According to the psychological diversity of nature, we also find 
 contrasts between the resolute and bold in action, and the far- 
 seeing, cautious, and reflecting. The general contrasts here 
 suggested, with their infinite varieties of shade, are found in 
 women as in men, although the feminine character chiefly 
 finds its circle of activity in home life, where Mary and Martha 
 — the Lord loved both of them — are permanent examples. 
 
 As it is often lamented that our age is so deficient in Christian 
 characters, we maintain, on the contrary, what would not be 
 difficult to prove, that in our century great Christian charac- 
 ters have appeared both in the literary profession and in the 
 Churches. But that Christian characters amongst the laity are 
 less conspicuous now than in those early times, proceeds from 
 the fact that Christian life in our day has not that exclu- 
 sively ecclesiastic and directly religious impress which it had 
 then — that the Christian in our day is often hidden under the 
 guise of common humanity. Where no special circumstances 
 make the Christian principle evident, two individuals may 
 perform the same outward action in the same forms of humanity, 
 whilst the inward principle (the motive and ^uietive) is widely 
 different in each case.
 
 IIL 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 DUTY AND LAW. THE LAW OF MORALITY AND THE LAW 
 OF NATURE. AUTHORITY. 
 
 § 113. 
 
 What virtue is as fulfilment, chity is as demand ; therefore the 
 whole doctrine of virtue may be treated as the doctrine of duty. 
 A virtue, a love which is not required by duty, is not a matter 
 of conscience, does not include obedience and the ministering 
 relation, is unethical ; for which reason we have also seen that 
 Christ's love is one with His perfect obedience. Duty points 
 back to the laio as the norm of the good, the eternal rule and 
 criterion for the will, for our acting as well as for our being. 
 "When the usages of language teach us to say, It is my duty, 
 but do not permit us to say. It is my law, and only to speak of 
 the law as the whole matter, these call our attention to the fact 
 that duty is the relation of the law to the individual subject. 
 As now the relation of law and duty to the human consciousness 
 and will is an entirely different matter within Christianity and 
 without it, and as Christianity has for its postulate not merely 
 the law as revealed to Israel, but also the law which from the 
 beginning was written in men's hearts, it is impossible to repre- 
 sent the Christian apprehension of law without a retrospective 
 glance at those forms of law which by Christ have received 
 their fulfilment. We go then, first, back to the law as a general 
 fact in human consciousness, a fact without the acknowledg- 
 ment of which Christianity itself cannot be acknowledged. 
 
 I 
 I
 
 THE LAW OF MORALITY AND THE LAW OF NATURE. 345 
 
 §114. 
 
 Universality and necessity are provisions which are insepar- 
 able from the law of the Good in our inner being, and without 
 which it would not have the character of law. It manifests 
 itself as universally binding ; for whilst it addresses itself with 
 its demands to the individual, it embraces at the same time the 
 whole world of personality, as binding upon all. The same 
 law which we perceive in our inner being, when in solitude we 
 descend into our conscience, meets us also outside of ourselves 
 as an objective historic power; for its norms are determining 
 for the regulations of society in the Family and the State, for 
 morals and the relations of justice, for all social relations. 
 However different these are in different ao;es and araono;st the 
 different races of men, there is still that connection with this 
 law, which gives them a higher value than the merely temporary, 
 which is determined by apparent good result ; it is, moreover, 
 the relation to this law which procures them respect and acknow- 
 ledgment, or the contrary. It manifests itself with unerring 
 necessity ; for it is as independent of men as the law which 
 determines the course of the stars, the growth of plants, and 
 the mode of life of beasts, and its requirement is no less per- 
 ceptible to our conscience than the law of gravity to our bodies. 
 Yet it is essentially different from the law of nature. When 
 this difference is defined by the assertion that the law of 
 morality expresses a demand — a "must," — whilst the law of 
 nature works by necessity, which executes its own designs 
 without the intervention of a medium, this assertion requires 
 closer scrutiny. For nature also expresses on many points a 
 demand which is by no means directly satisfied. We do not 
 merely refer to the natural bents and inclinations which are the 
 expression of an unsatisfied craving of nature, and thus express 
 a demand ; but w^e refer principally to the fact that nature 
 itself in many ways shows us a contrast between the normal 
 and the abnormal, shows us monsters and malformations, from 
 which we receive the impression of an unsatisfied demand of 
 nature, — a " must " to which the individual objects of nature 
 respond but imperfectly, or to which they even stand opposed. 
 The contemplation of nature constrains us, then, to speak of 
 what should be, but is not. But — however we may explain
 
 346 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 this abnormality in nature — the difference between the law of 
 nature and the law of morality is this, that only the latter 
 expresses a "must" which at the same time is an "ought." 
 It is not merely a power which manifests itself through the law 
 of morality, but a power which at the same time is authority/ ; 
 a power which demands acknowledgment, demands obedience 
 and voluntary submission, whilst it compels respect and esteem, 
 and brings with it obligation and responsibility. Only on this 
 account can the law of morality express its ** must " as an 
 " ought," because it is the law of free-ioill. 
 
 We therefore protest against that ethical naturalism which 
 denies the essential difference here described, and which, for 
 example, has found expression in Schleiermacher's famous 
 treatise on the relation between the law of nature and the law of 
 morality. In the view of this ethical naturalism, which is also 
 determinism, the law of morality is only the highest law of 
 nature, the law of nature itself, in so far as it enters into action 
 on the highest grade of life known to us — namely, self-conscious 
 life. As the highest potency of life, nature as self-conscious 
 reason, cannot from the first attain perfect control in human 
 individuals, in which the lower potencies, sensual, animal life, 
 are still predominant, it must begin its activity as a demand, a 
 " must," which by degrees disappears, in proportion as reason- 
 ing life progressively developes itself, and receives the impress 
 of a higher law of necessity. The fundamental error in this 
 theory rests on the misconstruction which forgets that the 
 transition from the law of nature to the law of morality, from 
 the realm of unconsciousness to that of self-consciousness, from 
 the mute and instinct-bound world to that of speech and free- 
 dom, is not such as that which finds place within nature's own 
 sphere, is not a transition from the laws of inorganic nature to 
 the organic, or as from vegetable life to animal life, which are 
 all only transitions within the same system ; but the transition 
 from the law of nature to the law of morality is the transition 
 to a new, another world, which forms a contrast, not to any single 
 step in natural life, but to the whole physical Kosmos.^ The 
 
 1 See Humboldt's Kosmos, i. 386 : "A physical picture indicates the 
 limits where the sphere of intelligence begins, and the furthest glimpse 
 sinks in another world. it indicates the lunits, and does not overstep 
 them."
 
 THE LAW OF MORALITY AND THE LAW OF NATURE. 347 
 
 explanation of the manner in which this new principle, 
 containing self-consciousness and liberty, speech and action, 
 makes its appearance in the midst of nature, will always con- 
 tinue to be incumbent on naturalism. Nay, although the 
 naturalistic thinker may explain everything else by the law 
 of nature, one thing he cannot explain, — namely, himself, 
 the thinking and willing mind, the free responsible personality. 
 For by the representation of a self-determining law of nature 
 nothing is explained, as it is just this which requires to be made 
 clear to us, in what manner the blindly existing nature, bound 
 by the law of necessity, can by its own power determine itself 
 so as to become seeing and consciously willing. The ethical 
 "ought" must remain to all eternity inexplicable by nature. 
 It comes not from beneath, but from above. The contrast 
 between good and evil will in all ages make a quite different 
 impression on human consciousness, from the contrast between 
 health and sickness, between a successful and an unsuccessful 
 development of nature, repressed and constrained by circum- 
 stances. And the highest phenomena of evil which history 
 and experience show us, will always mock an explanation 
 which seeks to derive them from flesh and blood, from the pre- 
 ponderance of the influence of the senses, or from impotence of 
 reason, " not yet" come to predominance in them. 
 
 But whilst we maintain the essential difference between the 
 law of nature and the law of morality, we by no means teach 
 an indissoluble dualism, and cannot, with Kant, whose theory 
 forms a contrast with that of Schleiermacher, acknowledge an 
 irreconcilable antagonism between the law of morality and the 
 law of nature, — a dualism in consequence of which there must 
 be in man an incessant struggle between reason and natural 
 impulse, virtue and the exercise of the senses, duty and incli- 
 nation. Such an irreconcilable dualism between the law of 
 morality and the law of nature would not merely place an 
 unsolved dualism in the being of God, since it is the same God 
 who reveals Himself in both worlds, but would also destroy the 
 unity of human nature ; whereas it is the same man, whose brain, 
 nervous system, circulation of the blood, and instinctive desires, 
 are determined by the law of nature, but whose will must 
 determine itself according to the law of morality, and under 
 the postulate of an absolute dualism would be doomed to an
 
 348 THE LAW. 
 
 incessant and resultless contest. Not tlie less Kant's theory 
 contains a higher truth than that of Schleiermacher, because it 
 rests on a deep view of the actual condition of human nature, the 
 practical enigma of human nature, which only finds solution in 
 redemption, in the Saviour, in whose sinless example we see the 
 harmonious unity of the law of nature and the law of morality. 
 
 §115. 
 
 The law of morality frees man so far from the law of neces- 
 sity, as it imprints on him the mark of freedom, stamps him 
 as a citizen in a kingdom which is higher than the necessity 
 of nature, and where everything is Aveighed and measured by a 
 different standard from that of nature. But it also impresses on 
 him a higher mark of dependence. In virtue of this law, which 
 embraces the whole world of humanity, this is determined as at 
 once the world of liberty and of authority^ whilst nature is only 
 that of necessity and of power. Authority and liberty, or free- 
 will — around these two poles revolves the whole moral world ; 
 and if we have formerly designated grace and free-will as these 
 poles, we have only named two sides of the same thing. The 
 power which binds human liberty with an absolute authority, 
 cannot be in any way conditional and finite, but only the 
 absolute power, or God. Unconditional demand can only 
 originate in absolute lehuj ; and human freedom is not there- 
 fore, as Kant believed, autonomic, or self-legislating, but theo- 
 nomic, or bound by the law of God. When Kant exclaims, 
 " Duty ! thou exalted and great name, which contains nothing, 
 which has universal favour, or seeks to ingratiate itself with us, 
 but desirest subjection; yet dost thou not move the will by 
 force or threatening, which call forth aversion, but thou dost 
 only set up a law, which of itself finds entrance to the mind, 
 and even against our will compels esteem and reverence (if it 
 does not always pi-ocure for itself obedience) ; before whom 
 inclinations are mute, though they may secretly rebel against 
 it, — what origin is worthy of thee, and where shall we find the 
 root of thy high descent ? " — and when he then answers him- 
 self : " It cannot be anything less than that which exalts man 
 above himself (as a portion of the world of sense), and knits 
 him to an order of things which only the understanding can con- 
 ceive. It can only be personality, that is, liberty, and independ-
 
 AUTHORITY. 349 
 
 ence of the whole mechanism of nature, vet at the same time 
 considered as a faculty of a being, that belongs at once to the 
 sensible and the supersensible world, and therefore, as belonging 
 to both worlds, is subjected to purely practical laws, which it pre- 
 scribes to itself (\\i2ii is to say, as a rational being that has itself as 
 a subject of the world of sense under suhordinatioii), and cannot 
 do otherwise than regard its own being, its highest destiny, and 
 its laws with the deepest respect ; " ^ — in all this discussion he 
 remains standing half way from the reply to this great question. 
 For human personality, which is not of itself, and in so many 
 ways is notoriously limited, imder condition of time and space, 
 which is born in time and developes itself from unconscious 
 night, gradually wakening up to self-consciousness and self- 
 government, cannot prescribe, and has not prescribed, for itself 
 the eternal law of its being. It owXy finds it in itself as given. 
 The root of the noble descent of duty concerning which he 
 inquires, must lie deeper than in man himself. And when 
 Kant above all else admires two things, — the starry heavens, 
 which are above him, and the moral law, which he finds in his 
 inner beincj : the first because its inconceivable vastness leads 
 him from worlds to worlds, from systems to systems, by which 
 he as a being of sense feels himself as it were annihilated, a 
 thing of nothing, a speck in the great universe ; the second 
 because it raises him above the whole sphere of sense, and knits 
 him to an unseen world, in which he has an infinite and eternal 
 dignity as a free intelligence ; — again his admiration remains 
 standing half way. For he admires only the marvel of free- 
 will which raises him above the world of sense, admires only 
 the marvel of a moral world, whilst he regards it exclusively 
 from the view-point of freedom as an autonomic republic, 
 which forms the higher contrast to nature as blind automaty. 
 On the other hand, he overlooks the marvel of authoritTj, which 
 bears witness that the government of God must be founded on 
 free humanity. He believes that he can explain authority by 
 liberty, believes that man's rational liberty is his own authority. 
 But just as little as human liberty can be derived from nature, 
 as little can authority, if it is questioned concerning its eternal 
 foundation and essence, be derived from human liberty. Its 
 source is above freedom. An impersonal law, an impersonal 
 ^ Kritik der practischen Vernun/t, p. 214, Eosenkrantz' edition.
 
 350 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 idea, which has not itself the will for its principle, cannot be an 
 authority for my will, cannot bind me, cannot call me to account, 
 or summon me before its judgment-seat. This can only be done 
 by the personal Sovereign of the universe, the Lawgiver, the 
 Judge. HoAvever superior in rank this impersonal law or idea 
 with its normative perfection may be to me, the individual, 
 finite, and limited human being, one infinite advantage is mine 
 in comparison with the idea, — namely, that I have self-con- 
 sciousness and will, which the idea has not. It is I who know 
 the law, whereas the law knows neither itself nor me. Must I 
 then be called to account and be judged at the tribunal of the 
 impersonal idea in matters of conscience, in which men cannot 
 judge me ? Then it is in reality myself who must conduct ray 
 cause before myself ; myself who in the last instance must doom 
 myself, though in relation to the eternal law. That at this 
 tribunal, where rational liberty must be its own authority, there 
 can be no strength of authority, must be apparent ; as it must 
 also be quite obvious that the result at this tribunal, especially 
 when the judgments are to be valid for eternity, where Om- 
 niscience is an essential condition to justice, can only be taliter 
 qualiter. If duty and responsibility are to be treated with 
 seriousness, then authority must be above liberty, then must the 
 authority which engages me in my conscience be the will of God, 
 that will which is at once holy and omnipotent, the same which 
 is lord over the laws of nature, and which has created the starry 
 heavens above me, the same which guides the history of the 
 world, and decides the destinies of kingdoms and of races. This 
 unity of the ethical and the phi/ sical, which, in God is the unity of 
 holiness and omnipotence, and in which the last is the mini- 
 stering organ for the first, is essential to the conception of 
 authority. For an ethical will, which is not at the same time a 
 power, and which in the execution of its aim must bend to the 
 physical and to the course of the world, expresses only an impotent 
 demand, is only an abstract shadow, and might rather be desig- 
 nated a wish than a will. Therefore 'bur inmost consciousness of 
 duty, immediate or mediate, is also atcompanied by the assurance 
 that the legislating authority which speaks in our inner being 
 is not merely the judging, but also the executive authority, 
 which can give effect to its laws and sentences, because it is 
 the law of the Almighty Sovereign of the universe. If man's
 
 AUTHOKITY. 351 
 
 rational liberty be its own authority, then it must also possess 
 power to carry forward moral ascendency to a triumphant issue, 
 and subdue the law of nature and the course of the world, so 
 that in the final instafnce they direct themselves by the law of 
 morality, — a theory which also in a side- way pressed upon Kant, 
 and brought him to the acknowledgment that he could not do 
 without God. In the unity here described of holiness and 
 power, which by a further development is acknowledged as the 
 unity of love and power, is the marvel of authority in the world 
 of human liberty, the marvel of moral creation ; that is to say, 
 this marvel that the Almighty has Himself limited His own 
 omnipotence, though not therefore given it away, in order that 
 He might rule over a state of free subjects, a civitas Dei. The 
 opposite error is a denial of the Creator (^Autor)^ and seeks to 
 found a civitas hominutn, a kingdom of humanity, in which one 
 again and again (theoretically and practically) upheaves the 
 Sisyphus stone, of attempting to deduce authority from free-will, 
 and again and again comes to the result of only having one 
 thing where two are required. Authority proceeds neither 
 from beneath nor quite from within : it comes from above, and 
 desires to be acknowledged in this its descent, 
 
 § 116, 
 
 The divine authority, which manifests itself in the law, which 
 is not merely the law of the individual, but embraces the whole 
 community, is postulate and background for all earthly human 
 authority, just as all human laws, as has already been asserted 
 by an ancient heathen sage (Heraclitus), draw their nourish- 
 ment from the one divine. All human authority rests iti 
 imitated form on the same Moments, which are present origin- 
 ally in the divine authority, — namely, on a unity of the ethical 
 and the physical, or, as we may also express it, of right and 
 might. Whilst by right we understand the ethically regulating, 
 swaying, and engaging, by might (the physical) we not merely 
 understand material power, but also higher agencies, as genius 
 and talent, which are appointed to be instruments for the ethical. 
 That authority is this unity of the ethical and the physical, may 
 be read in giant characters in the State, which is appointed to 
 be the earthly copy of the divine government. A magistracy, 
 a governnientj which has not pov.er to carry out its edicts, is
 
 352 THE LAW. 
 
 without authority. But, on the other side, power alone cannot 
 establish authority. A despot, such as Machiavelli sketches 
 him in his book about the prince who, setting aside all principles 
 of justice, only rules by force and fraud, or a revolutionary 
 assembly that acknowledges no other right than that of the 
 strongest, may certainly carry out a reign of terror, but can 
 exercise no real authority, because they cannot bind men by any 
 moral obligation, cannot engage them by means of conscience. 
 If might alone establishes authority, as Baader remarks, one 
 might say with the same reason, that a wild beast rushing forth 
 and terrifying a herd of cattle or a crowd of men, exercises 
 authority over them.^ True sovereign authority is only such 
 in the same measure as that can be applied to it, which Kant 
 says about duty, that it will not ingratiate itself with us, but 
 that its laws find entrance of themselves into the mind, and 
 even against our will, and in spite of the secret resistance of our 
 inclination, win our respect and assent. The same which holds 
 good in regard to the State is valid also with the necessary 
 alteration in regard to the Family, in regard to the authority of 
 parents over their children, of the school over the pupils, that 
 the authority must be able to commend itself to the moral sense 
 of the children and pupils, if it is to call forth obedience, filial 
 piety, and love. Despotic use of power in the family or the 
 school is not authority, for which reason Scripture admonishes 
 parents not to provoke their children to wrath (Eph. vi. 4). 
 But, on the other side, it must be evident that commands, pre- 
 scriptions, and rules, which are imperatively expressed, but 
 where transgression or neglect remain without consequences, 
 testify to the absence of authority. 
 
 In an entirely different form appears the unity of the ethical 
 and the physical, when from the regulations of society, and 
 the authorities associated therewith, we turn to free personal 
 authorities. We refer here specially to the highly gifted, who 
 at individual periods of time of historic development, in conse- 
 quence of a higher vocation, appear as teachers of the people or 
 as reformers of the state of society, and who, in contradistinc- 
 tion to the first, who are associated with the regulations which 
 nmst be carried on from generation to generation, may be 
 
 1 Utlerden Begnffder AutoriUU. Phil. Scliriflen, 2 Bd. S. 419. (On the 
 Conception of Authority. Phil. Writings, vol. ii. p. 419.)
 
 AUTHORITY. 353 
 
 called extraordinary authorities. No individual personality 
 will become an extraordinary authority in the historical life 
 of man without the power of genius, without an eminently 
 intellectual potency. And yet mere ability, mere endowment 
 alone, is insufficient to stamp any one as an authority. Only 
 that man becomes an authority, who to the power of genius or 
 conspicuous talent unites a force of personality which enables 
 him to exercise a moral sovereignty over men. Who thus, 
 mediately or immediately, directly or indirectly, is enabled to 
 commend himself and his cause to the consciences of men, to 
 their sense of truth and justice, is enabled thus to represent 
 his cause as that which ought to be ; so that men thereby find 
 themselves obliged voluntarily to submit and place themselves 
 under his educating, guiding, and directing authority, which 
 holds good both with regard to the true and the false authori- 
 ties, wdiich perplex consciences, and make men into slaves and 
 blind adherents. When we here, as throughout the whole of 
 this treatise, have placed the conception of authority in intimate 
 and indissoluble connection with the conscience and the idea of 
 duty, we by no means overlook the fact that this connection 
 cannot in every circle of life appear with the same centrality. 
 But though the idea of authority appears in a sufficiently vague 
 application (as when we speak of authorities in this or that 
 special science, this or that art), yet in none of these applica- 
 tions does it deny this connection. For we shall always find 
 that authority is understood not merely as that which in the 
 circle in question, on the basis of a power or ability, presents 
 before us that which ought to be (whether this is expressed 
 imperatively, or is placed before our eyes in actual accomplish- 
 ment), but at the same time as that which in this circle has a 
 legitimate demand on acknoioledgment, respect, and voluntary 
 submission on our side, by which the connection between duty 
 and conscience is admitted, although not always in that concep- 
 tion of the term embracing the whole man. 
 
 But whilst we place the conception of authority in intimate 
 connection with the conceptions of duty and conscience, it 
 ought not to be overlooked that authority not only demands but 
 bestows, or that authority as well as the law has its ultimate 
 principle in love. The right of authority is grounded on the 
 ethical, to which the power is subordinated j but the basis of 
 
 z
 
 354 THE LAW. 
 
 ethics, the fundamental Good, is love, personal imparting of 
 self. This holds good of every form of authority, though it is 
 differently determined in the different circles of life. Every 
 authority is only so in the full signification of the term, in the 
 same degree as its right is not the mere abstract right in its 
 unity with power, but when we can look up to it not merely 
 with reverence, not merely with admiration, but also with piety 
 and gratitude, with faith and confidence ; because it not merely 
 pledges us, but also bears towards us the relation of bestowing 
 and imparting, — not merely restricts us, but at the same time 
 supports, sustains, and exalts us, — not merely represses, but 
 developes our liberty. Therefore authority is not only closely 
 bound up with obedience, but moreover authority is associated 
 with filial piety, with admiration, with faith. That these 
 Moments are not always associated, experience shows. Yet 
 even that authority which merely requires and demands has 
 nevertheless its validity, when its abstract right is real right, 
 and it must be obeyed, although this obedience laclss the true 
 heartiness. But the more complete the authority is, the more 
 are admiration and confidence present. Therefore Christ 
 is the perfect personal authority ; for whilst He binds us 
 absolutely in our consciences, He stands at the same time 
 before us as the object of faith, of unlimited gratitude and 
 admiration. Whilst false authority only employs human 
 personalities as means for an earthly object, makes men stupid 
 and servile, true authority, especially that of Christ, not merely 
 works in the direction of demand, but in those of bestowal and 
 liberation, on their intelligence and their will. 
 
 Is it asked : In what manner shall the origin of authority in 
 human society be explained ? we reply : All authority is from 
 God (Rom. xiii. 1). Though this passage refers most particu- 
 larly to political authorities, yet it has an application to the 
 whole of human society. This does not imply that society 
 should be understood theocratically, as if its regulations had an 
 immediatelv divine character, or as if all human laws were 
 di\dne. In opposition to such an understanding of Scripture, 
 another passage exhorts us thus : " Submit yourselves unto 
 every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake" (1 Pet. ii. 13), 
 in which the same ordinances which were mentioned as divine 
 are also regarded as human. They have one side from which
 
 AUTHORITY. o55 
 
 they are a work of men, have undergone a historic develop- 
 ment, are imperfect, changing, inconstant, and from time to 
 time require to be reformed ; and it is for this reason that the 
 extraordinary authorities are sent. That all authority is from 
 God, does not imply that this or that form of State government 
 — the monarchical or the republican — is from divine right the 
 absolutely universally binding. But it does imply that this 
 relation of superiority and subordination which permeates the 
 whole of human society, and excludes all abstract liberty and 
 equality, — this pervading relation of contrast, tending never- 
 theless to unity between authority and liberty, authority and 
 obedience, authority and filial piety, — in its original source, iu 
 its inmost foundation and in its actual essence, is not of men, 
 cannot be deduced from the right of the stronger or the more 
 able, nor from common consent {contrat social), but rests on 
 God's will and appointment, and is subject to His guidance. 
 This implies, that in honouring his parents and obeying the 
 law, one obeys not only men, but also God. It implies, that 
 whilst superiors and subordinates are mutually bound to 
 each other, both are engaged to a higher third party, whose 
 servants they both are, whose laws they must both obey, and 
 to whom both must render an account. It implies, in one 
 word, that the whole order of human society in its ultimate 
 resort rests on the divine will as its foundation, that society 
 must be built on the basis of religion. The opposite theory, 
 which in our time has found much entrance, is this : All 
 authority is from men, or liberty is its own authority. Where 
 thus the whole relation of superiority and inferiority only be- 
 comes a relation between men and men, in which the higher 
 third can only be impersonal reason or idea, which on account 
 of its impersonality cannot call them to account, or pronounce 
 upon them any sentence, as they themselves must execute this 
 'partes, it leads only to an apparent authority, denying the 
 power, because the inmost nerve of obligation, which knits us 
 to responsibility, is severed along with the bond of religion. 
 God alone can bind the conscience, since He is the eternal 
 cause and source of all obligation and all right, just as it is 
 He from whom all power and all endowment issue. Without 
 common free subjection, common ministering relation under 
 Him, society will soon show us a condition destitute of
 
 356 THE LAW. 
 
 authority. We shall see despotism alternate with impotonce in 
 the governino; power, who will seek to compensate the want of 
 authority by ingratiating themselves with those over whom they 
 ought to exercise authority. AYe shall see servility alternate 
 with taking the law into their own hands on the part of those 
 who ought to obey, and who by self-will and revolt discover 
 that liberty desires to be its own authority. We shall see 
 man-worship (the worship of genius) alternate with material- 
 istic contempt for intellect and for more elevated humanity. 
 It is unnecessary to observe here, that much false authority 
 has also obtained entrance under the name of relifrion, and 
 contributed powerfully to further the evils above mentioned. 
 It is not the less certain that a community where religion is 
 absent is destitute also of authority, and all is vacillatino; and 
 insecure, because the supporting, sustaining basis is wanting. 
 And it will to all times continue to be wisdom which was 
 expressed by one of the ancients, when he said : " Far more 
 easily wilt thou be able to build a city in the air, than on earth 
 to found a city without the gods." 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 §117. 
 
 God alone can bind the conscience. But if we would under- 
 stand the conscience, we cannot rest satisfied with its many 
 imperfect phenomena, but must seek to examine its essence. 
 Conscience is not mere impulse, the impulse of obedience and 
 subordination, the aim of which is God and God's kingdom ; 
 it is not mere instinct which makes known to man what in an 
 ethical respect is serviceable to him, and what he must avoid 
 for the preservation of his soul, just as the instinct of animals 
 makes known to them what is serviceable to their self-pre- 
 servation, and incites them to avoid the opposite. It is also 
 consciousness, knowledge, information, man's joint acquaintance 
 with himself and with God, the consciousness direct, essential, 
 differine; from all consciousness of reflection and idea of our 
 dependence not merely on the law, but on the binding and 
 determining autliority, which speaks to us through the law, 
 Tiic system of ethics which is merely autonomic can only
 
 CONSCIENCE. 357 
 
 apprehend tlie conscience as man's knowledge of himself, 
 ■which certainly is the one essential side of the matter. The 
 voice of conscience is then considered as coming from man's 
 own being. It is man's ideal, or the ideal man in us, which 
 here expresses itself commanding or censuring, inciting or 
 reactinn; in relation to the empirical man, or the imperfect man 
 in actual existence. The ideal demands the universally binding, 
 and through the conscience remonstrates against those repre- 
 sentations which originate in egoism — passions and desires. 
 It requires unity and totality in the moral life of the individual ; 
 and in the upbraiding conscience we perceive the reaction of 
 the whole man against the egoism of the passions and desires, 
 which seeks to place a single side of humanity, an individual 
 interest, a part in the position of the whole. Conscience is 
 therefore the w^arden of the marches for the will, the main- 
 tainer of unity in the life of the individual ; which unity is 
 only possible when the individual, at every point of his life of 
 free-will, subjects himself to the demands of his ideal, or of his 
 eternal being. This explanation has certainly absolute value 
 in opposition to the materialistic or sensualistic explanation of 
 conscience, which is a caricature of the idealistic theory, and 
 about which we shall speak in passing. 
 
 Sensualism also explains the conscience as proceeding from 
 man himself. The conscience, according to this theory, differs 
 in no respect from the Ego. It is the whole Ego — not the ideal, 
 wdiich for sensualism does not exist, but the empiric Ego ; thus 
 exactly such as this has formed itself partly from our physical or- 
 ganization, partly from the influences which in the course of time 
 we have received from the surrounding world (the age we live in, 
 civilisation, etc.). Whatever now harmonizes with this empiric 
 Ego "in its totality," as it has been developed "in accordance 
 with the age," this we call good and right, and the opposite evil 
 and wrong ; for which reason these conceptions are so diverse 
 with different races and in different acjes. And when this em- 
 pirical Ego censures itself, because at times it yields to certain 
 temporary feelings and desires, or permits itself certain tem- 
 porary modes of action, which cannot be approved, because they 
 do not harmonize with this Ecco rei^arded as a totalitv, we call 
 this conscience. With regard to this empirical explanation of 
 conscience, which bases itself on that "exact" investiiration
 
 358 THE LAW. 
 
 which alone deserves the name of '^ science," it may simply be 
 said that it strikes all empiricism or experience alike in the 
 face.^ For it is an incontestable experience, that conscience 
 not merely upbraids us with individual passing inclinations and 
 modes of acting, but often warns us that our whole empirical 
 Ego is in a condition entirely different from what it ought to 
 be ; that conscience incessantly disturbs this empiric Ego in its 
 worldly harmony with itself, constantly appears as accuser and 
 adversary of this, which, notwithstanding the greatest exertions, 
 cannot keep away such disturbances from life, any more than 
 Don Juan's empiric Ego can keep the Commandant's spirit 
 from the body. And in the next place, how come I at all to 
 engage in individual passing modes of action wdiich I cannot 
 myself approve, if, as Sensualism teaches, I have only one 
 nature, namely, that of the senses, and merely temporal — if I 
 am only the developed intelligent animal ? If I have only one 
 nature, I can never attain to correct or to criticise myself, but 
 must be in harmony with myself in every particular, and know 
 only external limits and disturbances. Very different does the 
 case appear, if we do not close our eyes to experience, and 
 acknowledge that man is not flesh alone, but also spirit, or, as 
 Kant in his own way expressed it, that we are at once beings of 
 outward sense and rational beings, at once belong to two worlds, 
 for which reason our empiric Ego has always a super-empiric 
 postulate, which may be more definitely described as our ideal, 
 eternal Ego. In opposition to Materialism and Sensualism, 
 which deny the simplest and nearest-lying facts of experience, 
 and establish the autonomy of the empirical Ego, the moral 
 principle of which may be expressed in this formula : Do what 
 thou wilt if thou only preservest harmony with thy entire Ego, 
 as this is for the time constituted, — a rule which every criminal 
 and reprobate may appropriate to himself; — in opposition to 
 this teaching, the autonomy of idealism has absolute worth and 
 respectability, and Kant will stand to all generations as the 
 great witness of the reality of the ideal world, and against the 
 denial of the spiritual. But however true it may then be that 
 the law is the eternal law of our own being, and that man in 
 his conscience apprehends himself in the deepest unltj' of his 
 
 1 Harless, Clirhtlklie Ethik, 6te Auflage, S. 68 (Harless' Christian Ethics^ 
 6th editiou, p. 68).
 
 CONSCIENCE. 359 
 
 being, yet still that explanation of conscience which is merely 
 autonomic is only a half explanation. Amongst all races of 
 men who are not sunk into a condition of brutality, conscience, 
 however imperfect their idea of God may be, is considered not 
 as the voice of man alone, but as the voice of God ; and only 
 thus can the majesty of conscience be adequately expressed. 
 
 That which specially cannot be explained by our ideal being 
 alone is the majestic Thoii, shalt ! Our ideal being by itself 
 can only express itself as an inward and higher craving of 
 nature, which, in opposition to our lower nature and our nature- 
 bound liberty, necessarily comes to an outbreak. Its emotions 
 may in the condition of sin appear as the sighing and cry of 
 distress of a pure and noble being, under great ill-usage. But 
 it has no power to express that majestic imperative which 
 predicates a power which is not merely within, but above man. 
 When we then say that in conscience we hear the voice of 
 God, we do not speak of special revelations and inspirations. 
 But this we do say, that in conscience we perceive an evidence 
 which cannot be rejected, independent of ourselves, of a per- 
 manent relation of dependence in which we are placed, — an 
 evidence which permits man to perceive in his inmost being 
 the existence of a superhuman, supramundane principle, supe- 
 rior to that of the creature, — a light which shines in the darkness, 
 though the darkness perceiveth it not ; and which also assures 
 him that this consciousness of his of an invisible authority in 
 his inner being does not originate in himself, nor in the world 
 and his consciousness concerning the world, but is effected^ 
 is given to him by tJiis authority itself; assures him that it 
 is not merely he who is acquainted with the law, and his re- 
 lation to the law, but that he and his relation to the law are 
 known by the higher power, namely, by the Creator. There- 
 fore we say, and that in a far deeper significance than bare 
 idealism can, that conscience is a fundamental form of man's 
 personal consciousness of eternity, that ineffaceable certainty, 
 breaking through all sophistry, resisting all worldliness — 
 though often only in lightning flashes, the certainty that 
 the relation of duty with responsibility and judgment is not a 
 relation which stands and falls with our relations to the world 
 and to men, but in its essence is a relation to the holy and 
 almighty God ; that even if we w^ere denuded of all our worldly
 
 360 THE LAW. 
 
 relations, of all our relations to men, which befalls each of us 
 at death, still this siq^ranmndane fundamental relation would 
 continue to exist ; still, by virtue of the indissoluble copula of 
 conscience, we should find ourselves in presence of the holy- 
 God, and placed before His bar of judgment. At this judg- 
 ment bar we already appear in the present life, when we, whilst 
 withdrawing from all worldly relations, enter the sanctuary of 
 our conscience. Here it appears to us as vanity to receive 
 honour of men, and the only honour worthy of attainment is 
 perceived to be that which comes from God. Here the mis- 
 judged and innocently persecuted man seeks refuge, whilst from 
 all human bars of judgment he appeals to the highest infallible 
 authority, by whom he is known and appreciated, and who pro- 
 nounces righteous judgments. Here the sinner finds himself 
 placed before a judgment bar, where the trespass which he 
 committed a long series of years since stands as presently before 
 him as though it had been committed yesterday, as an evidence 
 that our actions only on their phenomenal exoteric side sink 
 in the stream of time, whilst their essential esoteric side, that 
 in them which belongs to our free-will and our obligations, is 
 preserved in an unseen world, where, lifted above the stream of 
 time, they accuse or excuse us. Just because conscience, in 
 the most eminent sense, is the consciousness of eternity, the 
 consciousness of a relation superior to the world, it speaks most 
 clearly when the voices of the world are mute, and often must 
 it say to man in dreams what it cannot succeed in telling him 
 in his waking moments. 
 
 §118. 
 If sin had not come into the world, then would the relation 
 of the law to human consciousness, and at the same time to 
 conscience, be entirely different from what it now is. Then 
 would conscience be the tranquil consciousness that our life was 
 a progressive life in God, in which the requirements of the law 
 and the fulfilment of the law rhythmically succeed each other, 
 in which the conscience would be latent, not manifest, and thus 
 there would be no question about conscience as such. Now 
 this is unquestionably also an evidence that our life is rooted 
 in God, but at the same time it proves that it is a life outside 
 of God, which is not the normal position. And the more we
 
 CONSCIEKCE. 361 
 
 advance in self-knowledge, the more opportunities will we have 
 of perceiving reactions of our higher nature in conscience, which 
 does not obtain its due position, and of the sacred authority 
 which we have offended, and which is the sovereign power of 
 existence. This is specially true of the notoriously evil con- 
 science after the commission of crime, that it expresses itself in 
 powerful reactions, which in the most obdurate criminals may 
 often break forth with overwhelming power. However diverse 
 the expression of an evil conscience may be, two principal 
 Moments are always found in it. Thus, in the evil conscience 
 there is an inward disquietude and dispeace, distress and 
 wretchedness (angustice) in the present. Moreover, there is 
 a miserable anticipation concerning the future. The violated 
 demands of the law weifih on the evil consciousness as an 
 oppressive burden, which literally makes the m^ind heavy, and 
 puts the will into a condition similar to that of the man who 
 cannot get air. And not only is it felt as a burden, but also 
 as an inward scourge (Jlagellimi)^ which chases the transgressor 
 like a wild beast, as we see in the case of Orestes, who was 
 persecuted by recollections ; and in the case of Cain, who, a 
 fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, in vain endeavours to 
 flee from himself, and from the accusation which sounds from 
 the depth of his being, which at the same time is self-accusa- 
 tion. As the transgressor has the avenging power behind him 
 in the recesses of his heart, so, too, he has him also before him, 
 since the violated requirement of the law incessantly in magic 
 presence places itself before him in the shape of the crime com- 
 mitted, as Banquo's ghost before Macbeth. And just as a good 
 conscience has not merely present inw^ard peace, but is always 
 accompanied by a blessed anticipation of the future, even if 
 present circumstances are dark enough ; so, too, an evil con- 
 science has not merely present inward misery, is chased not 
 merely by the terrors of memory, but has also a foreboding evil 
 anticipation of the time to come, even when externally sur- 
 rounded with the means and appliances of enjoyment. There 
 is in the conscience an impression, more or less distinct, that 
 the legislative and sentencing power is also the executive or 
 accomplishing. Although God's righteous judgment is already 
 fulfilled in the inward tortures of the conscience, yet there is 
 besides a conviction that the consequences of the law, duty and
 
 362 THE LAW. 
 
 responsibility, must be fully carried out, or that retribution must 
 be manifested in accordance with the external and the internal, 
 with fortune and guilt, with outward circumstances and personal 
 worth. However disposed the transgressor may be to regard 
 nature and the course of the world as indifferent to the con- 
 science and the laws of morality, to regard the law as some- 
 thing merely subjective, the reproaches of conscience as childish 
 fancies and imaginations, which have nothing to do with reality; 
 however many phenomena may appear to show that the law and 
 conscience are destitute of all objective corroboration in the 
 course of the world, which even seems frequently to mock them 
 and continue to go on its own way ; yet in the depth of con- 
 science, a secret conviction that the moral government of the 
 world is not the less accomplished through the course of the 
 world — that omnipotence, though for a time it may seem other- 
 wise, is still on the side of justice. And although this conviction 
 is trodden under foot by the obdurate mind, yet it forces itself 
 on the transgressor in his dreams, as with Richard iii. the 
 night before the battle. Therefore it recurs so frequently, that 
 the criminal trembles in solitude, is terrified by the rustling 
 of a leaf, imagines that avenging spirits will suddenly rush in 
 upon him and hurl him into woe, that an ambassador from the 
 "secret council" shall abruptly present himself before him; 
 as we see already in Cain, who fears that any one finding him 
 shall slay him. He knows that he has not merely holiness 
 against him, but omnipotence also. 
 
 If, therefore, as the functions of conscience have been 
 named, the reminding and pledging, the judging and inwardly 
 rewarding or punishing, we must still add to this list the team- 
 ing, or threatening of future retribution. First in this way 
 conscience bears testimony to our dependence on God and His 
 holy law, — namely, as testimony of the absolute validity of this 
 law in His government of the world, that God will be a rewarder 
 of those that seek Him, and will repay every one according to 
 his deeds (Heb. >:i. 6 ; Rom. ii. 6). And because the conscience 
 is consciousness of eternity, its threatenings do not point merely 
 to the present life, where even with the heathen it has often 
 warned of the avenging Nemesis, but also to the coming life. 
 However imperfect the conception of God was with the heathen, 
 they yet felt the admonitions of conscience regarding the life
 
 CONSCIENCE. 363 
 
 to come This may be seen, for instance, from that remarkable 
 passage in the beginning of Plato's Itepuhlic, where the old 
 Kephalos, whilst expressing his view of old age, says among 
 other things, " Thou must know, Socrates, that when man 
 believes death near, there is awakened within him a fear and 
 anxiety to which he was before a stranger. The well-known 
 traditions about the infernal regions, where every one shall 
 suffer punishment for the wrong he has committed while here, 
 and which he before considered absurd, begin now to distress 
 his soul as if they were really true, and he casts now himself a 
 deeper glance into that world, either from the weakness of old 
 age or because he is now closer to it. Full of fear and anxiety, 
 he begins to reflect, and examine if he have wronged any 
 one. He who finds many trespasses in his life, is constantly 
 frightened from sleep, like a child he trembles, and passes his 
 life in sorrowful forebodings; whilst, on the other hand, he who 
 is not conscious of any wrong is always accompanied by a joyous 
 and beautiful hope which, as Pindaros says, is the foster-mother 
 of old age." To this terror of the future here described we can 
 assign no other place in the soul than the conscience. It is the 
 warning conscience which, as consciousness of eternity, awakens 
 thoughts concerning retribution and dread of the future with 
 those who at an earlier period mocked at the traditions of the 
 infernal regions. It is from a good conscience that this joyful 
 hope and expectation spring. 
 
 In the prophetic announcement of a coming retribution, 
 conscience is closely associated with another form of man's per- 
 sonal consciousness of eternity, which, however, belongs also to 
 man outside of Christianity, and which is a postulate for the ap- 
 propriation of the gospel. We mean the deep craving which from 
 the beginning exists in the heart of man after a higher eternal 
 Good, and which in its essence is the longing of love after God 
 and God's kingdom, after blessedness in the perfected harmony 
 of the world, where all the contradictions of existence are at an 
 end. (" Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our hearts are 
 restless in the w^orld, and can find no repose till they rest in 
 Thee, O Lord ! " — Augustine s Confessions.) From each of 
 these points of issue the path leads to God. Both mutually 
 strencrthen each other, and their lines converge. Conscience 
 testifies concerning the kingdom of holiness and righteousness :
 
 SG4 THE LAW. 
 
 but whilst it expresses conviction of future retribution, it declares 
 at the same time, with greater or less clearness, that the king- 
 dom of holiness is also one of bliss. The longing after a supreme 
 Good, which shall surpass all the relative goods of earth, is an 
 evidence that a kingdom of bliss must be to be found for man, 
 but leaves it undetermined whether this is to be according to 
 merit or of free grace. There may be something in the middle 
 of the way which first clearly explains this. But blessedness, 
 when it is not confounded with earthly happiness, cannot be 
 imaged without holiness, without man's personal perfection in 
 harmony with the law of God and of his own being. Both 
 stand in close connection with the eschatological idea, the con- 
 tent of which is first disclosed by Christianity as the holy and 
 blessed kingdom of love, the advent and completion of which is 
 conditional on the doom of the livinji and the dead. In their 
 path to God some men take their starting-point pre-eminently 
 from conscience and duty, others from the longing desire of 
 love. But a long portion of the journey cannot be accomplished 
 ere the two paths merge into one. The man of duty and con- 
 science and the man of longing desire (Vhomme de dcsir) are 
 not two different men, but the same, created in dependence on 
 God, feeling his need of Him, in Plim seeking his perfection. 
 
 § 119. 
 
 But if it is the essence of conscience to testify concerning our 
 relation of dependence on the holy will of the Creator, through 
 the law of God and the government of the world, how is it to 
 be explained that the utterances of the conscience are so diffe- 
 rent in the different ages and among the different races of people, 
 so different with individuals who are contemporary, that fre- 
 quently things directly opposed to each other are affirmed to be 
 enjoined by conscience? — that often the most fearful crimes 
 are perpetrated under an appeal to the authority of the con- 
 science; often the most inane and most insignificant matters — as, 
 for instance, a vapid ceremonial — are introduced with the sanction 
 of conscience ? The readiest answer to this is, that conscience 
 is not from the beginning a perfect organ, but, considered from 
 its subjective side, requires to be developed, formed, and edu- 
 cated, and can only be developed in union with man's whole 
 moral being, and thus in combination with the other faculties
 
 CONSCIENCE. 365 
 
 of the soul. The development of conscience is specially condi- 
 tional on the development of knowledge, for which reason we 
 are accustomed to speak of the conscience in connection with 
 the reason. "Without the reason, conscience is blind; without 
 conscience, reason is cold and languid."^ Therefore human 
 thoughts and reflections on the law, and its application to the 
 individual case, appear before the judgment bar of the con- 
 science, accusing and excusing one another (Rom. ii. 15). Yet 
 not merely is the development of the conscience conditional on 
 knowledge, but also on the ivill, which, unlike, nay contrary to 
 knowledge, throughout thewhole history hasexerted a restraining, 
 obstructive influence on the cultivation of the conscience. For the 
 human will has a natural disinclination to cultivate and sharpen 
 the conscience in combination with the knowledge of the law, 
 has no desire to look into this mirror, and men as a rule desire 
 to have quite a different picture of themselves from that which 
 conscience shows them. This universal experience is corrobo- 
 rated by the information given us by Scripture concerning the 
 imperfection and abnormality of the phenomena of conscience ; 
 that these, namely, must be explained by the fact that man 
 through sin has lost communion with God, and that there has 
 thus been introduced an inharmonious relation between the 
 faculties of the soul, that the perception of the divine is dimmed, 
 that the will has a bias to prefer itself and the world before 
 God and God's kingdom. The apostle shows us this darkening 
 process in the Gentile world, in that he says, that though the 
 Gentiles had a knowledge of God, they honoured Him not as 
 God, nor considered it worthy their attention to preserve the 
 knowledge of God (because they preferred their own wisdom, 
 which in folly they had conceived), and therefore they were 
 given up to a reprobate mind. Yet he admits that, even 
 under this state of corruption, there w^ere those who had the 
 works of the law written on their hearts, whilst their conscience 
 witnessed against them, and their thoughts meanwhile accused 
 or else excused one another. 
 
 Therefore we assert that the conscience, not on its divine but 
 on its human side, may err, that it often requires to be corrected 
 and enlightened, and is always to be cultivated. The conscience 
 may be blunt, and require to be sharpened ; it may be lethargic, 
 
 * Treudelburg, Naturrecht.
 
 366 THE LAW. 
 
 and require to be roused. It may be confined, limited to too 
 narrow a sphere; whilst large portions of the life of man, which 
 oufi^ht to be determined by it, fall entirely beyond its dominion. 
 But one thing is common to all the phenomena of conscience. 
 However diverse may be man's apprehension of the law's con- 
 tent, still they have all the consciousness of a higher law for 
 their will, which they have not themselves instituted, and which 
 is binding upon all. However diverse their apprehension of the 
 moral government of the world, yet have all, who are not sunk 
 in brutality, and where a human social life has begun to be 
 formed, a consciousness that there is a higher invisible govern- 
 ment, which is superior to their will. And however diverse, 
 moreover, religious opinions may be, yet all have a feeling of 
 an unseen authority, which is binding on their will, from the 
 demands of ^yhich they dare not withdraw themselves, although 
 they often do the opposite of what they ought. In this, con- 
 science shows its objective power. Even in the greatest dark- 
 ness of the soul there continues to be a light which shines in 
 the darkness, even though the darkness comprehendeth it not. 
 Whej.'e it is dimmed as knowledge, it continues to work as im- 
 pulse, as a higher natural power, which, both in its incitements 
 and in its reactions, presses on the man as a power of an entirely 
 different nature from that which comes from the impulses of 
 earth. 
 
 §120. 
 
 Conscience does not express itself merely in the individual, 
 but also in society. That there is not merely an individual, 
 but also a social conscience, rests on this, that human indivi- 
 duals are not personal atoms, which have only their own 
 individual duties, but that they are organically combined into 
 a social whole, where in regard to social duties they are soli- 
 darically bound (one for all, and all for one), and thus have a 
 common responsibility, and with each other fall under the same 
 doom. Just as there are destinies which may visit a whole 
 people, and are felt by the whole people as a common destiny, 
 differino- from the individual destiny of each; so there is also a 
 common obligation, responsibility, and guilt, though this does 
 not fall equally on all, but on each according to his special 
 calling and position in society, whilst yet all are responsible in
 
 COXSCIENCK. 367 
 
 common. As the conscience is the sentinel of individual person- 
 ality, so is it, too, with regard to society as common personality. 
 The social conscience must not be confounded with lyuhlic 
 opinion^ which may often be without conscience, and in many 
 cases may show that a people's conscience sleeps. But where 
 the social conscience is vigorous and lively, it will also bear 
 testimony to itself through public opinion. It often bears the 
 relation to public opinion of a deep under-current, flowing in 
 an opposite direction ; a secret consciousness that that which is 
 defiantly maintained as public opinion, and set forth as such 
 by its organs, is false and mendacious; a calm witness that 
 these organs are false prophets, whose ideals are only idols, and 
 that the pathway which society is threading is not that of truth, 
 and does not lead to peace. Its movements are then perceived 
 in an inward restlessness and dispeace, which permeate the 
 people, even though the surface shows the opposite. Often 
 this calm witness is without power to break through into 
 positive reactions ; yet history also shows that conscience may 
 awake in a whole nation, it may be to cast aside the yoke of 
 false authority, it may be to incite the people to arise from 
 unbelief and worldly modes of thinking, from the illusions of 
 arrogance and vanity, and in penitence to repair to the forsaken 
 altars, again to build itself on the foundation of righteousness. 
 The fact that a whole people may prescribe for themselves fast- 
 days, on which they as a people acknowledge their sin and guilt, 
 and humble themselves before God ; or the fact that the public 
 voice may express itself powerfully against scandals introduced 
 into society, — are significant evidences of the reality of the social 
 conscience. It expresses itself not merely as judging, but also 
 as admonishing, and speaks then through single individuals as 
 prophetic voices in society, in regard to which history teaches 
 that not infrequently they have the fate of Cassandra, no one 
 believing their warnings and predictions until the fulfilment 
 arrives, bringing dismay. The development of the social 
 conscience, its purity and vigour, depend on the general moral 
 and religious knowledge of society, and on the susceptibility of 
 the general will to ethical motives. That the thoughts mutually 
 accuse and excuse one another, is here shown in a visible man- 
 ner, when, under public misfortune, parties mutually endeavour 
 to shift the blame from themselves on to the other side, seeking
 
 368 THE LAW. 
 
 to justify themselves before the bar of social conscience, though 
 there are in all ages those who set no higher aim before them 
 than that of justifying themselves in public opinion. But 
 however diverse and imperfect the phenomena of social con- 
 science may be, its existence implies solidaric obligation, which 
 presupposes community in customs and traditions, community 
 of laws, community of religion, as the highest binding authority. 
 Where society is disorganized, and the bonds loosened ; where 
 usages are no longer governing powers, but with impunity are 
 violated without any remonstrance on the part of public 
 opinion ; wliere the laws are framed thoughtlessly and arbi- 
 trarily, without the power of winning respect by their innate 
 necessity ; where religion has ceased to be the concern of 
 society, and is only considered as the private affair of indi- 
 viduals ; where religious convictions are only regarded as 
 *' different views," which are without influence on public life, 
 — then social conscience exists only in some individuals, who 
 may with sorrow contemplate the dissolution of society, whilst 
 in the greater portion it is an extinguished light. 
 
 THE LAW S CONTENT. 
 
 §121. 
 
 The content of the law, which embraces the individual and 
 society, is founded in the essence of human personality, ap- 
 pointed by the will of God, or in man as created in the image 
 of God. It is too limited an apprehension of the law's content, 
 to suppose it a mere collection of commands and prescriptions. 
 On the contrary, it is the idea of man himself appearing as the 
 aim and demand oi man's will, and embraces all man's relations 
 both towards heaven and earth. The great diversity of so- 
 called moral principles (the principle of happiness, the principle 
 of the common weal, the principle of independence, the principle 
 of rationality, the principle of likeness to God, etc.) is founded 
 on the different apprehension of man's being and destiny. But 
 if man is created in God's image, then free communion, free 
 union with God, is man's principal destiny ; and the law's chief, 
 all-embracing demand we cannot better express than in the
 
 THE LAW'S CONTENT. ' 369 
 
 words of Christ : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" (Matt. 
 xxii. 37). This is that first and great commandment, which 
 somewhat amplified will mean : Thou shalt love Him with a 
 receiving, appropriating, working, and suffering love. Thou 
 shalt love Him in contemplative love (in meditation), in mystic 
 love (in prayer), and in practical love (in acting and in suffer- 
 ing). And in each of these forms, thy love must be one 
 w^ith obedience {amor ohedientice). If by a moral principle 
 is understood the highest unity, to which the multiplicity of 
 duties may be referred, then we have here expressed the moral 
 principle, by which it remains to be observed that love to God, 
 through sin on the one side and redemption on the other, 
 receives new and special modifications. But it is unfair to- 
 limit the moral principle to this, and only to understand 
 morality as the doctrine of law or the doctrine of duty. The 
 true principle of morality embraces all three moral spheres ; 
 and only God Himself, or Christ in unity with His kingdom, 
 is the true principle wholly determining and embracing the- 
 moral life. 
 
 Love to God is thus the one all-embracing duty. But the 
 one must strengthen itself in the manifold, and love to God 
 must strengthen itself in the relations of human society, and 
 in relation to the government of created things, which finds in 
 man its centre. Therefore this is the second commandment : 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Thou shalt love 
 God's image upon earth. And because the conception of 
 neighbour is inseparable from the conception of the realm of 
 humanity, the second commandment also contains this : Tliou 
 shalt love humanity in God ; thou shalt love the realm of 
 humanity in its unity with the kingdom of God. And since 
 God's kingdom, in its unity with that of humanity, is the 
 ultimate object of the whole order of created things, which is 
 teleogically planned for this, we may sum up all the duties of 
 man in the apostolic formula, "that all must be done to the 
 glory of God" (eh So^av ©eoO, 1 Cor. x. 31). By this is 
 required not mere submission to the object of the loorld fixed 
 by the will of God, not mere submission to the divine ijlan of 
 the world — the ways and leadings of His wisdom towards the 
 race and individuals — which requires resignation on all merely 
 
 2 A
 
 370 THE LAW. 
 
 subjective demands and ideals ; but also submission to the 
 divine fjovermnent of the world, that everything may be per- 
 formed in harmony with the innate appointments of God, in 
 harmony with the divine regulations, with the God-appointed 
 norms. The love of obedience {amor^ ohedientiw) must, during 
 life in this world, prove itself to be that which fulfils all 
 righteousness, and in eveiy respect do that which is right. 
 
 Right is the objective content of the law — the Good itself as 
 the law-appointed, ordained, prescribed, and determined, which 
 is binding on all, and must be respected by all. The concep- 
 tion of right (not in a limited or partial sense, but in its wide 
 and fundamental signification) is the conception of the straight 
 line, the direct path, which is prescribed to all, that they should 
 by it approach the goal of their life, and is opposed to the 
 crooked ways of sinners. It is to the right that man is bound. 
 But as the conception of right is the conception of the straight 
 line, so is it also the conception of an order of things with a 
 multiplicity of problems which must be solved, of boundary 
 lines and relations which must be observed and maintained by 
 liberty. Not merely have men mutual claims of justice against 
 each other, but throughout existence man meets man with a 
 vast, all-embracing dem.and of right, a great Suum Cuigtie, — a 
 claim the nature of which is different according to the different 
 sphere in which it presents itself. To render unto Cassar the 
 things that are Cassar's, and to God the things that are God's ; 
 to i-ender to our neighbour that which belongs to him, not 
 merely in the relation of citizenship, but in that of pure 
 humanity, in that of philanthropy and friendship ; to render 
 to the laws of nature, to unconscious creation, that wdiicli is 
 nature's, because the laws and norms of unconscious nature 
 too must be respected, and dare not be violated by man, — these 
 are demands of diverse character and quality, but to which we 
 are all bound. Whilst the conception of duty does not find 
 any direct expression in the Holy Scriptures, though the apostle 
 designates us as debtors {o^eiXirao, Rom. xv. 26, 27), and the 
 Saviour Himself speaks about a "must" for His will (John ix. 
 4), on the otlier hand the expression "right" recurs again and 
 again in the Old Testament. " That which is altogether just 
 shalt thou follow," says Moses to Israel (Deut. xvi. 20). " I 
 have chosen the way of truth; Thy judgments have I laid
 
 THE LAW'S CONTENT. 371 
 
 before me," says David (Ps. cxix. 30) ; and he lauds the 
 blessedness of the man in whose heart are right ways (Ps. 
 Ixxxiv. 6). 
 
 Love (both human and divine) so little excludes righteous- 
 ness, thatj on the contrary, it cannot exist Avithout it. The 
 middle conception, through which this is perceived, is loisdom, 
 practical teleological knowledge, wliich discriminates the aim 
 and the means, fixes the value of things, and v/ithout which 
 love would be blind. In God's justice or righteousness His 
 wisdom appears as power, as the law-giving and regulating, 
 ordering and distributing power, which places everything in 
 the position which belongs to it, and preserves measure and 
 boundary; on which account also the divine righteousness 
 manifests itself as judging and retributive, as that which does 
 not permit itself to be mocked, but in the course of earthly 
 events vindicates God's authority. By means of wisdom the 
 love of God is in unity with His justice; for all manifestation 
 of justice has teleologic significance for the highest Good, or for 
 the manifestation of God's love to His creatures. And as love 
 cannot exist without wisdom and justice, so both of these last 
 are attributable to love, and are incomprehensible v/ithout it. 
 For what object can wisdom have except the Good ? and what 
 is the Good, except the kingdom of personality, except the 
 kingdom of love? And if we acknowledge the demand of 
 I'ustice on man as the demand to render to every one his own 
 (suum cuiqiie), in self-denial and self-limitation to devote 
 himself to the community, to the divine regulations ; if we 
 acknowledge the demand of justice as the demand for a rela- 
 tion of reciprocity between men, in which they, in self-limitation, 
 and with resignation of egoistic demands, must give to each 
 other and receive from each other whatever is mutually owing, 
 does it not show — unless we stop short at the merely negative 
 claim that we shall not injure one another (neminem lade), 
 without advancing to the positive demand of mutual help and 
 assistance — that love must be regarded as the very essence of 
 justice, as the fulfilling of the law ? (Owe no man anything, 
 but to love one another, Rom. xiii. 8.) And God's absolute 
 claim of right in man, — does it not include God's right not 
 merely to man's outward actions, but to his heart ? The more 
 cordially and spiritually justice is apprehended, the more
 
 372 THE L^VW. 
 
 clearly is perceived its unity with love. Undoubtedly this 
 was not known in the pre-Christian world, where the sao^es 
 stopped short at wisdom and righteousness as an ultimatum, 
 and perceived no higher ideal of personality than the ideal 
 of the wise man and the righteous man, but where neither 
 righteousness nor wisdom were grasped in their depth, because 
 the kernel of personality, namely love, was absent. In Christ, 
 on the contrary, love is revealed with wisdom and righteous- 
 ness as its special Moments. And the more deeply we meditate 
 on God's law as the law of personality, the more we shall per- 
 ceive it as the demand of the divine law, that the world of 
 human liberty, also from the side of humanity, must be a world 
 of love, and along with this a world of wisdom and righteous- 
 ness, — a demand, the eternal obligation of which is not dis- 
 turbed, because the actual world shows us a world of ecroism. 
 of folly, and injustice. 
 
 § 122. 
 
 The content of the law is at once universal and individual. 
 Its general content is its eternal and unchangeable appoint- 
 ments ; but these receive a characteristic impress with the 
 diversified individualities, since the moral obligations of every 
 individual and of every society are partly determined by their 
 special characteristics, partly by the particular claim which 
 the divine will, through the leadings of providence, makes upon 
 each of us in the sphere of life to which we have been 
 appointed. For in every sphere of life God claims, on the 
 ground of the general, something special from us. It is this 
 individual Moment which the apostle has before his eyes when 
 he counsels the Christians to " prove what is that good and 
 acceptable and perfect will of God" (Rom. xii. 2). The 
 meaning is not merely, that we should know, what we already 
 know, the general decree of love or the ten commandments, 
 but that we should discover what God requires of us according 
 to our innate characteristics, our special gifts, the talents com- 
 mitted to us, and wherewith we are to serve, and next what He 
 requires from us in this particular case, in this situation ; in 
 what manner we should accommodate ourselves to this or that 
 sign of the times, to this or that new movement, to this or 
 that new phenomenon. This discrimination of the individual
 
 TEE LAW'S CONTENT. 373 
 
 forms the most difficult phase in the discernment of the law. 
 When the Lord said to the rich young man, who believed that 
 he had observed the commandments according to their general 
 content, " If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, 
 and give to the poor, and come and follow me " (Matt. xix. 
 21), then it became the individual duty of the youth, in the 
 Lord's demand on him, to prove the good and acceptable and 
 perfect will of God. 
 
 On the individual side here indicated of the content of the 
 law rests the law's variability. It is unchangeable according to 
 its eternal universal essence, although this is only gradually 
 revealed to man and acknowledged by him ; but it is variable 
 in its individual determinations, because its universal demands 
 are modified differently for each individual, and become different 
 for the same individual at the different stages of his develop- 
 ment and progress in life. And as the whole moral world 
 finds itself in a progressive development under the guidance 
 of God, as even the moral condition of the world constantly 
 varies, so are the concrete appointments of the law, the con- 
 crete tenets of duty, subject to continual modification. But 
 this variability does not disturb the eternal unchangeableness 
 of the law, and its consistency with itself. The unity of the 
 law, and that of the divine will manifesting itself in the law, is 
 the all-determining and all-controlling principle in the shifting 
 multiplicity of special duties, in which it continues to unfold 
 its inexhaustible riches. When earlier appointments of duty 
 are abolished, new and higher ones are introduced, which from 
 innate necessity develope themselves on the everlasting basis 
 of the law and providence. The eternal requirements of love, 
 wisdom, and justice remain the same ; it is the individual circum- 
 stances which change. 
 
 § 123. 
 
 That the content of the law is determined by the will of 
 God, does not mean that it is arbitrarily so determined, as if it 
 might also have been different if it had thus pleased God. 
 But just as little is the content of the law determined indepen- 
 dentlv of God's will, or to be refrarded as a mere content of 
 reason, independent of personal relation to God (see the Theo- 
 logical Postulate). The onesided apprehension of the law as
 
 374 THE lav;. 
 
 law of impersonal reason, which in our day is the predominatin» 
 one, imbues not only pantheistic, but also deistic ethics. Deistic 
 ethics, indeed, postulates a personal Creator's will, but a will 
 which, after having accomplished the creation of the world and 
 of man, has resigned its sovereignty to the laws. As God is 
 only above and beyond the world, and there is no real meeting, 
 no actual contact finds place between God and man : the 
 content of the law, which God has planted in the heart of 
 man, can only become a content of so-called universal reason, 
 which includes everything except living, personal communion 
 with God Himself. That the divine will sanctions the pre- 
 scriptions of the law will here only mean, that these obtain our 
 reverence by being associated with the idea of God as the holy 
 Lawgiver, by being regarded as dictated by God. This legisla- 
 tion, which has found a classic expression in the moral system 
 of Kant, may be compared to a letter which bears as its seal 
 the divine will, but when it is opened contains nothing at all 
 Concerning any personal relation between God and us, but, 
 excluding everything personal, embraces merely bare and 
 abstract necessity of reason, — a system of rules universally 
 binding, and necessary for our conduct in the world. But the 
 question which we in vain seek to answer in this system of 
 ethics is this : How is it conceivable that the divine will, which 
 is the origin of the law, after this first legislation in the begin- 
 ning of creation, has become an inactive and sluggish principle ? 
 how is it conceivable that the content of the divine will, which 
 must be realized in and by man, is anything other than the 
 divine will itself ; whilst yet God can only be conceived as 
 having Himself, His honour, His manifestation, as His ultimate 
 object, as thus the divine will throughout, which in this view 
 differs from itself, yet can only be conceived as willing Himself 
 and His kingdom ? 
 
 The undeniable fact, that there is a wide-spread apprehen- 
 sion of the content of the law, in which there is no trace of 
 love to God, points back to another undeniable fact, namely 
 sin, by which man has revolted from God, and the perception 
 of the law and conscience has become darkened. Although 
 man has withdrawn from personal relation to God, from the 
 relation of liberty and love, he continues to be bound in a 
 relation of necessitv to the Good. The claim of the Good 
 
 I
 
 THE LAW'S CONTENT, 375 
 
 continues as ideal, as impersonal necessity of reason, as im- 
 personal wisdom and justice, to be immanent in human con- 
 sciousness and in the elements of human existence ; and it 
 has therefore a relative truth, that the law of morality is 
 valid also independently of faith in God, — in so far, namely, 
 as the norms of the Good, in the form of impersonal necessity 
 of reason, uncompromisingly press themselves on human con- 
 sciousness, although man may seek to explain away the divine 
 authority, with which they manifest themselves in the con- 
 science, and to make them the determinations of his own 
 reason. The most abstract expression for this abstract neces- 
 sity is given in Kant's principle of morality, — that we should 
 act according to universally binding rules, according to such 
 maxims as no one without self-contradiction can desire that 
 they should not be followed by all, — a principle, the validity of 
 which for his own actions every one is constrained to admit, 
 just as he is constrained to admit the validity of the principium 
 contradictionis for his thought. We call this principle the 
 most abstract, because every divine and human content is here 
 excluded; every question, TF/tai shall I do? is here rejected; 
 and we are only referred to the bare form, to the pure How 
 of universal validity and universal reason, the only thing from 
 which the practical thought cannot be abstracted. In this 
 abstract relation to the Good, o^espect for the law is the only 
 motive or inducement to morality ; for respect is not, like love, 
 a sentiment which rests on liberty, but is imperative and irre- 
 sistible. Even Xhe transgressor is constrained to respect the 
 law which he has violated. But just as this moral formalism 
 and other kindred legislations of reason do not satisfy the 
 human soul in its inmost being, where it continues to have a 
 consciousness, though darkened, of communion with God as 
 the most essential claim of the law, so, too, they militate against 
 God's revealed law, wdiich enlightens us reg-ardino; God's will, 
 and the authority and content of which, in spite of the 
 objections of human wisdom, constantly procure for themselves 
 a fresh admission into men's consciences.
 
 3713 THE LAW. 
 
 THE REVEALED LAW. MOSES AND CHRIST. 
 
 §124. 
 
 Tlie necessity of a revealed law is admitted with sin. Sinful 
 man has a disposition to depict to himself a God after his own 
 heart, a God who does not reckon closely with sin and with the 
 requirement of holiness, and a disposition to examine, expound, 
 and reason away the averment of the law and of conscience. 
 Therefore God has given a positive revealed law, in which the 
 requirements of God's will are represented to us as in an 
 infallible mirror, which does not flatter, and which shows us 
 our own form in its relation to the law. Whilst the heathen, 
 who seek to work out a moral system of their own^ only take 
 the law from its immanent side, with Israel the law appears in 
 revelation in its transcendency and majesty. But the revealed 
 law is not civen as somethine; isolated or standino; alone. It 
 would fare but ill with mankind, if God had only revealed His 
 law to us, and no man could endure to live under the law alone. 
 The revelation of the law is a middle link in the economy of 
 salvation and redemption ; and its inward postulate is grace, 
 which not merely holds good of the revelation of the law by 
 Christ, but also of the revelation of the law which was given 
 by Moses to the people of Israel. 
 
 The essential content of the law which was given by Moses 
 is expressed in the decalogue, or the ten commandments. Its 
 principle is love to God, although this is not expressly mentioned 
 in the ten commandments. The design of educating a rude 
 people, who were to be detached from the heathen world, and 
 that worship of nature to which they had an inherent disposition, 
 and w'ho could only be gradually led from the external to the 
 internal and the spiritual, made it imperative that the demand 
 of the law should more fully embrace action than disposition of 
 mind, although this last consideration is the essential meaning of 
 the law ; " for the law is spiritual," Kom. vii. 14 — it unfolds itself 
 by progressive perception. These circumstances made it impera- 
 tive that the law should appear predominantly as a prohibition 
 by its restraining " Thou shalt not," which points to sin and 
 evil desires. In vast general outline, the law spans the whole of
 
 THE REVEALED LAW. 377 
 
 life as a hedge, a warden of the marches ; whilst the three first 
 commandments treat of the relation to God and His worship, 
 the others of the relation to man — duty to parents as the oldest 
 human authority, and to our neighbour, to the life of man, to 
 marriage, to property, to the honour and good name of our 
 neighbour ; whilst the ninth and tenth commandments, with the 
 prohibition " Thou shalt not covet ! " are directed against the 
 root of sin in the heart, forbidding every invasion or encroach- 
 ment on the rights of our neighbour. The law was introduced 
 with the words, " I am the Lord thy God" and speaks with 
 the majestic authority of the Eternal, dispensing blessings 
 and curses on the fulfilment and transgression of the law. 
 But although this is given amidst the thunder and lightning of 
 Sinai, whose roll seems to be heard constantly in its mighty 
 imperatives, " Thou shalt not ! " or " Thou shalt ! " yet still it 
 points back to grace ; for the God who speaks in the law is He 
 who led the people out of Egypt, freed them from the yoke of 
 bondage — the God who gave the promise to Abraham, and who 
 has prepared a highest good, the Messianic kingdom, for Plis 
 people. Yet the relation between authority and liberty con- 
 tinues under the Old Testament to be a relation of unsolved 
 contradiction, of estrangement. The will of man is not at one 
 with God's will, is opposed to it ; and although the human 
 w'ill submits, yet the heart is not in accordance with the law, 
 so that again and again it is necessary to have recourse to the 
 thundering TJiou shalt not ! and its behests are obeyed in a 
 spirit of fear, a spirit of bondage very different from the spirit 
 of adoption (Rom. viii. 15). But the design of the law was 
 educative, or that the will of man should be trained to true 
 freedom, should be constantly receiving a deeper sense of the 
 spiritual significance of the law, should in the law of God 
 acknowledge the law of his own being, but also perceive his own 
 inability to perform it, should increase in perception of sin, and 
 thereby become susceptible of grace in Christ. In the Psalms 
 and with the prophets we find this deeper knowledge of the 
 law, and along with it a delight in God's law. But this 
 delight in God's law is inseparable from a deep and sincere 
 pain on account of sin, a longing after redemption. 
 
 The educative view-point is the principal one from which the 
 revealed law of God to Israel must be apprehended. Educa-
 
 378 THE LAW. 
 
 tion is an influence on the will of man through instruction and 
 discipline, since by discipline (TratBeca) we do not merely under- 
 stand punishment, but everything which serves to break man's 
 natural erroistic will, and form it to obedience to the law. Edu- 
 cation seeks to lead, guide, and support those who are minors, 
 who are still not able to direct their own path, and seeks at the 
 same time to influence them by the quiet force of circum- 
 stances. All this has its application to God's educative guid- 
 ance of the people of Israel, though Moses is more of a censor 
 than of a gentle guiding teacher ; in which, however, it must 
 not be forgotten that it was said of Moses that he was meek 
 above all the men that were upon the earth (Num. xii. 3). It 
 has its application in the giving of the law, in the entire theo- 
 cratic constitution. For the law of God is the foundation of 
 the State, and all religious appointments appear at the same time 
 as external appointments of righteousness. From this educative 
 point of view we must also apprehend the so-called ceremonial 
 law, the law of purity and impurity, of clean and unclean articles 
 of food, etc. The outward is here the symbol of the inward. In 
 opposition to paganism, which mixes together mind and matter, 
 oversteps and effaces the boundaries which God has drawn in 
 His creation, Israel was to be accustomed to make a difference, 
 to distinguish, to respect boundaries. Hence we find appoint- 
 ments such as these : " Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender 
 with a diverse kind (Lev. xix. 19). Thou shalt not sow thy 
 field with mingled seed ; and neither shall a garment mingled 
 of linen and woollen come upon thee."^ The law encompasses 
 Israel in every direction with its lines of division. The Rabbins 
 have, on examination, discovered 248 commands and 365 pro- 
 hibitions. But the whole of this education rests on the founda- 
 tion of preparing grace. By the side of the law stands the 
 symbol of promise and salvation in the high-priesthood, with the 
 sacrifice in the most holy place, which, as shadows and types, 
 point to fulfilment in Christ. 
 
 § 125. 
 
 " Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the pro- 
 phets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matt. v. 17). 
 In these words Christ describes His relation to the law of 
 * See Stall!, PMlosophie des Rechts, i. p. 39 (second edition).
 
 THE REVEALED LAW. 379 
 
 Moses ; whilst He adds, that till heaven and earth pass away^ 
 one jot shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled. The 
 first question which here arises is this : If the Lord here only 
 speaks of the ten commandments, or of the whole Mosaic law, 
 with its great multiplicity of ritual prescriptions ? We are not 
 justified in limiting the Lord's words to the decalogue alone. 
 For though the context shows that He speaks with special refer- 
 ence to this, still He speaks of the law^ as a whole. But how 
 can He then say, that not a tittle shall pass from the law, since 
 the development of the Chnrch shows us that the ceremonial 
 law, that the whole Mosaic dispensation, has been annihilated 
 by the influences proceeding from Christ ? We answer : He has 
 fulfilled the law, whilst He has released it from the temporary 
 forms in which its eternal validity was confined; He has unfolded 
 its spiritual essence, its inward perfection. Not even a tittle of 
 the ceremonial law has passed away, if we regard the Mosaic 
 law as a whole ; for the ideas which form its basis as the dis- 
 tinction between the unclean and the clean, are confirmed by 
 Christ, and contained in the law of holiness which He teaches 
 men. But the moral law in the stricter sense, or the ten com- 
 mandments, He has released from its direct association with the 
 judicial law, with the constraint on outward action in wdiich it 
 appears in the theocratic dispensation, and explains it not merely 
 as the law of works, but of the heart, of the frame of mind, 
 teaching hereby a better righteousness than that of the scribes 
 and Pharisees. " It was said to them of olden times, Thou 
 shalt not kill, and whosoever killeth shall be in danger of the 
 judgment ; but I say unto you, that whoso is angry with his 
 brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. 
 It was said to them of olden times, Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery ; but I say unto you, that whoso lookethupon a woman 
 to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in 
 his heart " (Matt. v. 21, 22, 27, 28). Whilst He thus brings 
 the law into the inmost recesses of the mind and disposition. He 
 illuminates it as the law of humanity, which not merely meets 
 man as an external positive commandment, but is acknowledged 
 by man as his own law (v6fio<i rov voo<i, Rom. vii. 23), as the 
 demand of his own beins: as formed in the ima^e of God. 
 "Whatsoever ye w'ould that men should do unto you, do ye 
 even so to them" (Matt. vii. 12). But whilst He thus explains
 
 380 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 the law as the law of humanity for heart and mmd, He explains 
 it at the same time as the demand of God's perfect will, as the 
 law of God's kingdom, which binds man to an invisible order 
 of things, which is higher than the State, even when this 
 appears as the ecclesiastical state, higher than every law of 
 visible temple service, higher than every visible Jerusalem or 
 Gerizim, and places man in relation to the heavenly Father, 
 which seeth in secret. 
 
 Yet this is not to be understood as if everything here was 
 only unseen and spiritual, as if men were to be released in 
 every sense from the external authority of the law, and referred 
 to the inward unseen authoritv in the conscience alone. As 
 Christ came to complete the law, so did He also come to com- 
 plete authority. He represents Himself as He to whom the 
 Father has committed all authority in heaven and on earth ; and 
 again and again His speech assumes a majestic authority, an 
 authority not of a servant, but that of a son in the house, the 
 Only-begotten of the Father — " I say unto you," by which He 
 shows that He is not a human teacher, a Socrates, who only 
 seeks to lead his disciples to discover the truth for themselves. 
 by descending into their own inner being, and who refuses to 
 assert his own personal authority. Christ seeks to bind men 
 to the authority of His word. He will judge them according 
 to these words, which shall not pass away when heaven and 
 earth pass away. But His authoritative demands find an echo 
 in the inmost beine; of man. It sounds to man as the demand 
 of his own conscience : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness" (Matt. vi. 33). The claim of authority is 
 at the same time the specially essential claim of freedom. 
 
 And Christ not only perfected the law by His teaching ; He 
 completed it, in that He fulfilled it in His own personality. His 
 life. He has left us an example of liberty and love, has showii 
 in His own life that love is the fulfilling of the law, has left in 
 it a summary of the law's demands, and power to fulfil them all. 
 He has fulfilled the law, has fulfilled it in our stead, which is 
 the mystery of atonement. And He continually completes it 
 in us, which is the mystery of redemption. The more clearly 
 we comprehend the demands of the law, the more we perceive 
 that we are not able to satisfy them ; and every one who seeks 
 to prove himself will give it as his experience, that if he acknow
 
 MOSES AND CHRIST. 381 
 
 ledges the claims which the Lord expresses in His sermon on 
 the mount as the claims of His own being, and heartily concurs 
 in them, still he is not able to imitate them : he will be thoroughly 
 convinced that the men who shape their lives in perfect accord- 
 ance with the Lord's sermon on the mount, must be entirely 
 different subjects, quite different personalities, from what we 
 are by nature and by our earthly education, and that its demands 
 are not the less absolutely necessary and just. But this is the 
 mystery of redemption, that the same Being who declares the 
 requirements of the law is He who is to fulfil the law in us by 
 His sanctifying and edifying grace in the Holy Spirit. Whilst 
 He as the Kedeemer receives us into fellowship with Him, and 
 by means of justifying faith gives us power to become the 
 children of God, He inspires us with the new desire, the new 
 spirit, by which we can aspire after the ideal, though only in 
 weakness, and through various stages of development. Christ's 
 legislation rests, therefore, entirely on the presupposition of 
 grace ; and the Lord's sermon on the mount is only rightly 
 understood, when it is constantly kept in view that it was de- 
 livered from the Mount of Beatitudes. He declares that they 
 are blessed who in their relation to God are susceptible of the 
 highest Good, which He will bestow on them from the Father's 
 free grace, — the poor in spirit, they that hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness, they that mourn, who need consolation. His doc- 
 trine of holiness is at the same time a doctrine of blessedness ; 
 and though He closes His discourse w^ith the impressive exhorta- 
 tion not only to hear His word, but to do it, not to build our 
 house upon the sand, but on the rock (Matt. vii. 24-27), yet 
 this doing of the word finds first its true meaning and explana- 
 tion in that doctrine of blessedness, which only shines through 
 in the sermon on the mount, and which is fully expressed by 
 Him in other contexts. 
 
 It is asked if Christ can be called a lawgiver ; and the ques- 
 tion may be answered affirmatively or negatively, according to 
 the conception which we have of legislation. Whilst Koman 
 Catholic theology describes Him as a lawgiver,^ whilst it has a 
 tendency to make of the gospel a new law, and of Christ a new 
 
 1 Concil. Trident. Sessio vi. xxi. : Si quis dixerit Christum Jesum a Deo 
 liomiaibus datum fuisse ut redemptorem, cui fidant, uon etiam u» legisla- 
 torcjn, cui obediant, anathema sit. 
 
 x-^' 
 
 y
 
 382 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 Moses, our old Lutheran theologians did not call Him so, but 
 regard Him as the person who has expounded and vindicated 
 the law (Inierpres et vindex legis)} The truth is, that Christ is 
 not a lawgiver like Moses, has not established a new theocratic 
 dispensation, in which the ethical is fashioned into a system of 
 external appointments ; above all, He has not brouo-ht us new 
 tables of the law, has not bestowed on us a new and formal code. 
 And it is a complete mistake, when, as is sometimes done in the 
 Protestant Church, the sermon on the mount is treated as if it 
 contained ecclesiastical and political regulations for direct appli- 
 cation, 'vhereas everything in this discourse refers us to the 
 world of temper and disposition. Yet we may speak of Christ's 
 legislation, of the legislation of God's kingdom, which He has 
 established. For not merely has He interpreted the law as it 
 is given by Moses, but He has perfected it : He has given a 
 new commandment, the commandment of love, which is new by 
 the position He has given it towards grace (John xiii. 34) ; has, 
 by a multiplicity of great and guiding maxims and prescriptions, 
 enunciated the principles and spirit of the law. But when the 
 legislation of Christ is thus designated, it must always be borne 
 in mind that He is at once the giver and the fulfiller of the 
 law, both for us and in us. And when the authority of Christ 
 is in question, it must always be remembered that He is the 
 unity of authority and grace. 
 
 THE NEW RELATION TO THE LAW. NOMISM AND ANTINO- 
 MIANISM. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 
 
 §126. 
 
 Since Christ, as the personal unity of authority and grace, 
 fulfils the law, a new relation is introduced between the law 
 and human liberty. In all those who become partakers of 
 redemption, the law becomes in principle at one with liberty, 
 becomes the special law of liberty, because the principle of 
 the law's fulfilment is bestowed on them by Christ. But also 
 in those who only become partakers of emancipation (see § 59, 
 Redemption and Emancipation), a new relation to the law is 
 
 ^ Form. Cone. Solid, decl. de lege et evang. : Christus legem in mauus 
 suas sumit eamque spiritu.aliter expUcat.
 
 THE NEW RELATION TO THE LAW. 383 
 
 introduced, in so far as they accept the negative (protesting) 
 Moment in Christ's position towards the Mosaic law, the release 
 from the merely external authority, the demand for sincerity 
 and spirituality in all things which are binding on men, which 
 is a great effect of the progressive emancipation proceeding 
 from Christ, and which awakens the principle of personality in 
 the human race. Christ Himself verily changes the relation of 
 the law to human consciousness, frees personality from a multi- 
 plicit}^ of mere outward, positive, and arbitrary appointments of 
 the law — heals on the Sabbath, defends His disciples who pluck 
 ears of corn on the Sabbath, declaring that the Sabbath was 
 made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mark ii. 27). 
 The appropriation of this protesting and emancipating Moment, 
 this elevation of earnestness and spirituality, of the right of 
 personality, may in some cases become a preparation for the 
 reception of the gospel, of redemption by Christ, and pave the 
 way for these ; in others, it may through human sinfulness be- 
 come the occasion of a series of false tenets of liberty, which 
 we class together under the designation Antinomianism. The 
 Christian apprehension of the law, in its passage through ages 
 of the world, has sometimes had to combat with Nomisin, 
 which seeks to maintain the Old Testament, external relation 
 to the law, and in opposition to evangelical liberty denies the 
 spirit of the law ; at other times with Antinomianism, which in 
 false emancipation and fanatic liberty not merely exalts itself 
 above the subordinate forms of the law, but even over the 
 eternal law sanctioned by Christ, denying its universal obliga- 
 tion and necessity. 
 
 Nomism has vmder the Old Testament reached its highest 
 point in Pharisaism. It repeats itself in Roman Catholicism, 
 with its multiplicity of human devices {traditiones humance), 
 which burden the conscience, since salvation is made dependent 
 on their observance. It repeats itself in Pietism, in which we 
 constantly hear the demand : " Touch not, taste not, handle 
 not ! " (Col. ii. 21.) In Nomism man is under the law (siib lege), 
 and the law is permanently without liberty, is not the law of 
 liberty ; for which reason also it is parcelled out into a multitude 
 of individual commands and prescriptions which circumscribe 
 liberty. The opposite extreme, or Antinomianism, was found 
 already in the apostolic age, and we hear the apostles exhort
 
 o 
 
 84 THE LAW. 
 
 their Christian followers to be " free, yet not as those who use 
 freedom as a cloak to lasciviousness, but as the servants of 
 God" (1 Pet. ii. 16). It repeats itself throughout history, 
 especially in those ages in which there is an aspiration after 
 liberty. In the early period of the Church it appears spe- 
 cially among the Gnostics, those extraordinary minds, which 
 were put in ferment by the spiritual influences issuing from 
 Christianity, and in whom we find an exalted sentiment of 
 liberty, a gushing spirituality, through which they, as if intoxi- 
 cated, find themselves uplifted above the limits of finiteness, 
 dream of becoming gods. Antinomian Gnostics laud highly 
 Pythagoras and Plato as men, who in paganism raised them- 
 selves above human laws and the opinions of the multitude ; 
 and in particular they laud Jesus, because He despised the 
 Jewish law, and, by the divine power which was in Him, 
 raised Himself to the highest unity. As they did not allow 
 themselves to be penetrated by the principles of redemption, 
 but, on the contrary, despised the historic facts of revelation, 
 emancipation was perverted into a formal self-exaltation above 
 God's law, and with several of them it gives occasion to the 
 flesh, whilst others devote themselves to a false asceticism 
 (Marcion). Antinomianism appears, moreover, at the time of 
 the Reformation, and in our own days. Yet it must be re- 
 marked, that though it associates itself most closely with the 
 tendencies to progress in history, it may also develope itself 
 from reaction. The great type in this case is the high priest 
 Caiaphas, who resists the progressive spirit of Christianity, and 
 at all hazards seeks to maintain the present state of things 
 against the new. He says : "It is expedient for us that one 
 man should die for the people, and that the wdiole nation perish 
 not" (John xi. 50). He does not examine if this man be 
 guilty or innocent, righteous or unrighteous ; it is enough for 
 him that this man is dano;erous to what he calls the common 
 weal. He savs : " The end hallows the means." 
 
 Antinomianism is thus not merely breach of the law or 
 transgression of duty, for this holds good with regard to every 
 sin. It is the doctrine which seeks to justify breach of the 
 law as authorized by higher purpose, and from a higher stand- 
 point. It is sin which I^as here formed for itself a system of 
 ethics, as a substitute for that which is founded on the law of
 
 INDIVIDUAL ANTINOMIANISM. 385 
 
 God. Sometimes it announces itself as the truly ideal system 
 of ethics, which alone is capable of satisfying the personality, 
 which is emancipated from antiquated prejudice ; at other 
 times it appears as the really practical system of ethics, which 
 takes up its position on the standpoint of life and reality, 
 paying regard to whatever, according to circumstances, is 
 necessary and appropriate, unconcerned about idealistic theories. 
 It appears both as individual and social Antinomianism. 
 
 § 127. 
 
 Individual Antinomianism we may describe in general as 
 that which seeks to maintain moral geniality, the right of the 
 God-inspired individual, at the cost of the universal obligation 
 of duty. A difference is thus instituted between every-day 
 morality and a higher morality, in the sense that individuals, 
 on account of their peculiar excellence, are released from the 
 obligations to which the multitude are bound, and thus also get 
 a privilege to sin. Thus, even in the early ages of the Church, 
 an Antinomianism appears in several Gnostics, in that they 
 distinguish between psychical and pneumatic men, — between 
 those who are bound to every-day morality, to the conventional 
 and traditional, the " external," and those who have attained 
 the stage of perfection, where everything external is indiffe- 
 rent. There were those who called themselves " Lords of the 
 Sabbath," and set themselves above the whole worship of God, 
 above the word and the sacraments, as something which was 
 only suited to the inferior multitude. There were also those 
 with whom this contempt for the external passed over into the 
 grossest sensuality, which they in spiritual arrogance sought 
 to justify by a so-called higher system of ethics. The true 
 Gnostic, said they, lives in an iminterrupted contemplation of 
 the divine. And just because he is so highly exalted above the 
 sensual, which with him is reduced to be the indifferent, he can 
 freely addict himself to all the pleasures of the flesh : for this 
 immersion in sensuality cannot introduce any taint into his 
 inmost being. We combat lust by addicting ourselves to lust. 
 It is no great thing to abstain from pleasure when one has not 
 experienced it; but the great thing is to find oneself in the 
 midst of pleasure and enjoyment, and not to be conquered by 
 it. It is only the small stagnant waters which become impure 
 
 2 B
 
 386 THE LAW. 
 
 when anything dirty Is cast into tliem. The ocean, on the 
 other hand, can receive anything into its depths without being 
 thereby sulHed. The true Gnostic is an ocean of spiritual 
 poiver, and cannot be sullied by anything ; for the impurity is 
 at once washed away by his exalted devotion. Representatives 
 of such tenets may be instanced in Carpocrates of Alexandria 
 (second century), and his genial son Epiphanes, who died from 
 the effects of debauchery at the age of seventeen (Faust and Don 
 Juan combined), after having written a work on viprightness 
 (irepl hiicaLO(Tvvr)q\ in which he expressed the opinion that the 
 law of nature is the highest law, — that the phantasies of sin 
 2")roceed from those human laws which fight against the law of 
 nature, and the dispositions implanted in man. He had by his 
 oral discourses produced such a powerful effect on the minds of 
 his hearers, that after his death a genius-worship was paid to 
 him in the island of Cephalonia, in the Ionian Sea, and here a 
 temple, a museum, and altars were erected in his honour : ^ by 
 which testimony is borne to the fact that men cannot entirely 
 tear themselves free from " the external," but in one way or 
 other return to it. 
 
 In another' form Antinomianism shows itself in the abuse of 
 the Christian doctrine of grace to the emancipation of the 
 flesh. Thus in several sects appears the perversion of the 
 apostolic words, " Where sin abounded, there did grace much 
 more abound " (Rom. v.) ; from which it was deduced, that we 
 should boldly plunge into the depths of sin in order to quicken 
 our perception of grace; and this was even used as an argu- 
 ment for the seduction of women, in order that these last might 
 attain a deeper consciousness of unworthiness, in which they 
 were deficient, and grace thus become more abundant ; in 
 direct opposition to the serious warning of the apostle against 
 doing evil that good might come (Rom. iii. 8). But not only 
 in such hideous phenomena as these does the perversion of the 
 gospel of grace appear, but moreover in other forms. In all 
 ages, men may be found in the Church who imagine that they 
 can sin because of grace, that they can permit themselves 
 
 1 Clemens Alexandrinus. Neander, GescMclite der cliristlichen Ethik, 
 p. 133 ; KircJieiigescMchte, vol. i. sec. 2, p. 511. See also Nitzsch, Die 
 Gesammterscheinung des Antinomismus {Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1846, 
 H. 1).
 
 INDIVIDUAL ANTIN0MIAKIS3I. 387 
 
 transgression and neglect, because the forgiveness of sin always 
 stands open, and it is not deeds, but faith, on which our safety 
 turns. As one example among many, we quote the following 
 piece of reasoning, which is not imaginary, and in various 
 forms repeats itself in actual life : — " God has remitted to me 
 an infinite debt, has forgiven me all my sins. Then He may 
 certainly also forgive me the five rixdoUars which I owe N. N., 
 and which it is inconvenient for me to pay. I don't intend to 
 pay them, although N. N., who looks at things from the stand- 
 point of the law, and as a Philistine and a matter-of-fact man, 
 priding himself on his social uprightness, constantly impor- 
 tunes me for the money. But if the Lord forgives me this 
 trifling debt, — and that of course He will, since He has forgiven 
 me the infinitely great one, — I do not concern myself about 
 what the children of this world call obligations." This reasoning 
 quite overlooks the fact that the essential fruit of faith is new 
 obedience, for which the law has not been abrogated, but per- 
 fected, in which the sense of duty has indeed been sharpened. 
 The new aspiration is to fulfil the law, and show loyalty also in 
 the smallest matters. (Rom. vi. 1 : Shall we remain in sin, that 
 grace may abound ? God forbid !) 
 
 § 128. 
 
 This Antinomian geniality meets us also in forms that lie 
 much closer to our human consciousness. That egoistic dis- 
 tinction between a higher moral standard for intellectual men, 
 and a lower for the common herd, we recognise also in the 
 more recent development of humanity, in the assertion that 
 geniuses, the highly gifted, are released from observance of 
 the ordinary rules of morality, — by which is understood the 
 doctrine of the universal obligation of duty, — and that there 
 may be permitted to these lofty spirits exemptions from 
 obedience to the moral law which cannot be conceded to the 
 multitude. Genius, it is said, must be judged after its own 
 standard, and is not to be measured by the common ell. Nay, 
 every able individuality is always in the right when it acts in 
 conformity with its nature. It has its limitations, its failings, 
 its weaknesses and passions ; but these are inseparable from its 
 excellence and its noble qualities, and it is absurd and unnatural 
 to desire that it should be without them. Every person of
 
 388 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 superior powers must be taken as he is ; we must concede to him 
 the privilege of sinning in certain chapters, which indeed cannot 
 be denied to him, if this distinguished individuality is to be itself, 
 and to rejoice us by its existence. For him, that is not sin which 
 is so for others ; as, for instance, to be fickle in love and faith- 
 less towards women, not to pay his debts, and to neglect im- 
 poi'tant parts of his official duties, when these are unsuited to his 
 genius. For him in every case this is a very pardonable, trifling 
 fault (peccatilliim) ; whilst such points must be taken far more 
 seriously with ordinary men, who have nothing higher to attend 
 to than their duties, and who, just because they do not distinguish 
 themselves by their talents, must be measured by the common 
 ell. Against this reasoning, which may be read at greater 
 length in many books, and is often heard in oral discussions, we 
 must protest most stouti}' on the law's account. Tliat indi- 
 viduality must be judged according to its own standards is 
 certainly quite true, but is no more valid in regard to genius 
 than to every other human individual. In all morality, that is 
 to say, there is an individual Moment, in so far as duty indi- 
 vidualizes itself for every one. But the individual standard is 
 only valid when it fits into the general, universally binding. 
 Genuine morality rests just on the unity of the individual and 
 the universal. And we degrade genius when we assert that 
 it cannot be judged from the view-point of the universal human, 
 that it is only genius at the expense of personality. The 
 greatest genius must be judged after the same law as the least 
 gifted, which exactly harmonizes with his human dignity; 
 on which, at the same time, it is to be remarked that this 
 diversity between highly gifted and slenderly endowed is but a 
 difference of degree, and no essential difference. For every 
 man is, according to his circumstances, an eternal genius ; 
 whether predominantly productive or receptive, is in this case of 
 no consequence. All shall be judged as personalities, that is 
 to say, as beings who in their characteristics must determine 
 themselves in relation to God's eternal law, which at the same 
 time is the law of his own being. In the diversity of indi- 
 vidualities and endowments there reigns the most perfect 
 impartiality in the law, because each one is to be judged not 
 according to his gifts, but according to his obedience, his 
 fidelity, his submission to God and God's government of the
 
 INDIVIDUAL ANTINOMIANISM. 389 
 
 world, which resents every violation, even the most trifling. 
 And fidelity must be shown not merely in great things, but also 
 in the smallest, the most insignificant. For, as the Lord says 
 in the parable of the unjust steward, " He who is unjust in the 
 least, is unjust also in much. And if ye have not been faithful 
 in the unriiihteous mammon, who will commit to vou the true 
 riches?" (Luke xvi. 11.) It is from fidelity and obedience 
 that false geniality seeks to emancipate itself. It desli'es, even 
 when it is enthusiastic for the really good, to be high-minded, 
 but it is not willing to serve ; it desires to move on high places, 
 but not to descend into the depths, not to abase itself and bear 
 marks of humiliation. This is very evidently shown in a 
 multitude of Antinomian phenomena, which dazzle by the 
 semblance of the exalted and the noble ; in which to act from 
 the bent of the mind, from love, from enthusiasm for the good, 
 is lauded as much more commendable than obedience to duty, 
 which is represented as the lower form of morality, as that 
 vv'hich is unworthy when compared with love, unworthy when 
 compared with enthusiasm, when compared with that lofty self- 
 sacrifice which is far above the plain prose of duty. But as 
 little as an obedience without love is the normal condition, just 
 as little is love without obedience a love worth havino;. Onlv 
 the union of the two constitutes that which is required of us, 
 as we have seen in the example of Christ. A lawless love, in 
 which there is no loyalty, a love without duty and obedience, 
 is also without uprightness, and will therefore, with all its 
 enthusiasm, be incapable of avoiding the violation, in on^. 
 way or other, of the divine laws for the government of the 
 world. And by many so-called beautiful and enthusiastic 
 actions, in which the actor has freed himself from the uni- 
 versal demands of justice, we are reminded of the holy 
 Crispinus, who stole leather in order to make with it shoes 
 for the poor. 
 
 If we desire to see Antinomianism in a noble and exalted 
 form, perhaps in the noblest in which it is seen in literature, we 
 should read Jacobi's missive to FIchte, in which it appears as a 
 relative correction of error, whilst in our judgment it is itself 
 radically wrong. FIchte and Kant had with great vigour main- 
 tained the universal obligation of the law, the absolute command 
 of duty, but without taking adequate heed of the Element of
 
 390 THE LAW. 
 
 individuality in duty, of the diversity of individualities and 
 situations, from which cause an ethical formalism appeared in 
 their system. Jacobi cannot be content to regard man as an 
 abstract rational existence, " a reasonable Inhabitant of earth," 
 concerning whose actions one can only inquire if they are in 
 accordance with universal obligation and necessity. He prefers 
 man as that fixed individuality, with that heart from which life 
 issues, with these sentiments and passions in this determined 
 situation. And with this heart, which alone is capable of what 
 bare reason is incapable, — namely, to elevate a man above him- 
 self, and which in Jacobi beats so high for virtue and the ideal 
 of the Good, — he protests against universally binding rules, from 
 which no exception is allowed, and to which an abstract obedi- 
 ence alone responds ; and he bursts forth into fervent enthusiasm 
 In these well-known words : " Nay, I am that atheist, that pro- 
 fane person, who, in despite of the will which wills nothing (that 
 is to say, in despite of the abstract formal precepts of morality), 
 will lie, like the dying Desdemona ; prevaricate and deceive, like 
 Pjdades representing himself to be Orestes ; will murder, like 
 Timoleon ; break law and oath, like Epaminondas and Johann 
 de Witt ; resolve on suicide, like Otho ; commit sacrilege, like 
 David ; nay, pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, only because I 
 am hungry, and the law was made for man, and not man for 
 the law\ I am that profane person, and scorn the philosophy 
 which calls me profane on that account — scorn it and its 
 highest essence ; for, with the holiest certainty which I have in 
 me, I know that it is man's right of majesty, the seal to his 
 dignity, his divine nature, to have privilegium aggratiandi (right 
 of pardon) for such offences against the absolute, universal, 
 irrational letter of the law." However great the influence 
 produced by the eloquence of this passage, when read in the 
 context of the missive, we cannot acknowledge any content of 
 truth in it except this, that the abrogation of the letter of 
 duty may be a fulfilment of its spirit ; that in all fulfilment of 
 duty there is a Moment of individuality, which does not admit 
 of expression in the general formula of duty ; that in actual life 
 duty is modified according to the diversity of individualities and 
 circumstances. But the error which is likely to arise from 
 this, and to which Jacobi gives admission, is that of extending 
 the mutability of duty to the essence of law and duty. For in
 
 INDIVIDUAL ANTINOMIANISM. 391 
 
 its essence the law is immutable, knows no exception, is the 
 same for all individuals and all situations, and every Moment of 
 the individual life of liberty must be determined by the one 
 absolute necessity which makes its claim heard throughout the 
 world of liberty. If we examine more closely the passage above 
 quoted from Jacobi, it will become evident that actions of very 
 diverse character are here classed together. For to break the 
 arbitrary Sabbath lav/ of the Pharisees, and pluck ears of corn 
 on the day of rest, certainly belongs to quite another category 
 from that of lying, committing suicide, murder, breaking vows 
 and promises. When Jacobi appears desirous of establishing 
 the lawfulness of the Antinomian modes of action which he 
 cites, by the assertion that the law was made for man, and not 
 man for the law, this may certainly hold good with regard to the 
 Sabbath law and other positive laws, which cannot be considered 
 as of the last importance. But concerning the eternal law of 
 God, it could equally well be said that man was made for the 
 sake of the law, or for the sake of God ; that he is appointed to 
 be God's instrument, God's ministering implement, since God 
 desires to be loved and obeyed by man. Whether any action 
 as an act of love is ethically justified, rests on whether at the 
 same time it can be shown to be an act of obedience, which also 
 contains this negative point, that it does not in any respect 
 involve a violation of that which, according to divine decree, 
 must not be violated. But the greater portion of the deeds 
 cited cannot stand this test. A closer examination will lead to 
 the acknowledgment that, however much we may sympathize 
 with the persons in question, and admire their deeds ; however 
 willingl}^ we may concede that, regarded from the stage of moral 
 development which they occupied, and under the circumstances 
 in which they were placed, they certainly acted in accordance 
 with their own being ; yet there is a taint of sin which adheres 
 to them, which makes them amenable to the sentence of the 
 law, and restrains our admiration, whilst it forbids us to found 
 Our system of Ethics on such authorities. Thus, if we contem- 
 plate the gentle Desdemona, uttering a falsehood from love at 
 the very moment of death, we must certainly acknowledge that 
 she who thus lies is no common individual, and bears in the 
 main a noble soul. Her touching, misunderstood, self-sacrific- 
 ing love to Othello, is pure and deep and cordial ; she makes
 
 392 THE LAW. 
 
 her last sacrifice in cliarnfino; herself with suicide, in order to 
 clear from the crime Othello, who in his jealousy and blindness 
 has murdered her. Not the less is there in her self-sacrificinff 
 lie of deep affection a disobedience, a self-willedness in regard 
 to the truth, of which she is sovereign as little as any other 
 individual of the race. Shakespeare, who does not paint angels 
 or patterns for ethical imitation, has also from the beginning 
 shown us that disobedience and self-willedness were the besettinii 
 sins of this otherwise pure and amiable character. For she has 
 married Othello without her father's knowledge and aciainst his 
 will, has violated duty by running off from her father's house. 
 And the same self-willedness and recklessness, and the accom- 
 panying thoughtlessness and imprudence, she discovers even in 
 her relation to Otliello. Herein are the germs of her tragic 
 fate. Jacobi seems also to have felt that in the examples which 
 he cited there lurked something not as it ought to be. For 
 tvhilst he begins in high tones, " Nay, I am that atheist, that 
 profane person, who will lie like the dying Desdemona, deceive," 
 etc. ; whilst he begins by professing to consider these deeds as 
 justifiable, he ends by ajjologizing for them, since he arrogates to 
 himself a right to pardon} This is just our opinion, that they 
 require forgiveness, and that this combination of virtue and 
 crime belongs to the tragic in human existence, which testifies 
 to the need of a Saviour. But we cannot, after the Pelaman 
 view of Jacobi, award to man himself the right of majesty to 
 pardon {privilegimn aggratiandi), but must assign both doom 
 and mercy to a higher source. From the standpoint of Chris- 
 tian Ethics, we continue to maintain that no action is ethically 
 justified if the individual is not included in the holy universally 
 obligatory. God's holy law knows no exceptions, and suffers 
 no transgressions pr neglects. With regard to Jacobi, more- 
 over, it must be especially noticed that by his high moral 
 enthusiasm he stands as a rare exception (a rara avis), a swan 
 among the many foul and unclean birds of Antinomianism 
 which history shows us, and that in other treatises he has 
 maintained the universal validity of the law, and combats this 
 false geniality.^ But his mind was entrapped into an Anti- 
 
 ^ See Julius Miiller, Die Lehre von der Siinde, i. S. 2G1, 5te Oplag 
 (Julius Miiller, The Ductrlne of Sin, vol. i. p. 261, 5th edition). 
 2 Alwill's Bricfsammlung (Alwill's Collected Correspondence').
 
 SOCIAL AIJTIXOMIAXISM. 393 
 
 nomianism from wliicli there was no escape, between tlie 
 universal and the individual. 
 
 § 129. 
 
 When we turn our attention towards social Antinomianism, 
 there meets us again a series of undisguisedly immoral and revolt- 
 ing phenomena, which recall to mind Carpocrates and Epiphanes. 
 We find thus social factions who deny the validity of the insti- 
 tutions appointed by God in human society, and set about the 
 destruction of the Family, the State, and the Church. We are 
 here constantly brought back to the maxim uttered by Epiphanes, 
 in which he anticipated the famous paradox of Rousseau {Re- 
 tournons a la iiature), that the law of nature is the highest of 
 laws, and that all misfortunes are due to human laws and insti- 
 tutions, which, more closely carried out, is expressed in the 
 assertion that happiness, earthly prosperity, and enjoyment is 
 the chief end of man : that man has a right to be happy, but 
 that society withholds from him this right. " Why has God 
 implanted in us desires if we have not a right to satisfy them ?" 
 On this reasoning is founded the right to emancipate the flesh, 
 and to do away with marriage as something merely conventional. 
 And this fallacy is preached in our day in a multitude of 
 romances and dramas (G. Sand, Alex. Dumas, etc.), which set 
 forth " free love " (amoxir libre) and " the lawfulness of passion" 
 in opposition to marriage as a pernicious human institution, an 
 " odious " invention. Duty comes, according to this view, from 
 man's choice alone ; the impulses and instincts of love, on the 
 other hand, come from God. God has not given us passions in 
 order that we should abjure them ; for passion is good, legiti- 
 mate, and holy : when man freely resigns himself to them, he 
 becomes at once happy and virtuous. Union between man and 
 woman is profaned by the relation of duty, and the vow of 
 fidelity brings an untruth into it. " For how can we pledge 
 ourselves to love each other to the end of time ? If we always 
 continue to love each other, where is the need for the troth- 
 plight ? And if we will not continue to love each other for all 
 time, of what service will be this bond, w^hich will then become 
 only a hateful tyranny?" Union only receives its truth from 
 mutual passion. Where that is quenched, union should cease 
 in order to give place to fresh combinations. The only crime
 
 394 THE LAW. 
 
 is falsehood, and to commit breach of the marriage vows is 
 justifiable, if there is but truth in the new relation — that is to 
 say, when the lovers really burn with an honest passion for 
 each other. What in this respect is called a woman's frailty, 
 must be charged to society, and not to evil propensities. " Evil 
 propensities are rare, and belong, God be thanked, to the 
 exceptions" {Les mauvais penchants sont rares, Us sont excep- 
 tionels, Dieu merci). Nay, we see in these novels and dramas 
 fallen women, impenitent Mary Magdalenes, represented in a 
 nimbus of virtue as the Mite of the sex, because, in opposition to 
 the falsehood of society, there is truth and sincerity in their pas- 
 sions, and we hear, under a shameful perversion of Luke vii. 47, 
 that all their sins are forgiven them because they have loved so 
 much.^ We will not deny that there may be here also something 
 for which society (la societe) is to be blamed, in so far as mar- 
 riages may be solemnized in all legal formality, and yet in an 
 entirely immoral manner, — when, for instance, a man, setting 
 aside all other considerations, gives his daughters in marriage 
 in order that they may make good and wealthy matches, and 
 thereby occasions a new demoralization. But this does not do 
 away with the inherent repulsiveness of the doctrine here 
 referred to. For it is evidently the law of the flesh or of the 
 members which is here desired to be substituted for the law of 
 the spirit. The much-lauded truth in passion is most frequently 
 mere impudence, which does not blush before the law of morality. 
 It is the fleshly sense which denies that marriage is an ordi- 
 nance superior to individuals ; that the individuals are pledged 
 not merely to one another, but to a higher authority, namely 
 God ; that the object of marriage is not exclusively what is here 
 constantly set forth as such ; that the individuals should be 
 happy and be mutually agreeable to each other, but that, more- 
 over, it is not the smallest aim of this institution that individuals 
 through it should be trained to mutual growth in excellence, for 
 which reason Christianity also speaks of the cross which God 
 has laid on this condition of life ; that marriage is not at all 
 merelv for the sake of the individual, but that the individuals 
 are at the same time for the sake of marriage, in order to fulfil 
 
 ^ The real meaning of the passage is this : Her many sins are forgiven her, 
 and tlierefore (because she has received such great forgiveness) she loves 
 much (she has evinced such deep gratitude towards Christ).
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 395 
 
 the demands which God's government of the world lays upon 
 them. Both the immoral entrance on the married state, and its 
 immoral dissolution, are condemned in the contemplation of 
 marriage as a divine appointment. The doctrines before cited 
 of the law of nature as the highest law, of the lawfulness of 
 impulses and passions, may perhaps partly find an explanation 
 in existing defects of society, but are very unsuited to supply 
 these. For, by corrupting moral principle, by denying the law 
 of morality, and fashioning a system of doctrine by which sin 
 itself is declared to be legitimate, they cast a blight upon the 
 moral world at its very root ; they sap its beginning, point of 
 issue, and foundation (the married state and the family), and 
 contribute to the unhealthiness of the whole moral condition.^ 
 
 In his writings concerning uprightness, the genial youth 
 Epiphanes, anticipating the ideas of false emancipation and of 
 revolution, determined the idea of uprightness as the idea of a 
 society, a community, under the condition of perfect equality. 
 He says : " Nature manifests everywhere an effort after unity, 
 communion, equality. Heaven spreads itself in the same manner 
 over all ; the stars of night shine alike for all. Therefore men 
 ought to be on an equality ; and there ought to be no differ- 
 ence between rich and poor, but community of ^rcperiy. It 
 is only through human laws that this corrupting element of 
 inequality has been introduced." This fallacy has repeated itself 
 in the socialist and communist opinions of our age. The so- 
 called law of nature, which demands equality of worldly means 
 and title to enjoyment, is here made the sum and substance of 
 all things, wdiilst it is forgotten that even nature does not strive 
 merely after similarity, but that there is also a vast dissimilarity 
 and variety in her works, which otherwise could not produce 
 organisms ; and it is to deny the moral law, to place an order 
 of society over the individual, in which the individual forms a 
 member. In the interests of the happiness of individuals, these 
 theorists desire to overturn the existing order of society, and 
 strive after an abstract equality in the possession of worldly 
 goods. But just by these means they bring the individual into 
 the worst kind of dependence on the mechanism of their self- 
 
 ^ Du roman et theatre contemporains et de leur influence sur les mosurs, 
 par M. Eugene Poitou (Contemporary Novels and Dramas, and their In 
 fluence ou Morals, by M. Eugene Poitou).
 
 396 THE LAW. 
 
 constituted society, and the liappiness aimed at is destroyed by 
 a new imliappiness. The unpractical element in their schemes 
 consists specially in this, that they entirely omit the considera- 
 tion of sin, and only seek the source of unhappy events in the 
 imagined faults of organization in existing society. But so long 
 as sin and death cannot be driven out of the world, neither can 
 adversity, suffering, poverty, sickness, and other miseries be 
 dispelled. 
 
 In the sixteenth century there appeared among the Ana- 
 baptists, in conjunction with a nomistic submission to the 
 revelations of new prophets, a fanatic chiliastic Autinomianism 
 which rejected the authority of the magistrate, military ser- 
 vice, oath and judicial process, property and difference of means, 
 whilst they sought to introduce the reign of the saints on earth, 
 — a theocracy in which false spirituality veered round into car- 
 nality, whilst even polygamy was introduced. (Compare this 
 with Mormonism.) Whilst we here refer to Church history, 
 we remark in general, that this fanatic delusion rests not merely 
 on a denial of even the moral economy of the world appointed 
 by God, but at the same time on a confusion of the heavenly 
 and the earthly reign of Messiah, a mistaken anticipation of the 
 future condition of the world. Although the appointments and 
 ordinances mentioned shall doubtless pass away in the comple- 
 tion of all things, in the future arrangement which Christianity 
 promises us, yet still they are essentially fitted for the whole 
 economy of the present world. There will not enter into this 
 present worldly condition any season in which the sacrednessof 
 marriage, the inviolability of property, the relation of sovereign 
 and subject, of clergy and laity, will cease to be binding on the 
 consciences of men {Conf. Aug. 16 and 5 Art.). 
 
 § 130. 
 
 But also where intelligent reflection rejects the above-men- 
 tioned revolutionary tenets, a social Antinomiauism may make 
 itself valid. The moral sophist appeals to a necessity which 
 arises from the many limitations of this earthly economy to 
 justify his breach of the law. To this belongs the maxim, that 
 the end hallows the means, that the good design of furthering 
 the well-beinfj of the whole atones for a wrono;-doino; in the 
 individual, when this is necessary to the attainment of the end.
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIAXISil. 397 
 
 This famous or notorious maxim is a fundamental article both 
 in political Antinomlanism and in Jesuitism. 
 
 Political Antinomiauism rests on the distinction between a 
 lower system of ethics, which is valid for private life, in which 
 the universal obligation of the law is acknowledo;ed, and in 
 which no one must violate the rights of his neighbour, and a 
 higher code for State life. Here, on the ground of circumstances 
 and the situation, it may often become necessary to commit a 
 violation of justice, to infringe treaties, to break one's word or 
 one's oath, or to swear an oath with no design of keeping it, 
 because that these things are the only means of attaining the 
 object in view, the only means for the execution of great politi- 
 cal schemes. But it is this distinction between one system of 
 morality for private life and another for political life which we 
 must unconditionally oppose. The universal obligation and 
 necessity of the moral law must not be circumscribed; all true 
 policy must be founded on ethics, as certainly as politics cannot 
 be disjoined from the idea of right and justice. We continue 
 with the apostle, not merely in private life, but also in political 
 life, to condemn the maxim, " Let us do evil that good may 
 come." For as this maxim circumscribes the universal obliga- 
 tion of the law, it is thus also at least a partial denial of the 
 moral government of the world. This is the conception of a 
 moral government of the v.'orld, that the same power which in 
 the moral law expresses its demand on us, is also the power 
 which directs and which will judge the world, — that the law of 
 morality is at the same time the law of iheioorld, the inmost law 
 of history. But as we dare not act according to such a maxim 
 as this, let us violate the law of the world, let us deny the law 
 of the divine guidance of the world, in order to accomplish good 
 in human life and in man's course. Neither is it difficult to 
 perceive that political Antinomiauism is only a very doubtful 
 and uncertain wisdom. The error here is, namely, that the end 
 which hallows the means is here the expected prosperous result. 
 But who guarantees to us that prosperous result ? And even 
 if we do attain the happy result which we have in view, who 
 will be answerable for it to us, that this may not at some period 
 produce great misfortune^ when it enters into new combinations, 
 when fresh waves of time break on it, by which this happy 
 result may become an irreparable injury to the society wliich we
 
 398 THE LAW. 
 
 sought to benefit by our breach of the law, and for which injury 
 we have made ourselves responsible by having worked to lead 
 things into this direction ? None of us knows the future, and 
 therefore we do well in not trying to play the part of Providence, 
 and interfering with the government of God, but, on the con- 
 trary, conscientiously asking ourselves if we are doing what is 
 right, independently of consequences and results, wliich are not 
 in our own power, and which our short-sighted view is unable 
 to take in. By setting aside the demand of duty in order to 
 obtain some desired good result, one confides to another divinity 
 than that of conscience — namely, to fate and fortune. One thus 
 permits himself to play a game of hazard, to leave the path of 
 duty and to tread that of fatalism.^ 
 
 Kant, who is always a safe guide when the question concerns 
 obedience to duty, or whether there are not cases in which it is 
 allowable to depart from this, makes a distinction which de- 
 serves to be repeated. He distinguishes between moral politi- 
 cians and political moralists. The first are those who bring 
 their policy into harmony with morality. The last, the 
 political moralists, are those who fashion for themselves a 
 system of morality, which for the most part is in accordance 
 with the advantage of the statesman. The moral politicians 
 find that the political rule, " Be wise as serpents," can, and 
 must, be brought into harmony with the demand, " Be harmless 
 as doves." They do not recognise the maxim that honesty is 
 the best policy ; but, on the other hand, they hold this incon- 
 trovertible one, tliat honesty is better than all policy, and an 
 indispensable condition of it ; because policy, by forsaking the 
 path of duty and honesty, places itself under the guidance of 
 blind fate, under the power of the result, with all the dark 
 necessities of the future which this may bring, and which 
 cannot be calculated beforehand by human reason. The 
 moral politician also employs discretion in the attainment of 
 the end which stands before him as the right one. But not 
 the result, only the duty, is with him the highest point ; and 
 whilst he does his duty, he leaves the result in the hands of 
 
 ^ Fiinelon, Sur k gouvernement civil: Faut-il pour guerir les maux du 
 corps politique, se servir d'un remede violent, qui ne reussira pent etre pas, 
 et dont la reussite pourroit causer des abus qui iroieut h la destruction de 
 tout gouvernement ? 
 
 I
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 399 
 
 Divine Providence. Political moralists (Antinomians), on the 
 other hand, place as their highest point the desired result, to 
 which everything else must be sacrificed. These politicians, 
 according to Kant, are the principal hindrance to permanent 
 peace among the States, that ideal which is always before our 
 eyes, but is never attained. Kant finds these political moralists 
 specially among the great rulers, whose antinomian maxims of 
 government and conquest he sets forth.^ Still it is not with 
 the great rulers alone that these maxims are found. They are 
 found also with the great majority of petty rulers, are found 
 especially in all political factions. All political partisans are 
 political moralists, or, as we prefer to call them, Antinomists. 
 They fashion for themselves their system of morality according 
 as party aim requires it, and regulate their convictions and 
 their mode of action by this. Even the better class among 
 them are far less particular about the means than the end, if 
 the latter can only be carried through, and where it is required 
 to get the majority. This is just what makes the party, whether 
 it be political or ecclesiastical, a party in the bad sense of the 
 term, that it is an external aim which is to be carried out, a 
 public opinion which is to be maintained, an appearance which 
 is to be kept up, and for which, in many cases, the individual 
 conviction must be sacrificed. 
 
 The most logical form of the denial of moral law here referred 
 to is found among fatalistic politicians. The deepest distinction 
 in politics is, namely, that of difference in views of life and of 
 the world, or whether one follows the ethical or the fatalistic 
 view of life, which last, in the bosom of Christianity, can only 
 arise from a falling away from the ethical view, and thereby 
 becoming antinomistic.^ In order to guard here against 
 misunderstanding, we remark that fatalistic views of life may 
 indeed be entertained where the freedom of the human will is 
 acknowledged, though this theory carried out must deny them. 
 The practical question of greatest importance in connection 
 with the present discussion is this : In what power do we con- 
 fide as ruling in history ? whether do we believe in the moral 
 order and guidance of the world ; or, besides human will and 
 
 ^ 1. Fac et excusa ; 2. Si fecisti nega ; 3. Divide et impera. — Zum ewifjen 
 Frieden, Werke, 7 B., Eosencrantz' edition. 
 2 H. Gelzer, Prot. MonatsMatter, 19 B., B. 76.
 
 400 THE LAW. 
 
 human genius, do we acknowledge any other power than fate, 
 fortune, and circumstances ? This last is the characteristic of 
 political fatalists, who, when they appear on the political theatre 
 of the world, show themselves gamblers at hazard on a great 
 scale. One lias already partially and unconsciously entered 
 into their system, when he thinks it necessary to employ any 
 means opposed to duty, in order thereby to attain some praise- 
 worthy historic aim. For therein lies implicite, that the God 
 of conscience is not the Almighty, only rules in private life, but 
 not in history, where another deity reigns, to whom must be 
 brought tribute and sacrifice. If I believe unconditionally on 
 the God of conscience as on the Almighty, who has all national 
 destinies in His hand, then I dare not erect and follow a theory 
 which contradicts this, and must, holding fast by duty as the 
 absolute, submit to belong to the suffering party, saying, but in 
 a deeper sense, with the old Roman : Vktrix causa diis (Fortune) 
 2)lacuif, sed victa Catoni (The victorious cause pleases Fortune, 
 the conquered pleases Cato). This is ethical politics. The 
 distinctly fatalistic politician, on the other hand, acknowledges 
 no ethical aim in history ; his highest view is progressive 
 " civilisation." He does not guide himself by eternal decrees, 
 but according to circumstances. The highest hunian powers 
 which move history are, in his idea, force and cunning ; and 
 whatever he can do, that he also dares. For his own person, 
 he confides in his fortunate star ; and when this wanes, he 
 comforts himself with this consideration, — if, after all, he 
 determines to survive his fortune, and does not rather commit 
 suicide, — that such is the course of the world. Another and 
 better quietive is unknown to him. In opposition to this, the 
 ethical politician must act according to this maxim, that this 
 world can only be made better by good and upright means, 
 knowing moreover that the special end of history is something 
 different and infinitely higher than anything political, and that 
 all states are only a subordinate and subservient means for this 
 end. 
 
 It need scarcely be said, that much fatalistic and hazard 
 playing policy has made itself valid under ethical disguises ; 
 for so great is the power of uprightness, that even they who 
 trample it under foot, at all times give themselves the appear- 
 ance of fighting under the panoply of uprightness. A policy,
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 401 
 
 moreover, which is in its essence ethical, may in the execution 
 become tainted by impure means. But until the close of the 
 world's history will the opposition between the fatalistic and 
 the ethical continue to be the indwelling, essential opposition, 
 which determines the essential differences in the political 
 phenomena. 
 
 Besides the two classes of politicians which have been named, 
 there is yet a third, very numerous class, namely of those that 
 adhere to both sides, hovering between the ethical and the 
 fatalistic view of the world, serving two masters, divided between 
 the God of conscience and circumstances, to which last they 
 usually bring sacrifices, through which they become unfaithful 
 to conscience and their better knowledge, but which they find 
 necessary, in order that the desired aim may not be missed. 
 Parliamentary transactions may here furnish many examples. 
 
 That policy which denies the moral government of the world 
 has unquestionably found its most complete representation in 
 Machiavelli's celebrated or notorious book concerning princes : 
 " He seeks in this treatise to show in what manner sovereignty 
 is to be won and maintained, and desires specially to give 
 direction to that prince, who, under its present corrupt, de- 
 graded, lawless state of anarchy, shall succeed in liberating 
 Italy. In order to create the new organization, the prince must 
 be armed with unlimited power to act according to the rules of 
 prudence, grounded on great political experience and technical 
 insight, which are here set down. A glowing but pagan love 
 of Fatherland has given the impulse to this treatise, which 
 from first to last insists that the prince ought not to concern 
 himself at all about the moral nature of the means which he 
 employs, for Fatherland must he saved at any cost ; thus also 
 by acts of injustice and violence, by poison and dagger, by 
 lying and deceit, by the mask of dissimulation and hypocrisy ; 
 in short, by any means which, under existing circumstances, 
 maybe 'necessary.' He will drive out devils by devils, the 
 devils of anarchy by the devils of tyranny. But just in this 
 manner he discovers his unbelief. He does not believe in the 
 God of conscience, and still less does he believe that the God 
 of conscience is also the God of history. For if the God of 
 conscience also bears sway in history, it may with certainty be 
 perceived that there is no liberation for Fatherland in this 
 
 2 C
 
 402 THE LAW. 
 
 way, and that Fatherland must first and foremost be so libe- 
 rated, that the false spirit, the false doctrines and maxims, 
 Avhich are the sources of its misfortunes, must be driven out 
 by a better spirit and better maxims. But Machiavelli is 
 desirous that his prince should liberate Italy through his own 
 effort, by force and cunning, and that he should rely on the 
 successful result of his undertaking, if he only seizes the 
 favourable opportunity and makes use of circumstances. Just 
 on this account is he a type of the policy which we designate 
 fatalistic. He does, indeed, expressly oppose fatalism, in so far 
 as he exalts free-will, its power to grasp and alter the relations 
 of the world ; and he designates the opposite belief as a doctrine 
 for sluggish and dastardly souls. But the principal matter is 
 that he exalts free-will, whilst recklessly setting aside the law, 
 conscience, duty, and responsibility ; or that he, as Fr. Schlegel 
 has with perfect truth expressed it, in the midst of modern 
 Christian Europe, establishes a system of politics as if such a 
 thing as Christianity, or even a Deity and divine justice, had 
 no existence. When all these considerations are excluded, no 
 other government of the world remains behind than a merely 
 naturalistic one, in which there is no other right than that of 
 the stronger and more sagacious, in which man with his free- 
 will, bound by no law of morality, is only an intelligent beast. 
 If it be asked, what power is above man ? certainly the word 
 ' God ' does appear a few times in the book, but immediately 
 interchanged with ' fortune,' ' fate,' ' circumstances,' which 
 last man to a certain extent can master, which the prince in- 
 deed is strenuously advised to attempt. Yet he adds that 
 fortune regulates half the concerns of men, that it only fares 
 well with us so long as we bring our doings into harmony with 
 circumstances and the spirit of the age ; and just because the 
 wheel of fortune turns so frequently, that it does not always 
 stand in the power of man to regulate his mode of action ac- 
 cording to the new circumstances, just for this reason so many 
 of the race are unfortunate." — The Prince, chap. xxv. That 
 power in JUstoiy, on which man at last must feel himself 
 dependent, and which he in the last resource cannot sway, 
 because no one can suit himself to every change of circum- 
 stance, which would be the same thing as having the ability to 
 change his own nature, is thus for Machiavelli " the inces-
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 403 
 
 santly revolving icheel of fortune or circumstances.*^ However 
 much political sagacity, in harmony with the course of the 
 world, may be contained in his reflections on the relation 
 between the prince and the circumstances which both exalt 
 him and crush him, when he is no longer capable of making 
 himself master of the situation ; yet we must designate his 
 view of life as fatalistic, because the last cause on which we 
 here rest in the contemplation of history is a blind, dark, 
 unreasoning power, namely, the incessantly revolving wheel of 
 circumstances, in whose motions no higher plan and object 
 is discerned, and which is indifferent to all ethics, wisdom, 
 and justice, — a mode of thinking quite in accordance with 
 the widespread pagan unbelief then prevalent in Italy. For 
 Machiavelli has only given to the predominant cast of thought 
 a fixed and consistent expression.^ A bright contrast to 
 Machiavelli appears in his contemporary and countryman 
 Savonarola, with his ethical though visionary policy, which, 
 with his testimony to the law and the gospel, in the corruption 
 of Italy, brought him to the stake. Of him Machiavelli says, 
 that of necessity it fared ill with him. For only armed pro- 
 phets, as Moses, Cyrus, and Romulus, come off victors ; the 
 unarmed must necessarily perish (chap. vi,). 
 
 After all these discussions, it may still be asked, under the 
 presupposition of the ethical view of life, if we then in no 
 sense acknowledge a political Antinomianism which is justifi- 
 able ? — if there may not be a state of society so unhappy and 
 perplexed, in which, if a helping hand is to be put forth for the 
 elevation of the community, it must be by some breach of right, 
 a breach of the formal letter of the law, in order to exalt the 
 higher ideal right of the spirit? — if there may not be a justifi- 
 able revolution, in which men tear off a tyrannic yoke, or any 
 justifiable coup detat, in which one single man appropriates to 
 himself the supreme power for the liberation of the whole, of 
 which history from the earliest period gives examples (Ca3sar, 
 Cromwell, Napoleon the First and the Third). We do not at all 
 imagine, that by a universal maxim we can decide individual 
 casuistic cases in history. Revolutions and coups d'etat are of 
 very diverse characters — are dissimilar already in the views of 
 life which produce them. But we know the maxim which the 
 * Fr. Schlegel, GescMcJite der Litteratur, 2d vol. (History of Literature).
 
 404 THE LAW. 
 
 Reformers followed — One ought to obey God rather than men ; 
 and where this really has its application, we acknowledge as 
 justified the breach of the laws of men, in order to fulfil that 
 of God. The great difficulty in determining the ethical value 
 of such a circumstance, is to point out where this application 
 has its perfect title ; and here begins the casuistic examination 
 of the individual concrete case, which must be completely set 
 forth. But since, in our day, men are so much disposed to 
 acknowledge the necessity of all revolutions, and to suppose that 
 everything is justified if it has only received the seal of 
 " necessity," it is to be observed that most political revolutions 
 have certainly been brought about by necessity, in so far as 
 the moral freedom of individuals was enslaved in the natural 
 processes of the jmsswjis, in so far as there has been there far 
 more Pathos than Ethos, and that in its enslaved condition it 
 has not been able to escape from manifold sins, as it must also 
 be acknowledged, that even those great individuals who take 
 part in these affairs can scarcely avoid being drawn into the 
 general entanglement of sin, and that it is scarcely possible 
 for them to pass untainted and scathless through commotion ; 
 because that, in order to escape this, it is necessary that they 
 should be personalities of a very high order of morality, 
 equipped not merely with a higher wisdom, but also with a 
 purer energy of will, a firmer independence of the badness of 
 their surroundings, both in the time present and to come, than 
 they are in reality. It may be acknowledged that some small 
 number from among these individuals may be regarded from 
 the same exculpatory or palliative point of view as we have 
 already admitted as valid in the case of Jacobi's effusion : 
 " Nay, I am that atheist, that profane person." But the 
 element of crime which enters into such historic deeds, 
 whether achieved by the individual or by the mass, even if 
 these deeds in other respects may be regarded as beneficial in 
 their results, is by no means justified before the bar of moral 
 law, lohere a Jdgher necessity hears sivay, zcJiich incessantly 
 demands that sin shall be expiated, that crime shall he punished. 
 There is a Nemesis, or, to speak in Christian phraseology, a 
 retributive justice, which punishes every crime, not merely 
 that which is committed in private life, but also that which is 
 committed in history, though it may tarry long, and then
 
 SOCIAL ANTINOMIANISM. 405 
 
 arrive suddenly and unexpectedly. Such retribution is often 
 indicated in the annals of history, and in that which passes 
 before our eyes. But in so far as it does not appear, we 
 continue to repeat : Respice finem ! It is only relatively true, 
 that the history of the world is the world's doom. There is yet 
 a hio;her doom. 
 
 We conclude with a word from Kant, with regard to which 
 it cannot be expected that it will receive universal assent, and 
 thus contribute to bring hither everlasting peace, but which, 
 even if this expectation is laid aside, contains a reliable guide 
 for action for the individual who desires to preserve his moral 
 liberty. " True policy cannot take a single step without first 
 having paid homage to morality ; and although politics in and 
 for itself is a difficult art, yet its combination with morality is 
 no art at all. For as soon as they come into collision with each 
 other, morality cuts the knot which policy cannot unravel." ^ 
 The great majority of politicians will, of course, shake their 
 heads, and say that this theory will not suit in practice ; to 
 which the simplest reply is, that that is just the defect in their 
 practice, that it does not accord with the theory. For what 
 they contemptuously term theory, ideology, and fanaticism, is 
 nothing less than even the eternal, universally obligatory, and 
 necessary law, according to which they and their actions shall 
 be judged at the last day ; because this law is not merely the 
 law of their own conscience, but even the law of the world, 
 according to which God governs the world, and will judge 
 the world, because it is the law of His own being. It boots not 
 here to say, with Rousseau, '' The most stringent morality 
 costs nothing on paper." For, since this morality is not 
 merely written on paper, or engraven on tables of stone, but 
 also on the conscience, we continue to be its debtors. On the 
 other hand, it will be readily admitted, that in regard to the 
 assertion of Kant, that the combination of politics with morality 
 is no art, it may be observed, that it is not always by any 
 means easy to determine ^oJieii that point of time has been 
 reached when morality should cut the knot ; not by any means 
 easy to perceive often the fine boundary line between the 
 accommodation, the gentle dealing, which morality demands, 
 and that in which treachery to the law commences (for instance, 
 ^ Zam ewigen Frieden (To Everlasting Peace).
 
 406 THE LAW. 
 
 by compromises). To perceive this is just the art. It also 
 remains to be remarked, that in order to perceive this, and after 
 the perception to have courarje to cut the knot, in many cases 
 demands not merely a higher talent, but also a higher degree 
 of development of the moral personality and energy of will, 
 than can be taken for granted as possessed by the majority; 
 nay, there are circumstances and decisions in which even the 
 purest and best must stand with fear and trembling in his 
 inmost soul, and with regard to which there is great need to 
 pray : Lead us not into temptation. 
 
 These considerations are corroborated in many ways in our 
 times, in which so many press forward to a political position 
 for Avhich they are unfit both in talent and disposition. Even 
 individuals of a superior and more distinguished character 
 frequently conduct themselves in the matter of politics, in the 
 same manner as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister conducted himself 
 in regard to dramatic art, to which this highly gifted being 
 devoted himself with enthusiasm, and for which, with the assent 
 of his friends, he believed himself to possess a decided talent. 
 In reality, he lacked the vocation for art, and had deceived 
 himself, so that his productions were not above mediocrity. 
 Whether he, whilst he felt an irresistible impulse to become 
 " a person of public note," would be strong enough in a moral 
 aspect to suffer no injury in his personality under the many 
 temptations to be encountered in this path, he had never taken 
 into consideration. Fortunately — which is far from being the 
 case with every aesthetic or political Wilhelm Meister — he 
 understood at last the counsel of his own inner being : " Fleey 
 young man, jlee ! " 
 
 JESUITISM. ANTINOMIAN DIRECTIONS TO WOELDLY 
 
 WISDOM. 
 
 § 131. 
 
 We continue our observations with a special reference to 
 Jesuitism, which is a form of Antinomianism near of kin to 
 the political. Jesuitism does not profess the fatalistic but the 
 ethical view of life, nay, apparently carries the last into com-
 
 JESUITISM. 407 
 
 pletlon. It does everything in God's name, and to God's 
 glory. But the holy is here but the means and the mask for 
 the execution of a worldly object. It mixes itself also in State 
 politics, but its first and principal sphere is the Church, where 
 it carries forward ecclesiastical policy, and gives counsel in the 
 confessional. 
 
 In Jesuitism, Antinomianism is combined with a false 
 Nomism. For Jesuitism is from its origin and aim nomistic. 
 It came forth as a reaction against liberty, against the Kefor- 
 raation and Protestantism. It seeks to maintain a permanent 
 absolute authority, specially that of the Pope, and to convert 
 the world to the one saving Church. This is its one uncon- 
 ditional aim ; and if it be asked what are the means which have 
 been hitherto employed for this, they are appropriate. For 
 only one absolute and unalterable duty is enjoined : obedience 
 to the Pope. All other duties are variable, and may be modified 
 by circumstances, and must be determined according to the 
 object in view. In regard to politics, it is sometimes appropriate 
 to the end in view, to appear as the defender of absolute 
 monarchy and the passive obedience of the subject, sometimes 
 as the defender of revolution and the sovereignty of the people, 
 to teach the right and duty of the people to abjure obedience 
 to non-Catholic princes, nay, to teach the justice of slaying a 
 tyrant. In regard to religion, it is found advisable in the con- 
 fessional, in order to win the world to the one thing needful, 
 to accommodate itself to circumstances, to free men from the 
 demands of the law, if only it can bind them to this one, to 
 obedience to the Church. Hence its teaching belongs to 
 Probabilism, or the doctrine of moral probability. Jesuitism, 
 that is to say, finds it right and fit to teach men the conviction, 
 that in most of human affairs it is very difficult, nay impossible, 
 for human reason to come to a clear and certain understanding ; 
 that, therefore, in his actions a man can only hold by that 
 which is most eligible, most probable, and that, in order to find 
 this out, one should hold to the best authorities. A moral 
 opinion becomes probable, when there can be cited for it the 
 authority of one or more teachers, and this becomes more 
 certain the more learned and pious these authorities have been. 
 As these teachers, however, may be in mutual disagreement, a 
 case may occur, where, in consideration of the circumstances, it
 
 408 THE LAW. 
 
 becomes advisaLle to take the less probable opinion as the more 
 probable. In Probabilism, Antinomianism appears in this way, 
 that the mere individual conjecture, the purely arbitrary, makes 
 itself lord and master over the law, that the universal obligation 
 and necessity of the law can be arbitrarily dispensed with. 
 In contrast to the bold Antinomianism of geniality, Probabilism 
 is intelligent, prudent, and modest, forbearing towards human 
 weakness, and therefore commends itself in a higher degree to 
 the great majority. But its arbitrary character is not less 
 rebellious, and shows itself principally in regard to the one 
 great commandment: Love to God. Instead of regarding 
 this as the all-embracing law, which is the life and soul of 
 every other, it is only regarded as an individual command by 
 the side of the many others. Thence arises the question : How 
 often and on what occasions must we love God? To love 
 God always would be to demand too much from human weak- 
 ness ; for which reason some teachers have thought that it is 
 sufficient to love Him when death is approaching, or when we 
 find ourselves in any great temptation or danger, or when \\q 
 have received a benefit from God, or when partaking the 
 sacraments. Again, others have thought that it is sufficient to 
 love God every fifth year, whilst others have maintained that 
 we ought to love God every Sunday. Moreover, there are 
 some who have thought that God does not require of us at all 
 that we should love Him, if we only do His will by fulfilling 
 the rest of the commandments, and that it is sufficient if we 
 only do not hate God.^ Nomism and Antinomianism here 
 show themselves in monstrous conjunction. The same appears s 
 
 when we examine the notorious doctrine of the Jesuits regard- f 
 
 ing falsehood, breach of the sixth commandment, and murder. 
 Against the whole of this Probabilism, and its scandalous 
 sporting with God's holy law, from which it can dispense at 
 pleasure, in order to make Clirist's burden light, and to win 
 men by a comfortable, pleasant Christianity, in accordance 
 with the world {devotion aisee), Pascal wrote his immortal 
 Leitres Provmciales, which at the same time mark the epoch 
 when the comic or irony for the first time appears in religious 
 polemics, combined with the deep seriousness of religion, 
 
 ^ According to the Jesuit moralist Escobar. See Pascal, the lOtli 
 Proviucialc, towards the conclusion. 
 
 f.
 
 JESUITISM. 409 
 
 Althougli the ascetic, rigorous Christianity of Pascal is far 
 behind the teaching of Luther in evangehcal liberty, yet with 
 him also the disposition of the mind is the principal thing : 
 the absolute universal obligation and necessity of the law, its 
 spirituality and integrity, are maintained with living energy, 
 and love to God as the fulfilment of the law, as the one 
 all-determining and all-penetrating. As Pascal's system of 
 dogmatics centres in Adam and Christ, so his system of 
 morality centres in sin and grace. 
 
 The great extension and entrance which Jesuitism has found, 
 rests on the circumstance that it has a powerful ally in the 
 natural heart of man, and that Jesuitic morality is a striking 
 form of the morality of the sinful heart of man, which Jesuitism 
 has only brought into system. Long before Jesuitism existed, 
 Jesuitic maxims were practised in a greater or less degree, and 
 many practise and will continue to practise them, without 
 knowing the system and its terminology. In the human heart 
 there is a natural tendency to Nomism and Antinomianism on 
 the one side, by observing an external rectitude, an outward 
 ceremonial service, and on the other by a tendency to break 
 the law, and by tranquillizing sophisms to attain dispensation 
 and liberty to sin, whether it be liberty to sin on some par- 
 ticular occasion, or to live entirelv in a state of sin. The 
 maxim over which Pascal has swung the scourge of satire, _ 
 that God is too good to require from us anything so pain- 
 ful as that we should always love Him, nay, that love to 
 God is not at all necessary, if we only do His will by fulfilling 
 the other commandments (thus to fulfil the other command- 
 ments toithout the relation of love to God, and setting it aside), 
 and that it is suflScient not to hate Him ; how many men, who 
 live out their lives destitute of any relation to God, soothe 
 themselves with this maxim, without knowing that Jesuitism 
 has brought it into a system ! And, although it sounds absurd, 
 how many men are there within the sphere of Protestantism, 
 who in their religious relation put in practice the doctrine that 
 it is sufficient to love God every Sunday, or at least a few 
 times throughout the year! And how many are there, who, 
 with regard to their worldly objects and schemes, prefer that 
 which is fitted for the furtherance of the object in vieiCj to the 
 demands of conscience ! And now Probabilism : the name
 
 410 THE LAW. 
 
 belongs to the Jesuitic system, but the thing so designated is 
 very common, and of every-day experience. For how many 
 find it more fitting and convenient, instead of acting on real 
 principles, to follow, if not the authority of the Church of 
 Eome, yet what we may call the authority of circumstances 
 or of opinion, the authority of the spirit of the age, the authority 
 of the powerful, whether we refer to princes and the great, or 
 to popular feeling expressed in newspapers and periodicals, and 
 who find it the pleasantest mode to follow one or other of the 
 authorities here named, according to circumstances ! How 
 many revolutions in the convictions of men rest upon this, that 
 it is now found reasonable, in consequence of certain circum- 
 stances, to pass over to another opinion, which is more advan- 
 tageous ! Jesuitism is no new discovery ; it is an old invention, 
 and repeats itself from generation to generation. 
 
 § 132. 
 
 The Antinomian principles, which more or less consciously 
 permeate the greatest part of the morality of men, which permit 
 certain deviations from the strait path, "on the ground of 
 circumstances and the difficulty of the position," — certain 
 actions *' with regard to which we must not be too nice," and 
 for which " we must forgive ourselves," — have in many respects 
 found formulated expression in literature, in the various exhor- 
 tations which are given to worldly prudence (for instance, in 
 Knigge's famous work, Omgang med Mennesker (Intercourse 
 with Men).^ Not as if all that is found in writings of this 
 kind must be false, and to be rejected. We may find, moreover, 
 much that is instructive, rules and warnings which have their 
 value, and which deserve a large measure of attention. None 
 the less certainly may be traced in most points the presence of 
 the Antinomian leaven, for which reason, in the reading of 
 such treatises, we must be very critical. The rules set forth 
 have, in respect to their mixed and ambiguous character, a 
 certain resemblance to the popular proverbs, in which the 
 
 ^ Vinet, Etudes sur Pascal, 248 : Qu'est ce probabilisme si ce n'est le 
 nom extraordinaire de la chose du mondc la plus ordinaire : le culte de 
 Topinion, la preference donnue ii I'autorite sur la conviction individuelle, 
 aux personnes sur les idees, au basard des rencontres sur les oracles de la 
 conscience 1
 
 ANTINOMIAN PRECEPTS TO WORLDLY PRUDENCE. 411 
 
 morality of the people has expressed with much naivete its 
 lessons in prudence, and its shrewd perception gained by ex- 
 perience of how matters go in the world. Although many of 
 these popular maxims contain golden rules of wisdom, yet the 
 great mass of them are ambiguous, just because they move 
 predominantly in the element of prudence, of the means, and 
 many of them testify in a high degree to the egoism of the 
 human heart, and its proneness to forge to itself maxims of 
 sin (for instance : A man's closest neighbour is himself ; Every 
 man is a thief in his trade ; "We must sing the song of the birds 
 we live among ; Whose bread I eat, his song I trill), and many 
 others of this kind, which, though they may bear a double 
 meaning, are principally to be taken in an egoistic sense. 
 Closely allied to these are many of the rules which in an elegant 
 form are developed in the treatises to which we refer, and 
 (vhich are principally designed for the upper, nay, the highest 
 classes. Among these we specially name the Spaniard Gracian's 
 world-renowned Manual of Worldlij Prudence^ translated by 
 Schopenhauer. The highly talented and much experienced 
 author was a Jesuit, and lived in the seventeenth century. 
 He is very far from the extremes of Jesuitry, — does not move 
 in the sphere of religion, but in that of secular matters; and 
 not unfrequently there is in his teaching a tinge of greatness 
 and dignity, which affords him ready entrance to many. His 
 treatise has thus many students, and has been specially recom- 
 mended to young men who wish to enter the great world, and 
 would prepare themselves for a happy and brilliant career.^ 
 
 He begins his treatise with this maxim: "Everything in our 
 times has attained its summit, but highest of all, the art of 
 making oneself of consequence. More is required now for one 
 wise man than in ancient times for seven." But he concludes 
 his book as summing up all in the exhortation to aspire after 
 " holiness," for in this all is said, since " virtue is the bond of 
 all perfection, and the centre of all happiness." Between this 
 
 ^ Balthasar Gracian's Hand-Orakel und Kunst der Weltklufjlieit : Aus 
 dessen TVerken gezogen von Don Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa und aus 
 dem spanischen Original treu und sorgfiiltig iibersetzt von Arthur Schopen- 
 hauer. 1862. (Published after Schopenhauer's death by J. Fraueusfadt.) 
 
 ^ The French translation bears the title, which, however, is not correct, 
 L'homme de cour de Baltasar Gracian.
 
 412 THE LAW. 
 
 commencement and conclusion the oracles are uttered, in which, 
 intermingled with valuable truths and instructive experiences, 
 we hear a series of exhortations to make our happiness in the 
 world, and draw the greatest possible advantage from men, yet 
 without allowing matters to assume an unpleasant appearance, 
 or losing one's dignity. We are told, for instance, that if one 
 wishes to win honour and respect, to make oneself of conse- 
 quence in the world, — which throughout is assumed as the 
 desire of all, — one must not associate with those who are in 
 misfortune, but with those who have success with them : for 
 misfortune arises most frequently from men's folly, and by 
 connecting ourselves with such persons as are suffering the 
 results of folly, we are running the risk of being drawn into 
 both their folly and their misfortune ; that when we are in un- 
 certainty who has success on his side, we should hold with the 
 prudent, as these have the greatest probability of sooner or later 
 obtaining success ; that loe should lay more stress on the successful 
 attainment of our object, than on the rigid observance of the rules 
 ivhich lead to this end : for when one has conquered, one does 
 not require to render an account, and a good result gilds over 
 everytliing. If we cannot clothe ourselves in the lion's skin, 
 we must next try that of the fox, and carry out through 
 cunning what we cannot accomplish through force. We should 
 speak as the mass do, but think with the few, and win 
 popularity by a discreet silence. To swim against the current 
 only befits a Socrates. It profits nothing to repel error, but 
 only serves to bi'ing oneself into danger ; for to differ from the 
 opinion of another is regarded by him as an insult. In great 
 assemblies, the wise man does not speak with his own voice, 
 but only with the general voice of folly, and can only express 
 his real opinion in a small and select circle. One should 
 understand how to shape oneself after every one, like a discreet 
 Proteus : be learned with the learned, pious with the pious ; 
 for congeniality -works good-will. We should examine the 
 minds of those with whom we have to do, and fit our instru- 
 ments to each. One should understand also at certain times 
 to practise contradiction, not in order to express one's own 
 opinion, but in order to try other people, and get to know 
 their secrets. A contradiction, a doubt expressed at the right 
 point of conversation, may often act as an emetic which forces
 
 ANTINOML\N PRECEPTS TO WORLDLY PRUDENCE. 413 
 
 secret thoughts to come forth. la one's public life one should 
 permit oneself to be guilty of pardonable errors ; for jealousy 
 exercises a base ostracism, and condemns the man who is 
 entirely perfect. Like an Argus, the jealous man searches for 
 the blemishes in the most perfect, for his own consolation. 
 Therefore Homer must sometimes fall asleep (dormitat quan- 
 doque Homerus), and one must affect little inadvertencies, 
 whether in valour or in genius, in order to mitigate envy, that 
 it may not burst from venom. One should study the art of 
 acting at once according to the first and second aim, which is a 
 principal consideration in prudence. One should begin with 
 attending to the affairs of strangers, and end by attending to 
 his own. One must understand how to lay on others the blame 
 of what goes wrong. If one is appointed to govern, one must 
 have a scape-goat on whom to devolve the responsibility of all 
 unfortunate undertakincrs. One must o;uard ao-ainst becomina; 
 the setting sun, and never permit oneself to grow dim, unless, 
 like the sun, to rise again. Altogether, one should endeavour 
 to prepare surprises for men in fresh dawnings of the day, and 
 always have something new in reserve, etc. 
 
 From these few examples, which we have drawn from 
 different parts of the work, it will be seen that this celebrated 
 author knows what is the ordinary way of the world, and he 
 has only expressed as a formula the system of morality which 
 practically is used by many. But in what manner these and 
 other precepts are to be brought into harmony with the demand 
 for holiness which he sets forth, and his representation of virtue 
 as the bond of perfection and the centre of happiness, or with 
 what right he in so many cases dispenses with the requirement 
 of holiness, — which is unavoidably necessary if these precepts 
 are actually to be followed, — he leaves his readers to find out 
 for themselves. It is not, however, difficult to find out. For 
 the principle which he seeks to couple with that of holiness, is 
 nothing else than the eudaimonistic principle so inexorably 
 combated by Kant, which in the present case may be expressed 
 thus : The absolute aim is to attain honour and respect in the 
 world, or as far as possible to be happy in this life. And as 
 this, in the present circumstances of men and of the world, 
 cannot be attained without in many cases setting aside the 
 obligations of holiness, by having a partial exception from the
 
 41J: THE LAW. 
 
 rule, this last becomes necessary. For the principal matter, 
 the chief end, — to be happy and to be of consequence in the 
 world, — must never be lost sight of. But this is just the Anti- 
 nomian leaven, which is a necessary ingredient in all worldly 
 prudence, which seeks to set itself in the place of wisdom. 
 
 It would be a misconception to suppose that Christianity 
 forbids us to institute a doctrine of prudence, since Christ 
 Himself gives us an exhortation to it. The same Lord and 
 Master who says, " Be harmless as doves," says also, " Be wise 
 as serpents" (Matt. x. 16); He who teaches us to love men 
 says, " Beware of men " (Matt. x. 17), by which He warns us 
 against an optimist and naive simplicity in reference to men, 
 through which we can only be deceived. Not merely by His 
 word, but also by His example, He gives us this admonition; and 
 we need here only refer to many of His questions and replies to 
 His adversaries, — for instance, the stamp of the tribute money. 
 But the fundamental principle to which all rules of prudence 
 must be subordinate is this, " Seek first the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto 
 you." Whilst every earthly object, if pursued unconditionally, 
 inevitably comes into collision with the law of morality, this 
 supramundane object or aim after the kingdom of God is the 
 only one which can never come thus into collision, for the simple 
 reason that the law of morality is the special law of the kingdom 
 of God, the law which is not of this world, but to which every- 
 thing in this world must be subordinate. The Christian doctrine 
 of prudence does not set forth earthly happiness, but salvation, 
 as the ultimate destiny of life. In the parable of the unjust 
 steward (Luke xvi. 1), Christ sets before us at once the teach- 
 mg of prudence and of salvation. The children of light should 
 learn from the children of this world prudence and ingenuit}'' iu 
 regard to the means through which they attain their object, and 
 in which they are so often inferior to the children of this world. 
 As these last are ingenious and inexhaustible in means to 
 accomplish their unrighteous ends, so should the children of 
 light have a corresponding abundance of means for the attain- 
 ment of the blessings of the kingdom of God, the blessings of 
 salvation. To this end the whole life should be applied. But 
 as the end of God's kingdom embraces holiness, the employment 
 of every unholy means is excluded, as this would be to work
 
 THE OBLIGATORY AND THE PERMISSIBLE. 415 
 
 exactly against the end, and thus be the reverse of a means, it 
 would be a hindrance, which removed us further from the goal. 
 
 THE OBLIGATORY AND THE PERMISSIBLE. THE BEFITTING. 
 ETHICAL FORBEARANCE (ACCOMMODATION). 
 
 § 133. 
 
 The essential and necessary relation between freedom and 
 law embraces the whole life of liberty ; and in the sphere of 
 liberty there is nothing which is indifferent {adiaphoroii) or 
 permissible, in the sense that it is not to be entirely regulated 
 by duty. Only a one-sided Nomism, which externally compre- 
 hends duty as a fixed quantity of commands and prohibi- 
 tions, can suppose that those modes of action which are neither 
 expressly commanded nor forbidden are indifferent, and that the 
 individual in regard to these may order his conduct independently 
 of law. It is then overlooked that duty embraces the whole 
 life of liberty as a unityy and is one with the very ideal of 
 personality. But just because duty is one with the ideal of 
 personality itself, expressed as an unconditional requirement, 
 there is also here a true conception of the permissible. As, 
 namely, determined duty is always the unity of the universal 
 and the individual, but the individual cannot be expressed in a 
 universal formula, there arises thence the conception of the 
 ethically permissible — not as that which falls outside the moral, 
 but that the morality of which can only be individually deter- 
 mined, and in this sense the permissible has an ineradicable 
 validity. The artistic liberty in moral life, moral beauty, rests 
 on this, that in our actions and in our whole manner of exist- 
 ence there is something — undoubtedly on the foundation of the 
 universally binding and necessary — belonging exclusively to the 
 individual and personal determination. 
 
 §134. 
 
 The permissible in the sense here given has as wide an extent 
 as even human morality, because in all morality there is an 
 individual Moment which does not admit of being formulized 
 in the ordinary manner. It is the right of the individual.
 
 416 THE LAW. 
 
 within the limits of the universally binding and necessary, to 
 determine himself his mode of actinjr accordinf; to individual 
 instance ; and so long as he does not offend against the univer- 
 sally binding and necessary, others are constrained, even if they 
 do not perceive this individual validity, to acknowledge in his 
 deeds the morally permissible. The abundant application of 
 this idea in daily life may specially be seen in one great 
 example, — namely, those actions which move in the aesthetic 
 sphere, just because individual freedom is here so highly 
 conspicuous. The relation between the aesthetic and the ethical 
 has been predominantly the subject of the pietistic dispute about 
 the so-called intermediate thing, adiaphora — matters of indif- 
 ference. The Pietists rejected worldly amusements, as the 
 stage, secular music, dancing, cards, as irreconcilable with 
 sanctification, whilst the orthodox regarded these as matters of 
 indifference. Both parties were wrong, — the Pietists because 
 they understood sanctification as predominantly self-denial and 
 renunciation of the world, and did not take into account that 
 sanctification also embraces the ennobling of the worldly and 
 natural, that abuse of the world does not exclude the true use, 
 and because they could ascribe to the aesthetic no validity, 
 except in so far as it serves immediately to the religious and 
 the ethical, and bears the direct impress of this earnestness ; 
 the orthodox, because they considered the worldly sesthetic as 
 indifferent, and having no bearing on morality and conscience. 
 For if the aesthetic has, as we on our side maintain, a necessary 
 place in the development of humanity, then it can neither be 
 reckoned amono; those thincps which are sinful in themselves — 
 as, in Pontoppidan's treatise, comedy is set down — or among 
 those inherently indifferent, but gets its place among the general 
 subjects of culture which belong to a middle sphere, the 
 object of which has a s-ubordinate significance in the develop- 
 ment of man for the ultimate and highest object of life, and 
 therefore they ought to he ethically and religiously regulated^ in 
 order that they may be performed to the glory of God. It 
 remains then, first, to examine whether the subjects in dispute 
 have a3stlietic value or not ; for it might possibly be shown of 
 many of these in concrete that they are only seemingly cesthetic, 
 and on this ground inherently inadmissible. Only after such a 
 general examination has been made can there in a right sense be 
 
 i
 
 THE BEFITTING. 417 
 
 any question of the etliically permissible. For also under the 
 presumption of the sesthetic value of such employment it can 
 only be decided by the purely individual instance, to what 
 extent I, the determinate individual, should engage in it, what 
 temptations to me are therewith associated, what importance 
 they may have for the development of my personality. Here 
 it holds good, " All things are lawful for me ; but all things 
 are not expedient" (1 Cor. vi. 12). I have the right to do it, 
 and no one can morally dispute this right ; but on my own part 
 the use of this right must be regulated by my individual ideal 
 of personality : for all the individual portion of my life must be 
 determined by that which must be the unity of my life ; and 
 nothincr individual is indifferent, but has a directino; influence 
 on the whole. To myself I must apply the biblical canon, 
 " All that is not of faith is sin" (Rom. xiv. 23), etc. All is sin 
 to me which does not proceed from the fundamental conviction 
 which must be the determining motive of the unity of my life, 
 and is not in harmony with it. If thus, after having partaken 
 of enjoyments of this kind, we cannot with ease pass into the 
 sphere of religion, and do not feel refreshed for the resumption 
 of our work, but observe that we have a struggle in returning , 
 to labour and prayer, then we have in this a criterion that what ; 
 is permissible has not been expedient, and that the purity of-- 
 conscience has not been preserved. 
 
 The embracing siirnificance which must be attributed to the- 
 permissible, when the question refers to the relation between 
 the sesthetic and the ethical, may also be seen in a single great- 
 example, by the definition of the conception of the Befitting or 
 Seemly. The Befitting (^Decorwii) is the aesthetic side of moral 
 personality itself, — the external reflection of morality in the 
 entire essence, appearance, and deportment of personality. The 
 Befitting shows itself in tone and gesture, gait and carriage, 
 dress and forms of social life. True decorum does not merely 
 express dignity, but may also express beauty, ease, and grace- 
 fulness ; as, for instance, it is said of Fenelon that he possessed 
 a courteousness {politesse) which overflowed in all forms except 
 in any in which virtue has been lost. The Befitting or Seemly 
 may doubtless be a mere outside, and then it is only a vain 
 show, a mask, as with a stage-player. But the ethically Seemly 
 is a necessary outpouring of the moral interior, and has 
 
 2 D
 
 418 THE LAW. 
 
 therefore its highest value when it expresses itself only as the 
 natural and necessary result of this. Now there is certainly 
 one kind of the Beseeming which is binding on all, in so far as 
 it forms part of the code of morality which is valid in society, 
 as that by which individuals are universally guided. But even 
 in this universally binding we may perceive a Moment of the 
 individuality of the different nations and ages of the world, an 
 individual Moment which in a special manner makes its freedom 
 valid in fashion^ which is the incessant change of the social 
 temper in regard to the aesthetic in dress and outward circum- 
 stance, and which may very easily overstep its boundary, 
 especially when it extends to higher matters. But under pre- 
 supposition of the relatively universally obligatory in society, 
 the Befitting must be determined more closely for each indi- 
 vidual according to his particular circumstances ; and the 
 permissible does not appear here as absolute arbitrary choice 
 and licence, — which would be just the Unbefitting, — but as that 
 which can be only individually determined. What holds good 
 for one is not so for all. What is befitting for one is not so for 
 another, not merely on the ground of difference in rank and 
 position, or difference in age, — a recreation which is befitting 
 for the younger is not therefore so for the older, — but on the 
 ground of the entire personality. The Permissible may even 
 appear here as a justified Antinomianism, in opposition to the 
 fashion prevalent in society. In opposition to this falsely 
 Befitting or Decorous, I may find myself called upon to main- 
 tain that which for me is the truly Befitting. 
 
 § 135. 
 
 As the Permissible has its origin in the liberty of the indi- 
 vidual, but liberty must bejhe^minister of love, the question 
 arises whether actions which we are otherwise iustified in doincr. 
 ought not in certain cases to be avoided, because the weak in 
 society might be thereby offended, that is to say, either per- 
 plexed in their consciences in regard to what is right and wrong, 
 or become uncertain regarding the character of the person so 
 acting ; as it may also be asked if there are not modes of 
 action which we should adopt, though by no means otherwise 
 bound to them, from a simple regard to our neighbour, who 
 might otherwise be offended. There thus arises a question of 

 
 ETHICAL FORBEARANCE. 419 
 
 accommodation to the weak, both in the negative and positive 
 direction. In regard to the first case, the Apostle Paul has 
 given a reply, in the manner in which he decides a question 
 which had arisen in the apostolic Church regarding clean and 
 unclean meats; since there was a Jewish ascetic party, who 
 held that the use of animal food should be abandoned, in con- 
 sequence of the apprehension they entertained of thus partaking 
 of the flesh of animals which had been offered to idols. This 
 flesh was sold in the market indiscriminately with other flesh ; 
 and as Christians buying their provisions in the market were 
 exposed to the risk of getting this sacrificial meat, and thus 
 taking part In heathen usages, they entirely abstained from 
 flesh (Rom. xiv. 4, 8 ; 1 Cor. viii.). The apostle himself 
 favours the freer opinion, because nothing is unclean in itself, 
 and an idol has no real existence ; but he insists that from love 
 one should not shock his brother, and says, with special refer- 
 ence to the victims offered to idols, " If meat make my brother 
 to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I 
 make my brother to offend " (1 Cor. viii. 13). In subsequent 
 times the same question repeats itself under many different 
 forms, since in all ages there has been an opposition between 
 an austere party among Christians, who predominantly con- 
 sider the relation to the world as renunciation, and constantly 
 repeat, " Touch not, taste not, handle not ! " and a less austere 
 party, who maintain that the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness 
 thereof, and nothing is impure in itself except sin. Thus there 
 is substituted for sacrificial meat, pagan poetry and art, the 
 theatre, dancing, secular music, entertainments, and social 
 amusements, and in our own day the opposition is the same. 
 If now the law of love necessitates that they who hold the 
 freer opinions should not recklessly use their liberty, and in 
 certain cases must even find themselves called upon to abstain 
 from the disputed modes of action, in order not to shock the 
 weak members, and thus to break down the Church instead of 
 building it up ; still love requires, moreover, that this submis- 
 sion be not unlimited. For then the weak would only be 
 confirmed in their mistake, whilst the strong would be hindered 
 in their progress, and the truth would be denied. The require- 
 ment that we should accommodate ourselves to the weak must 
 therefore be combined with this, that on the one side we must
 
 420 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 make it apparent that we are not overcome by these enjoyments, 
 and therefore can dispense with them; but, on the other side, 
 we must seek to lead the weak among us to a clearer knowledge, 
 and show them that these matters may be contemplated from 
 another point of view than the merely worldly and unethical. 
 Accommodation must therefore be combined with correction, 
 the accommodative method with the corrective. This is what 
 the apostle also does. For whilst he inculcates accommodation, 
 he seeks at the same time to make it obvious that the austere 
 practice is founded on an imperfect knowledge. (Rom. xiv. 
 14: "I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing 
 is unclean in itself ; yet to him who esteemeth anything to be 
 unclean, to him it is unclean.") Although, therefore, we ought 
 to guard against offending the weak, yet we ought not to allow 
 ourselves to be placed by the weak under any law of thraldom, 
 and under all circumstances we should maintain the principle 
 of evangelical liberty} Every attempt, therefore, to stamp the 
 merely individual as the universal and generally obligatory 
 should be protested against, and the individual must be kept 
 within its proper limits. But within these its validity must be 
 acknowledged. For even when a clearer perception leads to 
 the conviction that the modes of action from which the austere 
 practice abstains are not in themselves sinful, still this abstinence 
 may be perfectly right for the individual at a particular stage 
 of his development and guidance of life. The disputed modes 
 of action ought therefore to be regarded as such, about which 
 the one dare not constitute himself the judge of the other, 
 and for the sake of which he must not break off brotherly 
 intercourse with him, because, as the apostle says, to his oion 
 Master he standeth or falleth (Rom. xiv. 4). For although 
 there is but one Master, the same for all, yet each one has in 
 him his own master, because the Lord, within the universal 
 law of salvation, guides each one in his own peculiar manner. 
 
 ^ When the Synod at Jerusalem (Acts xv. 20) came to the resolution 
 that the Gentiles should abstain from meat offered to idols, the entire 
 resolution, which does not appear to have been specially adopted except 
 in Palestine, was only a tcmpurury regulation, instituted on the ground 
 of the disputes then existing in the Church, and principally designed 
 to secure the liberty of the Gentiles, by releasing them from the othe? 
 requii'ements of the Jewish ceremonial law.
 
 ETHICAL FORBEARANCE. 421 
 
 § 136. 
 
 Just as it is for the sake of the weak that we must abstain 
 from certain actions (negative accommodation), so, too, we must 
 do some things in order not to offend them (positive accommoda- 
 tion). There are usages and fashions to the observance of which 
 we only find ourselves obhged by the consideration of love to 
 our neighbour. Here also we may go back to Paul, who caused 
 Timothy, who on the mothers side belonged to the Jews, to be cir- 
 cumcised (Acts xvi. 3), in order to promote his usefulness among 
 the Jewish Christians, though he himself could not ascribe to 
 circumcision any permanent obligation, as through the gospel it 
 had lost its significance. Not the less it still had significance 
 for many Jewish Christians, who could not tear themselves 
 loose from the Jewish ceremonies, and thought, moreover, that 
 they ought to observe these in combination with Christianity. 
 Paul became to the Jews a Jew, and accommodated himself to 
 their sentiments by permitting Timotheus to be circumcised, 
 just as he also subjected himself to the Nazarite vow, and sacri- 
 ficed in the temple at Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 26), in order to 
 show that he reverenced the old customs of Israel descended 
 from the fathers. But, at the same time, he made it evident 
 that he did not ascribe to circumcision any universal necessity, 
 or made it into a law for all. He maintained the liberty of the 
 Gentiles in this respect; and when it was wished to force Titus, 
 who was a Gentile Christian, to be circumcised (Gal. ii. 3), and 
 to maintain circumcision as an essential of salvation, he opposed 
 it with all his energy, insisting, as he also does throughout his 
 whole teaching, that in Christ neither circumcision availeth 
 anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love 
 (Gal. V. 6). It is this mode of acting of the apostle which 
 formed the model after which the Formula Concordice was con- 
 structed concerning the Leipzig interim, in which Melancthon, 
 with other Protestant theologians, made the concession to the 
 Roman Catholics, that several Catholic ceremonies, which had 
 been laid aside in the evangelical worship, might be again intro- 
 duced as Adiaphora, because by this accommodation an approach 
 was hoped for between the Eoman Catholics and the Protestants. 
 The Formula Concordice concedes, that in such things as are 
 neither commanded nor forbidden in God's word, Christian
 
 422 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 liberty may be allowed, and that consideration should be shown 
 towards the weak, and care taken to avoid giving them offence ; 
 but that, on the other side, nothing whatever must be yielded, 
 when desired by the adversaries of the gospel, and when a clear 
 and distinct profession is required.^ For that which in itself 
 is innocent, and which under other circumstances might be con- 
 ceded, assumes then the significance of a question of principle, 
 in which one dare not yield. And evidently there is a question 
 of principle involved, when the Catholics wished to induce the 
 Reformers to resume Catholic ceremonies (lohich had been 
 already laid aside), and to inveigle them into accepting these as 
 a law. Here the Lutheran Church acted after the example of 
 Paul, who did not suffer that Titus should be circumcised. We 
 are here brought back to the rule mentioned above, that though 
 as far as possible we ought to accommodate ourselves to the 
 weak, still we are not to subject ourselves to any law^ of thraldom 
 on account of the domineering or self-conceited spirit of such, 
 whatever direction it may take. Thus, when in our own times 
 there are those within tlie Reformed Church who, in their desire 
 of rule, demand that the National Church should accommo- 
 date itself to their individual consciences, and abolish the regu- 
 lations which are necessary to its subsistence, and thus sap its 
 foundation, such demands should be strenuously opposed. That 
 this consideration applies also to the sphere of politics, "will pre- 
 sumably be apparent. Concessions ought only to be made under 
 presupposition of tlie impossibility of an attack on principles. 
 Again and again a solemn appeal is necessary to resist false 
 compromises, that false juste-milieu, which really means midway 
 between right and torong, which in our day is striven after by 
 so many, even by men in power, who wish to come to terms 
 with both parties, and who thereby contribute to undermine all 
 authority and stedfastness, not merely in institutions, but also 
 in modes of thought and dispositions of mind. 
 
 False accommodation, in its greatest extreme, appears in 
 Jesuitism. A classic example of this may be found in its 
 missions to China and India, where, in order to procure entrance 
 
 ^Formula concordix, de cxrimoniis ecclesiasticis : " Credimus, docemus 
 et confitemur, quod temporibus persccutionum, quandoperspicuaetconstans 
 confessio a nobis exigitur, liostibus Evaugelii in rebus adiaphoris uon sit 
 cedendum."
 
 DUTY AND WORKS OF SUPEREROGATION. 423 
 
 ■for the only saving religion, it so modified Christianity accord- 
 ing to the moral and religious ideas of heathenism, that Chris- 
 tianity itself became irrecognisable, and there appeared a 
 monstrous blending of Christian and pagan elements. 
 
 DUTY AND SUPEREROGATORY PERFECTION. EVANGELICAL 
 DELIBERATION AND BEHEST. 
 
 §137. 
 
 Nomism, which only outwardly apprehends duty as a set 
 quantity of commands and prohibitions, and has thereby brought 
 forth the idea of the indifferent and the permissible in the above- 
 described untrue sense, has also produced another conception 
 closely allied to it, which has occasioned much perplexity in the 
 sphere of morality — the conception of modes of action by Avhich 
 more is accomplished than duty demands, and an extraordinary 
 point of perfection is attained. But as little as we can admit 
 the validity of a morally indifferent action, can we sanction the 
 possibility of a moral '' more than sufficient ;" and not merely 
 in art, but also in morality, we must maintain that the super- 
 fluous does injury {superjlua nocent\ because everything that is 
 more than enough in one direction implies too little in another. 
 Both in art and in morality, neither more nor less is required 
 than the ideal, which contains completely the necessity of the 
 law. In order to establish the idea of works of moral super- 
 erogation {opera supererogatoria), which imply a surplus of 
 virtue and perfection, appeal has been made to the distinction 
 between the commands of the gospel and its exhortations {co7i- 
 silia et prcecepta). A command is that to which all are bound: 
 an exhortation, on the other hand, is an advice to those who 
 aspire after a higher perfection than that to which they are 
 pledged. Such counsel, it is imagined, may be found in the 
 Lord's words to the rich young man (Matt. xix. 21), and in the 
 advice of Paul to the Christians, after his own example to 
 remain in the state of celibacy (1 Cor. vii.). But this distinc- 
 tion is in this sense a theological device, a misrepresentation of 
 God's law. If duty is the entire life of liberty, embracing unity 
 of the universal and the individual, then no one can do more
 
 424 THE LAW. 
 
 tlian fulfil Ills duty, or, what is the same thing, no one can do 
 more than fulfil his God-given destiny. Gospel exhortations 
 are therefore nothing else than gospel precepts for single indivi- 
 duals, and under special circumstances, and therefore cannot be 
 expressed in the form of universal and unconditional commands, 
 although they are not less binding on the individual concerned 
 than are the universal precepts which apply to all. This is 
 strikingly true in the case of the Lord's recommendation to the 
 rich young man, who comprehended duty as a determinate 
 number of commandments, which he had kept from his youth 
 up. " Wilt thou be perfect?" says the Lord; " then sell all that 
 thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
 heaven ; and come and follow me." The universal require- 
 ment, which the Lord makes of all, is certainly that they should 
 not set their heart upon earthly things, and that when the cir- 
 cumstances of the times make a choice necessary between giving 
 up Christ or giving up their possessions, that they should be 
 prepared for this last. But ivhether this case really finds place 
 for the individual, can only be decided by individual circum- 
 stances. That it was so in the instance of the rich young man, 
 there is no doubt, since the Lord Himself desired him to part 
 with his possessions that he might be able without obstacle 
 to follow Him, as the Lord knew that the times of perse- 
 cution were at hand, in which it would be required of His 
 disciples to endure the loss of their earthly possessions, and 
 knew at the same time that this youth could only by enduring 
 this trial become fit for the kingdom of God. The word of 
 the Lord is not therefore a mere counsel, but a command ad- 
 dressed to the individual. The Lord does not express by any 
 means that the youth, by obeying His call, will be able to attain 
 another perfection than that to which he is bound. On the 
 other hand, it must be said that the young man, by not respond- 
 ing to the call which he received, fell under the doom of law 
 and conscience ; whilst, if he had responded to it, he would still 
 have been obliged to say, *'We are unprofitable servants, we 
 have done that which it was our duty to do" (Luke xvii. 10). 
 Under the same point of view we must regard the words of 
 Paul (1 Cor. vii. 7) regarding the unmarried condition. It has 
 the form of an advice ; for as he addresses all, the individual 
 formula cannot be adopted. But he who, on the ground of the
 
 DUTY AND THE PRESENT MOMENT. 425 
 
 circumstances of the time and of individuality, remains un- 
 married, only fulfils his individual duty, and has therefore no 
 higher perfection than he who with a good conscience lives in 
 the married state. The principal thing is, that every one must 
 be what God designed him to be. This superfluous virtue is of 
 the Evil One. What a Paul, an Augustine, a Luther, what a 
 Copernicus, a Kepler, and a Newton, have done for the human 
 race, undoubtedly cannot be the duty of all. Yet each of these, 
 in the actual good he has accomplished, has only done his 
 duty. Examples of works of supererogation are found in 
 rich abundance in the Eomau Catholic Church, especially 
 throughout the whole of monastic life, with its ascetic self- 
 inflicted tortures. The truth in these efforts is an enthusiastic 
 aspiration after the ideal, a struggle to get away from the 
 external relation of the law ; and herein lies in many cases an 
 element of pathos inspiring reverence, even though associated 
 with moral error. 
 
 DUTY AND THE PEESENT MOMENT. THE HARMONIZING OF 
 DUTIES AND MORAL INFLUENCE ON THE AGE. COLLI- 
 SION ANB CASUISTRY. 
 
 § 138. 
 
 As man's life of liberty is a life in time, the fulfilment of the 
 law, in so far as this can be accomplished, can only be realized 
 through the successive progressive series of human actions. 
 The one duty appears in a multitude of duties; and of these 
 many duties, which all have their demands on us, there is but 
 a single one that can be fulfilled in the passing moment. 
 Which single one of these many duties I shall at the present 
 moment fulfil, rests on the coincidence of the external require- 
 ment and the inward prompting, — a coincidence the real exist- 
 ence of which in many cases can only be known to the actor 
 himself. But as the moral life must be a unity, a connected 
 whole, the normal relation of liberty to the law appears in this, 
 that life is to be so planned that there may be time for the 
 fulfilment of its various duties ; and everything must get its time, 
 and be done at the right time. The normal relation between
 
 ^'^'o THE LAW. 
 
 liberty and law shows itself, therefore, in the harmonizing of 
 duties ; that the different duties are brought into the proper re- 
 lation of superiority and subordination to each other (one thing 
 must be done, and another not neglected) ; that our actions in the 
 different circles of moral life may obtain their proper position for 
 the unity of our individual life-tasks; that, in virtue of this unity, 
 the just proportion may be maintained between the principal 
 Moments of life, the practical and the contemplative, solitude 
 and social life, labour and rest, etc. But the harmonizing of 
 duties is inseparable from the moral employment of time, which 
 is also expressed in the universal requirement, that in order to 
 fulfil our duty we must use and improve our time. To employ 
 time morally (ethisere) is to transform the natural, in itself 
 indifferent time, into time determined and filled up by the mind. 
 Hence it belongs also to the right division of time among the 
 various duties of life, that there be produced a scheme of life, 
 nay, a daily scheme, which excludes the many unfilled pauses, 
 in which there is either complaint over the emptiness of time, 
 or iu which it is sought to be got rid of in senseless distractions. 
 An external division of time and arrangement of life, however, 
 according to the sun or the clock, which is merely external and 
 nomistic, is only of subordinate importance, — is only, even if in 
 many cases important, an ascetic means^ just as also no external 
 system can be invariably executed on account of the disturb- 
 ances which tim.e, that ceaselessly forth-streaming series of 
 changes and shifting phenomena, brings with it. To use time 
 morally will therefore mean, under all the changes of time, to 
 hold fast our individual life-task, and to use the present moment 
 in the service of the spirit ; to fight and overcome the obstacles 
 and restraints which the stream of time incessantly brings with 
 it, whilst it dashes its billows upon us ; and to produce a current 
 in the opposite direction, — namely, the moral teleologlcal motion 
 of life, — which issues from freedom's own fountain. When, 
 therefore, men often complain that they have not time to fulfil 
 their duty, that they cannot manage to accomplish that which 
 is incumbent upon them, they are really complaining that they 
 have not strength or will to produce the true time. ^JEstheti- 
 cally we may say that want of time is want of genius ; for genius 
 accomplishes in a very short time, and in right time, what others 
 cannot accomplish in an unlimited time. But ethically expressed,
 
 HARMONIZING OF DUTIES AND MORAL EMPLOYMENT OF TDIE. 427 
 
 it is this : want of time is want of moral energy and wisdom. 
 There exists, therefore, an inward and necessary connection 
 between the relation of liberty to time, and the relation of liberty 
 to the laio, — a point to which F. Baader has specially directed 
 attention.^ Where the law is only a demand, a mere impera- 
 tive for freedom, which this cannot fulfil, there will not merely 
 the law be felt by men to be an oppression, but time also will 
 have the same effect. For whilst freedom escapes the law of 
 the spirit, it reverts to the law of nature, and along with this 
 to the dominion of indifferent fleeting time, with all its same- 
 ness and restlessness, its tautology and wearisomeness, which is 
 unhajjpiness to the mind, and all the more deeply the more con- 
 sciousness it possesses of its spirituality. For in this transient 
 insipid time, the pressure of which the beast does not feel, the 
 mind finds itself thrust out into misery, as in a foreign element, 
 as a fish on the dry land. Where, on the other hand, the rela- 
 tion of liberty to the law is the normal, where the law is not 
 merely an imperative, but one with love as the fulfilment of the 
 law, where duty is fulfilled with facility and pleasure, there the 
 pressure of time is not felt. Time, indeed, has not disappeared ; 
 but its emptiness, its monotony, uneasiness, and excitement are 
 annihilated, because the mind has become master of time, and 
 has changed it to the form of the eternal. Human existence, 
 then, becomes not -without time, hut freed f7'om time. The con- 
 nection between the relation of liberty to time, and the relation 
 of liberty to the law, shows itself more plainly in the circum- 
 stance, that only where the relation to the law is normal does 
 there appear also the normal relation of freedom to the three 
 dimensions of time — present, past, and future. We will then 
 in the true sense live in the present moment, in the fulfilment 
 of the ethical requirements of the present, whether in the direc- 
 tion of production, or in that of reception and appropriation. 
 In contrast to this there recurs again and again the phenomenon 
 of men living principally either in the past or in the future, in 
 recollection or in hope. They imagine that it would fare better 
 with them if they could find themselves existing at another 
 period of time ; and in the beautifying light of fancy, they look 
 back either to their own past life, or to one of the vanished 
 
 1 Stir la notion du temps ; Vierzig Sdtze aus einer rellgiusen Erotik ; 
 Grundzuge der Socktdtsphilosophie.
 
 428 THE LAW. 
 
 periods of history in which they would have wished to live, in 
 order to have been able to accomplish their destiny ; or they 
 look forth into the time coming, when they hope that it will be 
 better with them, without considering that only by taking the 
 present moment in the service of eternity can this better future 
 be prepared for the inward man. All men at bottom seek the 
 present time ; that is to say, time filled with thought, in which 
 existence is bright and easy, and really free ; or, in other words, 
 all men at bottom seek the perfect life, released from all restric- 
 tions. But the perfect life is only in love as the fulfilling of 
 the law, which certainly cannot be at once mature in this state 
 of being, but must grow and be perfected through the continued 
 conquest of this passing time. The normal life of freedom may 
 therefore be depicted as a development of love, in which eternity 
 in increasing fulness is united to the present moment, as the 
 living productive centre between remembrance and hope, as a 
 progressive fulfihnent of duty, in which time past is preserved 
 as a problem solved, which is a good foundation for time coming, 
 and where the present moment is imbued with the advantages 
 of the future. It may be described as a process of constant 
 renewal of youth, b}- which the power of time in rendering aged 
 and effete, and which makes everything transitory, and will so 
 serve us too, is continually overcome by the present now, in 
 which love with increasing earnestness grasps the eternal, and 
 stretches forth to the goal. The child in its mother's womb, 
 says Meister Eckart, is old enough to die, but I shall grieve 
 if to-morrow I have not become younger (more free from the 
 world, free from time, more spiritually-minded). The more a 
 man, on the other hand, has permitted himself to be overcome 
 by the world, the more he has neglected to combat obstacles, 
 and to make use of the means and possibilities for his progress 
 which grace offers to him : the older he grows, the more he is 
 constrained to drag his antecedents about with him as an un- 
 satisfied demand, as an old debt, as the unused, unsolved, and 
 undigested time, which presses him as a heavy burden, and 
 which with years becomes more oppressive. For the series of 
 unconquered diflBculties generate new and more oppressive diffi- 
 culties, and by the neglect of the offered aids he becomes more 
 and more bound by the time gone by, and more and more unfit 
 to grasp the new means of help which grace holds out to him.
 
 COLLISION AND CASUISTKY. 429 
 
 At last he is obliged to let go his hold of hope, unless a crisis 
 occurs (conversion and repentance), by which he may be released 
 from his antecedents and make a beginning of a new life, and 
 thus attain to love and find the present time. Therefore it is 
 said in the Hirten des Hernias {HermcD Pastor)^ " They who 
 repent become younger ;" that is to say, become freed from the 
 burden of their sin, which makes them old, and gives them an 
 unpleasing appearance. In the perfect sense of the term, Christ 
 is the only one who here on earth ever lived in the real time, in 
 the youth of eternity, because in the perfect sense He is the 
 f ulfiller of the law, the only one for -whom time has never been 
 too short or too long, because His own free-will was the absolute 
 measure of time, — because He Himself, creating anew, appointed 
 and filled up the time. 
 
 What is here said of the ethical relation to time has also its 
 application to society. Most revolutions have been occasioned 
 by the circumstance that unsolved and neglected problems, that 
 unsatisfied demands from the time past, press on society, vrhose 
 progress is thereby impeded and brought to a stand-still. Re- 
 volution is, then, the attempt to get air, to escape from the close 
 atmosphere of former times, in which everything is antiquated, 
 to shape out a present time, make a fresh beginning, and intro- 
 duce an historic process of renewing youth. All, however, 
 depends on the manner and the spirit in which this attempt is 
 carried through. For it is not accomplished when, as in the 
 French Revolution, men decree a new mode of calculating time, 
 a new calendar, declare that the whole time past, and along 
 with it Christianity, is to be regarded as dead and powerless, 
 and thus rush into the future. Experience teaches that, by this 
 mode of progress, a new and interminable debt is contracted ; 
 and the deeper we come into this false relation to time, we but 
 accumulate a fresh series of neglects and transgressions, for 
 which atonement must be made. 
 
 § 139. 
 
 As the moral development of the world is not normal, but is 
 only to be rendered so by redemption, it cannot be otherwise 
 than that collisions should occur among the Moments of moral 
 life. Not merely in society may ideas come in collision with 
 ideas, interests with interests, but also in the case of individuals
 
 430 THE LAW. 
 
 moral collisions miiy arise. Love may thus in the same indivi- 
 dual come into collision with love — love for Fatherland, for 
 instance, with family affection — and cause suffering to the indi- 
 vidual. There arises, then, the question, whether there may be 
 also collision between duties ; for instance, a concurrence of 
 different duties, demanding fulfilment at the same time, whilst 
 the individual, by fulfilling the one, unavoidably is brought to 
 transgress or to neglect the other, where the fulfilment of duty 
 is thus inseparable from a violation of duty. The greater num- 
 ber of modern writers on ethics deny the possibility of such a 
 collision, and maintain that what is called the collision of duty 
 is only a collision between duty and inclination, or a colHsion 
 between moral interests, but not between duties ; just as they 
 also maintain that during every moment in question there is 
 only one thing which ought to be done, and that what is required 
 is to determine what that one is, whilst all the rest which are 
 represented as duties must be acknowledged to have no title to 
 the moment. We certainly concede that duties cannot come 
 into collision when the matter is considered in a purely objective 
 and ideal light. For the demands of the Good on our will, 
 which in the highest sense are the demands of God's will, cannot 
 possibly be in opposition, but must be in the most perfect har- 
 mony with one another. In a normal development the collision 
 of duty will never occur. But as the development is not norma], 
 and time has come into disorder, we must maintain the possibility 
 of collision of duty, certainly not in and for itself, but for the 
 subject involved in the present life. On the standpoint of 
 paganism the most collisions of duty occur, because here sin has 
 darkened even the moral conceptions. Greek tragedy turns in 
 a great measure on the collision of duties. Orestes has the 
 sacred duty to avenge his murdered father. But in order to 
 accomplisli this imperative duty, he must slay his mother, who 
 is the murderess of his father. In this collision of duties he is 
 finally overwhelmed. Such collisions could not occur in the 
 Christian world, because the moral conceptions are different. 
 Yet the collision of duty has not entirely vanished, and will not 
 vanish so long as salvation has not completely penetrated the 
 development of freedom. In the ordinary course of life, the 
 collision of duties has most frequently its cause in a previous 
 neglect, or because life has not been teleologically planned. He 
 
 '
 
 COLLISION AND CASUISTRY. 431 
 
 who has not planned his life, and turned his time to moral pur- 
 pose, may experience the difficulty of two official duties clashing, 
 because they both require to be fulfilled at the same moment 
 The collision might have been avoided, if at some earlier- point 
 of time some neglect or improper procrastination had not found 
 place. But now, on the ground of circumstances, the unsatisfied 
 demand of duty from time past clashes with the present demand 
 of the moment. The person concerned is not assisted by the 
 general rule, that the higher duty must be preferred to the 
 lower ; for both may be alike important, and equally required by 
 the present situation. The collision becomes then the doom of 
 the individual, the punishment of his faulty relation to the law 
 in time bygone. Or the individual may have made an indis- 
 creet promise. If this is afterwards perceived by himself to be 
 sinful, it ought certainly not to be fulfilled. But, on the other 
 side, am I pledged to keep my word, and may by breaking it 
 come to injure others. Thus, if I fulfil the rash and sinful 
 promise, I commit a sin ; if I do not fulfil it, I sin also. Here 
 too collision is the doom of the individual, and sin becomes the 
 punishment of sin. But also where no individual sin in time 
 past produces entanglement in the present, the moment m.ay 
 bring with it a twofold character in the matter in question, 
 which the personality is not able to solve, because it can only 
 accomplish the one part of the matter at the expense of the 
 other ; as when, in order to fulfil the duty of love towards a 
 sick person, one must utter a falsehood, because one has neither 
 wisdom nor love sufficient to tell the truth in such a manner 
 that the sick person will be able to bear it. Here the collision 
 becomes a test of the stage of moral development of personality 
 and energy, which the individual has attained. The different 
 rules which are set forth for the solution of collision may serve 
 to exercise the moral reflection, but will show themselves in 
 determinate instances as very unpractical, since every instance 
 has its own dialectic. Thus it is set forth as a rule, that the 
 claims of justice must be preferred to those of affection. One 
 should pay his debts in the first place, and from what remains 
 to him of his means show kindness to the necessitous bv the 
 relief of their wants. The opposite course would be after tlie 
 example of Crispin (the holy Crispinus, who stole leather to 
 make shoes for the poor). But what shall be said, then, to this
 
 432 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 example from Ferguson :^ " A boy lay almost naked on the 
 grave of his father, whom he had recently lost. Here he was 
 seen by a man who was on his way to his creditor to pay, as he 
 had promised, the debt he owed. The man lifted the boy from 
 the ground, and expended for his benefit the money which his 
 creditor was expecting ; and thus the last-named was disap- 
 pointed. Who would disapprove of this act of humanity, as 
 if it had been forbidden by a more stringent obligation ? " But 
 then the rule that the rights of justice must be preferred to 
 those of affection does not hold good unconditionally. Even as 
 regards the case in question, though we cannot but sympathize 
 with the man's mode of action, we must yet acknowledge that 
 the difficulty is not solved ; for the claims of justice have unques- 
 tionably been violated, and the man's creditor disappointed. 
 That there thus is introduced into this act of benevolence an 
 element of Antinomianism, cannot be denied. And the com- 
 passionate Samaritan in the Gospel, who was not in debtj but 
 exposed himself to the risk of his life in order to save the 
 unhappy man who had fallen among thieves, who perhaps were 
 still in the neighbourhood, was far nearer perfection. The only 
 certain means of avoiding the real collision of duty is normal 
 development, or, as of ourselves we have no normal develop- 
 ment, that which is determined by redemption. The more a 
 man brings his life under the regulation of redemption, and 
 thereby attains true liberty, the more his life is planned teleo- 
 logically, and the less he is encumbered and bound by the debts 
 of time past : he is all the stronger to govern circumstances, 
 instead of being governed by them; every moment he will be 
 growing in grace, and he will be all the less exposed to real colli- 
 sion of duty. To Christ there existed nothing answering to this 
 collision of duties, no collision in that which He oiirjht to do or 
 suffer, though His adversaries endeavoured to lead Him into it. 
 
 §140. 
 
 In the collision of duties (both actual and apparent), and in 
 the question of limitation concerning the permissible and the 
 un permissible, casuistry makes its appearance, as a sifting 
 examination and decision of difficult and intricate cases of 
 conscience (casus conscientiw)^ — a dialectic between the general 
 ^ Jacobi's A^orks, iii. ; in the ^lissive to Fichte.
 
 COLLISION AND CASUISTRY. 433 
 
 duty and the individual case in question. In the Roman 
 Catholic Church this dialectic has sent forth many offshoots ; 
 and as this Church lays more stress on outv/ard actions 
 than on dispositions of mind, it has assumed a character 
 rather juridical than moral. In the Lutheran Church, too, it 
 has been cultivated, and appeal's, for instance, in a remarkable 
 manner in the theological opinions of the seventeenth century, 
 but specially in Spener's Theologische Bedenhen ; and on ac- 
 count of the individual element in duty, life constantly brings 
 this dialectic along with it. But in so far as casuistry seeks to 
 be a discipline, which is to give rules, according to which we 
 shall be able to frame our conduct in all future cases of diffi- 
 culty, it is a failure, since the casuistic case, just on account of 
 the individual element, never recurs, but is new each time. In 
 real life, cases of casuistry must be solved either by direct 
 genial tact, that is, by the happy inspiration of the moment, or 
 by sustained reflection. Resolute, impulsive natures are speci- 
 ally fitted for the first mode of decision, cautious and thought- 
 ful natures for the second. But where the decision is normal, 
 each of them must have the testimony of conscience to the 
 obligation and necessity of the action (I cannot do otherwise). 
 False decision will show itself in impulsive natures in this 
 manner, that they confound the momentary disposition of 
 temperam.ent with the disposition of their genius, and act with 
 rashness, which afterwards occasions regret. With cautious 
 natures, on the other hand, false decision will show itself in 
 this, that they act in doubt and scrupulosity, which is not 
 consistent with a good conscience ; for all that is not of faith 
 is sin — all that does not spring from inward conviction of 
 the soul, and bearing its sanction. A middle way between 
 these extremes — though not the royal midway — is to act 
 according to Probabilism, and to content oneself with a 
 relatively correct decision, and a relative certainty of having 
 hit the mark. Probabilism, which we have before combated, 
 here receives a relative validity as a help in need. The ele- 
 ment to be rejected in Jesuitic Probabilism is, namely, that it 
 makes the highest moral truths, about which absolute certainty 
 must be demanded, doubtful and fluctuatimr, makes the hin;hest 
 and holiest the subject of a probabilism which incessantly 
 questions with flesji and blood. But even when we acknowledge 
 
 2E
 
 434 THE LAW. 
 
 the immoveable basis of truth, cases may occur where we must 
 be content with an approximate decision, with the decision 
 which appears the most admissible, which has the strongest 
 grounds to be received, although the evidence cannot be con- 
 sidered as absolute and conclusive, and where we must rest 
 satisfied with having conscientiously sought the truth, and acted 
 according to our " best persuasions." But the best persuasion, 
 since it suggests a next best, is not absolute persuasion ; pro- 
 babilism and relative certainty evince relativity in our own 
 moral standpoint. In Christ no probabilism whatever can be 
 imagined. And in the same measure as the personality grows 
 in wisdom and discretion, in love and courage, probabilism will 
 also disappear, and action will take place from perfect convic- 
 tion. Here it again appears that as we are, so we act ; although 
 it may be said again, that by acting we may become better. 
 
 CAN THE REGENERATE FULFIL THE LAW ? MERIT AND 
 
 REWARD. 
 
 §141. 
 
 As only love to God in perfect union with obedience can 
 fulfil the law, it is beyond all doubt that the unregenerate 
 cannot fulfil it. On the other hand, it is disputed in the 
 Christian Church whether or not the regenerate can do this, 
 or whether there may not be found among their number such 
 as are able to fulfil the law's demands. The Roman Catholic 
 Church affirms this, and teaches expressly that it is possible in 
 this life perfectly to satisfy the law {jjlene satisfacere'), making 
 however the remarkable restriction, " according to the condition 
 of this present life " [pro Jmjus vitce statu)^ and condemns those 
 who teach the opposite.^ The Reformed Church, on the other 
 hand, maintains that no one is able to do this,^ and that into 
 
 ^ Concil. Trident. Sessio vi. cap. 16. See canon xviii. : Si quis dixerit, 
 dei prsecepta homini justificato et sub gratia constitute esse ad observan- 
 dum impossibilia, anathema sit. 
 
 - Ap. C. De dilectione et impletione legis, 24 : In liac vita non possumus 
 legi satisfacere, quia natura carualis nou desiuit males affectus parere, etsi 
 liis resistit spiritus in nobis.
 
 CAN THE EEGENEEATE FULFIL THE LAW ? 435 
 
 the good deeds of the regenerate there always enters an element 
 of sin, which Luther expresses in a rather paradoxical manner 
 thus, that in every good deed the righteous man sins mor- 
 taliter, or at least venialiter; but which Schleiermacher expresses 
 adequately when he says, that in our good deeds there is 
 always something which needs forgiveness. Whilst we con- 
 tinue to teach the same, we refer to God's word and to 
 experience. For our Lord's Prayer is given to all, and for 
 every stage of development of the Christian life ; and Scripture 
 acknowledges no degree of perfection in the present life, in 
 which the petition : Forgive us our trespasses ! is no longer 
 necessary. Experience shows us likewise, that the Roman 
 Catholic Church only attains the imagined advantage of having 
 saints who have perfectly fulfilled the law, partly by lowering 
 the requirements of the law and degrading the ideal, partly by 
 weakening the conception of sin and teaching an innocent con- 
 cupiscence, an innocent covetousness, which with the saints has 
 its seat in the flesh, without the will being in the least degree 
 polluted by it. As we account it to the honour of the Reformed 
 Church that it has maintained the ideal requirements of the 
 law in their full rigour, we must also affirm with our Church 
 that there is no such thing as innocent covetousness, because 
 the will — even if the evil lusts arise spontaneously from the 
 source of nature — still becomes more or less participant in 
 them. Christ alone could be tempted without sin, because the 
 organs and natural basis of His will were absolutely pure ; but 
 temptation without sin cannot be imagined, where the natural 
 basis and organs of the will are polluted, and evil thoughts 
 from within arise as lusts. We teach, therefore, that the un- 
 solved Antinomianism, the war between the twofold law, the 
 law of sin in the members and the law of the mind, which 
 Paul describes in Rom. vii., continues throughout life for the 
 regenerate also ; which does not preclude, but presupposes, 
 that the regenerate in the midst of his strife has yet in his 
 inmost being peace in the Lord, and that the new man, in spite 
 of partial overthrow and retrogression, yet wins a progressive 
 victory. The impossibility of a perfect holiness in this life 
 rests on the union of soul and body encumbered with the 
 abnormality of man's present organism, originating in the old 
 nature and entangled in the sinfulness of the world. Doubtless,
 
 436 THE LAW. 
 
 during the progress of sanctification, sin is more and more 
 thrust out from tlie inward man to the outer, from the centre 
 to the surface, from the most holy place to the outer court of 
 the temple, to the bodily precincts and the lower regions of the 
 soul, from the heart is driven out into the extremities. Doubt- 
 less, in the human organization of soul and body, where evil 
 dispositions move, a new principle enters, which more and more 
 takes possession of the man. But not merely the bodily organs 
 of the will, but also the mental organs, thought, fancy, feeling, 
 which form as it were an inward body for the will, are, accord- 
 ing to their nature, in many ways in the power of sin. And 
 although the will takes up the position of suffering and struggle 
 against the sin in the members, yet it combats not merely with 
 a pure non-Ego, but also with itself, and the Ego sighs not 
 merely as burdened, but must also accuse itself, because it has 
 a disposition to take part with the adversary, and it feels its 
 need of renewal in the forgiveness of sins and peace in Christ. 
 When a wise man said, " My will is virtuous, but its organ is 
 in the power of the devil," this virtue must have been imper- 
 fect, because there exists a constant inward intercourse between 
 the will and its organs, and the will cannot escape complicity 
 with the sin in the members. In order that holiness may be 
 perfect, it is requisite that the will should receive a new organ- 
 ism^ the transition to which is through death, a transition which 
 is only perfected by the resurrection of the body. (See Dog- 
 matic Eschatologt/.) 
 
 The assertion, that the regenerate in this present life can 
 perfectly fulfil the law, is also made by several Protestant 
 sects, who appeal to 1 John iii. 9, " Whoso is born of God, 
 sinneth not ; " by which they overlook the words of the same 
 apostle, " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
 and there is no truth in us," 1 John i. 8 (a fraction of the 
 Methodists, Erik-Jansonians, and others). 
 
 § 142. 
 
 As in all our good deeds there is still something which 
 requires forgiveness, and as the actual good itself is a work of 
 divine grace, there cannot be in Christianity any mention of 
 merit and reward, if by merit is understood a performance of 
 duty, in consequence of which we have a claim to reward,
 
 MERIT AND REWARD. 437 
 
 a right to some benefit which must be paid to us for our 
 work. Such a relation to the law of liberty may have validity 
 in the sphere of human society, but is excluded from the 
 relation to God. One may have merit in the State, in the 
 Church, in the arts and sciences, etc., and these merits may find 
 their acknowledgment in human society ; but in relation to the 
 holy God, sinful man is Avithout all merit and dignity. Yet 
 there may be mention of deeds which, in spite of the infirmity 
 cleaving to them, are wrought in God, and which are well- 
 pleasing to God, since the person who performs them is well- 
 pleasing to Him for the sake of Christ, whose progressive work 
 in man the Father recognises ; and there may be mention of a, 
 reward of grace^ since grace in its own kingdom has instituted 
 a just relation between deeds and their consequences, — has 
 established the law, that what a man sows, that shall he also 
 reap ; whilst man, though referred to his own efforts and 
 exertions, must admit that the sowing of the seed, its growth 
 and harvesting, is nothing without the divine grace. The 
 difference in the reward is described in Scripture (2 Cor. ix. 6) 
 thus, that he that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly, and 
 he that soweth bountifully shall reap bountifully. The 
 difference in reward is also set forth in the parable of the 
 talents confided to the various servants (Luke xix. 12-28), 
 since he who, with the pound entrusted to him, had gained ten 
 talents, is set over ten cities ; he who has gained five talents 
 over five cities, — thus each one in proportion to that which he 
 has received and employed. The unity in reward, on the other 
 hand, is set forth in the parable of the labourers in the vine- 
 yard (Matt. XX. 1-16) ; since all the labourers, those who began 
 at the third hour, the seventh, ninth, and eleventh, get the 
 same reward, the one penny, for which the Lord had agreed 
 with them. The apparent contradiction between these parables 
 is removed by this consideration, that the parable of the 
 labourers in the vineyard refers to the general reward which 
 is common to all faithful labours, the one penny, for which the 
 Master agreed with them ; since He agreed with us that we 
 should allow ourselves to be redeemed by grace, without any 
 merit and desert on our side, and for our work in His vine- 
 yard ask no other reward than Himself the fellowship of His 
 love. The parable of the confided talents, on the other hand,
 
 438 THE LAW. 
 
 treats of the individualized reward in relation to the different 
 stages in the work of sanctification. The reward is thus both 
 unproportioned and proportionate. It is unproportioned when 
 the question is concerning redemption and salvation, which are 
 given to sinners of pure grace, an invahiable gift, which is quite 
 incommensurable with the deservings of sinful man. It is 
 proportionate, in so far as within the kingdom of grace is 
 arranged a variety of gifts (Charisms), the exercise of which 
 brings with it a variety of rewards, whilst all the faithful 
 servants receive essentially the same reward, since they all 
 enter into the joy of their Lord. As in this life there is the 
 change of seed and harvest, there is also the reward already 
 in this life as peace and joy with our God and Saviour, as 
 the fruit, which is produced by faithful labour, whether it 
 be thirty, seventy, or one hundred fold. But the perfect re- 
 ward is given yonder in the perfection of God's kingdom, and 
 all faithful labourers work in hope of the harvest of eternity. 
 
 l-HE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LAW TO THE REGENEKATE. THE 
 TRIPLE USE OF THE LAW. THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 
 IN THE GOSPEL, AND THE BINDING AUTHORITY. 
 
 §14 
 
 o. 
 
 Nearly akin to the question if the regenerate can fulfil the 
 law, is this, if the regenerate, after all, have anything to do 
 with the law as such ? which has appeared specially in this 
 form, whether the regenerate require the preaching of the law? 
 What has led to this question is the importance which the 
 Evangelical Church ascribes to justifying faith. In justifying 
 faith man has renounced all righteousness and wisdom of his 
 own, and thus has attained true liberty, by which means he is 
 not merely under the law (sub lege), but in the law (in lege) : 
 since the law has become his delight and love, as the fulfilling 
 of the law (the sum of its requirements, and the power for its 
 performance) has begun to well forth in his life as a living 
 fountain. Christ's authority, on which the believer knows him- 
 self to be dependent, has grace and love for its principle, and 
 not merely has its demands and obligations, but also imparts and
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LAW TO THE REGENERATE. 439 
 
 bestows. It has been stated above, that authority is the nearer- 
 perfection, the more we who are bound by it can look up to it 
 in admiration and reverence, in piety and gratitude, in faith 
 and confidence, because it not merely limits and controls our 
 liberty, but also establishes and confirms it. This holds good in 
 an absolute sense in regard to the relation to Him to whom the 
 Father has given all authority in heaven and in earth, and 
 concerning whom it is not merely said that " He spake with 
 authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark i. 22), but also that 
 " they marvelled at the gracious words which proceeded out of 
 His mouth" (Luke iv. 22). Just because Christ's authority is 
 full of grace, is it in the highest sense emancipating. And to 
 this emancipating energy of Christ is due, first of all, that He 
 frees us from the thraldom of the law. When Meister Eckart 
 says, " I pray God that He will make me free from God " (class 
 er mich quitt mache Gottes^, and when this is understood to mean 
 that he prays God to release him from that false relation of 
 dependence on God, from that external relation to law and 
 authority in which God is to him an oppressive burden, this 
 is fulfilled in Christ, and in the fellowship of Christ. 
 
 But it by no means follows from this that this essential unity 
 of law and liberty, of authority and liberty, which by justifi- 
 cation is given to man as the germ of a good life, can be 
 harmoniously carried through in every point of the Christian 
 life, or that Christians during their pilgrimage can arrive at 
 such perfection as to have no more need of the law, which was 
 sanctioned and fulfilled by Christ as such, but in every sense 
 have so outgrown the need of the law that they no longer 
 acknowledge the Good as a command, an imperative to which 
 their will and inclination are opposed, but fulfil it from the 
 impulse of the mind alone. This is the basis of Agricola's 
 obscure Antinomianism, or denial of the Christian's need of the 
 law, which made its appearance at the time of the Reformation, 
 and which was combated by Luther. Agricola does not teach 
 liberty to sin, and his doctrine cannot therefore be classed 
 with the forms of Antinomianism discussed above. But whilst 
 he set out from the proposition that we are saved, not by 
 the law, but by the gospel, which has delivered us from the 
 curse of the law, he maintained that a regenerate Christian has 
 nothing to do with the law, but in the whole conduct of his life
 
 440 THE LAW. 
 
 is determined exclusively by the love of Christ and the influence 
 of Ilis Spirit, both to die to the world, and to walk in the new 
 life, like a star wJiich hy necessity describes its course. He 
 taught that the preaching of repentance to the unconverted 
 ought not to be a preaching of the law, but of the love of 
 Christ, in His sufferings and death for our sins, in order to 
 touch and to turn the heart. And still less should the law be 
 preached to the already converted Christian, in whose ears the 
 glad tidings alone should be sounded. (Moses belongs only to 
 the council chamber.) Not of orders and commands could 
 there here be question, but only of the invitations and influ- 
 ences of grace. Against this false geniality, which overlooks 
 the consideration that the regenerate are still far from the 
 maturity of the perfect man in Christ, and in many respects 
 only beginners in the way of perfection, Luther maintains that 
 the law should be preached both to the unregenerate and the 
 regenerate : to the first, in order that they may be awakened 
 and alarmed ; to the last, that they fall not into a false peace 
 and security. The Lutheran theology maintained sound doc- 
 trine by its representation of the triple use of the law. The 
 use of the law is, namely, in part external, social (usus polilicus 
 s. civilis), to keep order in human society ; in part internal, 
 disciplinary (iisiis elenchticus s. 2^(-^'dagogicics), to awaken the 
 conviction of sin, alarm the conscience, and thus become a 
 schoolmaster to bring men to Christ ; and lastly, instructive 
 (usus didacticus, normativus s. tertius), even for the re<]jenerate,^ 
 Though these last have the law in their hearts, and though, if 
 the new life could perfectly evince its power in them, they would 
 walk in newness of life like the heavenly bodies which describe 
 their course ; yet the old Adam is still in them, and they have 
 not yet attained such maturity in Christ that they can entirely 
 dispense with the warning and discipline of the law. They still 
 require to view themselves in the mirror of the law, and must 
 sometimes constrain themselves to the obedience of Christ : in 
 other M-ords, the union of duty and affection, which is the 
 normal condition in the Christian life, may not be absolutely 
 indissoluble, on account of the sin cleaving to them, which, 
 though broken indeed in the regenerate heart, is not entirely 
 
 ^ Form. cone, de tertio usu legis : Tcrtius usus ad reuatos pertiuet, nou 
 quateuus justi, sed infirmitati adhuc obuoxii suut.
 
 THE THREEFOLD USE OF THE LAW. 441 
 
 rooted out ; and there are times in the life of the re/leemed in 
 which tiie imperative dominion of duty must be maintained, 
 without being one witli the impulse of affection. Thus 
 Lutheran Ethics asserts a rehative standpoint for the law, even 
 within the evangelical standpoint, whilst it unquestionably at 
 the same time is set forth as the duty of the Christian to 
 make this use of the law gradually superfluous, by eliminating 
 from his life those Moments in which the law only represents 
 itself before him as an imperative, without being one with the 
 impulse of affection ; in which he is obliged to constrain him- 
 self to act in accordance with principle, although principle does 
 not accord with inclination. 
 
 When in our days the attempt has been made to thrust out 
 the ten commandments from the Catechism, because the law 
 does not belong to the Christian instruction of youth, and 
 Christians shape their lives after the influences of the Spirit, 
 the same want of knowledge of Christ's authority, not merely 
 in bestowing but in imposing obligation, is shown, and the same 
 want of self-knowledfie as that with which Luther combated. 
 The truth is, that the ten commandments, which Christ has 
 not destroyed, but fulfilled, should be expounded not in the 
 spirit of the Old Testament, but in that of the New — should be 
 expounded in the spirit of Christ, and according to the guid- 
 ance He has given us ; but the untruth is, that the teachers and 
 preachers of the gospel had any right to lay aside the expound- 
 ing and preaching of the law both to the unregenerate and the 
 regenerate, and that the regenerate are so perfect that they do 
 not require the before-mentioned threefold uses of the law, or 
 that the regenerate — for even this purely Antinomian turn may 
 be given to the matter — whilst they renounce perfection in a 
 false geniality of faith, can allow themselves a laisser aller in 
 regard to the demands of the law. The error which seeks to 
 remove the ten commandments from the Catechism, and in its 
 indistinctness is not far from excluding the very idea of duty 
 from Christianity, is often heard in the maxim that the gospel 
 of Christ is not a command, but a gracious invitation. The 
 truth is, that it undoubtedly is a gracious invitation, and not a 
 compulsory order, which by external force is to be executed in 
 making men Christians. But the great untruth is, that the 
 gospel, as an offer and invitation, does not at the same time
 
 442 THE LAW. 
 
 contain a command of duty to the conscience, that Christ is 
 only an authority who bestows, and does not at the same time 
 bind and obhge, who lays on men a responsibihty for the 
 position they receive in the gospel, lays on men the duty of 
 believing, since it is said, Thou shalt believe ; as it is said, Thou 
 shalt love — slialt give to God that which is God's — give God 
 the honour, since thou believest on Him wliom He has sent : 
 it is His right that thou shouldest believe on Him, it is thy duty 
 to allow thyself to be saved ; and He Himself will aid us to 
 believe, if we are of the truth. Kepent ye, and believe the 
 gospel ! (Mark i. 15.) Do we hear in this only inviting grace, 
 and not at the same time binding authority? Was it not a 
 duty to believe, and did faith rest only on the impulse of the 
 Spirit and of love, how then can the Lord say that it is sin not 
 to believe on Him ? (John xvi. 9.) How can He then say, He 
 that believeth not is condemned ? How can He then, at His 
 second coming, judge the world according to the word which He 
 has spoken? The gracious invitation thus contains a command 
 or a requirement of duty ; and if there are those who will ask 
 us whether men should be bound to a blind belief in authority, 
 we reply by asking another question. If it is a blind belief which 
 is required, when the Lord says, " Seek, and ye shall find ; ask, 
 and ye shall receive ; " or when Pie says, " If any man will do 
 His will that sent me, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it 
 be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John vii. 17) ; or 
 when the apostle says, " By manifestation of the truth, com- 
 mending ourselves to every man's conscience" (2 Cor. iv. 2). 
 In this sense Christ's authority addresses itself to individuals 
 and to nations, both with His gracious invitation and His obliga- 
 tory demand. And the demand of duty continues to extend 
 itself over the whole life, in the same measure as there becomes 
 question of the free appropriation of grace. 
 
 god's educating grace in CHRIST. CHRIST AND THE 
 
 NATIONS. 
 
 § 144. 
 
 It has been asked if Christ is a lawgiver. It may in the 
 same manner be inquired if He is an educator, if the economy
 
 GOD'S EDUCATING GRACE IN CHRIST. 443 
 
 of salvation instituted by Him has at the same time apcedagogic 
 significance? And the answer is as before. He is not a 
 teacher, a censor, hke Moses ; He has not come to institute a new 
 theocratic dispensation, with new coercive and ceremonial laws, 
 in order through these to educate men for the kingdom of God. 
 Yet, nevertheless, we can and must speak of the educating 
 grace of God in Christ : " For the grace of God that bringeth 
 salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us (TracBevovcra 
 ^ytia?), that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should 
 live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world" (Tit. 
 ii. 11, 12). God's grace in Christ edifies us by the guidance 
 and discipline of the Spirit, by external and internal guidance ; 
 for which reason another apostolic writer says, " My son, 
 despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when 
 thou art rebuked of Him : for whom the Lord loveth He 
 chasteneth " (Heb. xii. 6). " No chastening for the present 
 seemeth to be joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless afterward it 
 yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which 
 are exercised thereby" (Heb. xii. 11). But the educating 
 grace has its principle in saving grace, and seeks through its 
 influence in man to develope that which grace has implanted in 
 him. And as God's educating grace shows itself in the life of 
 the individual, so also in that of the nations. 
 
 For it is a great error, an offshoot of false emancipation, to 
 imagine that Christ's authority should only extend to the indi- 
 vidual, or at the liighest to the house, to the family, but not to 
 the people and State. He affirmed marriage to be a divine 
 ordinance; and in the command to render unto Caesar the things 
 which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's, He 
 affirms even heathen states to be a divine ordinance. But the 
 principal declaration by which He asserts His authority in rela- 
 tion to society is His injunction to the disciples, " Go ye there- 
 fore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them 
 to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and, 
 !o, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world " 
 (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). Tliis mighty word contains a world of 
 thought, an infinite abundance of consequences, — although we 
 are very far from saying that all the consequences waiich men 
 have deduced from it are necessary consequences. He says not,
 
 1 
 
 444 THE LAW. 
 
 Teach some indivIJuals, Christianize some individuals, among 
 all nations. He says expressly, " Christianize all nations ; " and 
 thereby He expresses it as His will that His Church shall be 
 the Church of the nations of the earth, that all nations of the 
 earth, as one great family, should be gathered together under 
 Him, to whom " all authority {e^ovaia) is given in heaven and 
 on earth :" by which He expresses the idea of a Christendom. 
 But we cannot possibly admit, what would be at variance with 
 the rest of our Lord's sayings, that all were to become true 
 Christians, true disciples ; so that the idea, the national Church, 
 and the idea, the saints, the society of believers, should coincide 
 and mutually cover each other. For at every time the word 
 holds good, that many are called and few are chosen. Since 
 not the less tlie Lord desires that His ho2ise should be filled 
 (Luke xiv. 23), since He desires that all nations as such should 
 be christianized, we cannot understand this otherwise than that 
 the Lord by this command has given His Church the mission 
 to be an educating power to the people. And history shows us 
 also that Christ's Church, as the Church of the people, has been, 
 and is, a great educational institution, which, on the ground of 
 infant baptism — for infant baptism and national Churches 
 stand in internal and necessary connection — educates for the 
 kingdom of God ; so that they who in the social sense belong to 
 the Church as members, as links in the community, may also 
 in a personal sense come to belong to the Church, that is, to 
 the number of true believers, the congregation of saints (congre- 
 gatio sanctorum^ which is the Church in its narrower sense, or 
 the Church in its peculiar signification {ecclesia proprie, C. A. 8). 
 But the great question of the meaning of our Lord's command, 
 " Teach all nations," and the idea springing from thence of 
 the poedagogic character of the Church, is this : In what manner 
 it is possible for the Church, as a pajdagogic institution for the 
 nations, to preserve its evangelical character, without sinking 
 down to become a Church of the law, without sinking back to 
 the standpoint of the Mosaic law, in which the religious regula- 
 tions are at the same time external judicial regulations and 
 coercive regulations, which is not evaniielical. The dano;er and 
 temptation to this last lies near, in so far as the Christian 
 Church in this earthly existence cannot avoid giving itself a 
 constltutionj by which it comes under external rules of govern-
 
 CHEIST AND THE NATIONS. 445 
 
 ment, and especially cannot avoid this when it becomes the 
 national Church, in which case it must enter into intimate 
 relation to the State, and the whole external judicial law of 
 this last. 
 
 That the solution of this problem, the combination of the 
 evangelizing and pesdagogic character of the Church, to which 
 our Lord and the apostles have given no direct assistance, but 
 have left to historic development, is not easy, is evident from 
 history. Although we must in no case overlook the provi- 
 dential element in the guidance of the Church, yet history 
 shows that the import of the ptedagogic mission of the Church, 
 in many respects, has been conceived more in the spirit of 
 the Old Testament than in that of the New. Ere now, 
 Augustine, the great evangelical teacher, who, concerning sin 
 and grace, though dead, yet speaketh, fell into the error of 
 understanding our Lord's words, Luke xiv. 23, " Compel them 
 to come in " (compellare intrare), as a justification of external 
 force in brinmng; men to enter the Church. iVnd the eccle- 
 siastical sovereignty of the middle ages shows us a theocracy 
 after the Mosaic pattern, in which the Church rules over the 
 State, in which the invisible Christ is regarded as a new 
 Moses, who leads His people through the wilderness to the 
 promised land, is understood rather as a Lawgiver and Judge 
 of the universe than as the Saviour, but in which, in reality, 
 Christ's authority must give place to that of the Church and 
 its visible Stadtholder ; in which there is fashioned a compre- 
 hensive system of law, not merely for doctrine, but also for the 
 life, — a canonical law, in which an infinite number of religious 
 and moral commandments appear as external judicial regulations 
 in which transgression is punished by the secular arm, which 
 lends to the Church its sword. In opposition to this the 
 Reformation protested ; whilst from this compulsory education, 
 — the importance of which to the barbarous races of the middle 
 ages, who were scarcely fitted for anything higher, must not 
 be ignored, — from this Old Testament conception of God's 
 educative grace, it returned to God's saving grace, protested 
 against these false authorities and went back to Christ's, to the 
 Redeemer's own authority, by means of faith recovering the 
 true union of authority and liberty in the inner mind. Not 
 the less — although it is sung in Lutheran hymns : Moses now
 
 446 THE LAW. 
 
 has ceased to reign— does the old Testament education recur 
 in the Protestant State Church, in which the State, so to speak, 
 has incorporated the Church into itself, in which tha Christian 
 State is itself a censor on the part of Christ, in which it 
 upholds "both tables of the law," maintains the first table 
 of the law, the doctrine and worship of God, by compulsory 
 regulations, by which the members of the Church are kept 
 not merely to external order, but to the word and the sacra- 
 ments. The theocratic idea of the Old Testament is to be 
 traced here in many points, though it is not here the Pope, but 
 the secular sovereign, who, especially in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, in combination with political absolutism, stands forth as 
 the Vicar of God and Christ. 
 
 Not until our own times was the constraint of the State 
 Church abolished by the great principle of religious liberty. 
 Eeligious liberty, which does not tolerate the putting of any 
 constraint upon the conscience, is a consequence not merely of 
 negative emancipation destitute of religion, but also of that 
 emancipation which proceeds from Christianity itself. The 
 gospel, indeed, must demand religious liberty in order that it 
 may be truly appropriated; and when Christ says, "Render 
 unto Cassar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the 
 things that are God's," this world-renowned saying contains 
 also the demand for religious liberty : for no one can render 
 to God that which is God's— namely, his heart, and his heart's 
 acknowledgment — if he has not freedom to determine this. 
 The more the influences of religious liberty extend themselves, 
 the more will men also be called to self-education and self- 
 responsibility, the more will the educative power of Ciiristianity 
 evince its ethical character by the influence it exercises, through 
 word and instruction, through habits and culture, and through 
 institutions which are pervaded by the spirit of Christianity ; 
 but just on this account it pays adequate regard to individual 
 liberty^ which is not at all the same thing as to make conces- 
 sions to a false individualism subversive of the stability of 
 society. It is a demand of the time, that Church and State 
 should discriminate more clearly and essentially their different 
 functions, which is not at all the same thing as separation or 
 division, which would exclude internal unity and co-operation ; 
 and the saying, " Eeuder unto Caesar the things that are Ca3sar's,
 
 CHRIST AND THE NATIONS. 447 
 
 and unto God the tilings that are God's," is expressed in our 
 day with the power of a new presence. It is a requirement of 
 the time, that the Church should regain a position of greater 
 self-government, and herself fashion out her organization, her 
 social order and constitution. But that must not be forgotten, 
 which many are disposed to forget : so long as there can. be 
 mention of a constitution or external regulation of the Church, 
 — and there will be mention of this, throughout its earthly 
 existence, whatever may be otherwise thought of its condition, 
 — so long will it also, even when all constraint of conscience is 
 excluded, yet continue under judicial regulations, even though 
 these be self-appointed ; and to these its members must submit, 
 so far as they wish to continue its members : so long also will 
 there be in the Church an external legal Moment, a nomistic 
 Moment, which does not accord with the ideal of evangelical 
 liberty, of the liberty of God's children. As an earthly society 
 with external ordinances, and a mixture of pure and impure, 
 living and dead, or half-dead members, the Church will always 
 be different from the kingdom of heaven, of which our Lord 
 speaks in His parables, and which never attains perfect mani- 
 festation here below. To this diversity and contrast it be- 
 longs also, that it never can be perfectly freed from the 
 external law, and all the contingencies which accompany the 
 relation of liberty to these. The external appointments of 
 justice find their most perfect representation in the State, but 
 are imperatively necessary for every earthly society, which as 
 such seeks to enter the outer world, and which has therefore a 
 side which is allied, is analogous, to the State. And external 
 determination of justice always implies, in one sense or another, 
 external compulsion. Excommunication, exclusion from the 
 community, is thus a means of compulsion for the man, who 
 himself desires to remain in the community ; Church censure 
 and discipline are means of compulsion for him who does not 
 cordially submit to order, and yet cannot determine to forsake 
 the community. These conditions belong to the imperfection 
 of this earthly economy; and the means of compulsion are like 
 hobgoblins, which accompany the household, however frequently 
 tliey may change their dwelling. So long as the course of this 
 world continues with its external relation of right, with laws 
 the fulfilment of which is subject to contingency, so long will
 
 448 THE LAW. 
 
 the unity of authority and freedom, both in Church and State, 
 be only very relative. Only in the millennium can we conceive 
 of States in which, as in a temporary '' peace on earth," as in 
 a soothiuo; but soon fadins; evenino- red, the conflict between 
 authority and liberty is abolished, in which a universal satis- 
 faction in the relatively most perfect form which under these 
 earthly conditions is possible, is found with both governing and 
 governed, because both bow to the sovereignty of Christ, whilst 
 the devil is bound. In the present course of the world, this 
 absolute unity is found only in the invisible kingdom of grace, 
 in faith and love in the soul's inmost recesses, which lie hifiher 
 not merely than the State, but also than the visible Church. 
 This earthly patchwork will only be obliterated, when through 
 the last great crisis of the world the Perfect makes its entrance, 
 when the perfect theocracy arrives, in which God alone shall 
 reign and God's Spirit be all in all, in which Church and State 
 as external institutions have ceased, when Christ has restored 
 the kingdom to the Father, when all (relative) authority and 
 power arc abolished. 
 
 How far distant, under present contingencies, it is from the 
 time when a perfect condition of society can be expected, lies 
 already in this, that in every nation there exists a twofold 
 current of mind running in opposite directions, — the one of 
 belief, the other of unbelief ; that by progressive emancipation, 
 unbelief, with its doctrines, seeks to make itself valid as public 
 authority, and to stamp public life and its institutions with its 
 disorganizing impress, of which already many tokens are pre- 
 sent, — a contrast in the life of the people, the development of 
 which may, doubtless, at certain periods be repressed and 
 prevented, since the devil may be bound, but which at last 
 must lead everywhere to the breaking asunder of the unity 
 of national life, so that every nation splits itself into two nations 
 or into two camps.
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY IN DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY. 449 
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY. 
 CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS. 
 
 §145. 
 
 On the relation between authority and liberty rests every 
 organized society ; for no order of society can be conceived 
 without the relation between sovereign and subject, between 
 governor and governed, leader and followers, which by no 
 means excludes the relative independence of these last. But 
 just as in the case of the law we have affirmed that it is at once 
 changeable and unchangeable, so may the same be said about 
 authority. Although the divine authority is in itself the same, 
 its manifestation has yet subjected itself to a temporary de- 
 velopment in accordance with the divine plan of education. 
 The old covenant is dissolved by the new, in which the divine 
 authority first finds its perfect manifestation in Christ. Christ 
 is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. The divine 
 word, the law and the gospel, is the same at every time. But 
 its interpretation, its application and introduction into reality, 
 is entrusted to the CliuTch as steward of the divine mysteries. 
 And although the Lord has promised the Church His Spirit, 
 which guides us into all truth, still He has not given His 
 Church infallibility in the sense in which the Romish Church 
 employs the term. The authority of the Church is therefore, 
 both in I'egard to doctrine and the arran2;ements and constitu- 
 tion of God's worship, only relative, has its validity only in its 
 accordance with absolute authority with the divine word, and 
 may from time to time require to be reformed. Although the 
 State is a divine appointment, it has likewise a human and 
 changing side. For neither one form of government nor 
 another, neither these institutions of the State nor those, neither 
 this relation nor that among the different classes of the com- 
 munity, is determined by the divine word. This our Protestant 
 view of the subject, which we have learnt from the Reformers, 
 who divided shai'ply between divine and human right, and who 
 were still willing to acknowledge an authority with the Pope, 
 if he would only limit himself to demand it as a human historic 
 right and relinquish infallibility, we maintain in opposition to 
 
 2F
 
 450 THE LAW. 
 
 the Papist view of authority, the chief error of which rests on 
 this, that it confounds divine and human right, — the absolute 
 right, valid at all times, with the relative, which is merely 
 historical and temporary. Thus Maistre, who is one of the 
 most celebrated amongst Catholic writers adverse to revolu- 
 tionary movements, not merely asserts the infalHbility of the 
 Pope and of the Church, but also the divine institution of 
 monarchy, and futhermore of aristocracy. The nobility are 
 God's plenipotentiaries in regard to the lower classes of society; 
 princes are God's plenipotentiaries and vicars in regard to 
 the nobility ; the priesthood, God's plenipotentiaries in regard 
 to princes, — a system of divine authority, towards which the 
 subjects are only required to exercise passive obedience. It is 
 the ideal of the middle ages which hovers before him, and 
 which he maintains with glowing fancy and romantic feehng 
 in his denunciations of the French Revolution.^ That which 
 at a certain time, in a given state of society, has only a human, 
 historic, and at the same time fluctuating right, he asserts in 
 the abstract as absolute divine right, offering a scale of measure- 
 ment for all times ; and everything which departs from this 
 scale, or which opposes it, he views as revolt and ungodliness. 
 This confusion of human with divine right, though not in such 
 glaring degrees as in Maistre, may still sometimes be met with 
 in Protestant writers who desire to uphold the existing condition 
 of things. But both in regard to the Holy Scriptures and to 
 history, we must protest against it. God might certainly have 
 made it much easier for us, might have freed us from many 
 ecclesiastic and political party contests, if He had caused to be 
 established by Christ a universal tlieocracy embracing all races 
 of people, an external condition of right after the Mosaic pat- 
 tern, which was the dream of the middle ages ; for in this a 
 multitude of questions would have found their solution, which 
 for the human race bring painful crises. History shows that 
 He has not willed the establishment of a theocracy in this sense. 
 The more we from history itself learn to know His scheme of 
 education with regard to the human race, the more we acknow- 
 ledge it as a special feature in His authority to respect man's 
 liberty, we perceive it as His aim to educate man to liberty, that 
 
 ^ Essai sur le principe fjenerateur des constitutions politiques. Soirees 
 de St. Petersbourg, 1821. Stahl, Philosopliie des Redds, i. 543.
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY IN DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY. 451 
 
 is to say, to free unity with the divine authority ; we perceive 
 it as an essential Moment in His scheme of education, that man 
 shall be moulded to co-operation in his own education ; that 
 God thus does not prevent men from making immature and false 
 attempts in many directions, in order that they may thus attain 
 experiences which may lead them voluntarily and with full 
 conviction to devote themselves to the truth. Thence the tardi- 
 ness with which God leads man on step by step, and that not 
 by the straight line, but often by many circuitous routes, as the 
 children of Israel through the desert. And thence the frequent 
 want of rationality which is to be found in history, in spite of 
 the deep providential reason which is manifest to every more 
 serious contemplation. Nothing is more unreasonable than in 
 history to be only willing to see the unfolding of a mere neces- 
 sity of reason, and to point out everything which occurs in 
 liistory as rational. Applied to the relation between authority 
 and liberty, this means that God has only given us the absolute 
 principle of authority in Christ, in His word and His Spirit ; 
 that God in His arrangements has given us the general basis 
 for social life, but has left it to man himself, under the leadings 
 of His providence, and under the guidance of His Spirit, to 
 construct the edifice of society on this foundation. Thence the 
 variableness in the human side of authoritv. The more the 
 development of freedom advances, the more it climbs from a 
 lower to a higher class, the more it also grows beyond the 
 inferior forms of authority and the accompanying inferior 
 relation of dependence. For freedom can only cordially subject 
 itself to that authority whose legality is not merely external,, 
 transmitted throughout generations, and existent, but the 
 inward ethical legality of which it recognises. It can, in the 
 full sense of the v/ord, only subject itself voluntarily to that 
 authority to which it not merely can look up, but by which it 
 knows itself to be invigorated, in which it comes to itself and 
 wins itself; for true authority is always emancipative. But 
 when freedom is emancipated from obsolete authorities, which 
 can no longer bind the conscience, — as the Romish Church in 
 the times of Luther, and, we add, also in our own time, — then 
 holds good the rule, not merely to subvert, but also to com- 
 plete, that there may arise a new and higher form of authority. 
 Though the people themselves choose their magistrate, yet when
 
 452 THE LAW. 
 
 lie has been elected they submit to his authority ; as also in 
 marriage, though it rests on the free choice of the individuals, 
 yet, when it has once been entered into, it is a law oirr the 
 individuals, which they cannot arbitrarily break. But this, a 
 law over individuals, will never become a truth so lono; as the 
 religious basis is wanting, so long as it is not acknowledged 
 that all authority, and the accompanying relations of supremacy 
 and subordination, are from GoJ. People may grow beyond 
 many forms of human authority, may grow beyond this or 
 that educative form of the divine authority ; but beyond the 
 divine authority itself, beyond Christianity itself, they can 
 never grow, though by a fresh fall of man they may emanci- 
 pate themselves from these, — as, indeed, the most recent history 
 shows us by many examples, — they may devote themselves to 
 the fruitless, Sisyphus labour of trying to create authority 
 w^ithout God, of trying to deduce authority from liberty, 
 instead of establishing liberty by authority. 
 
 §146. 
 
 When an existing condition of society is about to give place 
 to another, there ensues an opposition between the old and the 
 new, which in the great historic turning-points may become a 
 ■world-renowned shock, an all-exciting crisis, not merely in the 
 outward consciousness, but in the inner. In such times of 
 revolution there may be the greatest difficulty in discriminating 
 between the unchanging and the changing, the permanent and 
 the temporary in the authority which is to rule in society, to 
 discriminate between the true and false authority. And the 
 general crisis of the world or of the nation is repeated in the 
 crises of souls of individuals, who in such times of great change 
 are called upon to make a decisive choice. In political revolu- 
 tions, sovereign stands against sovereign, authority against 
 authority, and the individual must make the great decision of 
 conscience to which party he will adhere. But in the highest 
 significance these individual crises ensue, when in the sphere of 
 religion authority stands up against authority. This shows 
 itself not merely on the first appearance of Christianity, when 
 Christianity enters the existing society W'ith the demand 
 on m.en to forsake their former faith, or, as in the case of 
 Israel, to allow it to be merged in Christianity. But these
 
 CONSERVATISM AND PEOGKESS. 453 
 
 crises are repeated also even in the special development of the 
 Christian Church, as in the apostolic Church, where many of 
 the christianized Jews could not let go their hold of Moses, 
 continued to observe the Mosaic ceremonial law, sought to 
 maintain Moses by the side of Christ, and in regard to the 
 freer evangelical dispensation and its demands passed through 
 struggles of conscience. So, too, at the time of the Reformation, 
 when a Luther had great inward struggles and temptations to 
 undergo before he could be fully emancipated from the old 
 Romish authority which he combated, but which long con- 
 tinued to manifest its power, its influences, and its after effects 
 within him. To such individual crises of the soul, in which 
 the individual must break with some existincr institution or 
 condition, which from childhood has had a binding power over 
 the conscience, and to which this was knit by the bond of 
 reverence and piety ; or, on the other hand, when the individual 
 feels himself oppressed by existing circumstances as by a yoke 
 of bondage, finds himself in existing circumstances as in an 
 ignoble captivity, and, with an ardent longing for liberty, 
 demands that the prison shall be opened and the mere letter 
 of the law give place to the eternal justice of the spirit and 
 truth — Luther experienced both these ; — to these individual 
 crises, which recur under the diversified forms and conditions 
 of society, and both psychologically and ethically are well 
 worthy of attention, we can in the present treatise merely 
 refer. Here, however, we assert that the opposition described 
 between the old and the new, and the accompanying twofold 
 demand for liberty, show themselves not merely in the great 
 turning-points of history, but are essentially present at all 
 times, so long as there can be question of a development of 
 society. For the conception of a development of society is 
 inseparable from the opposition between conservatism and 
 progress, — an opposition which should by no means be exclu- 
 sively treated, as is the general custom in teaching of the State, 
 but has its place in the general part of Ethics, which developes 
 the universal appointments pervading all circles of the moral 
 world. 
 
 Conservatism and progress have their first suggestion even 
 in the divine government of the world, which is at once con- 
 servative and progressive, preserving and advancing. It
 
 454 THE LAW. 
 
 desires progress and development, for this is the signification 
 of time and the determination of the human mind. But it 
 desires also coherence, steadiness, continuity in development ; 
 desires that everything should have its own time, that the new 
 shall come forth only when the fulness of time is come, that 
 nothing good and true which has been won in the earlier stages 
 should be lost, — that even when the form is dissolved and 
 blighted, yet the essence shall be preserved and retained in 
 higher forms. In so far the divine government of the world 
 is conservative. Both the mode of thinking of conservatism 
 and of progress are therefore justified, and each of these only 
 becomes false when it seeks to exclude the other. The con- 
 servative turn of mind is that of filial piety, which reverently 
 submits to the course of Providence throughout history, acknow- 
 ledges that the individual existing generation is but a single 
 link in the great chain of the human race, that the present 
 time is but a single segment in a great economy, in close union 
 with time past and time future ; that it therefore does not be- 
 come us to act as if there were neither past nor future, but that 
 Tve should preserve connection with time past by keeping the 
 fourth commandment : " Honour thy father and thy mother," 
 whilst at the same time preserving connection with the future, 
 with the unborn generations, to whom we owe the duty of 
 leaving behind us an inheritance, not of castles in the air, in 
 which they could find no shelter, but of realities. The con- 
 servative turn of mind is that of loyalty, which desires not to 
 consume but to increase the inheritance left to us by our 
 fathers ; the prudent, forbearing, respectful turn of mind, 
 which, so long as the fulness of time has not come, spares the 
 imperfect forms of the past, in which the good is contained, 
 remembering the word, " Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it " 
 (Isa. Ixv. 8). It is the mode of thought of patience, which 
 refrains from premature reforms, suifers, and endures the 
 evil for the sake of the good along with which it has grown up, 
 " lest with the tares ye root up also the wheat with them " 
 (Matt. xiii. 29) ; by which words our Lord puts us in mind, not 
 merely to inquire concerning the necessity of reforms, but also 
 of their suitability as to time, and to await the day of harvest. 
 But not less justified is that turn of mind which looks for 
 progress, the mood of hope and courage, the resolute disposition
 
 CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS. 455 
 
 which is not content to forbear and preserve, but will also 
 break down in order to build up, pluck up in order to plant 
 anew, and proclaim with power that providence is not merely 
 to be acknowledged in what has been or in what is, but also 
 in what ougJit to be and must be; that God has not merely 
 been present in time past, but also now witnesses for Himself 
 not merely through His acts and leadings, but also through 
 duty and conscience, wdiich demand that existing boundaries 
 must be overstepped. The mood of progress fixes its sharp 
 glance on the faults and deficiencies of existing things, on that 
 which ought not to be ; it fixes its glance on the preparing, 
 on the new germs of life, which appear by the side of the 
 decayed and withered forms of the old condition, from which 
 the spirit is departed, and it has open ears for the whisper of 
 the new spirit : " Let the dead bury their dead ; come thou and 
 follow me ! " Without this mode of thouc;ht Christ could never 
 have made disciples, the Church could never have arrived at a 
 Reformation, in no circle of life could the light of genius have 
 succeeded in penetrating. Each of these modes of thought 
 is thus justified, nay, they are both Moments in one and the 
 same mode of thought, the truly religior:S. They only become 
 untrue when the one is held to the exclusion of the other, and 
 the false spirit of the times exists then equally in both. Per- 
 verted desire for progress. Radicalism, the revolutionary spirit, 
 denies God in the past, if it does not at the same time deny 
 Him in the present and in the future. It acknowledges 
 essentially the divine only in the mere demand of what must 
 be, and considers itself as the true providence, and as the 
 acting God on earth. It has its principle in that arrogance 
 which overthrows the fourth commandment, " Honour thy 
 father and thy mother," despises the wisdom of the fathers, and 
 thinks that the individual present race, without presupposition, 
 can begin history from this point. It can only break down, 
 but not build up, quite contrary to the example which Christ 
 has left us. It certainly breaks down errors, prejudices, and 
 abuses, but drives out devils by devils — drives out, for example, 
 the devil of monarchical absolutism by the rule of the rabble, — 
 a practice which is widespread in the Radicalism and false 
 Liberalism of our days, and in their organs in the press, in 
 which the old errors are constantly driven out by a new error,
 
 456 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 the old lies by a new lie, which is set in the place of the old. 
 False conservatism, on the other hand, is that which under 
 all motions and revolutions " has learnt nothing and forgotten 
 nothing," and has its principle in that obduracy, that obstinacy, 
 which desires to hold fast an individual stage of development 
 in history as permanent, whilst by Providence it is appointed 
 to disappear; closes eyes and ears to the signs of the times, 
 which show that the divine government of the world will now 
 lead men to a new and higher stage. 
 
 Tims the Pharisees at the time of Christ, who sought to 
 retain that stas;;e of the divine revelation to which God had 
 Aitherto brought the children of Israel, but with open eyes yet 
 would not see that now the fulness of time had come for the 
 perfect manifestation, and for the abrogation of that which was 
 only preparation ; who would not acknowledge the signs of the 
 times either in John the Baptist or in Christ, and in so far as 
 they turned their eyes towards the future, imagined for them- 
 selves a Messiah after their own thoughts, a Messiah and a 
 future which should only be for the glorification of themselves 
 and their nation as it then existed. This obstinate retention of 
 an earthly state of things, combined with hatred, enmity, and 
 persecution against everything which announces a change in 
 this, is the characteristic of false reaction. False reaction, say 
 we; for in itself reaction is a vox media, which has not of 
 necessity a bad meaning, because everything depends on the 
 special character of the reaction, and the character of that 
 arrainst which it reacts. No revolution can be cured of its 
 errors except by a fundamental reaction, which always in 
 several respects must accompany a restoration. Stahl, who by 
 the Liberal party is reckoned as belonging to that of reaction, 
 has strikingly characterized false reaction, when he says that 
 it consists in ignoring and shutting oneself up against the 
 problems which are actually the necessity of the times, and 
 which revolution has only misunderstood ; that it not merely 
 will react against the diseased matter, but also against the 
 germs of development} We may also express its character- 
 istics thus, that false reaction is ever on the eve of committing 
 a Bethlehemite massacre of the innocents, in which, by the 
 
 ^ Die gegenwdrticjen Parteien in Staat xind Kirclie, (The Present Parties 
 in the State and the Church.)
 
 CONSERVATISM MW PnOGDESS. 457 
 
 guidance of Pro"vidence, it always liappens that the child over 
 which it specially watches is preserved from the violence of 
 the executioners, is saved by flight, and grows up in tranquillity, 
 till the fulness of time is come, when it shall accomplish its 
 mission and vanquish the tyrants. On the other side, revolution 
 is always on the eve of committing parricide and matricide, in 
 which it also, by the overruling of Providence, comes to pass 
 that the spirits of the murdered, after the lapse of a time, arise 
 living from the tomb, to denounce woe on the degenerate race 
 who slew them and devoured their inheritance, and to scatter 
 its work as chaff before the wind. Both extremes, both false 
 reaction and false revolution, false conservatism and false 
 progression, originate from the same source of unrighteousness, 
 and must both be considered as hostile to the kincrdoms of Go4 
 and man. Their crimes in the history of the world are great, 
 and the accusations which the one party casts against the other 
 may always be thrown back again. It is thus not the men of 
 progress, but the Conservatives, who have crucified Christ, 
 because they only acknowledged God in the bygone time, at 
 every price would retain the existing state of things, and 
 followed the Jesuitic counsel given them by Calaphas : It is 
 expedient for us that one man die for the people, and that the 
 whole nation perish not. It is the Conservatives who introduced 
 the Inquisition, burnt John Huss, and excommunicated Luther. 
 On the other hand, it is the men of progress who not merely 
 have crucified Christ aneio, have desired that Barabbas should be 
 released, and have trodden under foot the cross, but who have, 
 moreover, set themselves up against everything which is called 
 God, and the worship of God. It is the men of progress who 
 in the place of the Jesuits have introduced the Jacobins with 
 their bloody republic, in place of the heretic's fire and stake 
 have set up the guillotine, and with unspeakable terrorism and 
 fanaticism have persecuted all who would not receive their 
 mark, and fall down and worship the unclean spirit, which was 
 potent in them. It is the same human nature, in its corruption 
 and its combination with the powers of darkness, which is 
 manifested in both systems of thoun'ht. 
 
 Genuine conservatism must of necessity determine itself to 
 progress, for nothing living can be preserved in time except by 
 constant renewal and rejuvenizing, which again is conditioned
 
 458 THE LAW. 
 
 by a constant struggle with everything which would hinder the 
 process and development of life and produce stagnation. The 
 only certain means against age and decay is the continuance of 
 groioth. And it is just the privilege of the spiritual life, placed 
 under the influences of Christianity, to be able to continue to 
 grow in time ; whilst the natural life in time can only grow to a 
 certain limit, and thereafter must succumb to the forces of time 
 and become obsolete. The nations of antiquity, even the most 
 intellectual, exhibit to us a growth, a progress to a high point, and 
 thereafter a continued dwindling, decav, and destruction. But 
 it is a consideration, which is not refuted by history, that Chris- 
 tian nations Avho have received baptism possess in this a germ 
 of life, through which after all sicknesses they may be restored, 
 through all adversities may be anew regenerated. Continued 
 growth and regeneration are the imperative conditions of every 
 spiritual life, which will not succumb to death. For everything 
 which enters time present is subject to continual change, whether 
 to life or to death. To let everything remain as it is, is just 
 not to let it remain as it is, not to preserve it as a living thing. 
 And if, in the conservative interest, one would keep watch by a 
 corpse, even there all would not continue to be as it was. For 
 corruption spreads more and more, and the dead forms fall more 
 and more together. On the other side, it may be said that 
 genuine progress has its presupposition, its basis in conservatism. 
 For real progress is an advance in connected symmetrical develop- 
 ment, and must therefore take footing in existing conditions, 
 which are a result of the development of former times, — must 
 knit the Good which shall hereafter be to the Good which is 
 and has been, — must even, when it breaks down the obsolete and 
 false, with careful hand hold fast the thread of continuity and 
 of true tradition. Therefore we find also with the great I'eform- 
 ing personalities — for instance, Luther — sharp discriminating 
 power, energy in construction of a new system combined with 
 a deep conservative spirit, reverence for the former ages of 
 the Church, leniency towards whatever had been handed down 
 from thence in so far as the truth did not absolutely demand 
 its abrogation, and an endeavour by moderate measures to lead 
 over into the new circumstances, of which we have already an 
 example in the assembly of the apostles at Jerusalem (Acts xv.) 
 " It is not those weak minds which are struck by every new
 
 CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS. 459 
 
 phase of the gospel that are fitted to shape the true future ; 
 this is only to be shaped by the strong, which at the same time 
 grasp former times with firmness." ^ 
 
 The harmonious union of both the modes of thought here 
 described is only to be found with very rare great personalities. 
 The majority of men are limited by a predominant disposition 
 for one or other of them, and human society subsists by this 
 opposition. The one must complete itself by the other. Those 
 who, in consequence of their individuality, are predominantly 
 disposed to conservative opinions, are therefore suited to mould 
 the sense and the eye for movement, and to perceive in this not 
 merely what should be resisted and " held hard against," but also 
 what should be acknowledged and supported ; and they who, 
 in consequence of their individuality, are suited to keep their 
 eyes open to the condition of things in times gone by and still 
 existing, and to perceive herein not merely what ought to be 
 abolished, but also what ought to be preserved and introduced 
 into the new system. 
 
 § 147. 
 
 Both conservatism and progress, however many the forms 
 they may assume, yet at last return to the relation between 
 authority and liberty, because every regulation of society is 
 determined by this relation. But it cannot be too often 
 repeated : the ethical view of the world must not simply appre- 
 hend this relation from its changing, its mere historic side, but 
 also according to its eternal, unchanging essence. In practical 
 life it may in many cases be sufficient to remain stationary at this 
 mere historic apprehension, to respect existing authority, because 
 it is the existing, and thus that which has historically formed 
 itself; in progress to have the attention directed to the continuity, 
 in order that connection in development be preserved, that vio- 
 lent leaps may be avoided, and generally to take all appropriate 
 matters into consideration. Practical statesmen, who with full 
 reason demand that relations should not be regulated by abstract 
 principles and general doctrines, but according to what the cir- 
 cumstances at issue and the actual situation demand, very fre- 
 quently in their view of the world do not go beyond the hare 
 historical and actual. But the mere historical view has this 
 1 Schelling, Works, ii. 2, p. 283.
 
 460 THE LAW. 
 
 great Hmltation, that it is destitute of the true ethical motives, 
 and in ultimate instances is without any scale of measurement. 
 Til? ethical view of the world, to which all true political action 
 must be referred, as certainly as the idea of right has its root 
 in the ethical, cannot remain stationary by this historical rela- 
 tivity and changeableness, by this movement of the billows now 
 rising, now falling, this alternation of action and reaction, this 
 up and down, backwards and forwards, which to the external, 
 merely phenomenal contemplation may appear to be without aim 
 and object, but must fix its eye on the permanent and unshifting 
 basis of human society, on that which is God's decree and God's 
 demand from men at all times. The question of new refine- 
 ments of society, of new forms of government and constitution, 
 the social problems of the mutual relation of the diff extent classes 
 of society to each other, has certainly a great relative import- 
 ance ; and no one who lives, not outside, but in and with his own 
 generation, will be able to withhold from them his sympathy. 
 But the decisive fundamental question is, on which ultimate 
 basis the new structures of society shall be erected, and what it 
 is to which, under all changes and through all intermediate 
 links, we are to advance. The merely historically right is sub- 
 jected to fashioning in the infinite. But a fundamental con- 
 servatism and a fundamental spirit of progress must be aware 
 that, from the ethical view-point, it can never become right, 
 though it may become fact, that a people should rend them- 
 selves loose from the principle that the authority of the magis- 
 trate does not rest on the will of man, but on the will of God, 
 His decree and guidance ; that the magistrate is over the people, 
 and that a nation should not be governed from beneath upwards, 
 but from above downwards, which by no means includes that 
 the power of the magistrate is absolute, and may not be limited 
 by the constitution, by the co-operation of the people. At no 
 time will it become right, even if it be clothed in the forms of 
 legislation, for a people to renounce obedience to Christ, and no 
 longer to submit to His authority, no longer to admit that the 
 concerns of His Church are the concerns of the nation, but 
 limit these to be the concern of individuals : at no time will it 
 become right that Christ's authority should be dismissed from 
 public life, and be confined to private and domestic life. But 
 neither will it ever, from the ethical view-point, become right
 
 CONSERVATISM AND PROGKESS. 461 
 
 by a false conservatism to obstruct the advance towards the 
 advent of the kingdom of God and of man. Where these great 
 and unchanghig principles are denied, vvdiere tlie people will not 
 render unto God that which is God's, human right also becomes 
 denied, and a dissolution of society ensues. It w^as a forcible 
 repression of the kingdom of humanity, of the development of 
 the rights of men, which led to the French Revolution. But 
 this revolution itself fell into the error of w^ishing to emancipate 
 from God, from Christianity itself; one consequence of which 
 among others was, that it could not form a government. For 
 as the men of the Revolution were themselves destitute of all 
 authority, they could not, in spite of all orations about the 
 sovereignty of the people, and the will of the people as the 
 source of all authority, give to the governments which they 
 established what they themselves did not possess ; and one after 
 another of the authorities which they set up gave way, until at 
 last a dictator, in the feeling that the mere power which he 
 wielded (genius included) in full measure was not adequate to 
 establish a lasting authority, reintroduced a Christian national 
 Church, with the limitations which the principle of religious 
 liberty required. Let one judge as he will of Napoleon and 
 the Concordat of 1801, be it with all reason admitted that the 
 reintroduction of the authority of Catholicism (see John viii. 
 32, " The truth shall make you free ") could avail but little to a 
 people that had passed through the Revolution, and were imbued 
 with the ideas of emancipation ; much as is spoken, and with 
 justice, of Napoleon's personal ambition, impure and egoistic 
 motives, etc. ; however many dark sides in his operations have 
 been discovered in recent times,^ it is not the less true that this 
 act of restoration contains the solemn political acknowledgment 
 that the " glorious" Revolution, of which Napoleon was the sou, 
 just in this fundamental point stood in need of thorough correc- 
 tion even of its principles^ and that there was here a yawning 
 gulf to fill which human authority was powerless to effect ; that 
 he practically confirmed the words of Mirabeau, that God is as 
 necessary to the nation as liberty. The English Revolution, on 
 the other hand, has this great advantage over the French, that 
 
 ^ With regard to these colossal shadows in the settlement of the Con- 
 cordat, see Les Memoires du Cardinal Consalvi : likewise D'Haussonville, 
 L'egUse et le premier empire ; and Pressense, Dit Kirche und dit Revolution.
 
 462 THE LAW. 
 
 in spite of all its aberrations, it did not require such a corrective, 
 because from the first it rested on a religious principle, thouo-h 
 this might be one-sided, — a principle under which men bowed 
 as an absolute authority, and which exercised a binding, a theo- 
 cratic power over their will. It is the religious basis of the 
 English Kevolution which, through the Puritans who emigrated 
 from England, has given the free States of North America a 
 strength, a power of resistance against moral dissolution, a pre- 
 serving salt, which will never be attained by a democracy desti- 
 tute of religion and apostate from Cliristianity. 
 
 §148. 
 
 Whilst we apprehend the relation between authority and 
 liberty, according to its eternal and unchangeable essence, we 
 are brought back to what has been before discussed regarding 
 o'edemption and emancipation as the most fundamentally hostile 
 principles of history. Free grace and liberty are only two sides 
 of the same thing. Christianity, albeit from the beginning it 
 subjects to itself the relations and arrangements of society, 
 awakens the principle of personality in tlie nations, and thereby 
 sows the seed of emancipation, which germinates and unfolds 
 itself throughout centuries, although the growth often proceeds 
 slowly, and during long periods may seem to stand still. It 
 seeks to procure for man the full use of all his faculties, the 
 rights of man, in order that a free kingdom of humanity may 
 be framed ; desires to release him from all unauthorized external 
 barriers, which hinder the progress of the human mind to free 
 self-government, from the restrictions of nationalities, in so far 
 as these put division and enmity between the nations, from 
 despotism and slavery, from the yoke of false traditions ; but on 
 the other side, represents itself as the absolute authority to which 
 men ought readily to submit themselves. Christianity sharpens 
 and completes every demand of the law, not merely for the 
 individual, but also for society ; and it proffers to men the 
 grace of the gospel, whilst at the same time it expresses as a 
 demand of conscience that men should accept the invitation. 
 Authority and grace are thus the two principal parts of the 
 relation of God's kingdom to humanity, since grace is the 
 redeeming will of God's love, which offers and bestows on man 
 the highest Good, authority, the binding and obligatory power
 
 TRANSITION TO THE SPECIAL PART. 463 
 
 of God's will. The history of man, both of the race and indi- 
 vidually, therefore receives its ultimate and decisive importance 
 from the relation of liberty to the divine authority and the 
 divine grace, as well as from its relation to salvation and happi- 
 ness. Every time a new era appears in the history of the 
 world — although to outward contemplation many other widely 
 different matters may be assigned as its chief cause — it is 
 essentially this fundamental relation which enters into a new 
 stage of its development. 
 
 TRANSITION TO THE SPECIAL PART. 
 
 §149. 
 
 We have now endeavoured to represent the principles, the 
 ideals, and the norms or rules which determine the ethical view 
 of the world and of life. But since moral life must be rerrarded 
 in the special and individual fundamental forms of its reality, 
 and in its development through these, a new series of problems 
 present themselves. Our preceding contemplation was chiefly 
 directed to fundamental principles and universal laws (iiniver- 
 salid) ; and even when we touched on the special, and to a cer- 
 tain degree drew this into the discussion, it was only by way 
 of illustrating the general, only in the interest of priiiciples. 
 Henceforth the consideration must predominantly be turned 
 not towards the universal, but towards the special and indi- 
 vidual, since also the separate organizations of society are to be 
 considered as greater individuals, as common personalities, and 
 demand a new point of issue corresponding thereto. That is 
 to say, that if Ethics not merely represents a view of the world 
 and of life in its general outline, but moral life in its indi- 
 vidualized development, its growth and increase, its toil and 
 strife, the stages, gradations, through which it must actually 
 pass, and not merely represent these, but also be a guide and 
 assistance thereto, a teacher of the means and obstacles (pjeda- 
 gogic and ascetic), to which in the foregoing treatise only 
 general reference has been made, the starting-point must be 
 . taken, not from the moral world — though this is an absolutely 
 necessary presupposition — but from the individual personality .
 
 464 THE LAW. 
 
 Were we, that is to say, to take our starting-point from the 
 moral world, and thus begin the treatise on special Ethics with 
 the separate organizations of society, Family, State, and Church, 
 the complaint would be well-founded that the subjective factor 
 would not get justice. For althougli in the foregoing treatise 
 we have developed the idea of Christian virtue in general, yet 
 the Christian life in the social relations cannot be adequately 
 understood if sanctification has not been explained in the sepa- 
 rate Moments which determine personal self-education for the 
 kingdom of God. Should we then begin with the imitation of 
 Christ, knitting our exposition to the fundamental conception 
 of Christian virtue, as it is given in this work, it would cer- 
 tainly be the right beginning for the development of Christian 
 personality. But before the development of Christian person- 
 ality lies not merely another abnormal development, life under 
 the law and sin, with the various circumstances and stages of 
 develojmient of sinfulness, but also the passage from life under 
 sin to life under grace, or the process of 7'epentance, the special 
 Moments, obstacles, and dangers of which demand more minute 
 consideration. Thus it comes that special Ethics proceeds in 
 the reverse order to the general. An ethical view of the world 
 must lay special stress on the aim, and place the ideals in the 
 foreground. The representation of the ethical development of 
 personality should, on the other hand, lay stress on the way 
 which leads to the gcal, on the rneaiis which should be employed, 
 on the obstacles which should be combated. The one is as though 
 from the Mountain of Contemplation we were beholding the 
 land of liberty, with its ideals both of the world and of person- 
 ality, and only in a general way looked at the liigh road to the 
 goal, according to the eternal law of liberty. The other is to 
 descend from the mountain and accompany the pilgrim plodding 
 along the road, which in reality is longer and more difficult 
 than it looks from the standpoint of principles ; to pass through 
 its different stages, to point out the pitfalls which must be here 
 avoided. It is an obvious remark, that in this pilgrimage we 
 itcturn to points already beheld, where repetition becomes un- 
 avoidable. But with regard to this it may again be remarked, 
 that the more complicated a science is, the greater variety 
 and copiousness it embraces, — and there is no more compli- 
 cated science than Ethics, as certainly as human life is the
 
 TRANSITION TO THE SPECIAL PART. 465 
 
 most complicated we know, — the greater the necessity becomes 
 that the same conceptions should appear frequently, and in 
 several places ; with regard to which, it remains to be observed 
 in what connection and under what predominant point of view 
 they appear, and also what dependence and tone they assume 
 at the different places. 
 
 Special Ethics remains, then, to be treated under these 
 principal divisions: — 1. Life under the law and sin; 2. Life 
 in imitation of Christ ; 3. The moral life of society and the 
 kingdom of God. As the representation of the ethical organi- 
 zations of society must close with the ethical prospects of the 
 future, the treatise on Special Ethics will end where that on 
 General Ethics, or the ethical view of life, began, — with the 
 perspective of the completion of God's kingdom and the escha- 
 tological ideals therewith connected. 
 
 3Cf
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Aqttin^as, Thomas : Is the Good gonrl 
 because God Avills it ? or does He 
 ■will it bscause it is good in itself ? 
 G2. 
 
 Aristotle : the tragic hero must have 
 a crime, 1S3 ; great minds a dispo- 
 sition to melancholy, 191. 
 
 Asceticism, 297. 
 
 Augustine, Confessions of, contrasted 
 with those of Eousseau, 291 ; the 
 craving of human nature after 
 higher eternal good, associated with 
 dread of coming retribution, 3G3 ; 
 error regarding the meaning of the 
 passage, " Compel them to come 
 in," 445. 
 
 Autonomic and theonomic systems of 
 ethics contrasted, S. 
 
 Baader : might alone cannot establish 
 authority, 352 ; the connection be- 
 tween the relation of liberty to time 
 and the relation of liberty to the 
 law, 427. 
 
 Bossuet, controversy with Fenelon on 
 disinterested love to God, 321. 
 
 Byron the poet of pessimism, 178. 
 
 Calvinism contrasted with Luthcr- 
 anism, as bearing each the impress 
 of personality of their respective 
 founders, 40. 
 
 Camoens an illustration of the tragic 
 in human life, 182. 
 
 Chantal, Madame, content with her 
 lot, even if it were hell, if assigned 
 by Gcd, 327. 
 
 Chiliasm, its kernel, the idea of the 
 earthly sovereignty of Christianity, 
 156. 
 
 Carpocrates, father of Epiphanes, 386. 
 
 Chiromancy suggestive of the im- 
 portance of action, SO. 
 
 Comic, the, naivet6 of sin, 184. 
 
 Uaxte, conception of hell as moro 
 awful, because founded by eternal 
 love, 163. 
 
 Defective organization of the body not 
 an insuperable bar to high endow- 
 ment of the senses, as exemplified 
 in Saunderson, born blind, yet cele- 
 brated as an optician, 84. 
 
 Determinism sought to be proved by 
 the trueness to character demanded 
 of dramatic writers, 125 ; by moral 
 statistics, 120. 
 
 Dorner, the history of the develop- 
 ment of the doctrine of Christ's per- 
 son, 301. 
 
 Epiphanes : law of nature the highest 
 law, 386, 393 ; idea of uprightness 
 that of a community under the con- 
 dition of perfect equality, 395. 
 
 Ecclesiastes, classical expression of the 
 sceptic pessimism which may be dis- 
 sipated by faith, 174. 
 
 Eleusinian mj'steries contain a con- 
 ception of eternal blessedness, 153. 
 
 Fenelon : tenet of disinterested love 
 to God, 320 ; his writings reflect 
 his personality, 335 ; controversy 
 with Bossuet. See Bossuet. 
 
 Fichte : definition of the moral as the 
 progressive victory of reason over 
 sense, 9 ; every man a genius, 81 j 
 his theory of personality, 221. 
 
 Goethe as the poet of optimism, 168 ; 
 famous poem, Prometheus, 49. 
 
 Guyon, Madame : energy of will com- 
 mendable element in asceticism, 
 298 ; getting beyond sin and grace, 
 320. 
 
 Hegf.l on the philosophy of history, 
 137, 190 ; the tragic hero must have 
 a crime, 183. 
 
 466
 
 INDEX. 
 
 467 
 
 Holberg on the miseries of life, 
 
 188. 
 
 Jacobi : missive to Fichte regarding 
 Antinomianism, 389; quotation from 
 Ferguson, 432. 
 
 Kant : definition of the highest good 
 as the unity of virtue and happi- 
 ness, 149 ; disinterested reverence 
 for the law, motive of duty, 319 ; 
 human freedom self-legislating, 348 ; 
 the law sanctioned by the divine 
 will, but without personal relation 
 between God and man, 374 ; dis- 
 tinction between moral politicians 
 and political moralists, 398. 
 
 Kierkegaard on socialism and indi\'i- 
 dualism, 217 ; metaphor of every 
 man steering his own kajak, 208 ; 
 Socrates the requirement of the 
 present age, 222 ; Kierkegaard's 
 own mode of procedure, indirect 
 communication after the manner of 
 Socrates, 225. 
 
 Lavater : theory of man, as created 
 in the image of God, 86. 
 
 Luther, mode of his awakening to the 
 kingdom of God, 289 ; his sparkling 
 humour, 187 ; disquietude whilst in 
 thecloister, 291 ; imitation of Christ, 
 294 ; remarks on the preaching of 
 the sufferings of Christ under the 
 Papacy, 301 ; liberty of a Christian 
 man, 315; his own Christian peace, 
 334 ; purity of motive, 340 ; triple 
 use of the law, 440 ; combination 
 in his character of constructive 
 energy with a deep conservative 
 spirit, 458. 
 
 Lutheranism and Calvinism con- 
 trasted. See Calvinism. 
 
 Machiavelu : the manner in which 
 sovereignty is to be won and main- 
 tained, 401 ; comment on his coun- 
 tryman and contemporary Savona- 
 rola, 403. 
 
 Napoleon i., his quietive motives as 
 well as his military energy to be 
 considered in estimating his cha- 
 racter, 112; his reintroduction into 
 France of the authority of Catho- 
 licism, 461. 
 
 Pascal : irony concerning the Jesuits, 
 185 ; opinions on confession, 314 ; 
 Lettres Pro vinciales directed against 
 probabiliam, 408. 
 
 Plato : definition of the highest good 
 as not merelj' complete in itself, but 
 disposed to impart, 65 ; that inde- 
 pendent of God, and outside of 
 Him, whilst like Him eternal, there 
 is a chaos or unformed matter 
 (Hyle), as a resisting object for the 
 divine energy, 67 ; contempt for the 
 body, 72 ; ideal of a morally har- 
 monious condition of society, 156 ; 
 socialistic views of marriage and 
 the upbringing of children, 204 ; pro- 
 phecy, that when the righteous man 
 should be manifested, it would be 
 through the greatest suffering, 280; 
 the awakening of the conscience in 
 the near prospect of death, 363. 
 
 Probabilism, 407. 
 
 Prometheus, 46, 77. 
 
 QuiETiSTS, Molinos, Franciscus von 
 Sales, FranciscavonChantal, Jeanne 
 de la i\Iotte Guyon, 326. 
 
 Range, Abb6. See Asceticism. 
 
 Rothe, definition of the moral as the 
 progressive harmony of reason and 
 nature, 9 ; in his treatise on Duty, 
 the law as schoolmaster has no 
 place, 56 ; eternal nature or corpo- 
 reity in God, 68. 
 
 Eousseau: Confessions compared with 
 those of Augustine, 291 ; the most 
 stringent morality costs nothing on 
 paper, 405. 
 
 ScHELLiNG : connection of nature with 
 the world of spirits, 77. 
 
 Schlegel, his opinion of Machiavelli, 
 402. 
 
 Schleiermacher: three view-points of 
 the moral, 5 ; concept of the great 
 man, 242 ; famous treatise on the 
 relation between the law of nature 
 and the law of morality, 346. 
 
 Schopenhauer: champion of deter- 
 minism, 116 ; teaches that every 
 individual, by an act lying before 
 all time, has made himself once for 
 all what he is, 119 ; life itself the 
 highest evil, 158 ; Buddhist ethical 
 system, which places nothing as the 
 final determination and real content 
 of life. 
 
 Scotists, the adversaries of Plato and 
 Thomas Aquinas on the question, 
 Is the Good good because God wills 
 it ? or does He will it because it is 
 good in itself ? 62. 
 
 Shakspeare : folly of charging the sin 
 of men on fate (Lear), 122 ; charac-
 
 468 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ter may change, and has a turning- 
 point (Macbeth), 1*26 ; tragic ele- 
 ment in the story of any one due 
 to some imperfection in his own 
 character (Juliet, Desdemona, Lear 
 in the wild night-storm), ISO. 
 
 Socrates, should he be reckoned among 
 the great men ? 2-14. 
 
 Spinoza, antagonism with Leibnitz, 
 220 ; moral system recommends 
 disinterssted love to God, 330. 
 
 Stoics and Cynics, although they re- 
 
 presented virtue in contrast to en- 
 joyment, and maintained that the 
 first of these is itself the highest 
 good, yet lay down a doctrine of 
 happiness, 151. 
 
 Tertullian ascribed a body to God, 
 71 ; Patience God's foster-daughter, 
 315. 
 
 ViNET, the champion of individualism, 
 206. 
 
 THE END.
 
 T. & T. CLARK, 
 
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 Br A. B. BRUCE, D.D., 
 
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 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS 
 
 EXHIBITING THE TWELVE DISCIPLES OF JESUS UNDER 
 
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 THE TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN: 
 
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 SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
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 14 
 
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