Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXLIX.

Moral society is the family as enlarged by its own natural growth and by friendship, but which, in this enlarging, assumes also. an essentially different character. Social communion differs from family-communion by the greater retreating into the back-ground of the natural unity and at the same time of free personal choice; society itself assumes an objective, and, in some sense, nature-character; and the place of natural and free moral love is supplied by custom, which becomes more or less an objectively-valid power over the individuals. It differs, furthermore, from the family in this, that it involves a communion of a far more general character, one that absorbs into itself the individual person far less, and requires and brings about a more interrupted and only occasionally-exercised moral intercourse of its members. The members of society sustain to each other the relation of friendliness, which is larger in extent, but feebler in inner quality and power, than friendship. That form of love which manifests itself in friendliness, and which consequently constitutes the moral essence of society, is the love of neighbor, which, as distinguished from more intimate love, does not its own object, and is not directed toward particular persons but toward man in general. Social communion realizes itself through mutual, spiritual and natural, communicating, of which the latter form is the expression and the medium of the former. Spiritual communication may, however, take place only within the limits conditioned by the family, and hence only with some degree of moral reserve,—should never become family-confidentiality.

The family throws itself open indeed, in a normal state of things, to and for, society, but it does not merge itself therein,—rather is it the uniform and indispensable moral basis and presupposition thereof; it is a morbid state of society that does not rest on the family, but rather throws it into the back-ground, and more or less assumes its place. Only the moral integrity and the deep-reaching moral nature of the family give to society moral vitality; without these elements society declines to selfish, enjoyment-seeking characterlessness.

Society cannot, from its very nature, require as large a personal giving up of individual peculiarities as does the family; it rests essentially on a greater independence of its individual members to each other,—gives greater scope to the equal right of the individuals to independent peculiarities, than is the case with unreservedly-confiding love or reverence; it is made up therefore strictly only of the truly independent, and hence of the spiritually and morally mature; minors should belong predominantly only to the family, and should not as yet enter society; premature ripeness for society damagingly affects not only the taste for family-life but also the moral character of the person; and the most common reason for the characterlessness of the fashionable world, is the too early supplanting of the family-life by society-life. In society the individuals stand less in a strictly personal relation to each other,—stand not in the relation of a special, personal love, personally complementing each other, but rather as the single members of a more extensive generality. Here each one sees and loves, in the other, not so much the special personality as rather simply a single representative of society as a whole. In order to the exercise of social virtue, not so much depends on the personal choice of the individual—on the fact that I have to do with precisely this or that, to me, congenial personality—as on the fact that the person be simply a member of human, of moral, society in general. Hence the members of society make also less demands upon each other for mutual devotion and confidentiality than the members of a family; in the place of such perfect, mutual self-devotion as the property of others, come tender deference, politeness, friendliness and complacency. Politeness, which has nothing in common with hollow-hearted pretense, is not shown to the person as such but simply as a member of society, and should not be confounded with a manifestation of friendship, as this regards only the person. Forms of politeness are an expression of love, of friendliness, of humble deference, to another; they are manifestations of honor to whom honor is due, and it is due to every upright man [Rom xii, 10; xiii, 7; 1 Pet. ii, 17; v, 5; and, for examples, see Gen. xviii, 2 sqq.; xxiii, 7, 12; xxxii, 4, 18; xxxiii, 3, 6, 7, 13, 14; xliii, 26, 28; xliv, 18 sqq.; Rom. xv, 14, 15; etc.].

The boundary lines between the family and society are very delicate, but also very legitimate; and he who, from a misconception of this difference, oversteps these limits and demeans himself in society as in the family, that is, does not show that proper reserve which seeks not to press itself upon others,—in a word, he who shows himself over-confidential, is regarded, and rightly so, as indelicate, characterless, or impudent; and when the person so acting is a female, she is looked upon as unwomanly or shameless. French gallantry, for which, happily, we have no German word, is a treating of the female members of society as if they were family-members; it treats every maiden as if she were an affianced sweetheart; it manifests the appearance of love where neither its reality nor the design of realizing it exists; this is an immoral disintegration and invasion of the family by society, a breaking down of the limits between them. With the growth of gallantry the dissolution of the family usually increases also; and the gallant society-man usually is or turns out to be a very ungenial husband. That devotion, that full, mutual, spiritual self-communicating, and that confidentiality, which, within the family as well as within the bounds of friendship, are not only a right but also a duty become sinful when shown to society at large. Hence the personal love that manifests itself in the family is less in compass, but greater intensity in, than that love of neighbor which extends to all members of society without exception, as well as also without choice, and which manifests itself in the equally generally due spirit of friendliness [Matt. v, 47; Gal. v, 22; 1 Cor. xiii, 4; Eph. iv, 2, 32; Col. iii, 12; 2 Tim. ii, 24; Prov. xii, 25; Ruth ii, 8 sqq.]. He who loves and treat the members of his family merely with the friendliness of neighbor-love sins quite as much as he who promiscuously treats any or every one he meets with as a personal friend or as a consort; and this holds good not simply and merely of society as sin-disordered, though of course the difference is here much greater than in a state of innocence. Christian neighbor-love is indeed designated as brother-love, and the members of the moral community are to regard each other as brethren, even as also Christ calls his disciples his brethren [John xx, 17; Heb. ii, 11] or his friends [John xv, 13, 14], but this must not be so taken as to do away with the difference between family-love and neighbor-love; but, on the contrary, it rather simply implies that the latter is a form of love that is to be shaped after the pattern of brotherly love proper. Society is to be progressively more closely allied to the family,—is to be more and more affectionately and intimately united together on the basis and after the pattern of the family; and the closer bonds of the family are not thereby relaxed but in fact confirmed. The Son of man who embraced entire humanity in his love, loved yet his disciples with a closer love than he felt for others; and even among the disciples there was one “whom the Lord loved” by pre-eminence—who lay upon Jesus’ bosom; and also Lazarus was a special friend of the Lord [John xi, 3, 33 sqq.], although Christ’s love to these persons was still always something essentially other than human friendship—the Friend never predominating over the divine Master.—Of the distinctions that naturally form themselves in every society, and hence of the classes of callings, we cannot as yet here treat, as their sharper separation springs of and presupposes a sinful perversion of humanity.

As, on the part of the moral person, love in society is more of a general and, so to speak, impersonal character, so also is this love met from without by the objective reality of the moral, not so much as personal love in a personal form, as rather under a general and impersonal form—as a merely spiritual power, as custom. Custom is indeed upheld by the individual members of society, but it does not proceed from them as particular single persons, but rather from the collective public spirit of the whole. Custom is a fruit of the moral life, not of the individual, but of the collective public; it is the virtue of society as peculiarly-constituted; and, as such, it has a right to be respected by the individual; and the duty of the individual to conform to custom cannot be limited by mere caprice, but only by the higher moral law itself and by the legitimate peculiar duty of the individual subject. It is not requisite, in order to entitle social custom to the right of being respected, that in each particular case a definite moral or other rational ground be readily adducible for its continuance; this is in many cases even impossible; and though, of course, the custom, if legitimate, must ever have its sufficient reason, yet this reason is not always a universally-moral one. A respectful deference for that which has become historical in society is a high moral duty, provided simply that society itself is not already morally perverted. The ebullient juvenile vigor of the intensely self-conscious youth gladly recalcitrates against the historical reality of society,—is loth to recognize for itself any other limits than such as are imposed by the general and, as yet, not historically-determined moral law. The moral law, however, is not of a merely universal character, but shapes itself in society into a particular historical form; moral society has the same right to the forming and retaining of a peculiar character as has the individual person; and as the individual is entitled to be respected and spared in his moral peculiarity, so is entitled also, and with still greater right, the moral collective whole [Gen. xxix, 26]. It is a sign of moral crudity when individuals disregard social custom in cases where it is not positively evil, and oppose themselves to it for the simple reason that they do not regard it as absolutely necessary,—as, for example, in the style of clothing and in the forms of social intercourse. It is true, each individual is entitled to his own moral judgment as to a custom, and an immoral or irrational custom may by no means be spared or conformed to; on the contrary, there arises here the duty of reformatorily influencing society itself. But of such a perverted state of things we are not as yet here treating. The proper moral respecting of custom is good-mannered or becoming behavior κόὀμιος, 1 Tim. ii, 9; iii, 2]. The female mind embraces the moral more as an expression of custom; the male more as that of the law.

As all communion of love is a mutual imparting, so is it also with social love; the basis and at the same time the moral limit of this imparting or communicating, is the family. The family throws itself open occasionally for society,—imparts itself to society, welcomes its members hospitably into itself. Hospitableness or hospitality [Gen. xviii; xix; xxiv, 31 sqq.; Exod. ii, 20; Lev. xix, 33, 34; Judges xix, 20, 21; Job xxxi, 32; Matt. xxv, 35; x, 41, 42; Luke xi, 6; Acts xxviii, 7 sqq.; 1 Pet. iv, 9; Rom. xii, 13; 1 Tim. iii, 2; v, 10; Titus i, 8; Heb. xiii, 2] is properly a virtue practiced not by the individual, but predominantly by the family. It is the occasional letting in of society into the family, the outward manifesting of the love that prevails in the family toward those who stand to us simply in the relation of members in society. It is only the family that can exercise true hospitableness—that can constitute a hospitable house; this manifests itself, even in our present so radically perverted state of society, in the fact that it is always the housewife who takes the lead of the guest-circle, and gives it the family-. Hospitality is one of the first and most natural manifestations of neighbor-love, hence it is highly esteemed even among many uncultured nations; it exists always in its highest form where also the family is preserved in high moral integrity, as, for example, among the ancient Germanic races. It is a very special and important characteristic of hospitality, that it is not exercised merely toward friends proper, who in fact already belong to the outer circle of the family, but also, and historically even primarily, to strangers who are as yet not known personally at all, that is, to man simply in his quality of neighbor.