Adolf Wuttke · 35 of 107

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

(c) While, on the one hand, there is no form of action which could be to the subject, in any given moment, morally indifferent, that is, neither in harmony nor in disharmony with the divine will, neither good nor evil, still, on the other hand, no definitely-framed form of law embraces within itself the total contents of the moral life-sphere; for as every law has only contents of a general character, while the moral activity itself is always of an individual character, so that the moral actions of different men that fall under the same moral law offer a great diversity, hence the moral law does not sustain to the actions that answer to it precisely the same relation as an idea to its direct realization and manifestation; the particular moral action is not the simple, pure expression and copy of the moral law itself, but it always contains something which does not arise from the law, but from the individual peculiarity. The law as appropriated by the person is fulfilled only in such a manner as expresses also the peculiarity of the person. Every moral action contains therefore two elements: a general ideal one, the moral law, and a particular and inure real one, the personal element,—which latter, as the expression of the personally peculiar character, has also its perfect legitimacy. God’s moral will is not that men should be mere impersonal, absolutely similar expressions of the moral law, but that the latter should come to its realization only as appropriated by the particular personality. This personally peculiar element that inheres in every actual moral action cannot be embraced in any general legal formula, inasmuch as in its nature it is in fact not general, but a pure expression of individual personality. Every real moral activity is therefore the product of a twofold freedom: of that which subordinates the individual personality to the law, and of that which does not merge the personality into a mere abstract idea, but preserves it in its legitimate peculiarity, and which is to a certain extent a law unto itself.

By this notion of the right of personality Christian Ethics differs from all non-Christian systems, not excepting those of the Greeks, notwithstanding that the latter lay such great stress on the freedom of the person; and this feature is of wide-reaching significance. The decided rejection of the notion that there may be morally-indifferent actions and conditions, and the emphasizing the rights of personal individuality, are very essential to a true understanding of the moral. By insisting disproportionately on the former, we leave too little room for the peculiarity of the moral personality, and make it necessary that for every particular action there should be also a special law; this leads inevitably to a legal bondage hostile alike to all vital individuality, and to the essence of personal freedom. This is the stand-point of Chinese and of Talmudic ethics, and to a certain extent, of the casuistics of some Romish moralists. On the other hand, if we insist too exclusively on the peculiarity of the person, we incur the danger of trespassing on the unconditional validity of the law, to the profit of the fortuitous caprice of the subject,—somewhat as recently in the period of the so-called “geniuses” and of the genius-less freethinkers who followed them, all morality was made to consist in the uncurbed development of the fortuitous peculiarity of the individual, to which peculiarity every thing was freely allowed provided only that it was “genial.” The only true course is, in harmony with the general Christian consciousness, to hold fast to both of these elements.

At each and every particular point of time, the moral activity and the moral state are either good or evil, either in harmony with the moral idea or not so. Although in the same action there may be different phases which have morally different characters, and which place good and evil in close proximity, still these contrary elements never coalesce into a moral neutrum, into a morally-indefinite fluctuating between good and evil—a moral indifference. An individual may indeed be morally undecided, neither cold nor warm; this indecision, however, is not of a morally-indifferent character, but is itself evil. There may be different degrees of good or evil, but not an action that is neither good nor evil. This will become self-evident if we fix our mind on the fundamental idea of good and evil as that which answers to, or does not answer to, the divine will; between these two a third is absolutely inconceivable, just as in mathematics there is no medium between a correct and a false result, or in a clearly presented legal case no medium between yes and no. The bride who cannot answer “yes” to the question as to her willingness to the marriage, says thereby, in fact, “no;” and whoever does not at any given moment say “yes” to God’s never neutral will, simply rejects it. The essentially self-contradictory assumption of a morally-indifferent middle-sphere between good and evil, is in itself anti-moral; and every immoral person is only too ready to transfer all his immorality, in so far as he cannot explain it into good, into this pretended sphere of the morally indifferent.

And yet this so widely prevalent tendency to assume that there is a morally-indifferent sphere of action, is based on an actual, though falsely interpreted, presentiment of the true relations in the case. The fact is, every feature in correct moral action is not directly and specifically determined by the moral law, but a very essential phase of such action, has another source than the general law; nor is the truly moral man simply a mere expression of the moral law, but, as differing from other equally moral men, he is entitled as a person to have and retain his special peculiarity. This phase of the moral life appears at once, and very clearly, in that which lies at the basis of all moral society—wedlock-love. Love, and, more specifically, conjugal love, is a moral command; but the fact that this love fixes itself exclusively and continuously upon precisely this particular person, is a personally-peculiar shaping of the moral law; no law can prescribe what particular person shall be the object of my conjugal love; and the personal element is here so manifestly legitimate that the eliminating of it—the indulging in love, not to a particular personally-chosen person, but to the other sex in general—results in “free” love, the very quintessence of immorality and vulgarity. Wherever moral theories ignore the rights of personality, there the tendency is very strong to base marriage, not on personal choice, but on the choice of the State, as in ancient Peru. Now, what is true of conjugal love is true also, though not always in such striking consequences, of all moral activity. When two equally moral persons do the same thing, fulfill the same law, it is, after all, not the same action; nor indeed should it be; what is right and good in one person may, in that particular form, be even wrong in another, notwithstanding that the moral law is the same for all. Paul employs his moral activity in a different manner from that of Peter and James; in fact, in the living communion of Christians there is presented not only a great diversity of spiritual “gifts,” but also of personally-moral idiosyncrasies; even in the purely spiritual sphere there are manifold gifts, but only one Lord. The normal difference of moral life-tendency as seen in the sons of Adam, and which must have occasioned as great a difference in the fulfilling of the moral commands as it did in the manner of offering worship, presents a type of the manifold moral diversities into which the moral law is shaped by peculiarities of personality.

The virtualization of the personal element is not to be understood as a something conflicting with the divine law; on the contrary, it is in fact the divine will that the peculiarity of the personality be preserved. If, at first thought. it should seem questionable to place along-side of the universally-valid law another essentially variable element, lest thereby the unconditional validity of the law be infringed upon and negatived, let it be observed, in the first place, that the personal peculiarity finds in the moral law both its limits and its moral criterion, so that consequently it can never come into antagonism with the same, but that, nevertheless, there is, within the scope of the personal spiritual life, a field into which the law, because of its general character, does not dictatingly enter. So long as the moral consciousness is not yet truly mature, there is, indeed, in the personal element of the moral, a peril for the moral life, inasmuch as the law cannot give specific directions for every special case. Hence in the Old Testament God complemented his earlier legislation by special revelations of his will through priestly and prophetic inspiration; now, however, since the Spirit of God is poured out upon all men, there is no longer any need of this extraordinary revelation of the divine will in individual cases, for now the human personality, having come into possession of the truth, has also become “free indeed,”—is so imbued with the divine law that, in loving and acting as prompted by its divinely purified heart, it fulfills the divine law in the very fact of developing its personality; and, in fulfilling the law, it preserves also at the same time its personal peculiarity,—as, for example, in a happy marriage there is no longer any antagonism between the fulfilling of the will of the one party by the other, and the acting-out by each of his own personal peculiarity, but, on the contrary, in each of the two elements the other is already implied. And the moral unripeness of individual persons, that necessarily still exists even in a normal condition of humanity, is complemented to full moral safety by the spirit of the moral community,—as in fact this thought is vitally embodied in every true Christian church-communion.