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

As love springs from the consciousness of the harmony of the person with his object, and as the feeling of such a harmony is the feeling of happiness, hence all love is per se also happiness, and its striving is necessarily a striving for happiness. As, however, love does not seek its own, but finds its bliss alone in that of the beloved, it is clear that this striving for happiness, as based on moral love, is in nowise self-seeking and narrow-hearted, but, on the contrary, a proper motive of moral activity,—only, however, in so far as it is in unison with the right love, and does not appear as something different from it,—not as the first and fundamental element, but only as a derived one; but it becomes an immoral motive in so far as it is an expression of mere self love (Eudemonism).—The tendency to the good, which is produced by moral activity, becomes in turn itself a higher motive to the moral.

The question as to the morality of happiness-seeking as a moral motive, cannot be answered without a more definite characterization. The “eudemonistic” view proper, that of the Epicureans, is evidently immoral, as it rests on mere self-love. ethics could oppose to this self-seeking happiness-principle nothing other than the notion that virtue should be sought after for its own sake. If there was here a seeming subordinating of the person to a general moral idea, still, because of the inner untruthfulness of the position, it could not possibly be otherwise than that in fact, even in the strictest Stoicism, the mere proud self-consciousness of the individual should be, after all, the influencing motive proper. The thought of love as the true moral motive was entirely wanting to ethics,—is peculiar to Christianity. The Christian idea of love harmonizes the legitimate self-love with submission to the moral law. In loving God, man loves also himself as a child of God, and in fulfilling his duty he at the same time realizes his happiness. The love to God and to His creatures is, on the one hand, a feeling of happiness, and, on the other, a motive to moral activity. The old controversy about the happiness-principle, which has in recent times been revived, especially by the school of Kant, receives its proper solution only in the Christian view, namely, in that, while Christianity recognizes in the proper seeking for happiness a strictly moral motive, it also exalts the character of this seeking by the love in which alone it bases it. It is therefore a very one-sided illiberality in Rationalists to reproach Old Testament ethics with “Eudemonism.” It is true, the Old Testament recognizes the seeking after happiness as a proper motive in the fulfilling of the law: “That it may go well with thee and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth” [Deut. iv, 40; Exod. xx, 12; Deut. v, 16; xxix, 33; Psa. xxxvii, 37; cxxii, 6, etc.]; the formula “Blessed is he that,” etc., [Psa. i, 1; ii, 12; xxxiv, 8; xl, 4, etc.] and other similar ones, are very frequently given as an encouragement to moral obedience; but also Christ himself and the apostles expressly present such a motive: “Do this and thou shalt live” [Luke x, 28; comp. Matt. xix, 16, 17, 28, 29; vi, 19, 20; Mark x, 21; Luke xii, 33; John iii, 36; Eph. vi, 3; Rom. ii, 7; 1 Tim. iv, 88; vi, 19]; the “crown” of life is promised as a reward to fidelity [1 Cor. ix, 25; 2 Tim. iv, 8; 1 Peter v, 4; James i, 12; Rev. ii, 10]; but neither the Old nor the New Testament separate this striving for happiness from the love to God and our neighbor in which, in fact, both find the true motive to moral action. There is, in reality, no essential antagonism between love and the striving after happiness; but the latter is directly implied in the former, and is, in the nature of the case, inseparable from it. Christianity knows no other happiness than love to God in the consciousness of being loved by him.

All moral activity has necessarily a permanent result in the person himself; it makes the moral his possession and property,—forms more and more his moral character, and hence creates a tendency to, and a readiness in, moral acting. I his moral possession, as a result of moral activity—virtue—becomes in turn itself, as an active power, a motive force to moral life, so that by his moral activity man constantly increases the actuating power of the same. Of this readiness or skill in moral acting we will have occasion to speak hereafter; we merely remark here, that by virtue of acting morally the originally as yet undetermined freedom of choice receives a determined character,—takes up into itself the morally good as such. The moral develops itself into a constantly increasing power,—renews itself on a progressively larger scale in the organic circulation of life. The good becomes to the moral man, as it were, a second nature, which, in turn, works out of itself by virtue of its own power; it is no longer simply something objective to him, nor merely a natural quality conferred upon him, but it is a vital possession, and hence an actuating power within him.