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

In the appropriating activity man effects his unity with the objective entity, by taking it up into himself,—by uniting it with himself, by making it an element of his own nature. This moral activity differs both in regard to what element of the object is appropriated by the actor, and in regard to how this takes place.

(a) According to what element of the object is appropriated, the appropriating is either natural or spiritual; the latter is the more comprehensive, and extends itself to all objective existence,—also to God.—Natural appropriation relates as well to the existence and preservation of the individual person as to the existence and preservation of the species, and is the necessary condition of both. In both respects, therefore, man is bound to nature and stimulated by natural instinct, and although in this respect he is freer than the brute, and all the freer the higher his personality is developed, nevertheless in respect to the preservation of the existence of the subject, this freedom is still always of a limited character, and the law of nature is, in many respects, stronger than the will, though, however, not so potent as to force the will to the immoral.

All natural existence is at the same time also of spiritual significance,—is a realized thought, the expression of an idea. But as, on the other hand, not every spiritual entity is connected with a natural one, hence spiritual appropriating is of greater compass and higher significancy than the merely natural. The higher moral worth of the former appears also from this, that it preserves the objective existence in its reality, whereas natural appropriation more or less destroys it. With the increase of moral and spiritual growth, natural appropriation constantly gives place more and more to the spiritual; with the child the former predominates; but what is normal in the child becomes immoral in mature age.

In natural appropriation there is manifested a real and normal limitation of free self-determination. When hunger predominates, the spiritual forces subside, and at last it becomes even mightier than the free determinations of the will. Nevertheless this power of nature over the will is neither unlimited nor absolutely definitive, but the moral will is capable of asserting its autonomy against it. It may indeed enfeeble the bodily force and therewith also the spiritual, but it cannot absolutely determine the will. Christ cried out indeed on the cross: “I thirst;” but when hungering in the desert he resisted the temptation. The fact that from grief or despair persons have starved themselves to death, proves at least that the will is capable of being stronger than nature, even under its most overpowering phases. He who in the last desperation of famine lays hold on human life to satiate his hunger [Lev. xxvi, 29] commits a crime even in the eyes of human law, and the violence of hunger forms no excuse. That also in this respect a great difference is to be made between man as unfallen and man as enslaved to sin, we have already observed.