Adolf Wuttke · 61 of 107

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

Moral forming differs likewise in two respects. (a) According to that which is formed in the object, it is either a sensuously-natural or a spiritual forming.—1. Natural forming is a shaping of nature-material for the human spirit by virtue of the mastery of the spirit over nature, to the end either of practical utility or of a manifesting of spirit in art-work. Nature, as created, is indeed per se good and perfect, but it becomes a true home for, a true organ of, the spirit and of history, only by becoming imbued with spirit. Natural forming is moral and rational only in so far as it is the sensuous expressing of a spiritual forming.

All dominating is necessarily a forming, inasmuch as the dominated is more or less an expression of the will of the dominating power. A natural entity can bear this expression only in virtue of being shaped by man and at the same time for man. In natural forming the difference between man, as a moral creature, and the brute, becomes at once plainly visible. The activity of the brute is predominantly a sensuous appropriating; that of man is predominantly a forming, and indeed primarily a sensuously-natural forming. The appropriating of nature is primarily permitted by God to man, and is limited by a prohibition only in one respect; the forming of nature is enjoined upon him [Gen. i, 28; ii, 15]. The mere letting alone of even a Paradisaical nature in its given condition, is for man per se immoral; he is called to form it into a home for himself by his personal activity.—But man cannot morally accomplish a natural forming save on the condition that there exists already in him an antecedent moral forming. The artist cannot create a work of art unless it has already been spiritually formed in his soul; and each and every object that is shaped, is to be, in its entire purpose, not a mere solitary something existing for itself, but rather one of the stones of a greater and essentially-spiritual structure,—the structure of history. Man shapes nature not for its own sake but for humanity, namely, into a home for man’s spiritual life, into an expression of historical reality,—which is essentially the product of spiritual forming. Hence natural forming has always the purpose simply of serving the spiritual, even as the nourishment and development of the body take place not in the interest of the body, but of the spirit.