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

(b) According to the manner in which the objective entity is formatively influenced, we have to distinguish between particular and general forming.

1. Particular forming forms single objects for the service of the earthly wants of single or several persons, that is, for use for temporal ends. It is therefore labor, in the proper and narrower sense of the word. Labor relates not merely to natural matter, but also to the individual spirit, in so far as the latter is to be formed for the temporal earthly life, and hence is spiritual as well as natural forming.

All utility relates to the particular; that which is for the common utility is simply that which is useful for many particular persons. When the Rationalistic school spoke of the “common utility” of religion, it manifested simply very bad taste; religion is thus placed on a par, e. g., with a public fountain or an advertising sheet. Labor concerns the individual; works for the common utility, such as roads or canals, look not to the good of humanity as a whole, as a unity, but to the many individual persons whom they are to benefit; for him who does not use them, they have no significancy and are perhaps even offensive. Their utility and enjoyment fall to the individual as such, but not in virtue of his being a man, a rational spirit. In a work of art, however, one has pleasure precisely in his character of rational spirituality; although from another stand-point this work is of no “use” to him whatever. That which is to exalt the heart must be more than labor. Products of labor may indeed excite a general and rational interest, as, for example, a machine or other superior fruits of skill; here, however, it is not the work itself that is admired, but the art to which the handicraft has been exalted,—the spiritual power of invention, that is, the power of spirit,—not the utility, but the beauty or ingenuity,—not the merely individual element, but the spiritual, which, as such, bears upon itself the stamp of general significancy and validity. The actual work on a machine is performed not by the ingenious inventor, the master, but by the manual laborer; and in that which this laborer executes there is little else to admire than the industry, but nothing of a general interest. The end of a work of art is not, to be used by the individual, but to be enjoyed and admired universally; and it is properly regarded as a sign of spiritual unculture when a particular age takes delight only in the merely useful, in mere labor, and not also in that which transcends labor, namely, in art,—when the age does not also exalt labor into art. In the time of Rationalistic illuminism many “useless” art-structures of the Middle Ages, magnificent castles and churches, were into magazines and factories,—art was turned into a hand-maid of labor; this was certainly very “useful,” but it was at the same time also an evidence of shameful unculture. The spirit of mere utility is but little removed from barbarism.

Labor is not mere manual toil. Common usage is perfectly right when it speaks also, and not merely in the stricter sense of the word, of spiritual, intellectual, labor, and of intellectual laborers, in distinction from a higher spiritual and intellectual activity. The highest results to which the spirit can attain are not effected by labor; the delicate, etherial image which delights our astonished gaze was not painfully wrought out by the sweat of the multitude, but sprang forth at once from the brain of genius; but, as distinguished from this ideal activity of the spirit, there is another which is entitled to be called work in the strict sense of the word, and which consists in a strictly-particular forming. All spiritual activity which looks to the mere benefit of individuals is labor; thus, we speak of the labor of pupils, of official labors, etc. The pupil labors in order, by the appropriation of particular scientific material, to form himself as an individual for a calling in life; the teacher labors upon the pupil for the same end. All spiritual forming which looks to success in the world, to obtaining a position in it, is labor; hence also we may speak of a scientific industry; there is an immense difference between science as manual labor, and science as an art. When the learner, however, elevates himself to a more ideal activity,—when, inspired with enthusiasm for the true and the good, he soars above the merely particular, or when the teacher seeks to awaken an enthusiasm of this character in him, then the activity ceases to be labor and becomes a higher kind of forming. It is true, we sometimes speak, though in a less strict sense, of a laboring in the sphere of purely spiritual things, as, for example, in that of religion and of active love [Rom. xvi, 6, 12; 1 Thess. i, 3; Heb. vi, 10; 1 Cor. xv, 58; 2 Cor. vi, 5; xi, 27; Rev. ii, 2, 3; xiv, 13]; Paul says, “I labored more abundantly than they all” [1 Cor. xv, 10], and the pastor and the messenger of the Word may speak of their labor on souls [1 Cor. xvi, 16; 2 Cor. x, 15; xi, 23; 1 Thess. iii, 5; v, 12; 1 Tim. v, 17]; however, in this essentially figuratively-used expression [see John iv, 38; 1 Cor. iii, 8] reference is had not to the activity per se, but to the trouble in overcoming obstacles (hence the words κόπος and κοπιά) which lie not in the matter itself, but in other circumstances, such as the enmity of sinful men, the feebleness of the actor himself, etc.