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

(b) Moral appropriating is, as regards the moral person himself, directly at the same time also a moral forming of the person into a progressively more perfect expression of the moral idea,—into a personally-peculiar realization of the moral end; and in proportion as the moral person appropriates to itself its own self, puts itself into possession of itself, it accomplishes upon itself also a moral forming.

(1) Not the body is to appropriate to itself the spirit, but the spirit is progressively more and more to appropriate to itself the body, and to form it, and thereby also to form itself; hence the spirit alone is the appropriating factor, and the body is simply to be appropriated and formed. Even as nature stands to God in a twofold relation, namely, in that, on the one hand, God accomplishes his will in it, makes it good, and, on the other, reveals himself through it, makes it into his image, into an object of beauty, so also has the body in relation to the spirit the twofold destination of being its organ and its image; the former it becomes essentially by particular forming, the latter by general forming (§§ 109, 110).

(a) The body is formed and appropriated to itself by the spirit as its true absolutely subservient organ, in that (1) it is strengthened and rendered apt in accomplishing every service for the rational will, through the mediating and carrying out of all appropriating and forming action of the rational spirit as bearing upon the external world; (2) in that, in its sensuous impulses, it is held under the discipline of the spirit, and is never allowed to have an independent right for itself; in both these respects realizes itself the complete domination of the spirit over the body.

It is characteristic of the true moral nature of man, that he is capable, not merely, as is the case with the brute, of appropriating and forming external objects, but also himself. The brute is formed by nature, not by itself, and it appropriates to itself only nature, but not itself; but man in his first-given condition does not as yet really have himself, but must first learn to possess himself,—must attain to moral ownership of himself.

Man virtualizes his god-likeness primarily in this, that he glorifies God even in his body as the temple of the [1 Cor. vi, 19, 20], and that he presents this body to God as a living, holy, and well-pleasing sacrifice [Rom. xii, 1.] The preliminary manifold dependence of the spirit on the body, and through the body also on external nature, is to be overcome and changed into spiritual freedom; the spirit is itself to make the body truly its own body, to appropriate it to itself as a moral possession, to form it into the perfect organ of the spirit,—in a certain sense, to create it spiritually. The original foreignness of the body to the spirit is to be overcome; its as yet partially-actual independence is to be broken; the body is to be thoroughly permeated by the spirit, and all that is merely objective and unfree in it, to be done away with. The dominion of the spirit over nature, which is set before it as a moral goal, is to realize itself first on its own nature, that is, on the body. That this is a moral task is plainly indicated by nature itself. The brute is much earlier self-supporting and mature than man, and needs no training in order to attain to its greatest skill; all the skill that man attains to he has to get by learning, to acquire by moral effort; and all learning is an appropriating through consciousness; man must in some manner first comprehend his body, before he can really form it and take it under his control; he who is spiritually dull usually remains also physically clumsy; man as coming from the hands of nature is the most helpless and most unskillful of creatures; all that he ever becomes is by the spirit,—by free moral activity; that his nascent life is much more helpless than that of any of the animals, is simply an incident of his high moral dignity. That which he has from nature is indeed good, but if it remains as mere unspiritualized, undominated nature, then it becomes for him evil,—becomes something of which he is to be ashamed. This rendering the body skillful is a personally-particular forming—a working of the spirit upon the body; thereby the spirit forms the body into its own true possession; it aspires to have it for itself, to have it entirely in its control. Herein consists also the true particular appropriating, the enjoying, of the body; man enjoys it when he has it fully in his power. This is the secret of the rich enjoyment of young persons, when, in free corporeal movement, in skillful playing, in skating, in rhythmical muscular action, etc., they feel themselves masters over their bodies; it is the consciousness of freedom, of acquired mastery; for, all consciousness of mastery is a feeling of happiness, and that, too, a per se legitimate one.

Man is to form and appropriate to himself his body in two respects; for as a spirit lie stands to the outer world in the double relation of receiving and of influencing,—through the senses and through the organs of motion. The cultivation of the senses is more an appropriating than a real forming; the senses must first be brought under the control of the spirit; the seaman and the huntsman have not always a really sharper natural eye than others, but their seeing is more skilled,—they see many objects from which others may indeed receive exactly the same light-impressions, but yet not actually perceive them, for the reason that they overlook them; seeing is an art, and many, though with open eyes, see comparatively little. An uncultured person hears, in a beautiful piece of music, little more than confused sounds, for the reason that he does not know how to hear. It is a moral duty of man to develop his senses to perfection, fully to appropriate them to himself, for they were given to him by God as channels through which to appropriate to himself the outer world; and it is unthankfulness to God for man to be willing to see and hear little or nothing in God’s nature,—for him to have no open eyes for the glory of God as resplendent in creation, and no ear for the beautiful harmonies of nature and art. Rudeness and unculture are sinful in every respect, and hence also in respect to the senses.

The appropriating training of the organs of motion to vigorous skillfulness, not merely as a pleasure but also as a duty, is brought about under normal circumstances not so much by calculating art as by spontaneous natural activity; and it takes place chiefly during youth. While it was an error of many former educators entirely to neglect the training of the body to skillfulness and , still, on the other hand, there is danger of overestimating the worth of regulated gymnastics. The unnatural physical life of our city populations may render necessary a systematic process of corporeal exercise, notwithstanding its manifold unesthetic and even repulsive joint-wrenchings; but where the young people can have scope for indulging in more natural and frolicksome muscular recreation, regular gymnastics are doubtless quite superfluous; the learned cramming of overcrowded schools needs them indeed as a sanitary complement, but it is dangerous to substitute mere medicine for daily bread. It is a morbid condition of society, when that to which nature itself prompts us has to be made a school-requirement.

The complete subordinating of the sensuous impulses to the discipline of the spirit, that is, the training of the body by the spirit to temperateness in respect to all sensuous enjoyments, and to such activity as is necessary to its being a proper organ for the spirit, is also, at the same time, an appropriating and a forming; the members are to be formed into “instruments of unto God” [Rom. vi, 12, 13]. Paul represents the complete dependence of the body on the moral spirit as a dependence, not on the merely individual spirit, but on the spirit as morally subordinating itself to God. Man, as to God, is not to permit the per se legitimate caring for his body to become a fostering of the sensuous desires [Rom. xiii, 13, 14], but is strictly to subordinate the nurturing of the body and the indulgence in sensuous enjoyments to the rational purposes of the moral spirit, so that they shall simply be means for the spirit and never ends, in themselves [Luke xxi, 34; Rom. xiv, 17; Eph. v, 18; 1 Thess. v, 6; 1 Tim. iii, 2; Tit. ii, 1 sqq.; 1 Pet. iv, 7, 8]. Temperateness, however, does not imply the taking of the least possible quantity of food and drink, nor indeed indifference to the sensuous pleasures of the table; this would in fact be unthankfulness toward the goodness of God who has prepared for us also this pleasure; it does, however, require the observance of that measure which is conditioned on the needs and health of the body, and on the properly understood social relations of the person. Excessive indulgence is not only a degradation of the person himself, but also uncharitableness toward the destitute.