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

All moral attainments, and hence all the elements and forms of perfection or of the true good, are a moral possession, and hence a property. Every possession is an enlargement of the existence, the power and the life-sphere of the moral person, in virtue of moral appropriation,—is a breaking down of the limits of the original individuality, a uniting of the isolated existence with the life of the whole. Corresponding to the distinction between special and general appropriating (§ 104), and, from another point of view, to that between natural and spiritual appropriating (§ 101), the possession acquired by moral appropriating (which is at the same time necessarily also a forming) is, on the one hand, partly of a more external character,—bearing upon the individual as such and widening his life-sphere, and hence, as relating to others, of an exclusive character,—and, on the other, in part of a more inward, spiritual and, in so far, not merely personal, character, but, on the contrary, promotive of communion.

(a) The outward possession-legal property, temporal means—is, as the fruit of moral labor, a real and legitimate good, and hence also a legitimate end of moral effort, though it becomes at once sinful when it is made the end per se, the highest good itself, when it is placed above the inward possession and not rather vitally united with it, when the effort for it aims merely at the enjoyment and not. also at the moral culture and the moral communion naturally involved in it,—when it does not become a channel of communicative love.

If appropriating is per se a moral activity, then is also the striving after temporal possessions not only a right but also a duty. Possessions distinguish man from the brute, and civilized man from the savage; the Diogenic form of wisdom is by no means very profound. Labor finds in possessions its normal fruit; possessions are labor as having become reality. The brute is possessionless because he does not labor. In property man ceases to be a mere isolated individual of his species; he creates for himself a world about himself which he can call his own; his property is the outward manifestation of his inward peculiarity. The fact that he who possesses much is also much regarded and esteemed in the world, is, indeed, often very hollow and baseless, though in reality it springs from the per se correct consciousness that possessions are the fruit of labor,—the result of moral effort. He who acquires nothing for himself passes in the world, not without reason, for unrespectable. Of a special virtue of possession-despising, as with the mendicant monks, there can, in the ante-sinful state, be no question; and even after the fall, possessions are presented as a perfectly legitimate end of moral effort, and their being increased as a special divine blessing. Cain and Abel possess already personal property; and the God-blessed possessions of the patriarchs occupy a very large place in their morally-religious life [Gen. xii. 5, 16; xiii, 2; xiv, 14; xxiv, 22, 35, 53; xxvi, 13, 14; xxvii, 28; xxx, 27, 30, 43; xxxi, 42; xxxii, 5, 10, 13 sqq.; xxxiii, 11; xxxix, 5; xlix, 25; Exod. xxiii, 25; Lev. xxv, 21; Deut. ii, 7; vii, 13; xv, 14 sqq.; xvi, 15, 17; xxviii, 3 sqq.; xxxiii, 13 sqq.; xxiv, 25; comp. 1 Kings iii, 13; Psa. cvii, 38; cxii, 2, 3; cxxxii, 15].

Property being the enlarged life-sphere of the moral person,—in some sense his enlarged personality itself,—the moral phase thereof lies not merely in its antecedent ground, namely, labor, but also in its moral use and application. To its enjoyment man has a moral right, as such enjoyment is the reward of labor; but to the exclusive enjoyment of it for himself alone he has no moral right, seeing that he is bound to other men by love, and love manifests itself in communicative distribution.