SECTION LIII. The Moral. (Cont’d)

Though morality, as the free realizing of the good, appears essentially in the sphere of the will, yet as this will is a rational one,—the expression of a consciousness and of a love to the object of that consciousness,—hence, morality embraces the whole life and being of the spirit in all its forms of manifestation, as knowing, feeling, and willing. Moral knowledge is faith, not only religious, but also rational faith in general; moral feeling is pleasure in the good, and love of it, and, on the other hand, displeasure in the 11non-good; moral willing is a striving after the realization of the good. Morality itself, however, is not one of these three, but always and necessarily the union of all three of these phases of the spirit-life.

These three phases of the spirit-life are severally and collectively an expression of the union of the subject with objective being, with the All in general,—in the final instance with God. The subject itself becomes also to itself an object, and only thereby attains to its truth. The mere isolatedness of a being is per se evil, is the opposite of true existence and life, the ruin of life, that is, death,—is a dissolution of the unitary collective life into indifferent ultimate atoms. The individual exists in its truth only in so far as it comes into union with the All; this union is not its annihilation but its preservation, its recognition in the All as an organic member of the same; it is a mutual, vital relation, a unity in diversity; and this is in fact the essence of life, namely, that both the individual being and the collective whole, in all its parts, stand in relation to each other, and that, in this relation, the individual is, on the one hand, as a member, quite as fully at one with the whole, as, on the other, it is an integral being of itself.

In actively knowing, man brings the object into relation to himself,—takes it up, in its idea, spiritually into himself; in feeling, the subject brings himself in this spiritual appropriation into relation to himself,—embraces the appropriated object as in harmony or as in disharmony with his own being and character, that is, as pleasing or displeasing; in willing, the subject assumes an active determining relation toward the approvingly or disapprovingly received object; hence, the will rests on feeling, as in turn, feeling on knowledge, though the latter may be obscure and only half-conscious. In each of these three respects the spirit may be more or less free or unfree; in so far so it is free, it is also moral. It is true, knowing and feeling are primarily unfree,—they press themselves directly upon the essentially passive subject without his voluntary co-operation, and in so far as this is the case they are as yet extra-moral; but the 12moment they appear as freely willed they enter into the moral sphere, and this is their higher, rational form. Knowing is moral when we will to know rationally, that is, when we embrace isolated being, whether that of objective nature or of ourselves, as not existing for itself in its isolation, but on the contrary, when, passing beyond its isolatedness, we conceive it as having ultimately a divine ground,—in other words, when we associate all individual being with the infinite being and life of God, and thus conceive all existence as unitary and as established by God. Now, this passing beyond the individual object is not an unfree process; the object does not force us to do so, much rather it arrests us at its own immediate reality; but it is our rational nature that induces us to will to pass beyond. Knowing becomes moral when it becomes a pious consciousness,—assumes a religious character; and this pious associating of the finite with the infinite is faith, which is in its very essence religious. Faith can never be compelled by a presentation of arguments; in all its forms it is a voluntary matter; and from the simple fact that faith is a moral knowing, and hence includes within itself willingness and love, it is consequently not a mere knowing, not a mere holding-for-true; hence it may be, and is, a moral requirement. Without this willingness to find and acknowledge the divine in infinite objects, there is no knowledge of God, and hence no real rationality of knowledge. Though faith is essentially religious, nevertheless, springing forth from this source, it overflows and fructifies with its moral potency the entire field of rational knowledge. By virtue of this faith we have confidence in the truthfulness of the universe,—confidence that truth is discoverable, that the laws of our mind and the impressions made upon us by the external world are not untrue and defective, that divine order and conformity to law, and hence conformity to reason, pervade the universe, so that, consequently, we may rely on this order and this conformity to law. Without such a faith, without such a confidence independently of all presentation of evidence, there could be no knowledge—no possibility of a spiritual life in general. Without this confidence we would be unable to avoid suspecting poison in every cup of water, in every morsel of bread,—we would tremble lest, at 13every step, the ground might give way beneath our feet. Fondness of doubting presupposes depravity; skepticism proper, like the arts of sophistry, is an immoral dissolution of rational knowledge; under the skeptic’s eye, both the spiritual world and the realm of nature fall apart into lifeless ultimate atoms.

In so far as feeling is simply a direct consciousness of such an impressed state of the subject, it is as yet extra-moral, because unfree; it becomes rational and moral through freedom on the basis of the religious consciousness,—namely, when I do not permit myself to be determined by finite things in an absolutely passive manner, but, on the contrary, when I subordinate all my states of feeling to the power of faith or of the religious consciousness,—in a word, when I rise so far into the sphere of freedom as to have pleasure only in that which is God-pleasing, and displeasure only in the ungodly,—when my love to finite things is only a phase of my love to God.

The will, the more immediate sphere of the moral, is in itself likewise not as yet moral, but must first become so. Free will, as distinguished from the unfree impulse of the brute, is primarily as yet devoid of positive contents,—is only the possibility, but not the actuality, of the moral. It becomes a really free and, hence, a moral will only by coining into relation to faith, namely, in that it ceases to be a merely individual will determined solely by the isolated personality of the subject,—for, as such, it is as yet simply irrational and animal,—and furthermore in that it imbues itself with a positive faith,—determines itself by its God-consciousness and by its love to God,—so that thus, passing beyond mere finite being, it bases its outgoings on a rational faith in the infinite. This is so wide-reaching a condition of the moral will, that even an evil will (which also lies within the sphere of the moral) is determined by a certain faith-consciousness, seeing that such a will is a rebelling against its God-consciousness; “devils also believe” in God’s existence “and tremble” [James ii, 19]; the degree of guilt is strictly determined by the degree in which God is known. Hence the will is morally good when it rests on faith,—when it strives to realize the God-pleasing because of its God-consciousness 14and of its love to God; and it is morally evil when, despite its God-consciousness, it aims at the ungodly,—seeks to divorce finite beings, and especially its own, from its union with God. Hence in general terms, though morality has its essential sphere in the will, yet it also embraces, as intimately involved therein, the spheres of knowledge and of feeling.