And it was not for him an abstract conviction. In Palestine, where his

band was stationed, it was Roman arms alone that put a stop, for a time

at any rate, to the fierce intestine wars between different dynasties

and parties, accompanied by savage slaughter. And it was only under the

ægis of the Roman power that the neighbouring clans of the Edomites and

the Arabs gradually emerged out of the condition of continual wars and

crude barbarism.

Cornelius then did not err in thinking highly of his vocation, and in

considering the state and its chief organ, the army, a power necessary

for the common good. Ought he to have changed his judgment when he

became a Christian? A new, higher, and purely spiritual life was

revealed _in him_, but this fact did not abolish the evil _outside_ of

him. The pity which justified his military calling referred precisely

to those who were suffering from the _external_ evil, which remained

what it was. Or perhaps the higher life revealed in him, ought,

without abolishing the external evil, to have abolished the inward

good in him--the pity or charity which was ‘remembered by God,’ and

to have replaced it by indifference to the sufferings of others. Such

indifference or unfeelingness, however, is the distinctive mark of the

stone--of the lower and not of the higher grade of being. But perhaps,

in addition to compassion, the Christian receives, together with the

new life, a special power to overcome every external evil without

resisting it by force--to overcome it by immediate moral effect alone,

or by the miracle of grace. This supposition is remarkably ill-founded

and is based upon a complete misunderstanding both of the nature

of grace and of its moral conditions. We know that Christ Himself

encountered upon earth such human environment that His grace could not

work miracles ‘because of their unbelief.’ We know that in the very

best environment--in the midst of His apostles--He found ‘the son of

perdition.’ We know that of the two thieves who were crucified only

one repented. It is uncertain whether he would have been susceptible

to the Divine grace under other circumstances, but it is quite certain

that his comrade remained inaccessible to it even under _these_

circumstances.

Those who affirm that _every_ evil-doer may be all at once converted to

the good and restrained from crime by the immediate effect of the inner

power of grace alone, do not in the least realise the meaning of what

they are saying. So far as the inward, purely-spiritual power of the

good is concerned, its distinctive characteristic lies precisely in the

fact that it does not work like a mechanical agency which inevitably

produces external physical changes, but that it acts only on condition

of being inwardly received by the person upon whom it acts--a truth

which, one would have thought, the case of Judas made obvious to the

blind.

The power of the grace of Christ affected men who were sinful owing

to the infirmity of the flesh and not owing to the firmness of the

evil will--men who were not happy in their sins, but suffered from

them and felt the need of a physician. It was of these sick ready

to be healed Christ said that they will enter the kingdom of heaven

before the self-righteous, and this precisely was the reason why the

latter hated Him and reproached Him for condescending to mix with

publicans and sinners. But even His enemies could find no pretext to

accuse Him of condoning bloodthirsty murderers, impious blasphemers,

shameless seducers, and professional criminals of all kinds, enemies

of human society. But, it will be said, He left them in peace. There

was, however, no occasion for Him to deal with them since there

existed Roman and Jewish authorities whose business it was precisely to

restrain evil, as far as possible, by compulsion.

According to both the spirit and the letter of the Gospel we must

not appeal to the powers that be for enforced defence of _ourselves_

against attacks on our person or property. I ought not to drag into

the law court and prison the man who strikes me or walks away with

my fur coat. I ought with all my heart to forgive the wrong-doer for

the wrong which he does me, and not to offer any resistance to him so

far as I alone am concerned. This is clear and obvious. It is clear,

too, that I must not give way to evil feeling against the person who

wrongs my neighbours--him, too, I must forgive in my heart and regard

him as a fellow-man. What _practical_ duty, however, does the moral

principle impose upon us in that case? Can my duty be actually the same

in the case of my own injury and that of another? To allow injury to

myself means to sacrifice myself, and is a moral act; to allow injury

to others means sacrificing others, and this can certainly not be

called self-sacrifice. The moral duty towards others, psychologically

based upon pity, must not in practice give rights to violent men and

evil-doers alone. Peaceful and weak persons also have a right to our

active pity or help. And since, as individuals, we are unable to give

continual and sufficient help to all the injured, we must do this

in our collective capacity, that is, through the state. Political

organisation is a naturally-human good, as necessary to our life as our

physical organism is necessary to it. In giving us a higher spiritual

good Christianity does not deprive us of the lower, natural goods--it

does not pull from under our feet the ladder which we are mounting.

With the coming of Christianity and the good news of the Kingdom of

God, the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms did not disappear.

And if they have not been abolished, there is no reason why the

naturally-human kingdom, embodied in political organisation, should

be abolished either, since it is just as necessary in the historical

process as the others are in the cosmical. Nothing could be more absurd

than to maintain that although we cannot cease to be animals we ought

to cease being citizens.

The fact that the purpose of Christ’s coming to the earth could not

consist in creating a kingdom of this world or a state--which had

already been founded long ago--in no way proves that He took up a

negative attitude with regard to the state. The circumstance that the

Gospel does not deal with the external means of protecting humanity

from the crudely-destructive effect of the powers of evil could

entitle us to draw conclusions only if the Gospel had appeared before

the foundation of the state, in a community that had neither law nor

authority nor organised justice. There was no need to give in the

Gospel over again the principles of civic and juridical order which

had, many centuries before, been already given in the Pentateuch. If

Christ did not intend to reject them, He could do nothing but confirm

them, _and this was precisely what He did_. “One jot or one tittle

shall in no wise pass from the law.... Think not that I am come to

destroy the law.... I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

But, it will be urged, the grace and truth manifested in Christ

made the law void. Now, _when exactly_ did this happen? Was it when

Judas betrayed his master, or when Ananias and Sapphira deceived the

Apostles, or when the deacon Nicolas introduced sexual laxity under

the pretext of brotherhood, or when a Christian of Corinth was guilty

of incest? Or was it when the Spirit wrote through the prophet of the

New Testament to the Churches and said to the representative of one

of them, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest,

and art dead” (Rev. iii. 1); and to another, “I know thy works, that

thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then

because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee

out of my mouth” (vv. 15, 16).

If then, from the time grace and truth first appeared and to this day,

they have not taken possession either of the whole nor even of the

majority of Christian humanity, the question is how and in whom has the

law been made void. Could the law have been made void by grace in those

who have neither law nor grace? It is obvious that for them, that is,

for the majority of mankind, the law must, according to the word of

Christ, remain in full force as the external limit of their liberty.

And in order to be such a limit, the law must possess sufficient

power of compulsion, that is, must be embodied in the organisation

of the State with its law courts, police, armies. And in so far as

Christianity did not abolish the law, it could not abolish the State.

This necessary and rational fact does not, however, by any means prove

that the inner relation of men to the external force embodied in the

state, and consequently the general and particular character of its

activity, remained unchanged. Chemical substance does not disappear in

vegetable and animal bodies, but acquires new peculiarities in them,

so that there exists a whole science of organic chemistry. The case of

_Christian policy_ is similar. A Christian state must, if it is not a

mere name, distinctly differ from a heathen state, though as _states_

both have the same basis and common aim.

XIII

“A peasant goes forth into the fields to his husbandry; a Polovets

falls upon him, slays him, and drives away his horse. Then in a crowd

the Polovtsi come out against the village, kill all the peasants, set

fire to the houses and lead the women away into captivity, while the

princes are taken up with feuds among themselves.”[188] If _pity_ for

these peasants was not to be confined to sentimental words alone, it

was bound to lead to the organisation of a strong central authority

sufficient to defend the peasants from intestine wars between the

princes and the raids of the Polovtsi.

When, in another country, the greatest of her poets exclaimed with

profound grief, which he showed not in words only:

Ahi, serva Italia dei dolor’ ostello,

Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta![189]

--the same pity directly incited him to call from beyond the Alps a

supreme representative of state authority, a strong protector from

incessant and unbearable acts of violence. The pity for the actual

calamities of Italy, expressed in many passages of the _Divine

Comedy_, and the appeal for a state invested with the fulness of

power as a necessary means of salvation took the form of a definite,

well-thought-out conviction in Dante’s book _On Monarchy_.

The troubles of anarchy or of a weakly-developed state, that called

forth the pity of Vladimir Monomakh and of Dante, can only be cured or

remedied by a powerful state, and would inevitably arise again if it

disappeared. The purely moral motives were obviously insufficient in

the thirteenth century to prevent men from trying to exterminate one

another. And even granting that at the present day these motives have

become stronger and more widely spread--though this is doubtful,--it

would be ridiculous to maintain that they are in themselves sufficient

for the maintenance of peace. It is obvious that Italian citizens no

longer give vent to their party differences by cutting each other’s

throats solely because of the compulsory order of the state with its

army and police. As to Russia--not to speak of the intestine wars

among the princes, and of the people taking the law into their own

hands,--there is no doubt that the savage races which the duchy of

Moscow and the Russian empire had with such difficulty gradually driven

farther and farther away from the centre of the country, submitted to

force rather than became regenerated. And if, God forbid, the lance and

the bayonet were to disappear or to lose their force on the Caucasian,

Turkestan, or Siberian frontier all moralists would become at once

convinced of the true nature of these excellent institutions.[190]

_Just as the Church is collectively organised piety, so the state is

collectively organised pity._ To affirm, therefore, that from its very

nature the Christian religion is opposed to the state is to affirm

that the Christian religion is opposed to pity. In truth, however, the

Gospel not merely insists upon the morally binding character of pity

or altruism, but decidedly confirms the view, expressed already in the

Old Testament, that there can be no true piety apart from pity: “I will

have mercy and not sacrifice.”

If, however, pity be admitted in principle, it is logically inevitable

to admit also the historical organisation of social forces and

activities, which raises pity from the stage of a powerless and

limited feeling and gives it actuality, wide application, and means of

development. From the point of view of pity it is impossible to reject

the institution owing to which one can _practically pity_, i.e. _give

help and protection_ to tens and hundreds of millions of men instead of

dozens or at most hundreds of people.

The definition of the state (so far as its moral significance

is concerned) as organised pity can only be rejected through

misconception. Some of these misconceptions must be considered before

we go on to deal with the conception of the Christian state.

XIV

It is urged that the stern and often cruel character of the state

obviously contradicts the definition of it as organised pity. But this

objection is based on a confusion between the necessary and sensible

severity and useless and arbitrary cruelty. The first is not opposed to

pity, and the second, being an abuse, _is opposed to the very meaning

of the state_, and therefore does not contradict the definition of the

state--of the normal state, of course--as organised pity. The supposed

contradiction is based upon grounds as superficial as the argument that

the senseless cruelty of an unsuccessful surgical operation and the

sufferings of the patient in the case even of a successful operation

are in obvious contradiction to the idea of surgery as a beneficent art

helpful to man in certain bodily sufferings. It is obvious that such

representatives of state authority as Ivan the Terrible are as little

evidence against the altruistic basis of the state, as bad surgeons are

against the usefulness of surgery. I am aware that an educated reader

may well feel insulted at being reminded of such elementary truths, but

if he is acquainted with the recent movement of thought in Russia he

will not hold me responsible for the insult.

But, it will be maintained, even the most normal state is inevitably

pitiless. In pitying peaceful people whom it defends against men

of violence, it is bound to treat the latter without pity. Such

_one-sided_ pity is out of keeping with the moral ideal. This is

indisputable, but again it says nothing against our definition of

the state, for, in the first place, even one-sided pity is pity and

not anything else; and secondly, even the normal state is not by any

means an expression of the moral ideal already attained, but only

one of the _chief means_ necessary for its attainment. The ideal

condition of mankind, or the Kingdom of God, when _attained_, is

obviously incompatible with the state, but it is also incompatible

with pity. When everything will once more be good there will be no

one to pity. And so long as there are men to be pitied, there are men

to be defended; and the moral demand for organising such protection

efficiently and on a wide scale--_i.e._ the moral significance of the

state--remains in force. As for the pitilessness of the state to those

from whom or against whom it has to defend the peaceful society, it

is not anything fatal or inevitable; and although it undoubtedly is a

fact, it is not an unchangeable fact. In point of history there is no

doubt that the relation of the state towards its enemies is becoming

less cruel, and consequently more merciful. In old days they used to be

put to painful death together with their family and relatives (as is

still the case in China). Later, every one had to answer for himself,

and subsequently the very character of the responsibility has changed.

Criminals have ceased to be tormented solely for the sake of inflicting

pain; and at the present time the positive task of helping them morally

is recognised. What can be the ultimate reason of such a change?

When the state limits or abolishes the penalty of death, abolishes

torture and corporal punishment, is concerned with improving prisons

and places of exile, it is obvious that in pitying and protecting

peaceful citizens who suffer from crimes, it begins to extend its pity

to the opposite side also--to the criminals themselves. The reference,

therefore, to the one-sided pity is beginning to lose force as a fact.

And it is through the state alone that the organisation of pity ceases

to be one-sided, since the human crowd is still for the most part

guided in its relation to the enemies of society by the old pitiless

maxims, ‘to the dog, a dog’s death’; ‘the thief deserves all he gets’;

‘as a warning to others,’ etc. Such maxims are losing their practical

force precisely owing to the state, which is in this case more free

from partiality either to the one side or the other. Restraining with

an authoritative hand the vindictive instincts of the crowd, ready to

tear the criminal to pieces, the state at the same time never renounces

the humane duty to oppose crimes,--as the strange moralists, who in

truth pity only the aggressive, violent, and rapacious, and are utterly

indifferent to their victims, would have it do. This indeed is a case

of one-sided pity![191]

XV

Our definition of state may lead to a less crude misconception on the

part of the jurists, who regard the state as the embodiment of legality

as an absolutely independent principle, distinct from morality in

general and from motives of pity in particular. The true distinction

between legal justice and morality has already been indicated.[192]

It does not destroy the connection between them; on the contrary, it

is due to that connection. If this distinction is to be replaced by

separation and opposition, an unconditional principle must be found

which shall ultimately determine every legal relation as such and be

altogether outside of, and as far as possible removed from, the moral

sphere.

Such an a-moral and even anti-moral principle is to be found in the

first place in _might_ or force: _Macht geht vor Recht_. That in the

order of history relations based upon right follow those based upon

force is as unquestionable as the fact that in the history of our

planet the organic life appeared after the inorganic and on the basis

of it--which does not prove, of course, that inorganic matter is the

specific principle of the organic forms as such. The play of natural

forces in humanity is simply the _material_ for relations determined

by the conception of right and not the principle of such relations,

since otherwise there could be no distinction between right and

rightlessness. Right means the _limitation_ of might, and the whole

point is the _nature_ of the limitation. Similarly, morality might be

defined as _the overcoming of evil_, which does not imply that evil is

the principle of morality.

We shall not advance any further in the definition of right if we

replace the conception of might, derived from the physical sphere, by

the more human conception of freedom. That individual freedom lies at

the basis of all relations determined by law there can be no doubt,

but is it really the unconditional principle of legality? There are

two reasons why this cannot be the case. In the first place, because

in reality it is _not unconditional_, and, secondly, because it is

not the determining principle of _legality_. With regard to the first

point, I mean not that human freedom is never unconditional, but

that it is not unconditional in that sphere of concrete relations

in which and for the sake of which law exists. Suppose that some man

living in the flesh on earth actually possessed absolute freedom, that

is, that he could by the act of his will alone, independently of any

external circumstances and necessary intermediate processes, accomplish

everything he wished. It is obvious that such a man would stand outside

the sphere of relations determined by legality. If his unconditionally

free will determined itself on the side of evil, no external action

could limit it; it would be inaccessible to law and authority. And if

it were determined on the side of the good it would make all law and

all authority superfluous.

It is then irrelevant to speak of unconditional freedom in this

connection, since it belongs to quite a different sphere of relations.

Legality is concerned only with limited and conditional freedom,

and the question is precisely as to what limitations or conditions

are lawful. The liberty of one person is limited by the liberty of

another, but not every such limitation is consistent with the principle

of legality. If the freedom of one man is limited by the freedom of

his neighbour who is free to wring his neck or chain him up at his

pleasure, there can be no question of legality at all, and in any case

such a limitation of freedom shows no specific characteristics of the

principle of legality as such. These characteristics must be sought not

in the mere fact of the limitation of freedom, but in the equal and

universal character of the limitation. If the freedom of one is limited

to the same extent as the freedom of the other, or if the free activity

of each meets with a restriction that is common to all, then only is

the limitation of freedom determined by the conception of law.

The principle of legality is then freedom within the limits of

equality, or freedom conditioned by equality--consequently a

conditional freedom. But the equality which determines it is not an

absolutely independent principle either. The essential characteristic

of the legal norms is that, in addition to equality, they should

necessarily answer, too, the demand for _justice_. Although these two

ideas are akin, they are far from being identical. When the Pharaoh

issued a law commanding to put to death all the Jewish new-born babes,

this law was certainly not unjust on account of the unequal treatment

of the Jewish and the Egyptian babes. And if the Pharaoh subsequently

gave orders to put to death all new-born infants and not only the

Jewish ones, no one would venture to call this new law just, although

it would satisfy the demand for equality. Justice is not mere equality,

but _equality in fulfilling that which is right_. A just debtor is not

one who equally refuses to pay all his creditors but who equally pays

them all. A just father is not one who is equally indifferent to all

his children but who shows equal love for all of them.

Equality, then, can be just or unjust, and it is the just equality

or, in the last resort, justice that determines the legal norms. The

conception of justice at once introduces us into the moral sphere. And

in that sphere we know that each virtue is not in a cage by itself, but

all of them, justice among them, are different modifications of one

or, rather, of the threefold principle which determines our rightful

relation to everything. And since justice is concerned with man’s moral

interaction with his fellow-beings, it is merely a species of the moral

motive which lies at the basis of inter-human relations, namely of

pity: _justice is pity equally applied_.[193]

In so far then as legality is determined by justice it is essentially

related to the moral sphere. All definitions of law which try to

separate it from morality leave its real nature untouched. Thus,

in addition to the definition already mentioned, Iering’s famous

definition declares that ‘law is a protected or safeguarded interest.’

There can be no doubt that law does defend interest, but not every

interest. It obviously defends only the just interests or, in other

words, it defends every interest in so far as it is just. What,

however, is meant by justice in this connection? To say that a just

interest is an interest safeguarded by law is to be guilty of the

crudest possible logical circle which can only be avoided if justice

be once more taken in its essential, _i.e._ in its moral, sense. This

does not prevent us from recognising that the moral principle itself,

so far as the inevitable conditions of its existence are concerned,

is realised in different ways, and to a greater or lesser degree.

For instance there is the distinction between the external, formal,

or strictly-legal justice and the inner, essential, or purely-moral

justice, the supreme and ultimate standard of right and wrong being

one and the same--namely, the moral principle. Possible conflict

between ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ justice in particular cases is in itself no

argument against their being essentially one, since similar conflict

may arise in the carrying out of the simplest and most fundamental

moral demands. Thus, for instance, pity may demand that I should save

two men who are drowning, but being unable to save both, I have to

choose between the two. The cases of difficult choice between complex

applications of legal justice and morality in the strict sense are no

proof of there being any essential and irreducible opposition between

the two. The argument that the conceptions of justice and morality

alter in the course of history is equally unconvincing. It might carry

some weight if the rights and laws remained meanwhile unchanged. In

truth, however, they change even more according to place and time.

What conclusion, then, are we to adopt? There is change in the

particular conceptions of justice, there is change in the rights and

laws, but one thing remains unchangeable: the demand that the rights

and laws should be just. The inner dependence of legal forms upon

morality--independently of all external conditions--remains a fact. To

avoid this conclusion one would have to go very far--to the country,

seen by the pilgrim women in Ostrovsky’s play, where lawful requests

to Mahmut of Persia and Mahmut of Turkey were to begin by the phrase

“Judge me, O thou _unjust_ judge.”

Iering’s definition undergoes a change in the formula according to

which law _discriminates_ between interests in contradistinction to

morality which _values_ them. There can be no doubt that legal justice

discriminates between people’s interests and, equally, that it defends

them. But this fact alone gives as yet no idea of the essence of

legality. There may be discrimination of interests on grounds which

have nothing to do with legality, and the definition thus proves to be

too wide. Thus if robbers in a wood attack the travellers and leave

them their life but seize all their property, this will no doubt be

a case of the discrimination of interests, but to see in it anything

in common with legal right is only possible in the sense in which all

violence is the expression of the right of the fist, or the right of

brute force. In truth, legality is determined not of course by the

fact of the discrimination between interests, but by the constant and

universal _norm_ of such discrimination. To be consistent with the

conception of right, the discrimination of interests must be correct,

normal, or just. In drawing a distinction between the normal and the

abnormal discrimination of interests, and referring the first only to

the province of legal justice, we obviously make a _valuation_ of them,

and therefore the supposed opposition between legality and morality

falls to the ground. When we find some laws to be unjust and work for

their repeal, then, though we do not leave the domain of legality, we

are concerned not with any real discrimination of interests, but in the

first place with valuing the already existing discrimination, which in

its own day was also conditioned by judgments of value, though they

were different from those we pass now and opposed to them.

If morality then be defined as the valuation of interests, legal

justice forms an essential part of morality. This is by no means

contradicted by the fact that the standard of value in morality in the

strict sense and in the legal sphere is not the same. This difference,

the necessity, namely, for recognising legal relations apart from the

purely-moral ones, is itself based upon moral grounds--upon the demand,

namely, that the highest, the final good should be realised apart

from any external compulsion, and that, consequently, there should be

some possibility of choice between good and evil. Or, to put it in a

paradoxical form, the highest morality demands a certain freedom to

be immoral. This demand is carried out by legal justice which compels

the individual to do the minimum of good necessary to the social life,

and, in the interest of the truly moral, that is, of free perfection,

safeguards him from the senseless and pernicious experiments in

compulsory righteousness and obligatory holiness.[194]

Thus if the state is the objective expression of right, it necessarily

forms part of the moral organisation of humanity, which is binding upon

the _good_ will.

XVI

The connection of right with morality makes it possible to speak of the

Christian state. It would be unjust to maintain that in pre-Christian

times the state had no moral foundation. In the kingdoms of Judæa and

of Israel, the prophets directly put moral demands to the state, and

reproached it for not fulfilling these demands. In the pagan world it

is sufficient to mention Theseus, for instance, who at the risk of his

life freed his subjects from the cannibalistic tribute to Crete, in

order to recognise that here too the fundamental moral motive of the

state was pity, demanding active help to the injured and the suffering.

The difference between the Christian and the pagan state is not then

in their natural basis but in something else. From the Christian point

of view the state is only a part in the organisation of the collective

man--a part conditioned by another higher part, the Church, which

consecrates the state in its work of serving indirectly in its own

worldly sphere and by its own means the unconditional purpose which

the Church directly puts before it--to prepare humanity and the whole

earth for the Kingdom of God. From this follow the two chief tasks

of the state--the conservative and the progressive: to _preserve the

foundations of social life apart from which humanity could not exist_,

and _to improve the conditions of its existence_ by furthering the

free development of all human powers which are to be the instrument of

the future perfection, and apart from which the Kingdom of God could

not be realised in humanity. It is clear that just as without the

conservative activity of the state humanity would fall apart and there

would be _no one left_ to enter the fulness of life, so without its

progressive activity mankind would always remain at the same stage of

the historical process, would never attain the power finally to receive

or to reject the Kingdom of God, and therefore there would be _nothing

to live for_.

In paganism it was the conservative task of the state that was

exclusively predominant. Although the state furthered historical

progress, it did so involuntarily and unconsciously. The supreme

purpose of action was not put by the agents themselves, it was not

_their_ purpose since they had not yet heard ‘the gospel of the

kingdom.’ The progress itself, therefore, although it formally differed

from the gradual perfecting of the kingdoms of the physical nature did

not really have a purely-human character: it is unworthy of man to move

in spite of himself to a purpose he does not know. God’s word gives a

beautiful image of the great heathen kingdoms as powerful and wonderful

_beasts_ which rapidly appear and disappear. The natural, earthly men

have no final significance, and cannot have it; and the state, created

by such men, is their collective embodiment. But the pagan state,

conditional and transitory in nature, affirmed itself as unconditional.

Pagans began by deifying individual _bodies_ (astral, vegetable,

animal, and especially human) in the multitude of their various gods,

and they ended by deifying the collective body--the state (cult of the

kings in the Eastern kingdoms, the apotheosis of the Roman emperors).

The pagans erred not in ascribing positive significance to the state,

but only in thinking that it possessed that significance _on its own

account_. This was obviously untrue. Neither the individual nor the

collective body of man has life on its own account but receives it from

the spirit that inhabits it. This is clearly proved by the fact of the

decomposition both of the individual and of the collective bodies. The

perfect body is that in which dwells the spirit of God. Christianity,

therefore, demands not that we should reject or limit the power of the

state, but that we should fully recognise the principle which alone

may render the significance of the state actually complete--namely,

its moral solidarity with the cause of the Kingdom of God on earth,

all worldly purposes being inwardly subordinated to the one spirit of

Christ.

XVII

The question as to the relation of the Church to the state, which has

arisen in Christian times, can be solved in principle from the point

of view here indicated. The Church is, as we know, a divinely-human

organisation, morally determined by piety. From the nature of the case

the Divine principle decidedly predominates in the Church over the

human. In the relation between them the first is pre-eminently active

and the second pre-eminently passive. This obviously must be the case

when the human will is in direct correlation with the Divine. The

active manifestation of the human will, demanded by the Deity itself,

is only possible in the worldly sphere collectively represented by the

state, which had reality previously to the revelation of the Divine

principle, and is in no direct dependence upon it. The _Christian_

state is related to the Deity, as the Church is; it too is in a certain

sense an organisation of the God-in-man, but in it the human element

predominates. This is only possible because the Divine principle is

realised not _in_ the state, but _for_ it in the Church. So that in the

state the Divine principle gives _full play_ to the human and allows it

_independently_ to serve the supreme end. From the moral point of view

both the independent activity of man and his absolute submission to the

Deity as such are equally necessary. This antinomy can only be solved

and the two positions united by distinguishing the two spheres of life

(the religious and the political), and their two immediate motives

(piety and pity), corresponding to the difference in the immediate

object of action, the final purpose being one and the same. Pious

attitude towards a perfect God demands pity for men. The Christian

church demands a Christian state. Here as elsewhere _separation_

instead of _distinction_ leads to _confusion_, and confusion to

dissension and perdition. Complete separation of the Church from

the state compels the Church to do one of two things. It either has

to renounce all active service of the good and to give itself up to

quietism and indifference--which is contrary to the spirit of Christ;

or, zealous actively to prepare the world for the coming of God’s

kingdom, but, in its separation and alienation from the state, having

no means at its command for carrying out its spiritual activity, the

Church, in the person of its authoritative representatives has itself

to seize the concrete instruments of worldly activity, to interfere in

all earthly affairs and, absorbed in the question of means, forget its

original purpose--an unquestionably pure and high one--more and more.

Were such confusion allowed to become permanent, the Church would lose

the very ground of its existence. The separation proves to be no less

harmful to the other side. The state separated from the Church either

gives up spiritual interests altogether, loses its supreme consecration

and dignity, as well as the moral respect and the material submission

of its subjects, or, conscious of the importance of the spiritual

interests for the life of man, but, in its separation from the Church,

having no competent and independent institution to which it could

entrust the supreme care of the spiritual good of its subjects,--the

task of preparing the nations for the Kingdom of God,--it decides to

take that task upon itself. To do so consistently the state would have

to assume _ex officio_ the supreme spiritual authority--which would

be a mad and dangerous usurpation recalling the ‘man of lawlessness’

of the last days. It is clear that in forgetting its filial attitude

towards the Church, the state would be acting in its own name, and not

in the name of the Father.

The normal relation, then, between the state and the Church is this.

_The state recognises the supreme spiritual authority of the universal

Church, which indicates the general direction of the goodwill of

mankind and the final purpose of its historical activity. The Church

leaves to the state full power to bring lawful worldly interests into

conformity with this supreme will and to harmonise political relations

and actions with the requirements of this supreme purpose. The Church

must have no power of compulsion, and the power of compulsion exercised

by the state must have nothing to do with the domain of religion._

The state is the intermediary social sphere between the Church on the

one hand and the material society on the other. The absolute aims of

religious and moral order which the Church puts before humanity and

which it represents, cannot be realised in the given human material

without the formal mediation of the lawful authority of the state (in

the worldly aspect of its activity), which retains the forces of evil

within certain relative bounds until the time comes when all human

wills are ready to make the decisive choice between the absolute good

and the unconditional evil. The direct and fundamental motive of

such restraint is pity, which determines the whole progress of legal

justice and of the state. The progress is not in the principle, but in

its application. Compulsion exercised by the state draws back before

individual freedom and comes forward to help in the case of public

distress. _The rule of true progress is this, that the state should

interfere as little as possible with the inner moral life of man, and

at the same time should as securely and as widely as possible ensure

the external conditions of his worthy existence and moral development._

The state which chose on its own authority to teach its subjects true

theology and sound philosophy, and at the same time allowed them to

remain illiterate, to be murdered on the high-roads, or to die of

famine and of infection, would lose its _raison d’être_. The voice

of the true Church might well say to such a state: “It is I that am

entrusted with the spiritual salvation of these men. All that thou

are required to do is to have pity on their worldly difficulties and

frailties. It is written that man does not live by bread _alone_, but

it is not written that he lives without bread. Pity is binding upon

all, and upon me also. If, therefore, thou wilt not be the collective

organ of my pity, and wilt not, by rightly dividing our labour, make

it morally possible for me to devote myself to the work of piety,

I will once more have to set myself to do the work of pity, as I

have done in the old days when thou, the state, wast not yet called

Christian. I will myself have to see that there should be no famine and

excessive labour, no sick uncared for, that the injured should receive

reparation, and injurers be corrected. But will not then all men say:

What need have we of the state, which has no pity for us, since we have

a Church which took pity on our bodies as well as on our souls?” The

Christian state, worthy of this name, is one which, without interfering

in ecclesiastical affairs, acts within its own domain in the _kingly_

spirit of Christ, who pitied the sick and the hungry, taught the

ignorant, forcibly restrained abuses (driving out the money-changers),

was kind to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, and forbade his disciples

to use violence against unbelievers.

XVIII

Just as the fundamental moral motive of piety, determining our right

attitude to the absolute principle, is organised in the Church, and

the other ultimate moral principle, that of pity, determining our

right attitude to our neighbours, is organised in the state, so with

reference to the third essential aspect of human life our moral

relation to the lower nature (our own and that of others) is organised

objectively and in a collective form in society as an economic union or

zemstvo.

The moral duty of abstinence based as a fact upon the feeling of shame

inherent in human nature, is the true principle of the economic life of

humanity and of the corresponding social organisation, so far as its

own specific task is concerned. The economic task of the state which

acts from motives of pity, is compulsorily to secure for each a certain

minimum of material welfare as the necessary condition of worthy human

existence. This is the right solution of the economic question with

regard to one aspect of it, namely, with regard to relations between

human beings. Economic activity as such is, however, vitally concerned

with man’s relation to the material nature, and the unconditional

character of the moral principle and the completeness of the moral

order necessarily demand that this relation, too, should be brought

under the norm of the good or of perfection. Humanity must therefore

be morally organised not only in the ecclesiastical and the political,

but also in the specifically economic sphere of relations. And just as

between the Church and the state, so between the three parts of the

collective moral organisation there must be _unity without confusion

and distinction without separation_.

What form must, then, the good assume in the materially-economic

society as such? It is understood, of course, that moral philosophy

can do no more than indicate what the informing principle and the

final end of such a society ought to be. This principle is abstinence

from the evil of inordinate carnality; this end is the transmutation

of the material nature, both of our own and of that external to us,

into the free form of the human spirit, a form which does not limit it

from without, but unconditionally completes its inward and external

existence.

But what is there in common, it will be asked, between these ideas and

the economic reality whose principle is the infinite multiplication of

wants and whose end is an equally infinite multiplication of things

that satisfy these wants. Shame and shamelessness, spiritualisation of

the body and materialisation of the soul, resurrection of the flesh and

death of the spirit, certainly do have something in common, but the

common element is purely negative. This, however, is of no importance.

The fact that a moral norm is rejected does not abolish, but, on the

contrary, brings out its inner significance. There is no rational

ground for supposing that the economic life corresponds to the ideal

from the first in a way in which neither the Church nor the state

in their empirical reality correspond to it. There undoubtedly is a

certain opposition between the feeling of shame and the operations on

the stock exchange, but the opposition is certainly not any greater,

and perhaps is even less than that between real Christian piety and

the policy of the mediaeval Church. There is a lack of correspondence

between the principle of abstinence and money speculations, but again

it is not any greater, and, indeed, is less great than that between

the principle of the state as based upon justice and morality and the

institution of _lettres de cachet_, the dragonnades or the wholesale

expulsions of persons belonging to a different religion. On the

strength of what has happened and of what happens still, one may think

that the whole of the economic sphere is simply the field for greed

and self-interest, just as for some people the whole significance of

religion and the Church is summed up by the ambition of the clergy and

the superstitiousness of the masses, and for others the political world

contains nothing but tyranny of the rulers and blind submissiveness of

the crowd. Such views, no doubt, exist, but they are due either to a

desire to misunderstand the true meaning of things, or to incapacity

to understand it. The following argument is of more weight. Even if

we give up the immediate demand for the ideal of perfection in human

relations, we still ought to insist upon two things before we recognise

that the relations in question have any moral worth or significance.

(1) The moral principle said to be involved in them must not be

altogether foreign to them, but must show itself in them, even if in

an imperfect way only. (2) In their historical development they must

approximate to the norm or become more perfect. But the economic life,

if it is taken as a certain organisation of the material relations,

does not. in any way satisfy these two necessary demands. In spite

of all possible abuses in the ecclesiastical sphere, it could not be

seriously denied that the moral principle of piety is inherent in the

Church. It could not, for instance, be denied that the temples of God

are, generally speaking, erected owing to the feeling of piety, and

that the majority of people coming to the services are moved by it.

It could not be denied, either, that in some, if not in all, respects

the life of the Church is improving, and that many of the old abuses

have now become impossible. In a similar way no just man will deny

that state institutions--law courts, police, schools, hospitals,

etc.--are intended for the moral purpose of defending men from injuries

and calamities and of promoting their welfare, nor that the means of

attaining that purpose by the state are gradually improving in the

sense of becoming more merciful. But in the economic realm there exists

no institution which serves of objective expression to the virtue of

abstinence and helps to spiritualise the material nature. The moral

principle by which our material life ought to be determined, and our

external environment transformed, has no reality whatever in the domain

of the economic relations, and, therefore, there is in that domain

nothing to improve.

This complete separation of the economic life from its own moral

purpose is unquestionably a fact, but from our point of view it can

be satisfactorily explained. The moral organisation of humanity,

the principle of which was given in the Christian religion, could

not be _equally_ realised in all its parts. A certain historical

successiveness followed from the very nature of the case. The religious

task, the organisation of piety in the Church, was bound to occupy

the foremost place, both because it was the most essential and, in a

sense, the simplest thing, and the least conditioned by man. Indeed,

man’s relation to the unconditional principle revealed to him cannot be

determined by anything other than that principle itself, since nothing

can be higher than it; the relation rests upon its own foundation, upon

what is given. The second task of the moral organisation--the task of

the Christian state--is, in addition to the motive of collective pity,

also conditioned by the supreme religious principle which liberates

that worldly pity from the limitations it had in the heathen state.

And we see that the political task of historical Christianity, more

complex and conditioned than the religious one, comes on the scene

subsequently to the latter. There was a period in the Middle Ages when

the Church acquired definite organic forms, while the Christian state

was in the same condition of apparent non-existence as the Christian

economic life is to-day. The right of the fist, which was predominant

in the Middle Ages, no more corresponded to the ideal of the state than

modern banks and stock exchanges correspond to the ideal of economic

relations. Practical realisation of the latter is naturally the last

in the order of time since the economic sphere is the furthest limit

for the application of the moral principle. Its rightful organisation,

_i.e._ the establishment of the moral relation between man and material

nature, is inevitably conditioned in two ways: first, by the normal

religious attitude of humanity organised in the Church; and, secondly,

by the normal inter-human or altruistic relations organised in the

state.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the true economic problem to which

some socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century vaguely

groped their way, and from which modern socialists are as far removed

as their opponents, has not yet received a stable and definite

expression even in theory.

But however indefinite the last practical task may be, the changes in

the moral sentiments that predominated in the history of the Christian

world point with sufficient clearness to three main epochs. The _epoch

of piety_ was characterised by its exclusive interest for the ‘divine,’

its indifference and distrust of the human element, its hostility

and fear of the physical nature. This first epoch, in spite of its

stability and long duration, contained in itself a seed of destruction:

the spirit of the one-sided, intolerant piety of the Middle Ages was

regarded as the absolute norm. When this contradiction found its

direct and extreme expression in the inhuman and pitiless religious

persecutions inspired by ‘piety,’ there was a reaction which found its

first expression in idealistic humanism, and then showed itself in

works of practical pity and mercy. This movement of _human morality_

characteristic of the second epoch of the Christian history--from the

fifteenth to the nineteenth century inclusive--began to pass in the

course of that century into a third stage. Two preliminary truths

appeared in the living consciousness of mankind. The first is that

if mercy is to be fully carried out it must include the domain of

the _material life_, and the second is that the norm of the material

life is continence. To the philosophers this truth was clear in times

of antiquity, but it has not yet shed its light upon the general

consciousness for which it is but vaguely beginning to dawn. A glimmer

of it can unquestionably be seen in the nineteenth century in such

phenomena as the ascetic morality of the fashionable philosopher

Schopenhauer, the spread of vegetarianism, the popularity of Hinduism

and Buddhism which, though badly understood, are taken precisely on

their ascetic side; the success of the ‘_Kreuzer Sonata_,’ the fear of

the good people lest the preaching of continence might lead to a sudden

cessation of the human race, etc.

_Economic relations_ and _asceticism_ are the two apparently wholly

heterogeneous orders of facts and ideas, which, in the beginning of

the nineteenth century, were brought together in a perfectly crude and

external way by Malthusianism. _The inner and essential connection

between them consists in the positive duty of man to save material

nature from the necessity of death and decay, and to prepare it for

universal bodily resurrection._

XIX

It is generally believed that the purpose of the economic activity is

the increase of wealth. But the purpose of wealth itself--unless one

adopts the point of view of the ‘_avaricious knight_’--is to possess

the fulness of physical existence. This fulness no doubt depends

upon man’s relation to the material nature, and here two ways are

open before us. We can either selfishly exploit the earthly nature

or lovingly cultivate it. The first way has already been tried, and

although it has been of some indirect benefit to the intellectual

development of man and to the external human culture, the main purpose

cannot be attained by it. Nature yields to man on the surface, gives

him the semblance of dominion over her, but the fictitious treasures,

won by violence, bring no happiness and scatter in the wind like

burnt-up cinders. By means of external exploitation of the powers of

the earth man cannot secure that which is essential to his material

welfare,--he cannot, that is, heal his physical life and render it

immortal. And he cannot possess nature from within, for its true

substance is unknown to him. But in virtue of his reason and conscience

he knows the moral conditions, lying within his own control, which may

place him in the right relation to nature. Reason reveals to him that

every real fact or event is subject to the undefeasible law of the

conservation of energy. Carnal desires seek to bind the soul to the

surface of nature, to the material things and processes, and to turn

the inner potential infinity of the human being into the evil external

boundlessness of passions and lusts. Conscience even in its elementary

form of shame condemns this path as _unworthy_, and reason shows that

it is _perilous_. The more the soul expends itself outwardly, upon the

surface of things, the less inner force it has left for penetrating to

the inmost substance of nature and taking possession of it. It is clear

that man can truly spiritualise nature, that is, call forth and develop

its inner life, only by his own overflowing spirituality; and it is

equally clear that man himself can only become spiritualised at the

expense of his external, outwardly directed mental powers and desires.

The powers and desires of the soul must be _drawn within_ and, through

this, increase in intensity. And the inwardly concentrated, powerful

and spiritualised being of man will be in communion with the inner

substance of nature and no longer with its material surface.

What is required is not that man should give up externally acting

upon nature and carrying on the work of civilisation, but that he

should change the purpose of his life and the centre of gravity of his

will. External objects which most men passionately seek as ends in

themselves, expending upon them their inner powers of feeling and will,

must entirely become the means and the instruments, while the inner

forces gathered and concentrated within must be used as a powerful

lever to lift the weight of the material being which crushes both the

scattered soul of man and the divided soul of nature.

_The normal principle of the economic activity is economy--the saving,

the collecting of psychical forces by means of transmuting one species

of mental energy (the external or extensive) into another kind of

energy (the internal or the intensive)._ Man either scatters his

sensuous soul or he gathers it together. In the first case he achieves

nothing either for himself or for nature, in the second he heals and

saves both himself and it. Speaking generally, organisation signifies

that the means and instruments of the lower order are co-ordinated for

the attainment of one general purpose of a higher order. Therefore the

principle of economic activity that has hitherto been dominant--the

indefinite multiplication of the external and particular wants,

and the recognition of the external means of satisfying them as

ends in themselves--is the principle of disorganisation, of social

decomposition, while the principle of moral philosophy--the collecting

and the drawing in of all the external material purposes into one

inward and mental purpose of the complete reunion of the human being

with the substance of nature, is the principle of organisation and

universal resuscitation.

It must be remembered, however, that this task is _third_ in the order

of time in the general moral organisation of humanity, and that the

real solution of it is conditioned by the first two. The practice of

personal asceticism can be normal and rational only on condition of

a pious attitude to God and pity to men. If this were not so, the

devil would be the pattern of asceticism. In a similar manner the

collective organisation of the material life of man in accordance

with the principle of gathering the inner forces and restraining

the outer wants, cannot be rightly and successfully carried out by

isolated agents in the economic realm taken by itself. It involves the

recognition of the absolute purpose--the Kingdom of God--represented

by the Church, and requires the help of the rightful methods of state

organisation. Neither the individual nor the collective man can

introduce normal order into his material life apart from his religion

and his relation to other men.

Moral organisation of the human race or its regeneration into the

divine humanity is an indivisible threefold process. Its absolute

purpose is laid down by the Church as the organised piety, collectively

receptive of the Divine grace; its formal means and instruments are

supplied by the purely human, free principle of just pity or sympathy,

collectively organised in the state; and it is only the ultimate

substratum or the material body of the God-in-man that is found in the

economic life, determined by the principle of continence.

XX

The individual factor is, from the nature of the case, inevitably

involved in the social or the collective aspect of the moral

organisation of humanity. It is only in and through the activity of

the individual bearers of the supreme principles of life that humanity

increases in perfection, or is morally organised in the various aspects

of its existence. The unity, the completeness, and the right direction

of the general moral progress depend upon a harmonious co-operation

of the leading or ‘representative’ individuals. The normal relation

between the state and the Church would find its essential condition

and visible real embodiment in the abiding harmony of their supreme

representatives, the high priest and the king. The power of the

king would be consecrated by the authority of the priest, and the

authoritative will of the latter would only find expression through

the fulness of the power of the former. The high priest of the Church,

the direct bearer of the Divine principle, the representative of the

spiritual _parentage_, the father by pre-eminence, ought, every time

that he is tempted to abuse his authority by turning it into a power

of compulsion, to remember the words of the gospel that the Father

judges no one, but has passed all judgment to the Son, _for he is the

Son of man_. The Christian king, pre-eminently the son of the Church,

when tempted to raise his supreme temporal power to the level of the

highest spiritual authority, and allow it to interfere with the affairs

of religion and conscience, ought in his turn to remember that even the

King of Heaven does the _will of the Father_.

The authority of the high priest, as well as the power of the king,

are, however, inevitably connected with external advantages, and are

open to temptations that may prove too strong. Disputes, encroachments

and misunderstandings are bound to arise, and they obviously cannot

be finally settled by one of the interested parties. All external

limitations are, as a matter of principle or of ideal, incompatible

with the supreme dignity of the pontifical authority and of the

royal power. But a purely moral control over them on the part of the

free forces of the nation and society is both possible and extremely

desirable. In the old Israel there had existed a third supreme

calling, that of the prophet. Abolished by Christianity in theory, it

practically disappeared from the stage of history, and came forward in

exceptional cases only, for the most part in a distorted form. Hence

all the anomalies of mediaeval and modern history. The restoration

of the prophetic calling does not rest with the will of man, but a

reminder of its purely moral significance is very opportune in our day,

and is appropriate at the end of an exposition of moral philosophy.

Just as the high priest of the Church is the highest expression of

piety, and the Christian monarch the highest expression of mercy and

truth, so the true prophet is the highest expression of shame and

conscience. This inner nature of the prophetic calling determines its

external characteristics. The true prophet is a social worker who is

absolutely independent, and neither fears, nor submits to, anything

external. Side by side with the representatives of absolute authority

and absolute power there must be in human society representatives of

absolute freedom. Such freedom cannot belong to the crowd, cannot

be an attribute of democracy. Every one, of course, desires to have

moral freedom, as every one, perhaps, might wish to have the supreme

authority and power; but desiring is not enough. The supreme authority

and power are given by the grace of God; the true freedom man must

deserve for himself by self-renunciation. _The right to be free_

follows from the very nature of man and must be externally safeguarded

by the state. But the degree to which this right may be _realised_

entirely depends upon inner conditions, upon the level of the moral

consciousness. The man who has complete freedom, both external and

inward, is one who is not inwardly bound by anything external, and in

the last resort knows of no other standard of judgment and conduct than

the good will and the pure conscience.

The high priest is the coping-stone of a numerous and complex hierarchy

of the clergy, through which he comes into contact with the whole of

the laity; the king carries out his work among the people through

a complex system of civil and military institutions represented by

individual men; in a similar manner the free followers of the supreme

ideal realise it in the life of the community through a number of

men who more or less fully participate in their aspirations. The

three services can be best distinguished by the fact that the office

of the priest derives its main force from pious devotion to the

true traditions of the past; the office of the king--from a correct

understanding of the true needs of the present and the office of

the prophet, from the faith in the true vision of the future. The

difference between the prophet and the idle dreamer lies in the

fact that in the case of the prophet the flowers and fruits of the

ideal future do not hang in the air of personal imagination, but are

supported by the visible stem of the present social needs and by the

mysterious roots of religious tradition. And it is this same fact that

connects the calling of the prophet with the office of priest and king.

FOOTNOTES:

[178] The prayer for granting ‘eternal memory’ to the departed forms an

important part of the funeral and the requiem services in the Orthodox

Church.--_Translator’s Note._

[179] I cannot enlarge upon the details of this connection and upon

other cognate questions without passing into the sphere of metaphysics

and mystical aesthetics. But the general necessity of resurrection as

the fulness of the spiritual and bodily existence is sufficiently clear

from the point of view of the absolute moral principle and of the moral

order of reality.

[180] See above, Part I. Chapter II., ‘The Ascetic Principle of

Morality.’

[181] D. P. Yurkevitch, Professor of Philosophy, now deceased, told

me that a young scholar, son of an evangelical pastor in Moscow, was

present once at the marriage ceremony in the Russian Church, and was

very much struck by the fact that in the service the bridal crowns are

compared to crowns of the martyrs. This profound idea affected him so

deeply that it caused a complete revolution in his mind. As a result of

it, the young philologist gave up worldly learning and the university

chair he was going to occupy, and, to the distress of his relatives,

went into a monastery. He was the well-known Father Clement Sederholm,

of whose life and character the late K. N. Leontyev wrote so excellent

an account.

[182] The inner relation and contrast between the confusion of Babel

and the meeting of the Apostles in Sion, as the violation and the

restitution of the norm, are clearly indicated in the Church anthems

sung at Pentecost.

[183] The profound and important significance of the dogmatic disputes

dealing with the very essence of the Christian religion or piety I

have more definitely indicated elsewhere. See, _e.g._, _Veliki spor i

christianskaya politika_ (_The Great Dispute and Christian Policy_)

(1883), _Dogmatitcheskoe razvitie tserkvi_ (_The Dogmatic Development

of the Church_) (1886), _La Russie et l’Église universelle_ (1889).

This significance is particularly clear in the dispute concerning the

ikons which in the Christian East completed the circle of the dogmatic

development.

[184] This is discussed more fully in my _Duhovniya osnovi zhizni_

(_The Spiritual Foundations of Life_) and _La Russie et l’Église

universelle_ (last chapter).

[185] These three religiously moral works are dealt with at length in

the first part of the _Duhovniya osnovi zhizni_.

[186] Acts x.

[187] See above, Chapter IX., ‘The Significance of War.’

[188] From the _Instruction_ of Vladimir Monomakh, one of the rulers of

Russia in the eleventh century, to his children.--_Translator’s Note._

[189] “Italy, the slave and the abode of suffering, a ship without a

pilot amidst terrible storms.”

[190] My father had as a boy heard first-hand reminiscences of how

armed bands of Mongolians on the Volga engaged in open brigandage

carried away into captivity whole families of Russian travellers and

tormented them in all sorts of ways. At the present time this no longer

happens on the Volga, but on the Amur such things are still known to

take place. The perpetual war mission of the state is therefore not yet

over for Russia, and, had the good centurion Cornelius lived in our

day, no moral motives could prevent him from being a _sotnik_ of the

Kossacks in the Ussuriisky region.

[191] See above, Part III. Chapter VI., ‘The Penal Question from the

Moral Point of View.’

[192] See above, Part III. Chapter VIII., ‘Morality and Legal Justice.’

[193] See above, Part I. Chapter V., ‘Virtues.’

[194] See above, Part III. Chapter VIII., ‘Morality and Legal Justice.’

CONCLUSION

THE FINAL DEFINITION OF THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE AND THE

TRANSITION TO THE THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY

Our life acquires moral worth and significance when, through striving

after perfection, it becomes related to the perfect good. It follows

from the very conception of the perfect good that all life and all

existence are connected with it. There is meaning in the animal life,

in its functions of nourishment and reproduction. But this meaning,

important and unquestionable as it is, expresses only an involuntary

and partial connection of a particular being with the universal good,

and cannot satisfy the life of man; _his_ will and his reason, being

forms of the infinite, demand something more. The spirit is nurtured

by the knowledge of the perfect good and is propagated by doing

good, by realising, that is, the unconditional and universal in all

the particular conditions and relations. In inwardly _demanding_ a

_perfect_ union with the absolute good we show that that which is

demanded by us has not yet been given us, and that, therefore, the

moral significance of our life can only consist in _approaching_ the

perfect association with the good or in _rendering perfect_ our actual

inner connection with it.

The demand for moral perfection involves the general idea of

the absolute good and of its necessary attributes. It must be

all-embracing, that is, it must be the criterion of our moral relation

to all things. All that exists or may exist is from the moral point

of view exhausted by three categories: it is either above us, or on

a level with us, or below us. It is logically impossible to find a

fourth relation. Our inner consciousness testifies that above us

is the absolute good or God and that which already is in perfect

union with Him, a union we have not yet attained; on a level with

us is everything which, like ourselves, is capable of spontaneously

increasing in moral perfection, everything which, like us, is on the

way to the absolute, and can conceive the purpose of its action,--that

is, all human beings; below us is all that is incapable of inward

spontaneous perfection and that can enter through us only into a

perfect relation with the absolute--namely, material nature. This

threefold relation in its most general form is a fact. We are, as a

fact, subordinate to the absolute, by whatever name we might describe

it. We are, as a fact, equal to other men in the essential attributes

of human nature, and through heredity, history, and social life are

one with them in our earthly destiny. We possess, as a fact, important

advantages over the material creation. _The moral problem then can

only consist in perfecting what is given._ The fact of the threefold

relation must be transformed into a threefold norm of rational and

voluntary activity. The inevitable submission to the supreme power

must become the conscious and free service of the perfect good; the

natural solidarity with other human beings must be transformed into

sympathetic and harmonious co-operation; the actual advantages we have

over material nature must become rational mastery over it for our good

and its own.

The true beginning of moral progress is contained in the three

fundamental feelings which are inherent in human nature and constitute

natural virtue: the feeling of _shame_ which safeguards our higher

dignity against the encroachments of the animal desires, the feeling

of _pity_ which establishes an inner equality between ourselves and

others, and, finally, the _religious_ feeling which expresses our

recognition of the supreme good. Inseparable from these feelings is

the consciousness, even though it be a dim one, that they are the

norm, and express what is good, while the opposite of them is bad--the

consciousness that one ought to be ashamed of immoderate physical

desires and slavery to the animal nature, that one ought to pity

others, ought to do homage to the Divine. These feelings, representing

the _good nature_ which strives from the first towards that which

_ought_ to be, and the testimony of conscience that accompanies them

constitute the one or rather the three-in-one foundation of moral

progress. _Conscientious reason generalises the impulses of the good

nature and makes them into a law._ The content of the moral law is that

which is given in the good feelings, but it is clothed in the form of

a universal and binding demand or imperative. Moral law grows out of

the testimony of conscience, and conscience itself is the feeling of

shame developed on its formal and not on its material side.

With regard to our lower nature the moral law, generalising the

immediate feeling of modesty, commands us always to dominate all

sensual desires, admitting them only as a subordinate element within

the limits of reason; morality at this stage no longer takes the

form--as in the elementary feeling of shame--of the mere instinctive

rejection of the hostile element or recoiling before it, but demands

actual _struggle_ with the flesh. With regard to other human beings,

the moral law gives to the feeling of pity or sympathy the form of

justice, and demands that we should recognise each of our neighbours

as having the same absolute significance as ourselves, or that we

should regard others as we could consistently wish them to regard us,

independently of this or that particular feeling. Finally, in relation

to the Deity the moral law affirms itself as the expression of Its

law-giving will, and demands that that will should be unconditionally

recognised for the sake of its own dignity or perfection. But when

this _pure_ recognition of God’s will as the all-embracing and

all-sufficient good has been attained, it must be clear that the

_fulness_ of this will can only be revealed through its own inner

_effects_ in the soul of man. Having risen to this level, the formal or

rational morality enters the domain of the absolute morality--the good

of the rational law is completed by the good of the Divine _grace_.

According to the usual teaching of true Christianity, which correctly

represents the position, grace does not abolish nature and natural

morality but ‘perfects’ it, that is, brings it to perfection; in like

manner grace does not abolish law, but fulfils it, and only in so far

as it does so, renders it unnecessary.

The fulfilment of the moral law, whether instinctive or deliberate,

cannot, however, be limited to the personal life of the individual--for

two reasons, a natural and a moral one. The natural reason is that

the individual taken separately does not exist at all. From the point

of view of practice this reason is quite sufficient, but strict

moralists who care not for what _is_ but for what _ought to be_ will

attach greater weight to the moral reason--to the incompatibility,

namely, between the idea of a separate isolated man and the idea

of moral perfection. On natural and moral grounds the process of

attaining perfection, which constitutes the moral significance of our

life, can only be conceived as a collective process, taking place

in the collective man, that is, in the family, in the nation, in

humanity. These three aspects of the collective man do not replace

but mutually support and complete one another, each following its own

path towards perfection. Perfection is being attained by the family

which spiritualises and preserves for eternity the significance of the

individual past in and through the moral bond with the forefathers, the

significance of the real present in true marriage and the significance

of the individual future in the upbringing of new generations.

Perfection is being attained by the nation, which deepens and extends

its natural solidarity with other nations by entering into moral

communion with them. Perfection is being attained by humanity which

organises the good in the general forms of the religious, political,

and social-economic culture, rendering them more and more conformable

to the final end--the preparation of humanity for the unconditional

moral order, or the kingdom of God. Religious good or piety is

organised in the Church which seeks to make its human aspect more

perfect by making it more and more conformable to the Divine. The

inter-human good or justice and pity is organised in the State which

grows more perfect by extending the domain of justice and mercy at

the expense of violence and arbitrariness both within the nation and

between nations. The physical good or man’s moral relation to material

nature is organised in the economic union, the perfection of which

consists not in the accumulation of things, but in the spiritualisation

of matter as the condition of normal and eternal existence in the

physical world.

Constant interaction between personal moral effort and the organised

moral work of collective man finally justifies the moral significance

of life--that is, it justifies the good, which thus appears in all its

purity, fulness, and power. The system of moral philosophy worked out

in the present book is a conceptual reproduction of this process in

its totality; it follows history in what has been attained already,

and anticipates it in what is still left to be done. In reducing its

contents to one formula we shall find that the perfection of the good

finally shows itself as the _inseverable organisation of a threefold

love_. The feeling of reverence or piety, which means at first a timid

and involuntary and then a free and filial submission to the supreme

principle, comes to know its object as absolute perfection, and is

transformed into a pure, all-embracing, and boundless love for it,

conditioned solely by the recognition of its absolute character--an

_ascending love_. In conformity with its all-embracing object this

love includes all else in God, and, in the first place, those who,

like us, can participate in it, _i.e._ human beings. Our physical

and subsequently our moral and political pity for men becomes a

spiritual love for them, or an _equalising love_. But the Divine and

all-embracing love to which man attains does not stop at this; becoming

a _descending love_ it acts upon material nature, bringing it also

within the fulness of the absolute good, making it the living throne of

the Divine glory.

When this universal justification of the good, its extension to all the

relations of life, is clearly seen as a historical fact by every mind,

the only question for the individual will be the practical question of

will,--to accept this perfect moral significance of life for oneself,

or to reject it. But as long as the end has not yet come, as long as

the rightness of the good has not become self-evident in all things and

to all, further theoretical doubt is still possible. That doubt cannot

be solved within the limits of moral or practical philosophy, although

it in no way detracts from the binding character of its maxims upon men

of good will.

If the moral significance of life in the last resort consists in

the struggle with evil and in the triumph of good over evil, there

arises the eternal question as to the origin of evil itself. If evil

springs from the good, struggle with it seems to be based upon a

misconception; if it arises independently of the good, the good cannot

be unconditional, since the condition of its realisation will be

external to it. And if the good is not unconditional, wherein does its

essential superiority consist, and what is the final guarantee of its

triumph over evil?

Rational faith in the absolute good is based upon inner experience,

and upon that which with logical necessity follows from it. But inner

religious experience is a personal matter, and, from the external

point of view, is conditional. When, therefore, rational faith based

upon it becomes a system of universal theoretic assertions, it must be

theoretically justified.

The question as to the origin of evil is purely intellectual, and can

be solved by a true metaphysic alone, which, in its turn, presupposes

the solution of the question as to the nature, the validity, and the

means of knowing the truth.

The independence of moral philosophy in its own sphere does not prevent

it from being inwardly connected with theoretical philosophy--the

theory of knowledge and metaphysics.

It least of all befits believers in the absolute good to fear

philosophical investigation, as if the moral significance of the world

could lose by being finally explained, and as though union with God in

love, and harmony with His will, could leave us no part in the Divine

intellect. Having justified the good as such in moral philosophy; we

must, in theoretical philosophy, justify the good _as Truth_.

THE END

_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Obvious typographical errors corrected, however inconsistencies in

hyphenation and diacritical forms left unchanged.

Page 182: apparent inconsistent italicization of “movements seek”, has

been retained.