Adolf Wuttke · 104 of 107

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

The recognition of the moral character of a person on the part of moral society, is his social honor; each and every one has, normally, a moral right to such recognition by every other morally honorable person, and should strive to obtain and retain it. The actual manifestation of personal honor, as a moral possession, is personal dignity. No honor is morally valid save in so far as it is, at the same time, honor before God. The moral society into which the individual is incorporated by virtue, on the one hand, of custom, by which he as well as the collective society is influenced, and in which lie consequently recognizes the morality of society, and, on the other hand, by virtue of the honor which he enjoys in the eyes of society, and in which consequently his morality is recognized by the society, is for him his moral home.

Only he has honor who has acquired a moral character; the characterless is honorless. Honor is the reflection of the personal character in the consciousness of society,—is its recognition by the same. Honor is the reverse phase of love; only the moral man can rightly love, and in loving he thirsts also to be loved, and hence to be recognized in his moral personality by others; the immoral man as such is not loved, because he is not in the possession of honor. Though honor is based on moral character yet it is not identical therewith,—it is character as having become objective in the moral consciousness of society. God’s honor is not his and his divine essence themselves, but the recognition of the same on the part of rational creatures; and as God vindicates and seeks his own honor [Exod. xiv, 4; 1 Sam. ii, 30; Psa. xlvi, 10; Isa. xlii, 8; xlviii, 11; Ezek. xxviii, 22; comp. John v, 23; Rom. xi, 36; xvi, 27], so also the moral man seeks, and rightly so, his honor, but only such as is at the same time honor before God, namely, a recognition of his conduct and spirit as those of a child of God, and hence an honor which is at the same time the witness of a good conscience before God [Psa. iii, 3; lxxiii, 24; cxii, 9; John v, 44; xii, 26, 43; Rom. ii, 6, 7, 10, 29; v, 2; 1 Cor. iv, 5; 2 Cor. x, 18],—the pleasures of God in him who loves Him [2 Cor. v, 9; Col. i, 10]. In this sense honor before men and the children of God is a high good [Psa. vii, 5; xlix, 11; lxxxiv, 12; Prov. iii, 16, 35; viii, 18; xi, 16; xxi, 21; xxii, 4; xxix, 23; Phil. ii, 29], and to disesteem such honor is either to think unworthily or to be too high-minded.

Personal honor and social custom condition man’s moral home. Society and country are only in so far a home as they are expressive of the spiritually-moral life of society. My fatherland is not where I am outwardly prosperous, but where I enjoy myself morally,—feel myself vitally at one with a moral community. Mere nature forms a sort of home only for the savage; a true home is of a spiritual character, and nature is such only as brought within the sphere of history, as transformed by man. It is at home that man enjoys his existence; the far-off is tempting mostly only for him who is as yet in process of development toward spiritual and character-maturity; the seeking of a new home is in normal circumstances less an affair of the single individual than of whole branches of a nation, namely, in cases of the founding of new colonies; but here in fact the moral home migrates along. To be shut out from one’s home is properly regarded as a severe misfortune; the declaration that he should be a fugitive wanderer in the earth was the bitterest element in the curse upon Cain; among ancient nations banishment was the severest of punishments.