Adolf Wuttke · 77 of 107

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

(a) The moral sparing of others consists in a real recognition of their moral personality, and hence of their personal independence, freedom, and honor.

(α) Man’s personal independence and freedom, which are the expression of his morally rational essence, may be limited by others only in the interest of higher moral ends, namely, either in order to train the as yet morally and spiritually immature toward real freedom, or in the moral interests of the moral whole or society.—(β) The personal honor of our fellow-man is preserved when we recognize and treat him as a morally-rational being called to God-likeness and God-sonship, and hence as capable of, and entitled to, moral communion with us,—when we do nothing toward him which is inconsistent therewith,—which would stigmatize him as non-moral, or, undeservedly, as immoral and irrational; this is the duty of respecting our neighbor, and as implied therein of respecting the personal dignity of man in general,—the duty of sparing and protecting the good name of our neighbor.—(γ) From these two duties follows the duty of a sparing respect for whatever appertains to our neighbor,—belongs to him as a possession, is his property in the broadest sense of the word, that is, whatever he has a right to call his own,—and hence a positive avoidance of all action whereby it would be damaged or alienated from our neighbor.

Even as our personal morality does not consist in undisciplined arbitrary discretion, but in the controlling our own will by the will of God, so also there is no moral influencing of our fellow-man without a limiting of his individual will, of his individual liberty, and that too in the very interest of his higher personal freedom. The child cannot be educated without that in many respects limits be set to its, as yet, unripe, unintelligent will; in the person of the educator it is confronted with the principles of moral order under which it is to bow its individual will; it is in fact an essential part of the duty of sparing the personality of the child, that it be not allowed to grow up in rudeness. As the child is related to its parents, so is the individual person to the moral whole. He whose calling it is to govern, must confine the liberty of the individual within the order of the whole,—must in some measure limit it in order that all may become truly free; in an organized moral community it is each member’s duty to co-operate in the realization of moral order, and hence to hold within bounds both his own will and the will of others. Hence the moral sparing of others is never of an unconditional character, but finds a limit in the duty of moral culture; but within this limit the duty of sparing becomes all the more imperative. The limiting may never be such as to reduce the object to a mere will-less creature of arbitrary discretion; the right of the object of education or guidance to be an independent moral personality with a moral purpose of its own, may never be ignored. He who is as yet morally a minor may never be treated as if he were always to remain such,—never as a mere means to an end,—but he must be treated as having an end in himself. A slavish education is sinful; despotic government is immoral, whether exercised by a single individual or by a minority-crushing majority. Whatever apology may be made for slavery in a sinful world, in the sphere of pure morality it is absolutely anti-moral.

The sparing and respecting of the personal honor of others, appears among the chief commands in the Old Testament [Exod. xx, 16; Lev. xix, 16], and is presented also in the Gospel as one of the most essential of duties [Matt. v, 21, 22]. My neighbor has upon me a claim to respect for his honor, for his good name. Man is not a mere isolated unit, but a vital member of a moral whole; the personal honor, the good name, of each is the moral bond which holds together the community; he who has lost respect in society stands outside of the scope of its common-life,—is a broken-off leaf soon to wither away.—The sparing of the possessions of others [Exod. xx, 15, 17; Lev. xix, 35, 36; Deut. xxv, 13 sqq.; xxvii, 17; 1 Thess. iv, 6] is only a special phase of the sparing of the person of others. In his property man creates for and about himself a little world which as the product of his labor, belongs to him, which he calls his earnings, and for which he has consequently a moral right to recognition and respect on the part of others.