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Page 16
But there is something far greater in highly developed manhood than the
petty and selfish. Man is capable of conceiving and adopting higher
standards of morality than those of utility and pleasure, and it is the
spiritual life that enables him to do this. It is the spiritual that
frees the individual from the slavery of the sense world--from his
selfishness and superficial interests--that teaches him to care less for
the things of the flesh, and far more for the beautiful, the good, and
the true, and that enables him to pursue high aims regardless of the
fact that they may entail suffering and loss in other directions. This,
then, is the "High" in the world; the natural life is the "Low."
But what is the relation of the natural to the spiritual life? In the
first place, the spiritual cannot be derived from the natural, inasmuch
as the former is immensely superior to the latter, and that not merely
in degree, but in its very essence. The spiritual is entirely on a
higher plane of reality, and there cannot be transition from the natural
to the spiritual world. The natural has its limitations, and beyond
these cannot go. So far as the natural world is concerned man can never
rise above seeking for pleasure, and making expediency and social
approbation the standards of life, hence there is little wonder that
those ethical teachers who make nature their basis, deny the possibility
of action that is unselfish and free. "The Spiritual Life," however, as
Eucken says, "has an independent origin, and evolves new powers and
standards."
Neither do the two aspects run together in life in parallel lines. On
the contrary, the spiritual life cannot manifest itself at all until a
certain stage of development is reached in nature. It would seem
impossible to conceive of the animal rising above its animal instincts
and tendencies; its whole life is conditioned by its animal nature and
its environment. Man stands at the junction of the stages between the
purely natural and the purely spiritual. On the one hand, he is a member
of the animal world, he has its instincts, its desires and its
limitations; on the other hand, he has within him the germ of
spirituality. He belongs to both worlds, the natural and the spiritual.
He cannot shake off the natural and remain a man--to separate the two
means death to man as we know him. But there is a great difference
between his position in the natural world and his position in the
spiritual world. He seems to be the last word in the world of nature, he
has reached heights far beyond those reached by any other flesh and
blood. He is, so far as we know, the culminating point of natural
evolution--the final possibility in the natural world. But the stage of
nature only represents the first stage in the development of the
universe.
There is an infinitely higher stage of life, the spiritual life. And if
man is the final point of progress in the world of nature, he is, in his
primitive state, only at the threshold of the spiritual world. But he
is not an entire stranger to the spiritual--the germ is in him, and the
spiritual is consequently not an alien world for him. If the spiritual
were something entirely foreign it would be vain to expect much progress
through mere impulses from without. On the contrary, it is the spiritual
that makes man really great, and is the most fundamental part of his
nature.
The two stages of life, then, are present in man--the natural and the
spiritual; the former highly developed, the latter, at first, in an
undeveloped state.
Now the great aim of the universe is to pass gradually from the natural
to the spiritual plane of life. This does not mean that the latter is
the product of the former stage, for this is not the case. It means that
the deeper reality in life is the spiritual, and that the spiritual
develops through the natural in its own particular way. And this
particular way is not a mere development but a _self_-development. The
aim of the spiritual is to develop its own self through the human being.
In this way man is given the possibility of developing a self--a
personality in a very real sense.
Thus we arrive at some idea of the relation there exists between the
spiritual and the natural, and of the place of the spiritual and the
natural in man. The spiritual is neither the product nor an attribute of
the natural. Man is the border creature of the two worlds; he represents
the ultimate possibility of the one, and possesses potentialities in
regard to the other. The great object of his life must be to develop,
through making use of and conquering the life of nature, his higher self
into a free, spiritual, and immortal personality. The progressive stages
in this direction must be dealt with in the next chapter.
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