The Action of the Spirit Upon the Human Soul and the Resulting Phenomena in the Intellectual, Volitional, and Emotional (Heart) Domains

I take up again what was interrupted—namely, what has entered the soul as a consequence of its union with the spirit, «which is of God» (1 Cor. 2:12). Through this the whole soul was transformed and, from the animal soul it is by nature, became a human soul, with those powers and actions that were indicated above. But that is not the subject now. Remaining as it has been described, the soul manifests beyond that higher aspirations and rises one degree higher, appearing now as a soul that has been spiritualized.

Such spiritualizations of the soul are visible in all the aspects of its life—the mental, the active, and the feeling.

In the mental part, through the action of the spirit there appears in the soul a striving toward the ideal. Properly speaking, the soul’s mental activity rests entirely on experience and observation. From what is learned by this path in fragmentary and disconnected fashion, the soul builds generalizations, draws inductions, and thus obtains the fundamental principles concerning a particular circle of things. There it ought to rest. Yet it is never content with this, but strives higher, seeking to determine the significance of each circle of things within the totality of creation. For example: what a human being is—this is learned through observation of him, generalizations, and inductions. But not satisfied with this, we pose the question: «What does the human being signify in the general totality of creation?» Seeking to answer this, one person will conclude: he is the summation and crown of creatures; another: he is the priest—in the sense that all the voices of creatures praising God unconsciously are gathered up by him and he offers praise to the Most High Creator in a conscious hymn. The soul is drawn to generate thoughts of this kind about every other class of creatures and about the whole of creation. And it does generate them. Whether they correspond to reality or not is another question; but it is certain that the soul has an impulse to seek them, does seek them, and generates them. This is the striving toward the ideal, for the significance of a thing is its idea.

This striving is common to all. Even those who value no form of knowledge except empirical knowledge—even they cannot restrain themselves from idealizing against their will, without noticing it themselves. With their lips they reject ideas, yet in practice they construct them. The conjectures they accept, and without which no field of knowledge can do, are a lower class of ideas.

The ideal mode of contemplation is metaphysics and true philosophy, which have always existed and always will exist within the domain of human knowledge. The spirit, ever present in us as an essential force, itself beholding God as Creator and Provider, draws the soul also toward that invisible and boundless realm. Perhaps the spirit, by virtue of its likeness to God, was destined to contemplate all things in God, and would have done so had it not been for the Fall. But in any case, even now, whoever wishes to contemplate all that exists in an ideal manner must begin from God, or from that symbol which God has inscribed in the spirit. Thinkers who do not proceed in this way are, for that very reason, not true philosophers. By distrusting the ideas which the soul constructs on the basis of the spirit’s promptings, they act unjustly when they disbelieve what constitutes the content of the spirit; for the former is a human product, while the latter is of divine origin.

In the active part of the soul, the action of the spirit produces the desire and performance of disinterested deeds—virtues—or even something higher: the striving to become virtuous. The soul’s proper work in this part (the will) is the ordering of man’s temporal life, so that it may go well for him. In fulfilling this function, the soul does everything out of the conviction that what it does is either pleasant, or useful, or necessary for the life it is arranging. Yet the soul is not satisfied with this; it steps outside this circle and undertakes deeds and endeavors not because they are necessary, useful, or pleasant, but because they are good, noble, and just—striving toward them with all earnestness, even though they yield nothing for temporal life and are in fact unfavorable to it and are carried out at its expense. In some people, such strivings appear with such force that they sacrifice their entire way of life for them, choosing to live detached from it. Manifestations of this kind of striving are universal, even outside of Christianity. Where do they come from? From the spirit. The norm of a holy, good, and righteous life is inscribed in the conscience. Having received knowledge of it through union with the spirit, the soul is captivated by its invisible beauty and grandeur and resolves to introduce it into the sphere of its deeds and its life, transforming that life according to its demands. And all people sympathize with such strivings, even though not all give themselves over to them entirely; yet there is not a single person who does not at times devote his labors and his means to deeds undertaken in such a spirit.

In the feeling part of the soul, the action of the spirit gives rise to the striving and love for beauty, or, as it is commonly said, for the beautiful. The proper work of this part in the soul is to perceive, through feeling, its own favorable or unfavorable states and the influences from without, measured by the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the soul-bodily needs. But we observe alongside these self-interested feelings—let us call them such—a series of disinterested feelings arising entirely apart from the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of needs: feelings born of delight in beauty. One does not wish to look away from a flower, or to turn the ear from singing, for no reason except that both are beautiful. Everyone arranges and adorns their dwelling one way or another, because it is more beautiful that way. We go for a walk and choose a place solely because it is beautiful. Higher than all this is the enjoyment afforded by paintings, works of sculpture, music and singing—and higher than all of these is the enjoyment of works of poetry. Works of fine art delight not only by the beauty of outward form, but especially by the beauty of inner content—beauty perceived by the mind, ideal beauty. Where do such phenomena in the soul come from? They are visitors from another realm, the realm of the spirit. The spirit, knowing God, naturally apprehends the beauty of God and seeks to take delight in it alone. Although it cannot point precisely to what that beauty is, it carries within itself a hidden foreshadowing of it, and clearly indicates what it is not—expressing this verdict by the fact that it is satisfied by nothing created. To behold the beauty of God, to taste it and delight in it—this is the need of the spirit, this is its life and a paradisaical life. Having received knowledge of it through union with the spirit, the soul too is drawn to follow it, and grasping it in its own soul-like manner, either joyfully rushes toward whatever in its sphere appears to it as a reflection of that beauty (the dilettantes), or itself conceives and produces things in which it hopes to reflect that beauty as it appeared to it (artists and performers). And this is where these visitors come from—these sweet, sensuous feelings, detached from everything sensory, lifting the soul upward from the spirit and spiritualizing it! I should note that among works of art I count in this class only those whose content is the divine beauty of invisible divine things—not those which, however beautiful, depict the same ordinary soul-bodily existence or the same earthly things that make up the habitual setting of that existence. The soul, led by the spirit, does not seek mere prettiness, but the expression of the invisible beautiful world in beautiful forms—that world toward which the spirit draws it by its action.

So that is what the spirit gives the soul when united with it, and that is how the soul becomes spiritualized! I do not think any of this will have caused you difficulty; yet I ask you not to skim over what I have written, but to think it through carefully and apply it to yourself. Is your soul spiritualized? After all, you do sing and play music! At some point you and I will critique this aspect of yours in light of the demands I have described—demands as to what the fine arts ought to represent.