The Third Dimension of Human Life: the Spiritual Life. Its Chief Manifestations: the Fear of God, Conscience, and the Thirst for God. The Dignity of the Human Person
You write: «I tried to hold my thoughts on something serious and could not manage it at all. I thought this depended on my unaccustomedness to reasoning, and took up a good book, so that with its help I might keep the mind engaged in serious reflection—and there it was the same. The mind kept running off to one side, always toward trifles. Finally I fell into a complete reverie—and where had I not been, what stories had I not woven together! Someone among our household recalled me to myself with the question: «Why are you philosophizing so? About what?» But I had not been philosophizing at all—I had been daydreaming. It was always like this, but before I paid no attention to it. Now I see it, and I see that this ought not to be—but what is one to do? There is no managing the thoughts at all.»
How to deal with this I will tell you later; but for now, to that observation of yours please add another: try to go through even one day without getting irritated or vexed, and tell me how that goes for you.
Then you pose a question for me: «You concluded: there you have the soul and soul-life. But you have not indicated everything that occurs in the soul. Not a word about virtues, not a word about piety. Yet I see that in our family, among relatives, and among many acquaintances they stand in first place—not only in word but in deed. How is it that they were not mentioned?»
I was just about to write about this. Last time as well I wished to say what I will say now, but I thought it better to wait and see how you would view everything that had been said. And there is your question. I thank you for taking seriously what is offered to you. This is worthy of your so well-made head. The omission you noticed is no omission; but to speak about what seemed to you to have been left out would have been entirely out of place here. It is not the soul’s business to occupy itself with those subjects. For that there is the spirit; the soul is entirely turned toward the ordering of our temporal existence—earthly life. All its cognitions are built solely on the basis of what experience furnishes, and all its activity is turned toward satisfying the needs of temporal life; its feelings are generated and maintained solely by its visible states and situations. What lies above this is not its affair. Though there is in it sometimes something higher than what has been said, yet those are guests visiting it from another, higher domain—namely, the domain of the spirit.
What then is this spirit? It is that power which God breathed into the face of man, completing his creation. All kinds of creatures on earth were brought forth from the earth at God’s command. From the earth came also every soul of living creatures. The human soul, though in its lower part similar to the soul of animals, is in its higher part immeasurably superior to it. That it appears so in man depends upon its union with the spirit. The spirit, breathed in by God, by uniting with the soul raised it so far above every non-human soul. That is why within ourselves we notice, besides what is seen in animals, also what is proper to the soul of a spiritualized human being, and higher still—what is proper to the spirit itself.
The spirit, as a power that has proceeded from God, knows God, seeks God, and finds rest in Him alone. Through a certain spiritual and hidden intuition, being assured of its own proceeding from God, it feels its complete dependence upon Him and recognizes itself as obligated to please Him in all things and to live only for Him and through Him.
The more tangible manifestations of these movements of the spirit’s life are the following.
1. The fear of God. All people, at whatever level of development they may stand, know that there is a supreme being, God, who created all things, sustains all things, and governs all things; that they too depend upon Him in everything and must please Him; that He is the Judge and Rewarder of every person according to his deeds. Such is the natural symbol of faith, written within the spirit. Confessing it, the spirit stands in reverence before God and is filled with the fear of God.
2. Conscience. Knowing itself to be obligated to please God, the spirit would not know how to fulfill this obligation were it not guided therein by conscience. Having granted the spirit a portion of His own omniscience in the natural symbol of faith just mentioned, God also inscribed upon it the requirements of His holiness, righteousness, and goodness, entrusting to the spirit itself the task of watching over their fulfillment and judging itself as to whether it is fulfilling them or not. This aspect of the spirit is conscience, which indicates what is right and what is not right, what pleases God and what does not, what should and what should not be done; having indicated this, it forcefully compels the fulfillment of what should be done, and thereafter rewards its fulfillment with consolation and punishes non-fulfillment with remorse. Conscience is lawgiver, guardian of the law, judge, and rewarder all in one. It is the natural tablets of God’s covenant, extending to all people. And we see in all people, together with the fear of God, the workings of conscience as well.
3. The thirst for God. This is expressed in the universal striving toward the all-perfect good, and is most clearly seen also in the universal dissatisfaction with everything created. What does this dissatisfaction signify? It signifies that nothing created can satisfy our spirit. Having gone forth from God, it seeks God, desires to taste of Him, and finds rest in Him when it abides in living union and communion with Him. When it attains this, it is at peace; until it attains it, it can have no peace. However many created things and goods a person may possess, they are never enough for him. And all people, as you have already observed, seek and seek. They seek and find—but having found, they discard what they found and begin seeking again, only to discard that in turn once they have found it. And so on without end. This means that they are seeking the wrong thing and in the wrong place. Does this not tangibly show that within us there is a power drawing us from the earth and from earthly things upward—toward the Heavenly?
I am not explaining all these manifestations of the spirit to you in detail; I am only directing your thought toward its presence within us, and asking you to think more about this and to bring yourself to full conviction that the spirit truly is within us. For in it lies the distinguishing mark of the human being. The human soul raises us a little above the animals, while the spirit reveals us as made but a little lower than the angels. You surely know the meaning of the phrases that circulate among us: the spirit of a writer, the spirit of a people. This is a totality of distinguishing characteristics—real, yet in some sense ideal, discernible by the mind, elusive and intangible. The spirit of a person is the same; only the spirit of a writer, for example, is discerned ideally, while the spirit of a person is present in him as a living power, witnessing to its own presence through living and perceptible movements.
From what has been said, I would wish you to draw this conclusion: one in whom there are no movements and actions of the spirit does not stand at the level of human dignity.