Moral acts as volitions of the Spirit.
This criterion of the Spirit, of Progress, of Reality, is the intimate measure of our acts in the moral conscience, as it is the foundation, more or less clearly expressed, of our moral judgments. Why do we exalt Giordano Bruno, who allowed himself to be condemned to the stake for asserting his philosophy? Perhaps for the calmness with which he faced the torture? But many fanatics, even malefactors, are capable of this, and it may sometimes even be a simple sensual desire, of which we have seen examples in history and of which a modern Italian poet has lately sung, exalting the beauty of the flame and the voluptuousness of the pyre. By facing death and refusing to deny his philosophy, Bruno contributed to the creation of a larger form of civilization, and for this reason he is not only a victim, but also a martyr, in the etymological sense of the word: witness and realizer of a demand of the Spirit in universal.—Why do we praise the charitable man? Perhaps because he yields to the emotion caused by the spectacle of suffering. But emotion in itself is neither moral nor immoral, and thus to yield to it materially is weakness, that is, immorality. The charitable man, when he removes or mitigates suffering, relights a life and reconquers a force for the common work, which both he and the person whom he has benefited, must serve.
Critique of antimoralism.
There is indeed nothing more foolish than antimoralism, so much the fashion in our day; it is an ugly echo of unhealthy social conditions, of one-sided theories ill understood (Marxism, Nietzscheianism). Antimoralism is justified, in so far as it combats moral hypocrisy in favour of effective morality instead of that of mere words, but it loses all meaning when it inflates empty phrases or combines contradictory propositions and preaches against morality itself. By so doing, it thinks to celebrate strength, health and freedom, but on the contrary exalts servitude to unbridled passions, the apparent health of the invalid and the apparent strength of the maniac. Morality (begging pardon of literary immoralists), far from being a pedantic fiction or the consolation of the impotent, is good blood against bad blood.
Confused tendencies of tautological, material, religious formulæ, etc., toward the Ethic of the Spirit.
We must also declare that this truth concerning the ethical principle understood as will that has for its end the universal or the Spirit, is to some extent confirmed by several of the formulæ that we have criticized, which have erred only in defining it, either confusing altogether the universal and the contingent, or have fallen into tautologism. Those who posit Life, or the interest of the Species, Society or the State, as the end of morality, have in view that Life, that Species, that Society, or that ideal State, which is the Spirit in universal, although they are not able to define it clearly. The same may be said of other formulæ, which often have a better intention at starting than that realized in the development of the relative doctrines, or, on the contrary, a development superior to their bad initial intention.
The Ethic of the Spirit and religious Ethic.
This function of symbol possessed by idealist Ethic, this affirmation that the moral act is love and volition of the Spirit in universal, is to be found above all in religious and Christian Ethic, in the Ethic of love and of the anxious search for the divine presence. This is the fundamental characteristic of religious Ethic, which remains unknown to vulgar rationalists and intellectualists, to so-called free-thinkers, and to frequenters of masonic lodges, owing to their narrow party passion or lack of mental subtlety. There is hardly an ethical truth (and we have already had occasion to refer to this matter) that cannot be expressed with the words that we have learned as children from traditional religion, and which rise spontaneously to the lips, as the most elevated, the most appropriate and the most beautiful; words which are certainly impregnated with mythology, but are also weighty with profound philosophical content. There is without doubt an exceedingly strong antithesis between the idealist philosopher and the religious individual, but it is not greater than that within ourselves, when, in the imminence of a crisis, we are divided in soul and yet very near to unity and to interior conciliation. If the religious man cannot but see in the philosopher his adversary, his mortal foe, the philosopher, on the other hand, sees in him his younger brother, his very self of a moment past. Hence he will feel himself more nearly allied to an austere, emotional, religious Ethic, troubled with phantoms, than to an Ethic that is superficially rationalistic: for this latter is only in appearance more philosophical than the other, since if it possess the merit of recognizing (verbally only, or with psittacism, as Leibnitz would have said) the supreme rights of reason, yet in plucking thought from the soil in which it has grown and depriving it of vital sap, it exercises them very ill.