But hereupon I want to concentrate our
whole attention, not upon the consequences and applications of the
doctrine of loyalty, but upon the most central characteristic of the
loyal spirit. This central characteristic of the loyal spirit consists
in the fact that it conceives and values its cause as a reality, as an
object that has a being of its own; while the type of reality which
belongs to a cause is different from the type of reality which we
ascribe either to a thing in the physical world or to a law of nature. A
cause is never a mere mechanism. It is an essentially spiritual reality.
If the loyal human being is right in the account which he gives of his
cause, then the real world contains beings which are not mere natural
objects, and is subject to laws which, without in the least running
counter to the laws of outer nature, are the laws of an essentially
spiritual realm, whose type of being is superior to that possessed by
the order of nature which our industrial arts use. Either, then, loyalty
is altogether a service of myths, or else the causes which the loyal
serve belong to a realm of real being which is above the level of mere
natural fact and natural law.
Pages:
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658