Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/383

No. 3.] and adjustments, nor in public opinion, nor in moral laws, nor in the motives which are behind these and are their producers. The moral exists an sich, i.e., apart from empirical reality. The means to the realization of the moral ideal is not the moral organization of the empirical world, but the liberation of the relatively good (the higher soul) from the world of sense. In view of the absolute opposition that exists between the ideal world and the world of sense, there is only one way to the realization of the idea, viz., abnegation of the world (Entsinnlichung), or asceticism. This is the highest form of morals. It is that which puts the soul into direct communication with the absolute good. One may say that asceticism is the practical, and metaphysic the theoretical, way in which the soul attains to the idea of the good. If one takes the notion of asceticism in the sense of renunciation of the world, as historically one must, Stoicism would appear to have been established in direct opposition to it. The Platonic dualism of ideal and empirical world disappears here altogether. The Stoics know only a single infinite world. Their materialistic pantheism brings the ideal back into the real and finds the divinity in the world. What the hypostasis of the good was for Plato, the hypostasis of the moral law was for the Stoics; to Plato the highest form of morals was abnegation of the world and becoming like God; to the Stoics it was abnegation of the world and obedience to the absolute moral law, which is identical with the rule of the divinity in the cosmos. In this way the Stoics found a metaphysical basis for their asceticism. The Stoics of the Roman period, under the influence of Platonism, furnished to every succeeding metaphysic of morals the most important points of view. One may distinguish two periods in the development of morals in the ancient and mediæval church: in the first period asceticism, through the desolate economical and social conditions in the decaying Roman Empire, almost entirely took the place of 'natural' morality; in the second period natural morality, assisted by the general development of culture and the foundation of states not controlled by church power, gained a certain prominence, though secondary to asceticism. The first period is illustrated in Augustine, the second in Thomas Aquinas.

II.

It is characteristic of the Middle Ages that the ascetic form of morality takes precedence of the 'natural,' while in modern times asceticism is in practice abandoned, but in theory supernaturalism