As the higher principle, the principle of the general, Catholicism demands subjection to itself on the part of the particular and individual, the subjection of the human personality. By becoming an external power, however, it ceases to be the higher principle and loses its right of dominion over the human personality (which does possess internal power); while its factual domination appears only as coercion and suppression, provoking a necessary and just protest on the part of the personality—in which lies the essential meaning and justification of Protestantism.

Beginning with Protestantism, Western civilization represents a gradual emancipation of the human personality, of the human ego, from that historical bond, founded on tradition, which united but at the same time enslaved men during the period of the Middle Ages. The great meaning of the historical process which began with the Reformation consists in the fact that it has segregated the human personality and left it to itself in order that it might consciously and freely turn to the divine beginning, enter with it into a perfectly free and deliberate union.

Such a union would be impossible if the divine beginning were purely external to man, if it were not rooted in the human personality itself; in that case man could find himself in regard to the divine beginning only in a forced, fated subjection. The free internal union between the unconditional divine beginning and the human personality is possible only because the latter itself has an unconditional value. The human personality can unite with the divine beginning freely, from within itself; only because it is itself in a certain sense divine, or, more exactly, participant of Divinity.

The human personality—not, however, human personality in general, not the abstract idea of it, but [taken to mean] a real living person, an individual man-has unconditional, divine value. In this affirmation Christianity agrees with contemporary mundane civilization.

In what does this unconditionality, this divinity of the human personality consist?

Unconditionality, like other similar concepts (such as infinity, the absolute) has two meanings, negative and positive.

The negative unconditionality, which undoubtedly belongs to human personality, consists in the ability to transcend every limited content in the capacity not to be limited by it, not to be satisfied with it but to request something greater: in the capacity 'To seek beatitudes, for which there is no name or measure', in the words of a poet.

Not satisfied with any finite conditional content, man does, indeed, declare himself to be free from any internal limitation, declaring [thus) his negative unconditionality, which constitutes the surety of an infinite development. The dissatisfaction with any finite content, with any partial limited actuality is itself a request for full reality, full content. In the possession of the whole reality, however, of the fullness of life, lies the positive unconditionality. Without it, or at least without the possibility of it, the negative unconditionality has no significance, or, rather, means only an internal insoluble contradiction. The human consciousness of today finds itself in just such a contradiction.

Western civilization has liberated human consciousness from all external limitations, acknowledged the negative unconditionality of the human personality, proclaimed the unconditional rights of man. At the same time, however, having rejected every principle unconditional in the positive sense, that is to say, in reality, and by its very nature possessed of the entire plenitude of being; having circumscribed the life and consciousness of man with a circle of the conditional and transitory: this civilization has asserted [thereby] the striving and the impossibility of its satisfaction.

Contemporary man is aware that he is internally free, deems himself to he higher than any external principle independent of him, asserts himself as the centre of everything; but with all that, appears in reality to be only one infinitely small and disappearing [transitory] dot upon the circumference of the world.

Contemporary consciousness acknowledges that the human personality has divine rights, but does not give to it either the divine powers or the divine content; for contemporary man admits—in life as well as in knowledge—only a limited conditional reality, the reality of particular facts and phenomena—and from this point of view is himself but one of those particular facts.

Thus, on the one hand, man is a being with unconditional significance, with unconditional rights and demands; and [on the other hand] the same man is but a limited and transitory phenomenon, a fact among the multitude of other facts, on all sides limited by them and dependent upon them—and this is tnie not only [of] the individual man, but [of] the whole humanity. …

A clear understanding of what the idea is may be gained in a reference to the inner character of human personality.

Every human personality is first of all a natural phenomenon, subjected to external conditions and determined by them in its acts and perceptions. In so far as the manifestations of this personality are determined by the outside conditions, in so far as they are subjected to the laws of external or mechanical causality, in that measure the properties of the acts or manifestations of this personality—properties which form what is called the empirical character of this personality—are but natural conditional properties.

Together with this, however, every human personality has in itself something absolutely unique which defies all external determination, which does not fit any formula, and yet imposes a certain individual stamp upon all the acts and perceptions of this personality. This peculiarity is not only something undefinable, but also something unchanging: it is completely independent of the external direction of the will and action of this person; it remains unchanging under all circumstances and in all the conditions in which this personality may be placed. Under all these circumstances and conditions the personality will manifest that indefinable and elusive peculiarity, that its individual character, will put its imprint upon every one of its actions and perceptions.

Thus the internal individual character of the personality appears to be something unconditional, and it is that [unconditional element] what comprises its own essence, the particular personal content or the specific personal idea of the given being, the idea by which is determined the essential value of the being in everything, the part which it plays and for ever will play in the universal drama.

If the objective idea, or the idea as object, i.e., in contemplation or for 'the other one', differs from all other ideas by its essential quality or character, [i.e.,] differs objectively; then, on its own part, the bearer of that idea, or its subject (to be more exact—the idea as the subject) must be distinguished from others subjectively, or by its existence; i.e., it must possess a separate reality of its own, be an independent centre for itself; must, consequently possess self-consciousness and personality. For otherwise, i.e., if the ideas differed only objectively by the cognizable qualities, but were not self-differentiated in their own inner being, they would really be but representations for him who thinks, would not be real beings—which as we know, cannot be admitted.

Thus, the bearer of the idea, or the idea as a subject, is a person. These two terms, person and idea, are correlative as subject and object, and for the fullness of their activity are necessarily requisite to each other. Personality void of idea would be something empty, an external senseless force; there would be nothing for it to actualize; and therefore its existence would be only a striving, an effort to live, but not a real life. On the other hand, the idea without a corresponding subject or bearer to realize it, would be something completely passive and impotent, a pure object, i.e., something that could be only represented, but not anything really existing; for a real, full being the inward unity of personality and idea is necessary, as are heat and light in fire.

Applying what has been said to the unconditional idea, we find that, being defined by its objective substance as all-embracing or the all-one, it is at the same time defined also in its inner subjective existence as a singular and sole person containing in itself the whole in an equal manner and thereby equally differing from all.

Here for the first time we get the idea of the living God, and at the same time our former idea about God as the all receives a certain new explanation. God is the whole, this means that as every real being has a definite substance or content, of which he is the bearer, in reference to which he says 'I am', which is to say, I am this and not another; in the same way the divine being asserts its 'I am', but not in relation to any separate particular content, but in relation to all, i.e., in the first place, in relation to the unconditional, all-one, and all-embracing idea, and through it and in it, also in relation to the all separate ideas which constitute the scope and content of the unconditional idea.

In the Bible, when Moses inquires about the name of God, he receives the answer: ehjeh ashen ehjeh, that is to say (literally), 'I will be whom I will be', i.e., I am I, or, I am the unconditional (ultimate) person.⁴ If in Indian Buddhism the divine beginning was defined negatively as Nirvana or nothingness; if in the Greek idealism it was defined objectively as the ideal whole or the universal essence, then in Jewish monotheism it receives an inner subjective definition as the pure I or the unconditional personality. This is the first individual, personal revelation of the divine beginning.

Thus, obviously, the truth lies in the fact that the divine beginning is not solely a personality, solely in the sense that it is not exhausted by a personal definition, that it is not only the one but also the whole, that it is not only the individual but also the all-embracing being; that it is not only the extant one but also essence.

Human personality, and therefore every individual human being, is capable of realising infinite fulness of being, or, in other words, it is a particular form with infinite content. The reason of man contains an infinite possibility of a truer and truer knowledge of the meaning of all things. The will of man contains an equally infinite possibility of a more and more perfect realisation of this universal meaning in the particular life and environment. Human personality is infinite : this is an axiom of moral philosophy. …

…

Each single individual possesses as such the potentiality of perfection or of positive infinity, namely, the capacity to understand all things with his intellect and to embrace all things with his heart, or to enter into a living communion with everything. This double infinity — the power of conception and the power of striving and activity, called in the Bible, according to the inter pretation of the Fathers of the Church, the image and likeness of God — necessarily belongs to every person. It is in this that the absolute significance, dignity, and worth of human personality consists, and this is the basis of its inalienable rights.¹ It is clear that the realisation of this infinity, or the actuality of the perfection, demands that all should participate in it. It cannot be the private possession of each taken separately, but becomes his through his relation to all. In other words, by remaining isolated and limited an individual deprives himself of the real fulness of life, i.e. deprives himself of perfection and of infinity. A consistent affirmation of his own separateness or isolation would indeed be physically impossible for the individual person. All that the life of the community contains is bound in one way or another to affect individual persons ; it becomes a part of them and in and through them alone attains its final actuality or completion. Or if we look at the same thing from another point of view — all the real content of the personal life is obtained from the social environment and, in one way or another, is conditioned by its state at the given time. In this sense it may be said that society is the completed or magnified individual, and the individual is compressed or concentrated society.

The world purpose is not to create a solidarity between each and all, for it already exists in the nature of things, but to make each and all aware of this solidarity and spiritually alive to it; to transform it from a merely metaphysical and physical solidarity into a morally-metaphysical and a morally-physical one. The life of man already is, both at its lower and its upper limit, an in voluntary participation in the developing life of humanity and of the whole world. But the dignity of human life and the meaning of the universe as a whole demand that this involuntary participation of each in everything should become voluntary and be more and more conscious and free, i.e. really personal — that each should more and more understand and fulfil the common work as if it were his own. It is clear that in this way alone can the infinite significance of personality be realised or, in other words, pass from possibility to actuality.

Christianity has a different message. It both gives and promises to humanity something new. It gives the living image of a personality possessing not the merely negative perfection of indifference or the merely ideal perfection of intellectual contemplation, but perfection absolute and entire, fully realised, and therefore victorious over death. Christianity reveals to men the absolutely perfect and therefore physically immortal personality. It promises mankind a perfect society built upon the pattern of this personality. And since such a society cannot be created by an external force (for in that case it would be imperfeet), the promise of it sets a task before humanity as a whole and each man individually, to co-operate with the perfect personal power revealed to the world in so transforming the universe that it might become the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. The final truth, the absolute and positive universalism obviously can not be either exclusively individual or exclusively social: it must express the completeness and fulness of the individually-social life. True Christianity is a perfect synthesis of three inseparable elements: (1) the absolute event the revelation of the perfect personality, the God-man Christ, who had bodily risen from the dead; (2) the absolute promise of a community conformable to the perfect personality, or, in other words, the promise of the Kingdom of God; (3) the absolute task to further the fulfilment of that promise by regenerating all our individual and social environment in the spirit of Christ. If any one of these three foundations is forgotten or left out of account the whole thing becomes paralysed and distorted. This is the reason why the moral development and the external history of humanity have not stopped after the coming of Christ, in spite of the fact that Christianity is the absolute and final revelation of truth. That which has been fulfilled and that which has been promised stands firmly wfthin the precincts of eternity and does not depend upon us. But the task of the present is in our hands ; the moral regeneration of our life must be brought about by ourselves. It is with this general problem that the special task of moral philosophy is particularly concerned. It has to define and explain, within the limits of historical fact, what the relation between all the fundamental elements and aspects of the individually-social whole ought to be in accordance with the unconditional moral norm.