We know that the good in its full sense, including the idea of happiness or satisfaction, is ultimately defined as the true moral order which expresses the absolutely right and the absolutely desirable relation of each to all and of all to each. It is called the Kingdom of God. From the moral point of view it is quite clear that the realisation of the Kingdom of God is the only final end of life and activity, being the supreme good, happiness, and bliss. It is equally clear, if one thinks of the subject carefully and concretely, that the true moral order or the Kingdom of God is both perfectly universal and perfectly individual. Each wants it for himself and for eyery one, and is only abje to attain it together with every one. Therefore there can be no essential opposition between the individual and society; the question which of the two is an end and which is merely a means cannot be asked. Such a question would presuppose the real existence of the individual as a self-sufficient and self-contained entity. In truth, however, each individual is only the meeting-point of an infinite number of relations with other individuals. To abstract him from these relations means to deprive his life of all its concrete filling-in and to transform a personality into an empty possibility of existence. To imagine that the personal centre of our being is really cut off from our environment and from the general life which connects us with other minds is simply a morbid illusion of self-consciousness.

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. … Deprive a concrete human personality of all that is in any way due to its relations with social and collective wholes, and the only thing left will be an animal entity containing only a pure possibility or an empty form of man — that is, something that does not really exist at all. Those who had occasion to go down to hell or to rise up to heaven, as, for instance, Dante and Swedenborg, did not find even there any isolated individuals, but saw only social groups and circles.

Social life is not a condition superadded to the individual life, but is contained in the very definition of personality which is essentially a rationally-knowing and a morally-active force — both knowing and acting being only possible in the life of a community. Rational knowledge on its formal side is conditioned by general notions which express a unity of meaning in an endless multiplicity of events ; real and objective universality (the general meaning) of notions manifests itself in language as a means of communication, without which rational activity cannot develop, and, for lack of realisation, gradually disappears altogether or becomes merely potential. Language — this concrete reason — could not have been the work of an isolated individual, and consequently such an individual could not be rational, could not be human. On its material side knowledge of truth is based upon experience — hereditary, collective experience which is being gradually stored up. The experience of an absolutely isolated being, even if such a being could exist, would obviously be quite insufficient for the knowledge of truth. As to the moral determination of personality, it is clear that, although the idea of the good or of moral value is not wholly due to social relations as is often maintained, concrete development of human morality or the realisation of the idea of the good is only possible for the individual in a social environment and through interaction with it. In this all-important respect society is nothing but the objective realisation of what is contained in the individual.

… In its essential signification society is not the external limit of the individual but his inner fulfilment. It is not an arithmetical sum or a mechanical aggregate of the indi viduals that compose it, but the indivisible whole of the communal life. This life has been partly realised in the past and is preserved in the abiding social tradition, is being partly realised in the present by means of social service, and finally, it anticipates in the form of a social ideal, present in the best minds, its perfect realisation in the future.

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. … 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.

But this transition itself — this spiritualisation or moralisation of the natural fact of solidarity — is also an inseparable part of the common work. The fulfilment of this supreme task depends not upon personal efforts alone, but is also necessarily conditioned by the general course of the world s history, or by the actual state of the social environment at a given moment in history. Thus the individual improvement in each man cannot be severed from the universal, nor the personal morality from the social.

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.