Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 122

98

§ 42.

law.

For though

THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES it

is

[Div. II

asserted that the idea of law de-

velops itself with an inner impulse in the process of these

phenomena; yet this may never be taken naturalistically, in the form of a physiological process; and you should know the idea of law, which is entirely different from these phenomena, before you will be able critically to analyze the phenomenon of law. And thus we see in fact the simplest principles of law pass more and more into discredit, and the rise of two factions which, each in turn, call lawful what the other condemns as unlawful. This antithesis is especially prominent in its application to the conceptions of personal property and capital punishment. One wants violated law to be revenged on the murderer, while to the other he is simply an object of pity, as a victim of atavism. Every existing law (jus constitutum) declares, that property must be protected by law, but the anarchist declares that in the ideal law (jus constituendum) all property must be avenged as theft. Though, therefore, without hesitation we concede that the dominion of symbolism points to a strong analogy between and though we readily grant things " seen " and " unseen " that the naturalistic method, by historic comparative study, ;

productive of rich results also for the spiritual sciences; we emphatically deny that the study of the spiritual sciences can be entirely bound to the method of the natural sciences.

is

The

cause of this difference

" seen "

is

that the science of things

up (1) from the sensuous perception or observation of the elements by our senses, and (2) from the logical knowledge of the relations which exist among these elements by our thinking. This, however, is impossible is

built

with the spiritual sciences. In the object of this science the same distinction must be made between the real elements and their relations. But, fitted to bring us in connection with the elements of the things " seen," our senses refuse to render this service with reference to the elements of the things "unseen." Moreover, it is self-evident that the logical knowledge of the relations, which by itself would be insufficient, becomes floating, while the elements

among which they

exist are not

known.

The

plastic ca-

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