Page 110 - Eclipse of God

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RELIGION AND ETHICS

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We grasp an essential element of the path of the human spirit
known to history if we regard it from the standpoint of the
changes in the relationship between the ethical and the re-
ligious. But we must consider each, both the ethical and the
religious, not in one or another of its manifestations, but in its
basic form.
We mean by the ethical in this strict sense the yes and no
which man gives to the conduct and actions possible to him,
the radical distinction between them which affirms or denies
them not according to their usefulness or harmfulness for in-
dividuals and society, but according to their intrinsic value and
disvalue. We find the ethical in its purity only there where the
human person confronts himself with his own potentiality and
distinguishes and decides in this confrontation without ask-
ing anything other than what is right and what is wrong in
this his own situation. The criterion by which this distinction
and decision is made may be a traditional one, or it may be
one perceived by or revealed to the individual himself. What
is important is that the critical flame shoot up ever again out

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