The Spirit Of The Liturgy by Romano Guardini

7. THE PRIMACY OF THE LOGOS OVER THE ETHOS

THE liturgy exhibits one peculiarity which strikes as very

odd those natures in particular which are generously endowed

with moral energy and earnestness--and that is its singular

attitude towards the moral order.

People of the type instanced above chiefly regret one thing

in the liturgy, that its moral system has few direct

relations with everyday life. It does not offer any easily

transposable motives, or ideas realizable at first hand, for

the benefit of our daily conflicts and struggles. A certain

isolation, a certain remoteness from actual life

characterize it; it is celebrated in the somewhat

sequestered sphere of spiritual things. A contrast exists

between the study, the factory, and the laboratory of to-

day, between the arena of public and social life and the

Holy Places of solemn, divine worship, between the intensely

practical tendency of our time, which is opposed to life by

its wholly material force and acrid harshness, and the

lofty, measured domain of liturgical conceptions and

determination, with its clearness and elevation of form.

From this it follows that we cannot directly translate into

action that which the liturgy offers us. There will always

be a constant need, then, for methods of devotion which have

their origin in a close connection with modern life, and for

the popular devotions by which the Church meets the special

demands and requirements of actual existence, and which,

since they directly affect the soul, are immediately

productive of practical results.1 The liturgy, on the

contrary, is primarily occupied in forming the fundamental

Christian temper. By it man is to be induced to determine

correctly his essential relation to God, and to put himself

right in regard to reverence for God, love and faith,

atonement and the desire for sacrifice. As a result of this

spiritual disposition, it follows that when action is

required of him he will do what is right.

The question, however, goes yet deeper. What is the position

of the liturgy generally to the moral order? What is the

quality of the relation in it of the will to knowledge, as

of the value of truth to the value of goodness? Or, to put

it in two words, what is the relation in it of the Logos to

the Ethos? It will be necessary to go back somewhat in order

to find the answer.

It is safe to affirm that the Middle Ages, in philosophy at

least, answered the question as to the relation between

these two fundamental principles by decisively ranking

knowledge before will and the activity attendant upon the

functioning of the latter. They gave the Logos precedence

over the Ethos. That is proved by the way in which certain

frequently discussed questions are answered,2 and by the

absolute priority which was assigned to the contemplative

life over the active3; this stands out as the fundamental

attitude of the Middle Ages, which took the Hereafter as the

constant and exclusive goal of all earthly striving.

Modern times brought about a great change. The great

objective institutions of the Middle Ages--class solidarity,

the municipalities, the Empire--broke up. The power of the

Church was no longer, as formerly, absolute and temporal. In

every direction individualism became more strongly

pronounced and independent. This development was chiefly

responsible for the growth of scientific criticism, and in a

special manner the criticism of knowledge itself. The

inquiry into the essence of knowledge, which formally

followed a constructive method, now assumes, as a result of

the profound spiritual changes which have taken place, its

characteristic critical form. Knowledge itself becomes

questionable, and as a result the center of gravity and the

fulcrum of the spiritual life gradually shifts from

knowledge to the will. The actions of the independent

individual become increasingly important. In this way active

life forces its way before the contemplative, the will

before knowledge.

Even in science, which after all is essentially dependent

upon knowledge, a peculiar significance is assigned to the

will. In place of the former penetration of guaranteed

truth, of tranquil assimilation and discussion, there now

develops a restless investigation of obscure, questionable

truth. Instead of explanation and assimilation, education

tends increasingly towards independent investigation. The

entire scientific sphere exhibits an enterprising and

aggressive tendency. It develops into a powerful, restlessly

productive, laboring community.

This importance of the will has been scientifically

formulated in the most conclusive manner by Kant. He

recognized, side by side with the order of perception, of

the world of things, in which the understanding alone is

competent, the order of practicality, of freedom, in which

the will functions. Arising out of the postulations of the

will he admits the growth of a third order, the order of

faith, as opposed to knowledge, the world of God and the

soul. While the understanding is of itself incapable of

asserting anything on these latter matters, because it is

unable to verify them by the senses, it receives belief in

their reality, and thus the final shaping of its conception

of the world, from the postulations of the will which cannot

exist and function without these highest data from which to

proceed. This established the "primacy of the will." The

will, together with the scale of moral values peculiar to

it, has taken precedence of knowledge with its corresponding

scale of values; the Ethos has obtained the primacy over the

Logos.

The ice having been broken, there now follows the entire

course of philosophic development which sets, in the place

of the pure will logically conceived by Kant, the

psychological will, constituting the latter the unique rule

of life--a development due to Fichte, Schopenhauer, and von

Hartmann--until it finds its clearest expression in

Nietzsche. He proclaims the "will to power." For him, truth

is that which makes life sound and noble, leading humanity

further towards the goal of the "Superman."

Such is the origin of pragmatism, by which truth is no

longer viewed as an independent value in the case of a

conception of the universe or in spiritual matters, but as

the expression of the fact that a principle or a system

benefits life and actual affairs, and elevates the character

and stability of the will.4 Truth is fundamentally, if not

entirely--though here we overstep the field marked out for

our consideration--a moral, though hardly a vital fact.

This predominance of the will and of the idea of its value

gives the present day its peculiar character. It is the

reason for its restless pressing forward, the stringent

limiting of its hours of labor, the precipitancy of its

enjoyment; hence, too, the worship of success, of strength,

of action; hence the striving after power, and generally the

exaggerated opinion of the value of time, and the compulsion

to exhaust oneself by activity till the end. This is the

reason, too, why spiritual organizations such as the old

contemplative orders, which formerly were automatically

accepted by spiritual life everywhere and which were the

darlings of the orthodox world, are not infrequently

misunderstood even by Catholics, and have to be defended by

their friends against the reproach of idle trifling. And if

it is true that this attitude of mind has already become

firmly established in Europe, whose culture is rooted in the

distant past, it is doubly true where the New World is

concerned. There it comes to light unconcealed and

unalloyed. The practical will is everywhere the decisive

factor, and the Ethos has complete precedence over the

Logos, the active side of life over the contemplative.

What is the position of Catholicism in relation to this

development? It must be premised that the best elements of

every period and of every type of mind can and will find

their fulfillment in this Religion, which is truly capable

of being all things to all men. So it has been possible to

adapt the tremendous development of power during the last

five centuries in Catholic life, and to summon ever fresh

aspects from its inexhaustible store. A long investigation

would be needed if we were to point out how many highly

valuable personalities, tendencies, activities and views

have been called forth from Catholic life as a result of

this responsiveness to the needs of all ages. But it must be

pointed out that an extensive, biased, and lasting

predominance of the will over knowledge is profoundly at

variance with the Catholic spirit.

Protestantism presents, in its various forms, ranging from

the strong tendency to the extreme of free speculation, the

more or less Christian version of this spirit, and Kant has

rightly been called its philosopher. It is a spirit which

has step by step abandoned objective religious truth, and

has increasingly tended to make conviction a matter of

personal judgment, feeling, and experience. In this way

truth has fallen from the objective plane to the level of a

relative and fluctuating value. As a result, the will has

been obliged to assume the leadership. When the believer no

longer possesses any fundamental principles, but only an

experience of faith as it affects him personally, the one

solid and recognizable fact is no longer a body of dogma

which can be handed on in tradition, but the right action as

a proof of the right spirit. In this connection there can be

no talk of spiritual metaphysics in the real sense of the

word. And when knowledge has nothing ultimately to seek in

the Above, the roots of the will and of feeling are in their

turn loosened from their adherence to knowledge. The

relation with the super-temporal and eternal order is

thereby broken. The believer no longer stands in eternity,

but in time, and eternity is merely connected with time

through the medium of conviction, but not in a direct

manner. Religion becomes increasingly turned towards the

world, and cheerfully secular. It develops more and more

into a consecration of temporal human existence in its

various aspects, into a sanctification of earthly activity,

of vocational labor, of communal and family life, and so on.

Everyone, however, who has debated these matters at any

considerable length clearly perceives the unwholesomeness of

such a conception of spiritual life, and the flagrance of

its contradiction of all fundamental spiritual principles.

It is untrue, and therefore contrary to Nature in the

deepest sense of the word. Here is the real source of the

terrible misery of our day. It has perverted the sacred

order of Nature. It was Goethe who really shook the latter

when he made the doubting Faust write, not "In the beginning

was the Word," but "In the beginning was the Deed."

While life's center of gravity was shifting from the Logos

to the Ethos, life itself was growing increasingly

unrestrained. Man's will was required to be responsible for

him. Only one Will can do this, and that is creative in the

absolute sense of the word, i.e., it is the Divine Will.5

Man, then, was endowed with a quality which presumes that he

is God. And since he is not, he develops a spiritual cramp,

a kind of weak fit of violence, which takes effect often in

a tragic, and sometimes (in the case of lesser minds) even a

ludicrous manner. This presumption is guilty of having put

modern man into the position of a blind person groping his

way in the dark, because the fundamental force upon which it

has based life--the will-is blind. The will can function and

produce, but cannot see. From this is derived the

restlessness which nowhere finds tranquillity. Nothing is

left, nothing stands firm, everything alters, life is in

continual flux; it is a constant struggle, search, and

wandering.

Catholicism opposes this attitude with all its strength. The

Church forgives everything more readily than an attack on

truth. She knows that if a man falls, but leaves truth

unimpaired, he will find his way back again. But if he

attacks the vital principle, then the sacred order of life

is demolished. Moreover, the Church has constantly viewed

with the deepest distrust every ethical conception of truth

and of dogma. Any attempt to base the truth of a dogma

merely on its practical value is essentially unCatholic.6

The Church represents truth--dogma--as an absolute fact,

based upon itself, independent of all confirmation from the

moral or even from the practical sphere. Truth is truth

because it is truth. The attitude of the will to it, and its

action towards it, is of itself a matter of indifference to

truth. The will is not required to prove truth, nor is the

latter obliged to give an account of itself to the will, but

the will has to acknowledge itself as perfectly incompetent

before truth. It does not create the latter, but it finds

it. The will has to admit that it is blind and needs the

light, the leadership, and the organizing formative power of

truth. It must admit as a fundamental principle the primacy

of knowledge over the will, of the Logos over the Ethos.7

This "primacy" has been misunderstood. It is not a question

of a priority of value or of merit. Nor is there any

suggestion that knowledge is more important than action in

human life. Still less does a desire exist to direct people

as to the advisability of setting about their affairs with

prayer or with action. The one is just as valuable and

meritorious as the other. It is partly a question of

disposition; the tone of a man's life will accentuate either

knowledge or action; and the one type of disposition is

worth as much as the other. The "Primacy" is far rather a

matter of culture--philosophy, and indeed it consists of the

question as to which value in the whole of culture and of

human life the leadership will be assigned, and which

therefore will determine the decisive tendency; it is a

precedence of order, therefore, of leadership, not of merit,

significance, or even of frequency.

But if we concern ourselves further with the question, the

idea occurs that the conception of the Primacy of the Logos

over the Ethos could not be the final one. Perhaps it should

be put thus: in life as a whole, precedence does not belong

to action, but to existence. What ultimately matters is not

activity, but development. The roots of and the perfection

of everything lie, not in time, but in eternity. Finally,

not the moral, but the metaphysical conception of the world

is binding, not the worth-judgment, but the import-judgment,

not struggle, but worship.

These trains of thought, however, trespass beyond the limits

of this little book. The further question--if a final

precedence must not be allotted to love seems to be linked

with a different chain of thought. Its solution perhaps lies

within the possibilities we have already discussed. When one

knows, for instance, that for a time truth is the decisive

standard, it is still not quite established whether truth

insists upon love or upon frigid majesty; the Ethos can be

an obligation of the law, as with Kant, or the obligation of

creative love. And even face to face with existence it is

still an open question whether this obligation is a final

rigid inevitability, or if it is love transcending all

measure, in which the impossible itself becomes possible, to

which hope can appeal against all hope. That is what is

meant by the question whether love is not the greatest of

these. Indeed, it is.

Nothing less than this was announced by the "good tidings."

In this sense, too, as far as the primacy of truth--but

"truth in love"--is concerned, the present question is to be

resolved.

As soon as this is done the foundation of spiritual health

is established. For the soul needs absolutely firm ground on

which to stand. It needs a support by which it can raise

itself, a sure external point beyond itself, and that can

only be supplied by truth. The knowledge of pure truth is

the fundamental factor of spiritual emancipation. "The truth

shall make you free."8 The soul needs that spiritual

relaxation in which the convulsions of the will are stilled,

the restlessness of struggle quietened, and the shrieking of

desire silenced; and that is fundamentally and primarily the

act of intention by which thought perceives truth, and the

spirit is silent before its splendid majesty.

In dogma, the fact of absolute truth, inflexible and

eternal, entirely independent of a basis of practicality, we

possess something which is inexpressibly great. When the

soul becomes aware of it, it is overcome by a sensation as

of having touched the mystic guarantee of universal sanity;

it perceives dogma as the guardian of all existence,

actually and really the rock upon which the universe rests.

"In the beginning was the Word"--the Logos....

For this reason the basis of all genuine and healthy life is

a contemplative one. No matter how great the energy of the

volition and action and striving may be, it must rest on the

tranquil contemplation of eternal, unchangeable truth. This

attitude is rooted in eternity. It is peaceful, it has that

interior restraint which is a victory over life.

It is not in a hurry, but has time. It can afford to wait

and to develop.

This spiritual attitude is really Catholic. And if it is

also a fact, as some maintain, that Catholicism is in many

aspects, as compared with the other denominations,

"backward," by all means let it be. Catholicism could not

join in the furious pursuit of the unchained will, torn from

its fixed and eternal order. But it has in exchange

preserved something that is irreplaceably precious, for

which, if it were to recognize it, the non-Catholic

spiritual world would willingly exchange all that it has;

and this is the primacy of the Logos over the Ethos, and by

this, harmony with the established and immutable laws of all

existence.

Although as yet the liturgy has not been specifically

mentioned, everything which has been said applies to it. In

the liturgy the Logos has been assigned its fitting

precedence over the will.9 Hence the wonderful power of

relaxation proper to the liturgy, and its deep

reposefulness. Hence its apparent consummation entirely in

the contemplation, adoration and glorification of Divine

Truth. This is also the explanation of the fact that the

liturgy is apparently so little disturbed by the petty

troubles and needs of everyday life. It also accounts for

the comparative rareness of its attempts at direct teaching

and direct inculcation of virtue. The liturgy has something

in itself reminiscent of the stars, of their eternally fixed

and even course, of their inflexible order, of their

profound silence, and of the infinite space in which they

are poised. It is only in appearance, however, that the

liturgy is so detached and untroubled by the actions and

strivings and moral position of men. For in reality it knows

that those who live by it will be true and spiritually

sound, and at peace to the depths of their being; and that

when they leave its sacred confines to enter life they will

be men of courage.

ENDNOTES

1. Both in this connection and in countless others we find

demonstrated the absolute necessity of the extra-liturgical

forms of spiritual exercise, the Rosary, the Stations of the

Cross, popular devotions, meditation, etc. There could be no

greater mistake than the attempt to build up liturgical life

on an exclusively liturgical model. And it is equally

mistaken merely to tolerate the other forms, because the

"lower classes" need them, while setting the liturgy as the

only possible pattern and guide before struggling humanity.

Both are necessary. The one complements the other. Pride of

place, however, belongs of course to the liturgy, because it

is the official prayer of the Church.

(Cf. my book, "Der Kreuzweg unseres Hernn und Heilandes,"

Introduction, Mainz, 1921)

2. Cf. the discussions on the significance of theology as to

whether it is a "pure" science or one with an aim, that of

bettering humanity; upon the essence of eternal happiness,

whether it ultimately consists in the contemplation of God

or in the love of Him; on the dependence of the will upon

knowledge, and so on.

3. It is significant that it was not until the seventeenth

century, and then in the face of universal opposition, that

active Orders for women were founded. The history of the

Order of the Visitation is especially instructive in this

connection.

4. This tendency has also influenced Catholic thought. A

great deal of modernistic thought endeavors to make

theological truth--dogma-dependent upon Christian life and

to estimate its importance not as a standard of truth, but

as a value in life.

5. Yet even here reason affirms that God is not merely an

Absolute Will but, at the same time, truth and goodness.

Revelation seals this, as it does every form of spiritual

perception, by showing us that in the Blessed Trinity the

"first thing" is the begetting of the Son through the

recognition of the Father, and the "second" (according to

thought, of course, not according to time) is the breathing

forth of the Holy Ghost through the love of Both.

6. Here nothing is said, of course, against the endeavor to

exhibit the value of dogma in the abstract, and that of the

single dogmatic truth for life. On the contrary, this can

never be done forcibly enough.

7. This is said of knowledge, not of comprehension of the

primacy of knowledge over the practical, of the

contemplative over the active life in the way understood by

the Middle Ages, even if it lacks the latter's cultural-

historical characteristics. On the other hand, it is

impossible for us to free ourselves sufficiently from the

domination of pure comprehension, as it has endured for half

a century.

8. John viii. 32.

9. Because it reposes upon existence, upon the essential,

and even upon existence in love, as I hope to be able to

demonstrate upon a future