Attributes and Capacities of Man

Abstract

The religious conception of human attributes and capacities is that each is in its own way an expression of the mysterious and self-subsistent vital principle or soul. In this way it is possible to understand the autonomous and spontaneous character of these capacities; one is aware of his own creative activity, just as he is aware of life in general as a creative energy. We are dealing with a religious conception, especially where there is an awareness that the faculties — for example, wisdom as sacred science — are directed toward infin te goals. This is, in other words, a feeling that these faculties serve to orient man in the life of the world and to bring him into harmony with it, to lead him into divine life and to enable him to participate in it. The finite intellectual or moral capacities are not able to do this. The capacities directed to infinite goals are themselves infinite, and an awareness of this lies at the heart of the religious conception of their essence.