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Whoever grasps the ordo amoris of a man, has hold of man himself. He possesses him as moral subject — what crystal form is to crystal itself. He sees into this man as far as one can see into one’s fellow. Behind the empirical multifold and complexity he sees the ever simply flowing basic contours of man, and this, rather than knowledge or will, deserves to qualify as the core of man as a spiritual being. He possesses in his spiritual make-up the original source that secretly spawns all that issues from man. And even more, it is the primordial determinant of that which incessantly places itself around him — in space his moral world, in time his fate, i.e., to become the quintessence of the possible that can happen to him and only to him.1

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2387-0_3

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