how all social institutions and events stem from the inner world of man, while every era prefers a different type of thought and sentiment. He knows from his own inner life that every power of the soul can be cultivated or can deteriorate through the decision of one’s own will. Love can evolve into a just, selfless feeling and artistic creativity, but it can also degenerate into a mean, self-seeking carnal instinct. It will induce accord in the former case and corruption in the latter. It is a moral challenge. Romanticism, as an era borne by the power of love, faced this challenge: some managed to constructively transform it into a rare creativity, while with others it degenerated into mere erotic dreaming and devastating revolutions. As the personality is born in puberty by adopting certain ideals and defining oneself against the authorities, so Europe struggled for personal freedom and respect for the human personality as such. Napoleon came to be a great commander because he allied himself with the mission to spread this achievement of the great French Revolution across the world. The Napoleonic civil code became a lasting component of our law. The student can see that every era – including the present one – has a mission for which he is co-responsible. A young man or woman cannot complete his or her individuation, cannot healthily develop mentally unless he or she finds a meaningful task to struggle for. If the world operates automatically on the basis of demographic, economic and other external causes, and man is only to slot somewhere into the cycle of production and consumption, so one may simply commit suicide immediately. The same is true in relation to nature. If it operates automatically as a chemical chain reaction or a genetic machine, I can only worry and pay. Yet I establish an entirely different relationship with my kidney when I understand that it is not a mere excretory organ, but an organ carrying and mirroring my feelings and interpersonal relationships. It starts me wondering about the mysterious process taking place in my renal calyces. Therefore, the health condition of my kidneys passes into my own hands, into the sphere of my own personal freedom but also responsibility. My damaged kidney is not only the job of my physician who has to repair it or replace it like a radiator in an automobile service station. A graduate in such education acquires awareness about how ethics is embedded within the nature of things. Moral powers literally hold together every atom of our body, as well as every community. He starts to regard total ethical relativists as mentally disturbed, dissociated personalities who have lost connection to the realities of life. Allegedly, opinions differ and we cannot find out which one is better. But the inevitable consequences of these opinions are such that all of us agree whether or not they are good or bad. Every opinion, attitude or state of the soul materializes. Everybody expects the right to have opinions, but some opinions inevitably lead to war and nobody wants to die. Everybody mentally experiences whatever he likes – but some mental states lead to illness and nobody wants to be ill. Say, for example, I will give up mentally, I will stop setting myself future goals that create an inner warmth in me by sacrificing to them – then my immunity 72 (36) Emil Páleš
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