THE ETHIC OF DEVOTION AND THE ETHIC OF SELF-PERFECTING
The widening of the ethic of self-devotion into a cosmic ethic
BEING sufficiently informed about the questions which have called for
solution and the results attained in the search for an ethic down to
the present time, the ethic of self-devotion and that of
self-perfecting can now try to combine their ideas, with a view to
establishing together the true basic principle of the moral.
Why do they not succeed in combining their ideas?
On the side of the ethic of self-devotion the fault must somehow lie
in the fact that it is too narrow. As a matter of principle social
utilitarianism is concerned only with the relations of man to man and
to human society. The ethic of self-perfecting on the other hand is
something universal. It has to do with the relation of man to the
world. If the ethic of self-devotion, therefore, wishes to agree with
that of self-perfecting, it must become, like the latter, universal,
and let its devotion be directed not only towards man and society but
somehow or other towards all life whatever in the world.
But ethics hitherto have been unwilling to take even the first step in
this universalizing of devotion.
Just as the housewife who has scrubbed out the parlour, takes care
that the door is left shut so that the dog may not get in and spoil
the work she has done by the marks of his paws, so do European
thinkers watch carefully that no animals run about in the fields of
their ethics. The stupidities they are guilty of in trying to maintain
the traditional narrow-mindedness and to raise it to a principle [pg
233] border on the incredible. Either they leave out altogether all
sympathy for animals, or they take care that it shrinks to a mere
afterthought which means nothing. If they admit anything more than
that, they think themselves obliged to produce elaborate
justifications, or even excuses, for so doing.
It seems as if Descartes with his dictum that animals are mere
machines had bewitched the whole of European philosophy.
So important a thinker as Wilhelm Wundt mars his ethic with the
following sentences: “The only object for sympathy is man. . . . The
animals are for us fellow-creatures, an expression by which language
already hints at the fact that we acknowledge here a kind of
co-ordination with ourselves only with reference to the ultimate
ground of everything that happens, viz., creation. Towards animals
also, then, there can arise within us stirrings which are to a certain
extent related to sympathy, but as to true sympathy with them there is
always wanting the fundamental condition of the inner unity of our
will with theirs.” To crown this wisdom he ends with the assertion
that of rejoicing with animals there can at any rate be no question,
as if he had never seen a thirsty ox drink.
Kant emphasises especially that ethics have to do only with duties of
man towards men. The “human” treatment of animals he thinks himself
obliged to justify by putting it forward as a practising of
sensibility which helps to improve our sympathetic relations with
other human beings.
Bentham, too, defends kindness to animals chiefly as a means of
preventing the growth of heartless relations with other men, even
though he here and there recognises it as something obviously right.
Darwin in his _Descent of Man_ notices that the feeling of sympathy
which is dominant in the social impulse, becomes at last so strong
that it comes to include all men, and indeed even animals. But he does
not pursue the problem and the [pg 234] significance of this fact any
further, and contents himself with establishing the ethics of the
human herd.
Thus it ranks with European thought as a dogma that ethics have to do
properly only with a man’s relation to his fellows and to society. The
motives which emanate from Schopenhauer, Stern, and others, for
throwing down the antiquated line of circumvallation, are not
understood.
This backward attitude is the more unintelligible seeing that both
Indian thought and Chinese, even when they have only scarcely begun to
develop, make ethics consist in a kindly relation to all creatures.
Moreover, they have come to this view quite independently of each
other. The subtle and far-reaching commands concerning regard for
animals in the popular Chinese ethics of the book _Kan Yin Pien_
(_Concerning Rewards and Punishments_) cannot be referred back, as is
commonly supposed, to Buddhist influences._(_105_)_ They have no
connexion with metaphysical discussions about the mutual relationship
of all beings, such as became effective as the ethical horizon widened
in Indian thought, but originate in a living, ethical feeling which
dares to draw the consequences which seem to it to be natural.
When European thought refuses to make self-devotion universal, the
reason is that its efforts are directed to reaching a rational ethic
which deals with universally valid judgments, and it sees a prospect
of that only when it can keep its feet upon the solid ground of
discussion of the interests of human society. But an ethic which
busies [pg 235] itself with the relations of man to the whole creation
forsakes it. Such an ethic is driven into discussions about existence
as such. Whether it will or not, it has to plunge into the adventure
of coming to terms with nature-philosophy, and the result of such an
adventure cannot be foreseen.
This is a correct conclusion. But it has already been shown that the
ethic of society, which guides men from the outside, supposing it can
be drawn up in this way at all, is never a true ethic, but merely an
appendix to ethics. It has been established further that true ethics
are always subjective, that they have an irrational enthusiasm as
their very breath of life, and have to come to terms with
nature-philosophy. The ethic of self-devotion has, therefore, no
reason for shrinking from this in any case unavoidable adventure. Its
house has been burnt down. Let it go out into the world to seek its
fortune.
Let it, then, venture to accept the thought that self-devotion has to
be practised not only towards men but towards all living creatures,
yes, towards all life whatever that exists in the world and is within
the reach of man. Let it rise to the conception that the relation of
men to each other is only an expression of that in which they all
stand to Being and to the world in general. Having thus become cosmic,
the ethic of devotion can hope to meet the ethic of self-perfecting,
which is fundamentally cosmic, and to unite itself with it.
The ethic of self-perfecting and mysticism
But in order that the ethic of self-perfecting may combine with that
of self-devotion, it must first become cosmic in the right way.
It is indeed fundamentally cosmic, because self-perfecting can consist
of nothing but this, that man comes into his true relation to the
Being that is in him and outside him. His natural, outward connexion
with Being he means to [pg 236] change into a spiritual, inward
devotion to it, letting his passive and active relation to things be
determined by this devotion.
In this effort, however, he has never yet got further than a passive
devotion to Being. He is always driven past active devotion to it.
This one-sidedness is what makes it impossible for the two ethics of
self-perfecting and of self-devotion to penetrate each other, and to
produce together the complete ethic of passive and active
self-perfecting.
But what is the reason that the ethic of self-perfecting, in spite of
all its efforts, cannot get out of the circle of the passive? It is
that it allows the spiritual inward devotion to Being to be directed
to an abstract notion of Being instead of to real Being. Thus it
approaches nature-philosophy in a wrong way.
Whence this error? It is a result of the difficulties which the ethic
of self-perfecting meets when it attempts to comprehend itself in
nature-philosophy.
In a fashion which is deep, though it strikes us as unfamiliar,
Chinese thought undertakes to arrive at this agreement. It thinks that
it is somehow or other in the “impersonal” element of the world’s
activity that the secret of the truly ethical lies. It accordingly
makes spiritual devotion to Being consist in this, that we look away
from the subjective stirrings within ourselves, and relate ourselves
to the laws of objectivity which we discover in the course of nature.
It is with this deep “becoming like the world” that the thought of
Lao-tse and that of Chwang-tse are concerned. The motifs of such an
ethic make themselves heard in a wonderful fashion in Lao-tse’s
_Taoteking_; but they cannot be made to produce a complete symphony.
The meaning of what happens in the world is a thing we cannot
investigate. What we do understand of it is that all life tries to
live itself out. The true ethic of life, therefore, “in the spirit of
what happens” would seem to be that of Yang-tse and Friedrich
Nietzsche. On the other hand the assumption [pg 237] of an
objectivity, dominant in the course of nature, which can be a pattern
for our activity is nothing else than an attempt, undertaken with the
palest of colours, to paint the world as ethical. Correspondingly,
this existence in the spirit of the world means with Lao-tse and
Chwang-tse an inward liberation from the rule of passion and from
outward occurrences, which is accompanied by marked depreciations of
all tendencies to activity. Whenever life in the spirit of the world
leads to a really activist ethic as with Confucius, Mo-Di, and others,
there has been a corresponding interpretation of the meaning of the
world. Whenever, in general, human thinking raises
being-like-the-world to an ethic, the ethical willing of mankind has
read somehow or other into the world-spirit an ethical character in
order to be able to find itself in it later.
Since no motives to ethical activity are to be discovered in the
course of nature, the ethic of self-perfecting must allow both the
active and the passive ethic to originate side by side in the bare
fact of spiritual inward self-dedication to Being. It must derive them
both from the act as such, without any presupposition of any sort of
ethical quality in Being. Then first will thought have reached a
complete ethic without having been guilty of any sort of naïve or
tricky proceedings.
That is the problem at which the ethical searching of all peoples and
all ages vainly toils, so far as it ventures to think in the spirit of
true nature philosophy. With the Chinese and the Indians, in Stoicism,
with Spinoza, Schleiermacher, Fichte, and Hegel, and in all mysticism
of union with the Absolute, it reaches only an ethic of resignation,
consisting of inward liberation from the world, never at the same time
an ethic of working in the world and upon the world.
It is true that it only seldom ventures honestly to admit to itself
the unsatisfactory result. As a rule it seeks to widen it, and to
maintain in some measure an activist ethic in spite of it, letting
this ethic be combined in some form or other with the ethic of
resignation. The more [pg 238] consistent the thinkers, the more
modest is the space occupied by the piece thus hooked on.
With Lao-tse and Chwang-tse, with the Brahmans and the Buddha, with
the Stoics of antiquity, with Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, and
with the great monist mystics the activist ethic is reduced to little
more than nothing. With Confucius and Meng-tse, with the Hindoo
thinkers, with the representatives of the Later Stoicism, and with J.
G. Fichte it makes strenuous efforts to assert itself, but it can do
so only so far as it takes either naïve or sophisticated thought to
help it.
Every world-and-life-view which is to satisfy thought is mysticism. It
must seek to give to the existence of man such a meaning as will
prevent him from being satisfied with being a part of the infinite
existence in merely natural fashion, but will make him determine to
belong to it inwardly and spiritually also, through an act of his
consciousness.
The ethic of self-perfecting is in inmost connexion with mysticism.
Its own destiny is decided in that of mysticism. Thinking out the
ethic of self-perfecting means nothing else than seeking to found
ethics on mysticism. Mysticism, on its side, is a valuable
world-and-life-view only in proportion as it is ethical.
And yet it finds it cannot succeed in being ethical. Experience of
becoming one with the Absolute, of existence within the world-spirit,
of ascent into God, or whatever one may choose to call the process, is
not in itself ethical; it is only spiritual. Of this deep distinction
Indian thought has become conscious. With the most varied phrasing it
proclaims the statement: “Spirituality is not ethics.” We Europeans
have remained naïve in matters of mysticism. What appears among us as
mysticism is usually mysticism with a more or less Christian, that is
to say ethical, colouring. Hence we are inclined to deceive ourselves
about the ethical content of mysticism.
If one analyses the mysticism of all peoples and all ages to find out
its ethical content, we find that this is [pg 239] extraordinarily
small. Even the ethic of resignation, which seems after all to belong
naturally to mysticism, is in it more or less afflicted with
impotence. Through the absence of the activist ethic with which it
should normally be bound up, it to a certain extent loses its hold,
and pushes itself more and more into the region of no longer ethical
resignation. There then arises a mysticism that no longer helps the
effort for self-perfecting, which is the deeper work to which it is
called, but allows absorption into the Absolute to become an aim in
itself. The purer the mysticism, the further has this evolution
developed. Mysticism becomes then a world- and life-view of the merging
of the finite existence in the infinite, if indeed it does not get
reversed, as with the Brahmans, into the lofty mysticism of the
existence of infinite existence within the finite. The ethic of
self-perfecting, which should arise out of mysticism, is therefore
always in danger of perishing in mysticism.
The tendency of mysticism to become supra-ethical is quite natural. As
a matter of fact its connexion with an Absolute which has neither
qualities nor needs has nothing more to do with self-perfecting. It
becomes a pure act of consciousness, and leads to a spirituality which
is just as bare of content as the pre-supposed Absolute. Feeling its
weakness, mysticism does all it can to be more ethical than it is, or
at any rate to appear so. Even the Indian form of it makes efforts in
this direction, although again, on the other hand, it has courage to
be veracious enough to rank the spiritual above the ethical.
In order to judge what mysticism is worth ethically one must count
only what it contains in itself in the way of ethics, not what it does
or says beyond that. Then, however, the ethical content of even
Christian mysticism is terrifyingly small. Mysticism is not a friend
but a foe of ethics; it devours it. And yet the ethic which is to
satisfy thought must be born of mysticism. All deep philosophy, all
deep religion, are ultimately a struggle for ethical mysticism and
mystical ethics.
[pg 240]
Dominated by efforts to secure an activist ethical world- and
life-view, we Westerners do not allow mysticism to come into its own.
It leads among us a furtive, intermittent existence. We feel
instinctively that it stands in antagonism to activist ethics, and we
have therefore no inward relationship to it.
Our great mistake, however, is thinking that we can reach without
mysticism an ethical world- and life-view, which shall satisfy thought.
Up to now we have done nothing but fabricate world- and life-views.
They are good because they keep men up to activist ethics, but they
are not true, and therefore they are always collapsing. Moreover they
are not deep. Hence European thought makes men ethical indeed, but
superficial, and the European, because he is surfeited with world-view
which has been fabricated with a view to activist ethics, has no
collectedness and no inward personality, nor indeed any feeling of
need for these things.
It is indeed time for us to abandon this error. Depth and stability in
thinking come to the world- and life-view of activist ethics only when
this springs from mysticism. The question of what we are to make of
our life is not solved by our being driven out into the world with an
impulse to activity, and never being allowed to collect ourselves for
thought. It can be really answered only by a world- and life-view which
brings man into a spiritual inward relation to Being, out of which
there results of natural necessity an ethic both passive and active.
The hitherto accepted mysticism cannot effect this because it is
supra-ethical. The struggle of thought has therefore to direct itself
upon ethical mysticism. We must rise to a spirituality which is
ethical, and to an ethic which includes within itself all
spirituality. Then only do we become profoundly qualified for life.
Ethics must resolve to originate in mysticism. Mysticism, on its side,
must never think that it exists for its own sake. It is not a flower,
but only the calyx. Ethics are [pg 241] the flower. Mysticism which
exists for itself only is the salt which has lost its savour.
The hitherto accepted mysticism leads into the supra-ethical because
it is abstract, and abstraction is the death of ethics, for ethics are
a living relation for a living life. We must therefore abandon
abstract mysticism, and turn to the mysticism which is alive.
Abstract mysticism and the mysticism of reality. Supra-ethical, and
ethical mysticism
The Essence of Being, the Absolute, the World-spirit, and all similar
expressions denote nothing actual, but something conceived in
abstractions which for that reason it is also absolutely impossible to
represent to the mind. The only reality is the Being which manifests
itself in phenomena.
How does thought come to such a meaningless proceeding as making man
enter into a spiritual relation with an unreal creation of thought? By
yielding to temptation in two ways, one general, one particular.
Thrown back upon the necessity of expressing itself in words thought
adopts as its own the abstractions and symbols which have been coined
by language. But this coinage should have no more currency than allows
it to represent things in an abbreviated way, instead of putting them
forward with all the detail in which they are given. But in time it
comes about that thought works with these abstractions and symbols as
if they represented something really existing. That is the general
temptation.
The particular temptation lies in this case in this, that man’s
devotion to infinite Being, effected with the help of abstractions and
symbols, is thereby given expression in an enticingly simple way. It
is taken to consist of entrance into relation with the totality of
Being, that is to say, with its spiritual essence.
That looks very well in words and in thought. Reality, [pg 242]
however, knows nothing about the individual being able to enter into
connexion with the totality of Being. As it knows of no Being except
that which manifests itself in the existence of individual beings, so
also it knows of no relations except these of one individual being to
another. If mysticism, then, means to be honest, there is nothing for
it to do but to cast from it the usual abstractions, and to admit to
itself that it can do nothing rational with this imaginary essence of
Being. The Absolute may be as meaningless to it as his fetish is to a
converted negro. It must in all seriousness go through the process of
conversion to the mysticism of reality. Abandoning all stage
decorations and declamation, let it try to get its experience in
living nature.
There is no Essence of Being, but only infinite Being in infinite
manifestations. It is only through the manifestations of Being, and
only through those with which I enter into relations, that my being
has any intercourse with infinite Being. The devotion of my being to
infinite Being means devotion of my being to all the manifestations of
Being which need my devotion, and to which I am able to devote myself.
Only an infinitely small part of infinite Being comes within my reach.
The rest of it drives on past me, like distant ships to which I make
signals they do not understand. But by devoting myself to that which
comes within my reach and needs me, I make spiritual, inward devotion
to infinite Being a reality and thereby give my own poor existence
meaning and richness. The river has found its sea.
From devotion to the Absolute there comes only a dead spirituality. It
is a purely intellectual act. No motives to activity are given in it.
Even the ethic of resignation can only eke out a miserable existence
on the soil of such an intellectualism. But in the mysticism of
reality devotion is no longer a purely intellectual act, but one in
which everything that is alive in man has its share. There is
therefore dominant in it a spirituality which carries in itself [pg
243] in elemental form the impulse to action. The gruesome truth that
spirituality and ethics are two different things no longer holds good.
Here the two are one and the same.
Now, too, the ethic of self-perfecting and the ethic of devotion can
interpenetrate each other. They now become, we see, cosmic in
nature-philosophy, which leaves the world as it is. Hence they cannot
but meet each other in a thought (which satisfies in every direction
the laws of thinking), of living devotion to Being which lives. In
this thought lie passive and active self-perfecting in mutual
agreement and perfect union. They comprehend each other as the working
out of one and the same inner compulsion. Having become one they no
longer need first of all to exert themselves to establish by joint
efforts the completed ethic of influencing the world through
liberation from the world. The completeness is now automatically
attained. Now there ring out in wonderful harmonies all the notes in
the gamut of ethics, from the vibrations in which resignation begins
to be audible as ethics, up to the higher notes in which ethics pass
over into the harsh noises of the commands which are proclaimed by
society to be ethical.
Subjective responsibility for all life which comes within his reach,
responsibility which widens out extensively and intensively to the
limitless, and which the man who has become inwardly free from the
world experiences and tries to make a reality, that is ethics. It
originates in world- and life-affirmation. It makes itself a reality in
life-denial. It is completely bound up with optimistic willing. Never
again can the belief-in-progress get separated from ethics, like a
badly-fastened wheel from a cart. The two turn inseparably on the same
axle.
The basic principle of ethics, that principle which is a necessity of
thought, which has a definite content, which is ever bringing itself
into steady, living, and practical agreement with reality, proclaims
itself to be: Devotion to life out of reverence for life.
[pg 244]