THE ETHIC OF REVERENCE FOR LIFE
The basic principle of the moral
COMPLICATED and laborious are the roads along which ethical thought,
which has mistaken its way and lost itself, must be brought back. Its
course, however, maps itself out quite simply if, instead of taking
apparently convenient short cuts, it keeps to its right direction from
the very beginning. For this three things are necessary.
It must have nothing to do with an ethical interpretation of the
world.
It must become cosmic and mystical, that is, it must seek to conceive
all the devotion which rules in ethics as a manifestation of an
inward, spiritual relation to the world.
It must not go astray into abstract thinking, but must remain
elemental, understanding self-devotion to the world to be
self-devotion of human life to every form of living being with which
it can come into relation.
The origin of ethics is that I think out the full meaning of the
world-affirmation which is given by nature together with the
life-affirmation in my will-to-live, and try to make it a reality.
To become ethical means to begin to think sincerely.
Thinking is the agreement between willing and knowing which is come to
within me. Its course is a naïve one, if the will demands of the
knowledge to be shown a world which corresponds to the impulses which
it carries within itself, and if the knowledge attempts to satisfy
this requirement. The place of this dialogue, a dialogue which is
doomed beforehand to produce no result, must be taken by a correct
one, in which the will demands from the knowledge only what it really
knows.
[pg 245]
If the knowledge answers solely with what it knows, it is always
teaching the will one and the same fact, viz., that in and behind all
phenomena there is will-to-live. Knowledge, though ever becoming
deeper and more inclusive, can do nothing except take us deeper into
the enigmatic fact that all that is, is will-to-live. Progress in
science consists only in increasingly accurate description of the
phenomena in which life in its innumerable forms appears and passes,
letting us discover life where we did not previously expect it, and
putting us in a position to turn to our own use in this or that way
what we have learnt of the course of the will-to-live in nature. But
what life is, no science can tell us.
For our world- and life-view, then, the gain derived from knowledge is
only that it makes it harder for us to be thoughtless, because it
forces upon our attention ever more strongly the mystery of the
will-to-live which we see stirring everywhere. Hence the difference
between learned and unlearned is an entirely relative one. The
unlearned man who, at the sight of a tree in flower, is overpowered by
the mystery of the will-to-live which is stirring all round him, knows
more truly than the learned one who studies under the microscope or in
physical and chemical activity a thousand forms of the will-to-live,
but who, with all his knowledge of the life-course of these
manifestations of the will-to-live, is unmoved by the mystery that
everything which exists is will-to-live, while he is puffed up with
vanity at being able to describe exactly a fragment of the course of
life.
All true knowledge passes on into experience. The nature of the
manifestations I do not know, but I form a conception of it in analogy
to the will-to-live which is within myself, and thus my knowledge of
the world becomes experience of the world. The knowledge which is
becoming experience does not allow me to remain in face of the world a
subject who merely knows; it forces upon me an inward relation to the
world, and fills me with reverence for the mysterious will-to-live
which is in everything. By making [pg 246] me think and wonder, it
leads me ever upwards to the heights of reverence for life. There it
lets my hand go. It cannot accompany me further. My will-to-live must
now find its way about the world by itself.
It is not by informing me what this or that manifestation of life
means in the sum-total of the world that knowledge brings me into
connexion with the world. It goes about with me not in outer circles,
but in the inner ones. From within outwards it puts me in relation to
the world by forcing my will-to-live to feel everything around it as
also will-to-live.
With Descartes, philosophy starts from the dogma: “I think, therefore
I exist.” With this poverty-stricken, arbitrarily chosen beginning, it
is landed irretrievably on the road to the abstract. It never finds
the entrance to ethics, and remains entangled in a dead world- and
life-view. True philosophy must start from the most immediate and
comprehensive fact of consciousness, which says: “I am life which
wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live.” This is not
a cleverly composed dogmatic formula. Day after day, hour after hour,
I live and move in it. At every moment of reflexion it stands fresh
before me. There bursts forth again and again from it as from roots
that can never dry up, a living world- and life-view which can deal
with all the facts of Being. A mysticism of ethical union with Being
grows out of it.
As in my own will-to-live there is a longing for wider life and for
the mysterious exaltation of the will-to-live which we call pleasure,
with dread of annihilation and of the mysterious encroachment on the
will-to-live which we call pain; so is it also in the will-to-live all
around me, whether it can express itself before me, or remains dumb.
Ethics consist, therefore, in my experiencing the compulsion to show
to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do to my own. There we
have given us that basic principle of the moral which is a necessity
of thought: It is good to maintain and to promote life; it is bad to
destroy life or to obstruct it.
[pg 247]
As a matter of fact everything which in the ordinary ethical valuation
of the relations of men to each other ranks as good, can be brought
under the description of material and spiritual maintenance or
promotion of human life, and of effort to bring it to its highest
value. Conversely, everything which ranks as bad in human relations is
in the last analysis material or spiritual destruction or obstruction
of human life, and negligence in the effort to bring it to its highest
value. Separate individual categories of good and evil which lie far
apart and have apparently no connexion at all with one another fit
together like things which belong to each other, as soon as they are
comprehended and deepened in this the most universal definition of
good and evil.
The basic principle of the moral means, however, not only an ordering
and deepening of the current views of good and evil, but also a
widening of them. A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the
compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks
from injuring anything that lives. He does not ask how far this or
that life deserves one’s interest as being valuable, nor, beyond that,
whether and how far it can appreciate such interest. Life as such is
sacred to him. He tears no leaf from a tree, plucks no flower, and
takes care to crush no insect. If in summer he is working by
lamplight, he prefers to keep the window shut and breathe a stuffy
atmosphere rather than see one insect after another fall with singed
wings upon his table.
If he goes into the street after a shower and sees an earthworm which
has strayed on to it, he bethinks himself that it must get dried up in
the sun, if it does not get back soon enough to ground into which it
can burrow, and so he lifts it from the deadly stone surface, and puts
it on the grass. If he comes across an insect which has fallen into a
puddle, he stops a moment in order to hold out a leaf or a stalk on
which it can save itself.
He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is the fate of
every truth to be a subject for laughter until [pg 248] it is
generally recognized. Once it was considered folly to assume that men
of colour were really men and ought to be treated as such, but the
folly has become an accepted truth. To-day it is thought to be going
too far to declare that constant regard for everything that lives,
down to the lowest manifestations of life, is a demand made by
rational ethics. The time is coming, however, when people will be
astonished that mankind needed so long a time to learn to regard
thoughtless injury to life as incompatible with ethics.
Ethics are responsibility without limit towards all that lives.
The definition of ethics as a relation to things within a disposition
to reverence for life, strikes one in its absolutely universal extent
as cold. But it is the only complete one. Sympathy is too narrow to
rank as the essence of the ethical. It denotes, of course, only
interest in the suffering will-to-live. But ethics include also
feeling as one’s own all the circumstances and all the aspirations of
the will-to-live, its pleasure, too, and its longing to live itself
out to the full, as well as its urge to self-perfecting.
Love means more, since it includes fellowship in suffering, in joy,
and in effort, but it shows the ethical only in a simile, although in
a natural and deep one. It makes the solidarity produced by ethics
analogous to that which nature calls forth on the physical side, for
more or less temporary purposes between two beings which complete each
other sexually, or between them and their offspring.
Thought must strive to bring to expression the nature of the ethical
in itself. To effect this it comes inevitably to defining ethics as
devotion to life which is inspired by reverence for life. Even if the
word reverence for life sounds so general as to seem somewhat
lifeless, what is signified by it is nevertheless something which the
man into whose thought it has made its way can never get rid of.
Sympathy, and love, and every kind of valuable emotion are given
within it. With a restless living force [pg 249] reverence for life
works upon the disposition into which it has entered, and throws it
into the unrest of a feeling of responsibility which at no place and
at no time ceases to affect it. Just as the screw which burrows
through the water drives the ship along, so does reverence for life
the man.
Arising, as it does, from an inner compulsion, the ethic of reverence
for life is not dependent on the extent to which it is able to think
itself out to a satisfying life-view. It need give no answer to the
question of what significance the ethical man’s work for the
maintenance, promotion, and exalting of life can have in the total
happenings of the course of nature. It does not let itself be misled
by the calculation that the maintaining and completing of life which
it practises is hardly worth consideration beside the tremendous,
unceasing destruction of life which goes on through natural forces.
Having the will to action, it can leave on one side all the problems
of the success of its work. Full of significance for the world is the
fact in itself that in the ethically developed man there has made its
appearance in the world a will-to-live which is filled with reverence
for life and devotion to life.
In my will-to-live the universal will-to-live experiences itself
otherwise than in its other manifestations. In them it shows itself in
a process of individualising which, so far as I can see from the
outside, is bent merely on living itself out to the full, and in no
way on union with any other will-to-live. The world is a ghastly drama
of will-to-live divided against itself. One existence makes its way at
the cost of another; one destroys the other. One will-to-live merely
exerts its will against the other, and has no knowledge of it. But in
me the will-to-live has come to know about other wills-to-live. There
is in it a longing to arrive at unity with itself, to become
universal.
Why does the will-to-live experience itself in this way in me alone?
Is it because I have acquired the capacity of reflecting on the
totality of Being? What is the goal of this evolution which has begun
in me?
[pg 250]
To these questions there is no answer. It remains a painful enigma for
me that I must live with reverence for life in a world which is
dominated by creative will which is also destructive will, and
destructive will which is also creative.
I can do nothing but hold to the fact that the will-to-live in me
manifests itself as will-to-live which desires to become one with
other will-to-live. That is for me the light that shines in the
darkness. The ignorance in which the world is wrapped has no existence
for me; I have been saved from the world. I am thrown, indeed, by
reverence for life into an unrest such as the world does not know, but
I obtain from it a blessedness which the world cannot give. If in the
tenderheartedness produced by being different from the world another
person and I help each other in understanding and pardoning, when
otherwise will would torment will, the division of the will-to-live is
got rid of. If I save an insect from the puddle, life has devoted
itself to life, and the division of life against itself is got rid of.
Whenever my life devotes itself in any way to life, my finite
will-to-live experiences its union with the infinite will in which all
life is one, and I enjoy a feeling of refreshment which prevents me
from pining away in the desert of life.
I therefore recognize it as the destiny of my existence to be obedient
to this higher revelation of the will-to-live in me. I choose for my
work the removal of this division of the will-to-live against itself,
so far as the influence of my existence reaches. Knowing now the one
thing needful, I leave on one side the enigma of the world and of my
existence in it.
The surmisings and the longings of all deep religiousness are
contained in the ethic of reverence for life. This religiousness,
however, does not build up for itself a completed world-view, but
resigns itself to the necessity of leaving its cathedral unfinished.
It finishes the choir only, but in this choir piety maintains a living
and never-ceasing divine service.
[pg 251]
The ethic of resignation. An ethic of veracity towards oneself, and an
activist ethic
The ethic of reverence for life shows its truth also in that it
includes in itself the different elements of ethics in their natural
connexion. Hitherto no ethic has been able to present in their
parallelism and their interaction the effort after self-perfecting, in
which man acts upon himself from outside without deeds, and the
activist ethic. The ethic of reverence for life can do this, and
indeed in such a way that it not only answers academic questions, but
also produces a deepening of ethical insight.
Ethics are reverence for the will-to-live within me and without me.
From the former comes first the profound life-affirmation of
resignation. I apprehend my will-to-live as not only something which
can live itself out in happy occurrences, but also something which has
experience of itself. If I refuse to let this self-experience
disappear in thoughtlessness, and persist in feeling it to be
valuable, I begin to learn the secret of spiritual self-assertion. I
win an unsuspected freedom from the various destinies of life. At
moments in which I had expected to find myself overwhelmed, I find
myself exalted in an inexpressible and surprising happiness of freedom
from the world, and I experience therein a clearing of my life-view.
Resignation is the vestibule through which we enter ethics. Only he
who in deepened devotion to his own will-to-live experiences inward
freedom from outward occurrences, is capable of devoting himself in
profound and steady fashion to the life of others.
Just as in the reverence for my own will-to-live I struggle for
freedom from the destinies of life, so I struggle too for freedom from
myself. Not only in face of what happens to me, but also with
attention to the way in which I deal with the world, I practise the
higher self-maintenance. Out of reverence for my own existence I place
myself under the compulsion of veracity towards myself. Everything [pg
252] I acquired would be purchased too dearly by action in defiance of
my convictions. I fear that if I were untrue to myself I should be
wounding my will-to-live with a poisoned spear.
The fact that Kant makes, as he does, veracity towards oneself the
centre point of his ethic, testifies to the depth of his ethical
feeling. But because in his search for the essential nature of the
ethical he fails to find his way through to reverence for life, he
cannot comprehend the connexion between veracity towards oneself and
an activist ethic.
As a matter of fact the ethic of veracity towards oneself passes
imperceptibly into that of devotion to others. Such veracity compels
me to actions which manifest themselves as devotion in such a way that
ordinary ethics derive them from devotion.
Why do I forgive anyone? Ordinary ethics say, because I feel sympathy
with him. They allow men to seem to themselves, when they pardon
others, frightfully good, and allow them to practise a style of
pardoning which is not free from humiliation of the other. They thus
make forgiveness a sweetened triumph of self-devotion.
The ethic of reverence for life does away with this unpurified view.
All acts of forbearance and of pardon are for it acts forced from one
by veracity towards oneself. I must practise unlimited forgiveness
because, if I did not, I should be wanting in veracity to myself, for
it would be acting as if I myself were not guilty in the same way as
the other has been guilty towards me. Because my life is so liberally
spotted with falsehood, I must forgive falsehood which has been
practised upon me; because I myself have been in so many cases wanting
in love, and guilty of hatred, slander, deceit, or arrogance, I must
pardon any want of love, and all hatred, slander, deceit, or arrogance
which have been directed against myself. I must forgive quietly and
without drawing attention to it; in fact I do not really pardon at
all, for I do not let things develop to any such act of judgement. Nor
is this any eccentric proceeding; [pg 253] it is only a necessary
widening and refinement of ordinary ethics.
The struggle against the evil that is in mankind we have to carry on
not by judging others, but by judging ourselves. Struggle with oneself
and veracity towards oneself are the means by which we work upon
others. We quietly draw them into our efforts after the deep spiritual
self-assertion which springs out of reverence for one’s own life.
Power makes no noise. It is there, and works. True ethics begin where
the use of language ceases.
The innermost element then, in activist ethics, even if it appears as
self-devotion, comes from the compulsion to veracity towards oneself,
and obtains therein its true value. The whole ethic of being other
than the world flows pure only when it comes from this source. It is
not from kindness to others that I am tender-hearted, peaceable,
forbearing, and friendly, but because by such behaviour I prove my own
deepest self-assertion to be true. Reverence for life which I apply to
my own existence, and reverence for life which keeps me in a temper of
devotion to other existence than mine, interpenetrate each other.
Ethics and thoughtlessness. Ethics and self-assertion
Ordinary ethics, because they are without any basic principle of the
ethical, are obliged to engage at once in the discussion of
conflicting duties. The ethic of reverence for life has no such need
for hurry. It takes its own time to think out in all directions its
own principle of the moral. Knowing itself to be firmly established,
it then settles its position with regard to these conflicts.
It has to come to terms with three adversaries: these are
thoughtlessness, egoistic self-assertion, and society.
To the first of these it pays usually insufficient attention, because
no open conflicts arise between them. This adversary does,
nevertheless, obstruct it imperceptibly.
There is, however, a wide field which our ethic can take [pg 254]
possession of without any collision with the troops of egoism. Man can
accomplish much that is good, without having to require of himself any
sacrifice. And if there really goes with it a bit of his life, it is
something so insignificant that he feels it no more than if he were
losing a hair or a piece of dead skin.
Over wide stretches of conduct the inward liberation from the world,
the being true to oneself, the being different from the world, yes,
and even devotion to other life, is only a matter of giving attention
to this particular relation. We fall short so much, because we do not
keep ourselves up to it. We do not stand sufficiently under the
pressure of any inward compulsion to be ethical. The steam hisses at
all points out of the leaky boiler. The resulting losses of energy are
as high as they are in ordinary ethics, because these ethics have at
their disposal no single basic principle of the moral which works upon
thought. They cannot repair the boiler; they do not, indeed, ever even
examine it. Reverence for life, however, being something which is ever
present to thought, penetrates unceasingly and in all directions men’s
observation, reflexion, and resolutions. A man can keep himself clear
of it as little as the water can prevent itself from being coloured by
the dye-stuff which is dropped into it. The struggle with
thoughtlessness is started, and is always advancing.
But what is the relation between ethics and reverence for life in the
conflicts which arise between inward compulsion to devotion, and
necessary self-assertion?
I too am subject to division of my will-to-life against itself. In a
thousand ways my existence stands in conflict with that of others. The
necessity to destroy and to injure life is imposed upon me. If I walk
along an unfrequented path, my foot brings destruction and pain upon
the tiny creatures which populate it. In order to preserve my own
existence, I must defend myself against the existence which injures
it. I become a hunter of the mouse which inhabits my house, a murderer
of the insect which wants to have its nest there, a mass-murderer of
the bacteria which [pg 255] may endanger my life. I get my food by
destroying plants and animals. My happiness is built upon injury done
to my fellow-men.
How does our ethic assert itself in the tragic necessity to which I am
subjected through the division of my will-to-live against itself?
Ordinary ethics seek compromises. They try to lay down how much of my
existence and of my happiness I must sacrifice, and how much of them I
may preserve at the cost of the existence and happiness of other
lives. With this distinction they produce an experimental, relative
ethic. They offer as ethical what is in reality not ethical but a
mixture of non-ethical necessity and ethics. They thereby establish a
huge confusion, and allow the starting of an ever-increasing
obscuration of the conception of the ethical.
The ethic of reverence for life knows nothing of a relative ethic. It
allows to rank as good only the maintenance and promotion of life. All
destruction of and injury to life, under whatever circumstances they
take place, it condemns as evil. It does not keep in store adjustments
between ethics and necessity all ready for making up. It is always
again and again and in ways that are always original coming to terms
in men with reality. It does not abolish for man all ethical
conflicts, but compels him to decide for himself in each case how far
he can remain ethical and how far he must submit himself to the
necessity for destruction of and injury to life, and therewith incur
guilt. It is not by receiving instruction about agreement between
ethical and necessary, that a man makes progress in ethics, but only
by coming to hear more and more plainly the voice of the ethical, by
becoming ruled more and more by the longing to preserve and promote
life, and by becoming more and more obstinate in resistance to the
necessity for destroying or injuring life.
In ethical conflicts man can arrive only at subjective decisions. No
one can lay down for him at what point, on each occasion, lies the
extreme limit of possibility for [pg 256] his persistence in the
preservation and promotion of life. He alone has to decide, by letting
himself be guided by a feeling of the highest possible responsibility
towards other life.
We must never let ourselves become blunted and dull. We are living in
truth, when our experience in these conflicts is ever deepening. The
good conscience is an invention of the devil’s.
Man and other living creatures
What does reverence for life say about the relations between men and
the animal world?
Whenever I injure life of any sort, I must be quite clear whether it
is necessary. Beyond the unavoidable, I must never go, not even with
what seems insignificant. The farmer who has mown down a thousand
flowers in his meadow to feed his cows, must be careful on his way
home not to strike off in thoughtless pastime the head of a single
flower by the roadside, for he thereby commits a wrong against life
without being under the pressure of necessity.
Those who experiment with operations or the use of drugs upon animals,
or inoculate them with diseases, so as to be able to bring help to
mankind with the results gained, must never quiet any misgivings they
feel with the general reflexion that their gruesome proceedings aim at
a valuable result. They must first have considered in each individual
case whether there is a real necessity to force upon any animal this
sacrifice for the sake of mankind, and they must take the most careful
pains to ensure that the pain inflicted is made as small as possible.
How much wrong is committed in scientific institutions through neglect
of anæsthetics, which to save time or trouble are not administered!
How much, too, through animals being subjected to torture merely to
give to students a demonstration of perfectly understood phenomena. By
the very fact that animals have been subjected to experiments, and
have by their pain won such valuable results for suffering [pg 257]
men, a new and special relation of solidarity has been established
between them and us. From that springs for each one of us a compulsion
to do to every animal all the good we possibly can. By helping an
insect when it is in difficulties I am thereby attempting to cancel
part of man’s ever new debt to the animal world. Whenever an animal is
in any way forced into the service of man, every one of us must be
concerned with the suffering which it has thereby to undergo. None of
us must allow to take place any suffering for which he himself is not
responsible, if he can hinder it in any way, at the same time quieting
his conscience with the reflexion that he would be mixing himself up
in something which does not concern him. No one must shut his eyes and
regard as non-existent the sufferings of which he spares himself the
sight. Let no one regard as light the burden of his responsibility.
While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of
thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much
brutality prevails in our slaughter-houses, while animals have to
suffer in our kitchens painful death from unskilled hands, while
animals have to endure intolerable treatment from heartless men, or
are left to the cruel play of children, we all share the guilt.
We are afraid of making ourselves conspicuous, if we let it be noticed
how we feel for the sufferings which man brings upon the animals. We
think at the same time that others have become more “rational” than we
are, and that they take as being usual and as a matter of course, what
we are excited about. Yet suddenly they will let slip a word which
shows us that they too have not yet learnt to acquiesce. And now,
though they are strangers, they are quite near us. The mask in which
we misled each other falls off. We know now, from one another, that we
are alike in being unable to escape from the gruesome proceedings that
are taking place unceasingly around us. What a happy making of a new
acquaintance!
The ethic of respect for life guards us from letting each other
believe through our silence that we no longer experience [pg 258]
what, as thinking men, we must experience. It prompts us to keep each
other sensitive to what distresses us, and to talk and to act together
without any feeling of shyness, just as the responsibility we feel
moves us to. It makes us keep on the look-out together for
opportunities of bringing some sort of help to animals, to make up for
the great misery which men inflict on them, and thus to step for a
moment out of the incomprehensible horror of existence.
The ethic of the relation of man to man
In the matter also of our relation to other men, the ethic of
reverence for life throws upon us a responsibility so unlimited as to
be terrifying.
Here again it offers us no rules about the extent of the
self-maintenance which is allowable; again, it bids us in each case
come to terms with the absolute ethic of self-devotion. I have to
decide in accordance with the responsibility of which I am conscious,
how much of my life, my possessions, my rights, my happiness, my time,
and my rest I must devote to others, and how much of them I may keep
for myself.
In the question of possession, the ethic of reverence for life is
outspokenly individualist in the sense that wealth acquired or
inherited must be placed at the service of the community, not through
any measures taken by society, but through the absolutely free
decision of the individual. It expects everything from a general
increase in the feeling of responsibility. Wealth it regards as the
property of society left in the sovereign control of the individual.
One man serves society by carrying on a business in which a number of
employees earn their living; another by giving away his wealth in
order to help his fellows. Between these two extreme kinds of service
let each decide according to the responsibility which he finds
determined for him by the circumstances of his life. Let no one judge
his neighbour. The one thing that matters is that each shall value
what he possesses as means to action. Whether this is [pg 259]
accomplished by his keeping and increasing his wealth, or by surrender
of it, matters little. Wealth must reach the community in the most
varied ways, if the latter is to profit by it in the best way.
Those who possess little wealth to call their own are most in danger
of holding what they have in a purely selfish spirit. There is
profound truth in the parable of Jesus which makes the servant who had
received least the least loyal to his duty.
My rights too the ethic of reverence for life does not allow to belong
to me. It forbids me to quiet my conscience with the reflexion that as
the stronger, but by quite legitimate means, I am advancing myself at
the cost of one who is weaker than I. In what the law and public
opinion allow me it sets a problem before me. It bids me think of
others, and makes me ponder whether I can allow myself the inward
right to pluck all the fruit that my hand can reach. Thus it may
happen that in obedience to consideration for the existence of others
I do what seems to ordinary opinion to be folly. Yes, it may even show
itself to be folly by the fact that my renunciation has not been of
the slightest benefit to him for whom it was made. And yet I was
right. Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal. What it
commands has its own significance, even if it seems foolish or
useless. We all look, of course, in one another, for the folly which
indicates that we have higher responsibilities making themselves felt
in ourselves. Yet it is only in proportion as we all become less
rational, in the meaning given it by ordinary calculation, that the
ethical disposition develops in us, and allows problems to become
soluble which have hitherto been insoluble.
Nor will reverence for life grant me my happiness as my own. At the
moments when I should like to enjoy myself without restraint, it wakes
in me reflexion about misery that I see or suspect, and it does not
allow me to drive away the uneasiness thereby caused to me. Just as
the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving
surface of ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but [pg
260] always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an
uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethic whispers into my ear. You
are happy, it says; therefore you are called upon to give much.
Whatever more than others you have received in health, natural gifts,
working capacity, success, a beautiful childhood, harmonious family
circumstances, you must not accept as being a matter of course. You
must pay a price for them. You must show more than average devotion of
life to life.
To the happy the voice of the true ethic is dangerous, if they venture
to listen to it. When it calls to them, it never damps down the
irrational which glows within it. It assails them to see whether it
can get them out of their rut and turn them into adventurers of
self-devotion, people of whom the world has too few. . . .
Reverence for life is an inexorable creditor! If it finds anyone with
nothing to pledge but a little time and a little leisure, it lays an
attachment on these. But its hardheartedness is good, and sees
clearly. The many modern men who as industrial machines are engaged in
callings in which they can in no way be active as men among men, are
exposed to the danger of merely vegetating in an egoistic life. Many
of them feel this danger, and suffer under the fact that their daily
work has so little to do with spiritual and ideal aims and does not
allow them to put into it anything of their human nature. Others
acquiesce; the thought of having no duties outside their daily work
suits them very well.
But that men should be so condemned or so favoured as to be released
from responsibility for devotion as men to men, the ethic of reverence
for life will not allow to be legitimate. It demands that every one of
us in some way and with some object shall be a man for men. To those
who have no opportunity in their daily work of giving themselves as
man to men, and have nothing else that they can give, it suggests
their offering something of their time and leisure, even if these have
been granted to them in scanty measure. Find for yourselves some
secondary [pg 261] work (it says to them), an inconspicuous one,
perhaps a secret one. Open your eyes and look for a human being or
some work devoted to human welfare which needs from some one a little
time or friendliness, a little sympathy, or sociability, or work.
There may be a solitary or an embittered fellow-man, an invalid or an
inefficient person to whom you can be something. Perhaps it is an old
person or a child. Or some good work needs volunteers who can offer a
free evening, or run errands. Who can enumerate the many ways in which
that costly piece of fixed capital, a human being, can be employed!
More of him is wanted everywhere! Hunt, then, for some situation for
your humanity, and do not be frightened away if you have to wait, or
to be taken on trial. And do not be disturbed by disappointments.
Anyhow, do not be without some secondary work in which you give
yourself as a man to men. There is one that is marked out for you, if
you only truly will to have it. . . .
Thus does the true ethic speak of those who have only a little time
and a little human nature to give. Well will it be with them if they
listen to it, and are preserved from becoming stunted natures, because
they have neglected this devotion of self to others.
But to everyone, in whatever state of life he finds himself, the ethic
of respect for life does this: it forces him ever and again to be
inwardly concerned with all the human destinies and all the other
life-destinies which are going through their life-course around him,
and to give himself, as man, to the man who needs a fellow-man. It
will not allow the learned man to live only for his learning, even if
his learning makes him very useful, nor the artist to live only for
his art, even if by means of it he gives something to many. It does
not allow the very busy man to think that with his professional
activities he has fulfilled every demand upon him. It demands from all
and every that they devote a portion of their life to their fellows.
In what way and to what extent this is laid down for him the
individual must gather from the thoughts which arise in [pg 262] him,
and from the destinies in which his life moves. One man’s sacrifice is
outwardly unpretentious. He can accomplish it while continuing to live
a normal life. Another is called to some conspicuous devotion, and
must therefore put aside regard for his own progress. But let neither
judge the other. The tasks of men have to be decided in a thousand
ways to let the good become actual. What he has to bring as an
offering is the secret of each individual. But one with another we
have all to recognize that our existence reaches its true value only
when we experience in ourselves something of the truth of the saying:
“Whoever shall lose his life, the same shall find it” (S. Matt. x.
39).
Personal and supra-personal responsibility. Ethics and humanity
The ethical conflicts between society and the individual arise out of
the fact that the latter has to bear not only a personal, but also a
supra-personal responsibility. When my own person only is concerned, I
can always be patient, alway forgive, use all possible consideration,
always be tender-hearted. But each of us comes into a situation when
he is responsible not for himself only, but also for some undertaking,
and then is forced into decisions which conflict with personal
morality.
The industrialist who manages a business, however small, and the
musician who undertakes public performances, cannot be men in the way
they would like to be. The one has to dismiss a worker who is
incapable or given to drink, in spite of any sympathy he has for him
and his family; the other cannot let a singer whose voice is the worse
for wear perform any longer, although he knows what distress he thus
causes.
The more extensive a man’s activities, the oftener he finds himself in
the situation of having to sacrifice something of his humanity to his
supra-personal responsibility. Out of this conflict consideration
brings the average person to the decision that the wider
responsibility does, as a matter of principle, annul the personal. It
is with this idea [pg 263] that society addresses the individual. For
the quieting of consciences for which this decision is too categorical
it perhaps lays down a few principles which undertake to determine in
a way that is valid for everybody, how far in any case personal
morality can have a say in the matter.
To the current ethic no course remains open but to sign this
capitulation. It has no means of defending the fortress of personal
morality, because it has not at its disposal any absolute notions of
good and evil. Not so the ethic of reverence for life. That possesses,
as we can see, what the other lacks. It therefore never surrenders the
fortress, even if the latter is permanently invested. It feels itself
in a position to persevere in holding it, and by continual sorties to
keep the besiegers on the _qui vive_.
Only the most universal and absolute purposiveness in the maintenance
and promotion of life, which is the objective aimed at by reverence
for life, is ethical. All other necessity or expediency is not
ethical, but only a more or less necessary necessity, or a more or
less expedient expediency. In the conflict between the maintenance of
my own existence and the destruction of, or injury to, another, I can
never put the ethical and the necessary together to form a relative
ethical; I must choose between ethical and necessary, and, if I choose
the latter, must take it upon myself to be guilty through an act of
injury to life. Similarly I am not at liberty to think that in the
conflict between personal and supra-personal responsibility I can
balance the ethical and the expedient to make a relative ethical, or
even annul the ethical with the purposive; I must choose between the
two. If under the pressure of the supra-personal responsibility I
yield to the expedient, I become guilty in some way or other through
failure in reverence for life.
The temptation to combine with the ethical into a relative ethical the
expedient which is commanded me by the supra-personal responsibility
is especially strong, because it can [pg 264] be shown, in defence of
it, that the person who complies with the demand of this
supra-personal responsibility, acts unegoistically. It is not to his
individual existence or his individual welfare that he sacrifices
another existence or welfare, but he sacrifices an individual
existence and welfare to what forces itself upon him as expedient in
view of the existence or the welfare of a majority. But ethical is
more than unegoistic. Ethical is nothing but the reverence felt by my
will-to-live for every other will-to-live. Whenever I in any way
sacrifice or injure life, I am not within the ethical, but I become
guilty, whether it be egoistically guilty for the sake of maintaining
my own existence or welfare, or unegoistically guilty for the sake of
maintaining a greater number of other existences or their welfare.
This so easily made mistake of accepting as ethical a violation of
reverence for life if it is based upon unegoistic considerations, is
the bridge by crossing which ethics enter unintentionally the
territory of the non-ethical. The bridge must be broken down.
Ethics go only so far as humanity does, humanity meaning respect for
the existence and the happiness of individual human beings. Where
humanity ends pseudo-ethics begin. The day on which this boundary is
once for all universally recognized and marked out so as to be visible
to everyone, will be one of the most important in the history of
mankind. Thenceforward it can no longer happen that ethics which are
not ethics at all are accepted as real ethics, and deceive and ruin
individuals and peoples.
The ethics hitherto current have hindered us from becoming as earnest
as we must be by the fact that they have utterly deceived us as to the
many ways in which each one of us, whether through self-assertion, or
by actions justified by supra-personal responsibility, become guilty
again and again. True knowledge consists in being gripped by the
secret that everything around us is will-to-live and seeing clearly
how again and again we incur guilt against life.
Fooled by pseudo-ethics, man stumbles about in his [pg 265] guilt like
a drunken man. If he becomes instructed and earnest he seeks the road
which leads him least into guilt.
We are all exposed to the temptation of lessening the guilt of
inhumanity which comes from our working under supra-personal
responsibility, by withdrawing as far as possible into ourselves. But
such freedom from guilt is not honestly obtained. Ethics start with
world- and life-affirmation, and therefore will not allow us this
flight into negation. They forbid us to be like the housewife who
leaves the killing of the eels to her cook, and compels us to
undertake all duties involving supra-personal responsibility which
fall to us, even if we should be in a position to decline them for
reasons more or less satisfactory.
Each one of us, then, has to engage, so far as he is brought to it by
the circumstances of his life, in work which involves supra-personal
responsibility, but we must do it not in the spirit of the collective
body, but in that of the man who wishes to be ethical. In every
individual case we struggle therefore to preserve as much humanity as
is ever possible in such work, and in doubtful cases we venture to
make a mistake on the side of humanity rather than on that of the
object in view. When we have become instructed and earnest, we think
of what is usually forgotten: that all public activity of whatever
sort has to do not with facts only, but also with the creation of that
spirit and temper which is desirable in the collective body. The
creation of such a spirit and temper is more important than anything
directly attained in the facts. Public work, in which the utmost
possible effort is not made to preserve humanity, ruins the
disposition. He who under the influence of supra-personal
responsibility simply sacrifices men and human happiness when it seems
commanded, accomplishes something. But he has not reached the highest
level. He has only outward, not spiritual influence. We have spiritual
influence only when others notice that we do not decide coldly in
accordance with principles laid down once and for all, but in each
individual case fight for humanity.
[pg 266]
There is too little among us of this kind of struggling. From the
smallest who is something in the smallest business, right up to the
political ruler who holds in his hands the decision for peace or war,
we act too much as men who in any given case can prepare without
effort to be no longer men, but merely the executive of general
interests. Hence there is no longer among us any trust in a
righteousness lighted up with human feeling. Nor have we any longer
any real respect for one another. We all feel ourselves in the power
of a mentality of cold, impersonal, and usually unintelligent
opportunism, which stiffens itself with appeals to principle, and in
order to carry out small interests is capable of the greatest
inhumanity and the greatest folly. We therefore see among us one
temper of impersonal opportunism confronting another, and all problems
are executed in a useless conflict of force against force because
there is nowhere at hand such a spirit and temper as will make them
soluble.
Only through our struggles for humanity can forces which work in the
direction of the truly rational and expedient become powerful, while
the present spirit and temper prevails. Hence the man who works under
supra-personal responsibilities has to feel himself answerable not
only for the successful result which is to be realized through him,
but for the general spirit and temper which has to be created.
We therefore serve society without losing ourselves in it. We do not
allow it to be our guardian in the matter of ethics. That would be as
if the solo violinist allowed his bowing to be regulated by that of
the double-bass player. Never for a moment do we lay aside our
mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions
which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is
full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. It is an
unreliable horse, and blind into the bargain. Woe to the driver if he
falls asleep!
All this sounds too hard. Society serves ethics by giving legal
sanction to its most elementary principles, and handing [pg 267] on
the ethical principles of one generation to the next. That is much,
and it claims our gratitude. But society is also something which
checks the progress of ethics again and again, by arrogating to itself
the dignity of the ethical teachers. To this, however, it has no
right. The only ethical teacher is the man who thinks ethically, and
struggles for an ethic. The conceptions of good and evil which are put
in circulation by society are paper-money, the value of which is to be
calculated not by the figures printed upon it, but by its relation to
its exchange value in gold of the ethic of reverence for life. But so
measured, its exchange value reveals itself as that of the paper-money
of a half-bankrupt state.
The collapse of civilization has come about through ethics being left
to society. A renewal of it is possible only if ethics become once
more the concern of thinking human beings, and if individuals seek to
assert themselves in society as ethical personalities. In proportion
as we secure this, society will become, instead of the purely natural
entity, which it naturally is, an ethical one. Previous generations
have made the terrible mistake of idealizing society as ethical. We do
our duty to it by judging it critically, and trying to make it, so far
as is possible, more ethical. Being in possession of an absolute
standard of the ethical, we no longer allow ourselves to make
acceptable as ethics principles of expediency or even of the vulgarest
opportunism. Nor do we remain any longer at the low level of allowing
to be current as in any way ethical meaningless ideals, of power, of
passion, or of nationalism which are set up by miserable politicians
and maintained in some degree of respect by bewildering propaganda.
All the principles, dispositions, and ideals which make their
appearance among us we measure, in their showy pedantry, with a rule
on which the measures are given by the absolute ethic of reverence for
life. We allow currency only to what is consistent with the claims of
humanity. We bring into honour again regard for life and [pg 268] for
the happiness of the individual. Sacred human rights we again hold
high; not those which political rulers exalt at banquets and tread
underfoot in their actions, but the true ones. We call once more for
justice, not that which purblind authorities have elaborated in a
legal scholasticism, nor that about which demagogues of all shades of
colour shout themselves hoarse, but that which is filled to the full
with the value of each single human existence. The foundation of law
and right is humanity.
Thus we bring the principles, dispositions, and ideals of the
collective body into agreement with humanity. At the same time we
shape them in accordance with reason, for only what is ethical is
truly rational. Only so far as the current disposition of men is
animated by ethical convictions and ideals is it capable of truly
purposive activity.
The ethic of reverence for life puts in our hands weapons for fighting
false ethics and false ideals, but we have strength to use them only
so far as we—each one in his own life—preserve our humanity. Only when
those men are numerous who in thought and in action bring humanity to
terms with reality, will humanity cease to be current as a mere
sentimental idea and become what it ought to be, a leaven in the
spirit and temper of individuals and of society.
[pg 269]