mortification of our own will, asceticism, is here for the first time
expressed abstractly, and free from all mythical elements, as _denial of
the will to live_, appearing after the complete knowledge of its own
nature has become a quieter of all volition. On the other hand, it has
been known directly and realised in practice by saints and ascetics, who
had all the same inward knowledge, though they used very different
language with regard to it, according to the dogmas which their reason had
accepted, and in consequence of which an Indian, a Christian, or a Lama
saint must each give a very different account of his conduct, which is,
however, of no importance as regards the fact. A saint may be full of the
absurdest superstition, or, on the contrary, he may be a philosopher, it
is all the same. His conduct alone certifies that he is a saint, for, in a
moral regard, it proceeds from knowledge of the world and its nature,
which is not abstractly but intuitively and directly apprehended, and is
only expressed by him in any dogma for the satisfaction of his reason. It
is therefore just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher
as that a philosopher should be a saint; just as it is not necessary that
a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great
sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. In general, it is a strange
demand upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue than that
which he himself possesses. To repeat the whole nature of the world
abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts, and thus to store up,
as it were, a reflected image of it in permanent concepts always at the
command of the reason; this and nothing else is philosophy. I refer the
reader to the passage quoted from Bacon in the First Book.
But the description I have given above of the denial of the will to live,
of the conduct of a beautiful soul, of a resigned and voluntarily
expiating saint, is merely abstract and general, and therefore cold. As
the knowledge from which the denial of the will proceeds is intuitive and
not abstract, it finds its most perfect expression, not in abstract
conceptions, but in deeds and conduct. Therefore, in order to understand
fully what we philosophically express as denial of the will to live, one
must come to know examples of it in experience and actual life. Certainly
they are not to be met with in daily experience: _Nam omnia præclara tam
difficilia quam rara sunt_, Spinoza admirably says. Therefore, unless by a
specially happy fate we are made eye-witnesses, we have to content
ourselves with descriptions of the lives of such men. Indian literature,
as we see from the little that we as yet know through translations, is
very rich in descriptions of the lives of saints, penitents, Samanas or
ascetics, Sannyâsis or mendicants, and whatever else they may be called.
Even the well-known “Mythologie des Indous, par Mad. de Polier,” though by
no means to be commended in every respect, contains many excellent
examples of this kind (especially in ch. 13, vol. ii.) Among Christians
also there is no lack of examples which afford us the illustrations we
desire. See the biographies, for the most part badly written, of those
persons who are sometimes called saintly souls, sometimes pietists,
quietists, devout enthusiasts, and so forth. Collections of such
biographies have been made at various times, such as Tersteegen’s “Leben
heiliger Seelen,” Reiz’s “Geschichte der Wiedergeborennen,” in our own
day, a collection by Kanne, which, with much that is bad, yet contains
some good, and especially the “Leben der Beata Sturmin.” To this category
very properly belongs the life of St. Francis of Assisi, that true
personification of the ascetic, and prototype of all mendicant friars. His
life, described by his younger contemporary, St. Bonaventura, also famous
as a scholastic, has recently been republished. “Vita S. Francisci a S.
Bonaventura concinnata” (Soest, 1847), though shortly before a painstaking
and detailed biography, making use of all sources of information, appeared
in France, “Histoire de S. François d’Assise, par Chavin de Mallan”
(1845). As an Oriental parallel of these monastic writings we have the
very valuable work of Spence Hardy, “Eastern Monachism; an Account of the
Order of Mendicants founded by Gotama Budha” (1850). It shows us the same
thing in another dress. We also see what a matter of indifference it is
whether it proceeds from a theistical or an atheistical religion. But as a
special and exceedingly full example and practical illustration of the
conceptions I have established, I can thoroughly recommend the
“Autobiography of Madame de Guion.” To become acquainted with this great
and beautiful soul, the very thought of whom always fills me with
reverence, and to do justice to the excellence of her disposition while
making allowance for the superstition of her reason, must be just as
delightful to every man of the better sort as with vulgar thinkers,
_i.e._, the majority, that book will always stand in bad repute. For it is
the case with regard to everything, that each man can only prize that
which to a certain extent is analogous to him and for which he has at
least a slight inclination. This holds good of ethical concerns as well as
of intellectual. We might to a certain extent regard the well-known French
biography of Spinoza as a case in point, if we used as a key to it that
noble introduction to his very insufficient essay, “De Emendatione
Intellectus,” a passage which I can also recommend as the most effectual
means I know of stilling the storm of the passions. Finally, even the
great Goethe, Greek as he is, did not think it below his dignity to show
us this most beautiful side of humanity in the magic mirror of poetic art,
for he represented the life of Fräulein Klettenberg in an idealised form
in his “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,” and later, in his own biography,
gave us also an historical account of it. Besides this, he twice told the
story of the life of St. Philippo Neri. The history of the world, will,
and indeed must, keep silence about the men whose conduct is the best and
only adequate illustration of this important point of our investigation,
for the material of the history of the world is quite different, and
indeed opposed to this. It is not the denial of the will to live, but its
assertion and its manifestation in innumerable individuals in which its
conflict with itself at the highest grade of its objectification appears
with perfect distinctness, and brings before our eyes, now the ascendancy
of the individual through prudence, now the might of the many through
their mass, now the might of chance personified as fate, always the vanity
and emptiness of the whole effort. We, however, do not follow here the
course of phenomena in time, but, as philosophers, we seek to investigate
the ethical significance of action, and take this as the only criterion of
what for us is significant and important. Thus we will not be withheld by
any fear of the constant numerical superiority of vulgarity and dulness
from acknowledging that the greatest, most important, and most significant
phenomenon that the world can show is not the conqueror of the world, but
the subduer of it; is nothing but the quiet, unobserved life of a man who
has attained to the knowledge in consequence of which he surrenders and
denies that will to live which fills everything and strives and strains in
all, and which first gains freedom here in him alone, so that his conduct
becomes the exact opposite of that of other men. In this respect,
therefore, for the philosopher, these accounts of the lives of holy,
self-denying men, badly as they are generally written, and mixed as they
are with superstition and nonsense, are, because of the significance of
the material, immeasurably more instructive and important than even
Plutarch and Livy.
It will further assist us much in obtaining a more definite and full
knowledge of what we have expressed abstractly and generally, according to
our method of exposition, as the denial of the will to live, if we
consider the moral teaching that has been imparted with this intention,
and by men who were full of this spirit; and this will also show how old
our view is, though the pure philosophical expression of it may be quite
new. The teaching of this kind which lies nearest to hand is Christianity,
the ethics of which are entirely in the spirit indicated, and lead not
only to the highest degrees of human love, but also to renunciation. The
germ of this last side of it is certainly distinctly present in the
writings of the Apostles, but it was only fully developed and expressed
later. We find the Apostles enjoining the love of our neighbour as
ourselves, benevolence, the requital of hatred with love and well-doing,
patience, meekness, the endurance of all possible injuries without
resistance, abstemiousness in nourishment to keep down lust, resistance to
sensual desire, if possible, altogether. We already see here the first
degrees of asceticism, or denial of the will proper. This last expression
denotes that which in the Gospels is called denying ourselves and taking
up the cross (Matt. xvi. 24, 25; Mark viii. 34, 35; Luke ix. 23, 24, xiv.
26, 27, 33). This tendency soon developed itself more and more, and was
the origin of hermits, anchorites, and monasticism—an origin which in
itself was pure and holy, but for that very reason unsuitable for the
great majority of men; therefore what developed out of it could only be
hypocrisy and wickedness, for _abusus optimi pessimus_. In more developed
Christianity, we see that seed of asceticism unfold into the full flower
in the writings of the Christian saints and mystics. These preach, besides
the purest love, complete resignation, voluntary and absolute poverty,
genuine calmness, perfect indifference to all worldly things, dying to our
own will and being born again in God, entire forgetting of our own person,
and sinking ourselves in the contemplation of God. A full exposition of
this will be found in Fénélon’s “Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la
Vie Interieure.” But the spirit of this development of Christianity is
certainly nowhere so fully and powerfully expressed as in the writings of
the German mystics, in the works of Meister Eckhard, and in that justly
famous book “Die Deutsche Theologie,” of which Luther says in the
introduction to it which he wrote, that with the exception of the Bible
and St. Augustine, he had learnt more from it of what God, Christ, and man
are than from any other book. Yet we only got the genuine and correct text
of it in the year 1851, in the Stuttgart edition by Pfeiffer. The precepts
and doctrines which are laid down there are the most perfect exposition,
sprung from deep inward conviction of what I have presented as the denial
of the will. It should therefore be studied more closely in that form
before it is dogmatised about with Jewish-Protestant assurance. Tauler’s
“Nachfolgung des armen Leben Christi,” and also his “Medulla Animæ,” are
written in the same admirable spirit, though not quite equal in value to
that work. In my opinion the teaching of these genuine Christian mystics,
when compared with the teaching of the New Testament, is as alcohol to
wine, or what becomes visible in the New Testament as through a veil and
mist appears to us in the works of the mystics without cloak or disguise,
in full clearness and distinctness. Finally, the New Testament might be
regarded as the first initiation, the mystics as the second,—σμικρα και
μεγαλα μυστηρια.
We find, however, that which we have called the denial of the will to live
more fully developed, more variously expressed, and more vividly
represented in the ancient Sanscrit writings than could be the case in the
Christian Church and the Western world. That this important ethical view
of life could here attain to a fuller development and a more distinct
expression is perhaps principally to be ascribed to the fact that it was
not confined by an element quite foreign to it, as Christianity is by the
Jewish theology, to which its sublime author had necessarily to adopt and
accommodate it, partly consciously, partly, it may be, unconsciously. Thus
Christianity is made up of two very different constituent parts, and I
should like to call the purely ethical part especially and indeed
exclusively Christian, and distinguish it from the Jewish dogmatism with
which it is combined. If, as has often been feared, and especially at the
present time, that excellent and salutary religion should altogether
decline, I should look for the reason of this simply in the fact that it
does not consist of one single element, but of two originally different
elements, which have only been combined through the accident of history.
In such a case dissolution had to follow through the separation of these
elements, arising from their different relationship to and reaction
against the progressive spirit of the age. But even after this dissolution
the purely ethical part must always remain uninjured, because it is
indestructible. Our knowledge of Hindu literature is still very imperfect.
Yet, as we find their ethical teaching variously and powerfully expressed
in the Vedas, Puranas, poems, myths, legends of their saints, maxims and
precepts,(85) we see that it inculcates love of our neighbour with
complete renunciation of self-love; love generally, not confined to
mankind, but including all living creatures; benevolence, even to the
giving away of the hard-won wages of daily toil; unlimited patience
towards all who injure us; the requital of all wickedness, however base,
with goodness and love; voluntary and glad endurance of all ignominy;
abstinence from all animal food; perfect chastity and renunciation of all
sensual pleasure for him who strives after true holiness; the surrender of
all possessions, the forsaking of every dwelling-place and of all
relatives; deep unbroken solitude, spent in silent contemplation, with
voluntary penance and terrible slow self-torture for the absolute
mortification of the will, torture which extends to voluntary death by
starvation, or by men giving themselves up to crocodiles, or flinging
themselves over the sacred precipice in the Himalayas, or being buried
alive, or, finally, by flinging themselves under the wheels of the huge
car of an idol drawn along amid the singing, shouting, and dancing of
bayaderes. And even yet these precepts, whose origin reaches back more
than four thousand years, are carried out in practice, in some cases even
to the utmost extreme,(86) and this notwithstanding the fact that the
Hindu nation has been broken up into so many parts. A religion which
demands the greatest sacrifices, and which has yet remained so long in
practice in a nation that embraces so many millions of persons, cannot be
an arbitrarily invented superstition, but must have its foundation in the
nature of man. But besides this, if we read the life of a Christian
penitent or saint, and also that of a Hindu saint, we cannot sufficiently
wonder at the harmony we find between them. In the case of such radically
different dogmas, customs, and circumstances, the inward life and effort
of both is the same. And the same harmony prevails in the maxims
prescribed for both of them. For example, Tauler speaks of the absolute
poverty which one ought to seek, and which consists in giving away and
divesting oneself completely of everything from which one might draw
comfort or worldly pleasure, clearly because all this constantly affords
new nourishment to the will, which it is intended to destroy entirely. And
as an Indian counterpart of this, we find in the precepts of Fo that the
Saniassi, who ought to be without a dwelling and entirely without
property, is further finally enjoined not to lay himself down often under
the same tree, lest he should acquire a preference or inclination for it
above other trees. The Christian mystic and the teacher of the Vedanta
philosophy agree in this respect also, they both regard all outward works
and religious exercises as superfluous for him who has attained to
perfection. So much agreement in the case of such different ages and
nations is a practical proof that what is expressed here is not, as
optimistic dulness likes to assert, an eccentricity and perversity of the
mind, but an essential side of human nature, which only appears so rarely
because of its excellence.
I have now indicated the sources from which there may be obtained a direct
knowledge, drawn from life itself, of the phenomena in which the denial of
the will to live exhibits itself. In some respects this is the most
important point of our whole work; yet I have only explained it quite
generally, for it is better to refer to those who speak from direct
experience, than to increase the size of this book unduly by weak
repetitions of what is said by them.
I only wish to add a little to the general indication of the nature of
this state. We saw above that the wicked man, by the vehemence of his
volition, suffers constant, consuming, inward pain, and finally, if all
objects of volition are exhausted, quenches the fiery thirst of his
self-will by the sight of the suffering of others. He, on the contrary,
who has attained to the denial of the will to live, however poor, joyless,
and full of privation his condition may appear when looked at externally,
is yet filled with inward joy and the true peace of heaven. It is not the
restless strain of life, the jubilant delight which has keen suffering as
its preceding or succeeding condition, in the experience of the man who
loves life; but it is a peace that cannot be shaken, a deep rest and
inward serenity, a state which we cannot behold without the greatest
longing when it is brought before our eyes or our imagination, because we
at once recognise it as that which alone is right, infinitely surpassing
everything else, upon which our better self cries within us the great
_sapere aude_. Then we feel that every gratification of our wishes won
from the world is merely like the alms which the beggar receives from life
to-day that he may hunger again on the morrow; resignation, on the
contrary, is like an inherited estate, it frees the owner for ever from
all care.
It will be remembered from the Third Book that the æsthetic pleasure in
the beautiful consists in great measure in the fact that in entering the
state of pure contemplation we are lifted for the moment above all
willing, _i.e._, all wishes and cares; we become, as it were, freed from
ourselves. We are no longer the individual whose knowledge is subordinated
to the service of its constant willing, the correlative of the particular
thing to which objects are motives, but the eternal subject of knowing
purified from will, the correlative of the Platonic Idea. And we know that
these moments in which, delivered from the ardent strain of will, we seem
to rise out of the heavy atmosphere of earth, are the happiest which we
experience. From this we can understand how blessed the life of a man must
be whose will is silenced, not merely for a moment, as in the enjoyment of
the beautiful, but for ever, indeed altogether extinguished, except as
regards the last glimmering spark that retains the body in life, and will
be extinguished with its death. Such a man, who, after many bitter
struggles with his own nature, has finally conquered entirely, continues
to exist only as a pure, knowing being, the undimmed mirror of the world.
Nothing can trouble him more, nothing can move him, for he has cut all the
thousand cords of will which hold us bound to the world, and, as desire,
fear, envy, anger, drag us hither and thither in constant pain. He now
looks back smiling and at rest on the delusions of this world, which once
were able to move and agonise his spirit also, but which now stand before
him as utterly indifferent to him, as the chess-men when the game is
ended, or as, in the morning, the cast-off masquerading dress which
worried and disquieted us in a night in Carnival. Life and its forms now
pass before him as a fleeting illusion, as a light morning dream before
half-waking eyes, the real world already shining through it so that it can
no longer deceive; and like this morning dream, they finally vanish
altogether without any violent transition. From this we can understand the
meaning of Madame Guion when towards the end of her autobiography she
often expresses herself thus: “Everything is alike to me; I _cannot_ will
anything more: often I know not whether I exist or not.” In order to
express how, after the extinction of the will, the death of the body
(which is indeed only the manifestation of the will, and therefore loses
all significance when the will is abolished) can no longer have any
bitterness, but is very welcome, I may be allowed to quote the words of
that holy penitent, although they are not very elegantly turned: “_Midi de
la gloire; jour où il n’y a plus de nuit; vie qui ne craint plus la mort,
dans la mort même: parceque la mort a vaincu la mort, et que celui qui a
souffert la première mort, ne goutera plus la seconde mort_” (Vie de Mad.
de Guion, vol. ii. p. 13).
We must not, however, suppose that when, by means of the knowledge which
acts as a quieter of will, the denial of the will to live has once
appeared, it never wavers or vacillates, and that we can rest upon it as
on an assured possession. Rather, it must ever anew be attained by a
constant battle. For since the body is the will itself only in the form of
objectivity or as manifestation in the world as idea, so long as the body
lives, the whole will to live exists potentially, and constantly strives
to become actual, and to burn again with all its ardour. Therefore that
peace and blessedness in the life of holy men which we have described is
only found as the flower which proceeds from the constant victory over the
will, and the ground in which it grows is the constant battle with the
will to live, for no one can have lasting peace upon earth. We therefore
see the histories of the inner life of saints full of spiritual conflicts,
temptations, and absence of grace, _i.e._, the kind of knowledge which
makes all motives ineffectual, and as an universal quieter silences all
volition, gives the deepest peace and opens the door of freedom. Therefore
also we see those who have once attained to the denial of the will to live
strive with all their might to keep upon this path, by enforced
renunciation of every kind, by penance and severity of life, and by
selecting whatever is disagreeable to them, all in order to suppress the
will, which is constantly springing up anew. Hence, finally, because they
already know the value of salvation, their anxious carefulness to retain
the hard-won blessing, their scruples of conscience about every innocent
pleasure, or about every little excitement of their vanity, which here
also dies last, the most immovable, the most active, and the most foolish
of all the inclinations of man. By the term _asceticism_, which I have
used so often, I mean in its narrower sense this _intentional_ breaking of
the will by the refusal of what is agreeable and the selection of what is
disagreeable, the voluntarily chosen life of penance and self-chastisement
for the continual mortification of the will.