This mental process may most clearly be made intelligible by reference to a bodily one. A healthy person, after a time of repose, finds it child's play to overcome gravitation, the force by which every atom of his body is drawn downwards; nay, the effort may cause him the greatest pleasure, as is evident from the delight with which all sorts of bodily exercises are practised in the different forms of sport. But when the muscles are exhausted by protracted and excessive exertions, their strength may, indeed, under certain circumstances, just suffice to overcome the force of gravitation and to keep the body erect, but there can then be no question of taking pleasure in doing so, and with each increase of weakness a yet greater feeling of oppressive discomfort ensues. Only extreme necessity, fear of certain destruction, can ultimately deter a man, in a state of extreme exhaustion, from giving way to the force of gravitation, from yielding to the feeling of fatigue and casting himself on the ground. Something similar happens to a morally weak-minded man who still possesses a larger or smaller remnant of altruistic, sympathetic feelings and power of sensible reflection. Morally he keeps more or less perfectly erect, outwardly, perhaps, faultlessly so. But he derives no pleasure from this effort, and as a starving man dreams of luscious food, and a tired man longs for the spot where he may lie down and rest, so the morally weakminded antisopher pines for freedom from the outer and inner restraint of social impulses, for freedom from the "ascetic ideal." In conclusion, the brief explanation of how it was possible for this antisophy to attain to such high consideration may be of interest. In our nature there are present good and evil impulses, a striving after the perfect, and on the other hand a lack of appreciation of what is good and noble. Every average man is a mixture of genius and narrow-mindedness. Now, as the good, the divine in us is satisfied by all that is perfect, beautiful, and elevated, so also all that is base, common, ugly, and perverse finds its echo within us. It is, for instance, a well-known fact that a large number of psychiatrists become insane themselves purely as the result of a kind of mental infection. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the preachings of narrow selfishness frequently enough fall on fertile soil, that the seed springs up, and that a person quite sensible in other respects is suddenly inspired with an enthusiasm for the productions of megalomania and concealed moral weakness of mind. Ultimately the productions of a time of discord and ferment fall again into oblivion, but moral, intellectual, and æsthetic narrowness can never be quite expelled from the human heart, for we are men, imperfect beings at variance with ourselves. Only too often do our base instincts conquer us; the better element frequently lives in us merely as a desire, a longing, an idea, and we are easily disconcerted by being called idealists and dreamers. And yet a difference exists between love and egotism, and yet love makes one rich and selfishness makes one poor. To use Schiller's words, "Egotism erects its centre in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation1... If each man loved all men, each individual would possess the whole world; 2 egotism is the supremest poverty of a created being." 1 Philosophical Letters, in Essays Esthetical and Philosophical by Friedrich Schiller. Newly translated, 1910, p. 388. 2 Id. p. 387. • Id. p. 385. How far Goethe was from disparaging the feeling for truth and from seeing salvation in a hostile attitude towards one's surrounding, as the antisophers do, we learn from his words, "Wisdom lies only in truth." And further, "Everything we call inventing, discovering in the higher sense of the words, is the significant application and employment of an original feeling for truth, which, long and silently cultivated, unexpectedly leads, with the swiftness of lightning, to a productive knowledge. It is a revelation developing from within on the outside, which produces in man a presentiment of his likeness to God. It is a synthesis of world and mind which gives the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of existence." 2 1 Reflections and Maxims, in Criticisms, Reflections and Maxims of Goethe. Translated by W. B. Rönnfeldt, p. 155. 2 Goethe's Werke (Hempel), vol. XIX, p. 196. XII. THE MYTHS OF PANDORA SCHOPENHAUER demands of genius "the completest objectivity," and Goethe, in exactly the same sense, demands as "the first and last thing in genius love of truth," or the endeavour to grasp reality as it is; the man of genius is, therefore, characterised as he who, guided only by the objective point of view, without thought of paltry personal advantages or disadvantages, un-influenced either by hope or fear, free from the dominion of paralysing care, goes on the way his own genius has marked out for him. So, according to the Pandora Myth, the inner godlike nature — that is, genius or the creative power of man-is, in spite of the envy of the gods, preserved by leaving imprisoned in Pandora's ample jar the worst of all evils, namely, inner instability and dependence upon outer good and evil, the wavering to and fro between hope and fear, the elpis (лís), the breathless, anxious suspense as to what is about to happen, while all the other evils rush out of Pandora's vessel and crush man down to an outwardly ungodlike being, to a worm exposed to every form of destruction. Though outwardly ungodlike, because perishable to the last degree, the inner man rises above his fate and, led by a high ideal, unmoved by the most alluring 1 Cp. Note on p. 444. |