A CONFESSION [13]
everything while here it is the development of the life of mankind.
The error is there as before: development and progress in infinity
can have no aim or direction, and, as far as my question is
concerned, no answer is given.
In truly abstract science, namely in genuine philosophy -- not
in that which Schopenhauer calls "professorial philosophy" which
serves only to classify all existing phenomena in new philosophic
categories and to call them by new names -- where the philosopher
does not lose sight of the essential question, the reply is always
one and the same -- the reply given by Socrates, Schopenhauer,
Solomon, and buddha.
"We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life", said
Socrates when preparing for death. "For what do we, who love
truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and
from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so,
then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?
"The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is
not terrible to him."
And Schopenhauer says:
"Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as *will*,
and all its phenomena -- from the unconscious working of the
obscure forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of
man -- as only the objectivity of that will, we shall in no way
avoid the conclusion that together with the voluntary renunciation
and self-destruction of the will all those phenomena also
disappear, that constant striving and effort without aim or rest on
all the stages of objectivity in which and through which the world
exists; the diversity of successive forms will disappear, and
together with the form all the manifestations of will, with its
most universal forms, space and time, and finally its most
fundamental form -- subject and object. Without will there is no
concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But
what resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only
that same wish to live -- *Wille zum Leben* -- which forms
ourselves as well as our world. That we are so afraid of
annihilation or, what is the same thing, that we so wish to live,
merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to
live, and know nothing but it. And so what remains after the
complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the
will, is, of course, nothing; but on the other hand, for those in
whom the will has turned and renounced itself, this so real world
of ours with all its suns and milky way is nothing."
"Vanity of vanities", says Solomon -- "vanity of vanities --
all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he
taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another
generation commeth: but the earth abideth for ever....The thing
that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is
that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath
been already of old time, which was before us. there is no
remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any
remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come
after. I the Preacher was King over Israel in Jerusalem. And I
gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that
is done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons
of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that
are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of
spirit....I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to
great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have
been before me over Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great experience
of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and
to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation
of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
"I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth,
therefore enjoy