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The Philosophy of Civilization
Albert Schweitzer
Arguably the best and most compelling presentation of Reverence
for Life from a philosophical point of view is to be found in
Albert Schweitzer’s volume, The Philosophy of Civilization (originally published in 1923), in Chapter 26, entitled "The
Ethics of Reverence for Life" (The Philosophy of Civilization, trans. by C. T. Campion [Buffalo: Prometheus, 1987], 307-29).
This presentation of Reverence for Life follows a lengthy and
largely critical survey of the unsuccessful attempts of other
ethical thinkers to offer a satisfactory system of ethics. Schweitzer
himself proposes what he calls "the most universal definition
of good and evil": "It is good to maintain and to encourage life;
it is bad to destroy life or to obstruct it." The chapter is reproduced
here with the permission of Rhena Schweitzer Miller.
Complicated and laborious are the roads along which ethical thought,
which has mistaken its way and taken too high a flight, 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 to say, it must seek to conceive all the self-devotion
which rules in ethics as a manifestation of an inward, spiritual
relation to the world; it must not lapse 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, together with the life-affirmation in
my will-to-live, is given by nature, and try to make it a reality.
To become ethical means to begin to think sincerely.
Thinking is the argument between willing and knowing which goes
on within me. Its course is a naïve one, if the will demands of
knowledge to be shown a world which corresponds to the impulses
which it carries within itself, and if knowledge attempts to satisfy
this requirement. This dialogue, which is doomed to produce no
result, must give place to a debate of the right kind, in which
the will demands from knowledge only what it really knows.
If knowledge answers solely with what it knows, it is always teaching
the will one and the same fact, namely, that in and behind all
phenomena there is a will-to-live. Knowledge, though ever becoming
deeper and more comprehensive, can do nothing except take us ever
deeper and ever further into the mystery 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 conception of the universe and of life, then, the gain
derived from knowledge is only that it makes it harder for us
to be thoughtless, because it ever more forcibly compels our attention
to the mystery of the will-to-live which we see stirring everywhere.
Hence the difference between learned and unlearned is entirely
relative. 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 than the scientist who studies under
the microscope or in physical and chemical activity a thousand
forms of the will-to-live, but, 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. 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 man who merely knows, but forces upon me an inward
relation to the world, and fills me with reverence for the mysterious
will-to-live which is in all things. By making 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
connection 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 making my will-to-live feel everything
around it as also will-to-live.
With Descartes, philosophy starts from the dogma: "I think, therefore
I exist." With this paltry, arbitrarily chosen beginning, it is
landed irretrievably on the road to the abstract. It never finds
the right approach 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 an ingenious dogmatic formula. Day by day,
hour by hour, I live and move in it. At every moment of reflection
it stands fresh before me. There bursts forth from it again and
again 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 depreciation
of 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 encourage
life; it is bad to destroy life or to obstruct it.
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
endeavor to bring it to its highest value. Separate individual
categories of good and evil which lie far apart and have apparently
no connection at all with one another fit together like the pieces
of a jig-saw puzzle, as soon as they are comprehended and deepened
in this the most universal definition of good and evil.
The basic principle of the moral which is a necessity of thought
means, however, not only an ordering and deepening, but also a
widening of the current views of good and evil. 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
sympathy as being valuable, nor, beyond that, whether and to what
degree it is capable of feeling. 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 his windows shut and breathe a stuffy atmosphere
rather than see one insect after another fall with singed wings
upon his table.
If he walks on the road after a shower and sees an earthworm which
has strayed on to it, he bethinks himself that it must get dried
up on the sun, if it does not return soon enough to ground into
which it can burrow, 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 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.
As a general proposition the definition of ethics as a relationship
within a disposition to reverence for life, does not make a very
moving impression. But it is the only complete one. Compassion
is too narrow to rank as the total 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 simile that is natural and profound. 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 arrives at defining ethics as devotion
to life inspired by reverence for life. Even if the phrase reverence
for life sounds so general as to seem somewhat lifeless, what
is meant by it is nevertheless something which never lets go of
the man into whose thought it has made its way. Sympathy, and
love, and every kind of valuable enthusiasm are given within it.
With restless living force reverence for life works upon the mind
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 churns its way through the
water drives the ship along, so does reverence for life drive
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 can be thought out
to a satisfying conception of life. It need give no answer to the question
of what significance the ethical man’s work for the maintenance,
promotion, and enhancement of life can be 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 practices is hardly
worth consideration beside the tremendous, unceasing destruction of life
which goes on every moment through natural forces. Having the will to
action, it can leave on one side all problems regarding the success of
its work. 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 is full of importance for the
world.
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 individualizing 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 yearning 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?
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 at an end. If I save an insect from a puddle,
life has devoted itself to life, and the division of life against
itself is ended. Whenever my life devotes itself in any way to
life, my finite will-to-live experiences 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 activity the removal of this division of the will-to-live
against itself, so far as the influence of my existence can reach.
Knowing now the one thing needful, I leave on one side the enigma
of the universe and of my existence in it.
The surmisings and the longings of all deep religiousness are
contained in the ethics of reverence for life. This religiousness,
however, does not build up for itself a complete philosophy, but
resigns itself to the necessity of leaving its cathedral unfinished.
It finishes the chancel only, but in this chancel piety celebrates
a living and never-ceasing divine service.
* * *
The ethic of reverence for life shows its truth also in that it
includes in itself the different elements of ethics in their natural
connection. Hitherto no system of ethics has been able to present
in their parallelism and their interaction the effort after self-perfecting,
in which man acts upon himself without outward deeds, and activist
ethics. The ethics of reverence for life can do this, and indeed
in such a way that they not only answer academic questions, but
also produce 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-realization.
I win an unsuspected freedom from the various destinies of life.
At moments when I had expected to find myself shattered, I find
myself exalted in an inexpressible and surprising happiness of
freedom from the world, and I experience therein a clarification
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 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 regard to the way in
which I concern myself with the world, I practice the higher self-maintenance.
Out of reverence for my own existence I place myself under the compulsion
of veracity towards myself. Everything I might acquire 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, sincerity towards oneself
the central point of his ethics, 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 connection between veracity towards
oneself and activist ethics.
As a matter of fact, the ethics of sincerity towards oneself passes imperceptibly
into that of devotion to others. Such sincerity compels me to actions
which manifest themselves as self-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, when they pardon
others, to seem to themselves wonderfully 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 ethics of reverence for life do away with this crude point
of view. All acts of forbearance and of pardon are for them acts
forced from one by sincerity towards oneself. I must practise
unlimited forgiveness because, if I did not, I should be wanting
in sincerity 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 unostentatiously;
in fact I do not really pardon at all, for I do not let things
develop to any such act of judgment. Nor is this any eccentric
proceeding; it is only a necessary widening and refining of ordinary
ethics.
We have to carry on the struggle against the evil that is in mankind,
not by judging others, but by judging ourselves. Struggle with
oneself and veracity towards oneself are the means by which we
influence others. We quietly draw them into our efforts to attain
the deep spiritual self-realization which springs from reverence
for one’s own life. Power makes no noise. It is there, and works.
True ethics begin where the use of languages ceases.
The innermost element then, in activist ethics, even if it appears as
self-devotion, comes from the compulsion to sincerity towards oneself,
and obtains therein its true value. The whole ethics of being other than
the world flow pure only when they come from this source. It is not from
kindness to others that I am gentle, peaceable, forbearing, and friendly,
but because by such behavior I prove my own profoundest self-realization
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 my own, interpenetrate each other.
* * *
Because ordinary ethics possess no basic principle of the ethical,
they must engage at once in the discussion of conflicting duties.
The ethics of reverence for life have no such need for hurry.
They take their own time to think out in all directions their
own principle of the moral. Knowing themselves to be firmly established,
they then settle their position with regard to these conflicts.
They have to try conclusions with three adversaries: these are
thoughtlessness, egoistic self-assertion, and society.
To the first of these they usually pay insufficient attention,
because no open conflicts arise between them. This adversary does,
nevertheless, obstruct them imperceptibly.
There is, however, a wide field of which our ethics can take possession
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 so insignificant
that he feels it no more than if he were losing a hair or a flake
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
self-devotion to other life, is only a matter of giving attention to this
particular relationship. 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. At all points the steam hisses out
of the boiler that is not tightly closed. In ordinary ethics the resulting
losses of energy are as high as they are because such ethics have at their
disposal no single basic principle of the moral which acts upon thought.
They cannot tighten the lid of the boiler; indeed, they do not ever even
examine it. But reverence for life being something which is ever present
to thought, penetrates unceasingly and in all directions a man’s
observation, reflection, and resolutions. He 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 going on.
But what is the position of the ethics of reverence for life in
the conflicts which arise between inward compulsion to self-sacrifice,
and the necessary upholding of the ego?
I too am subject to division of my will-to-live 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 persecutor of the little
mouse which inhabits my house, a murderer of the insect which
wants to have its nest there, a mass-murderer of the bacteria
which 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 can ethics be maintained in face of the horrible necessity
to which I am subjected through the division of my will-to-live
against itself?
Ordinary ethics seek compromises. They try to dictate how much
of my existence and of my happiness I must sacrifice, and how
much I may preserve at the cost of the existence and happiness
of other lives. With these decisions they produce experimental,
relative ethics. They offer as ethical what is in reality not
ethical but a mixture of non-ethical necessity and ethics. They
thereby bring about a huge confusion, and allow the starting of
an ever-increasing obscuration of the conception of the ethical.
The ethics of reverence for life know nothing of a relative ethic.
They make only the maintenance and promotion of life rank as good.
All destruction of and injury to life, under whatever circumstances
they take place, they condemn as evil. They do not keep in store
adjustments between ethics and necessity all ready for use. Again
and again and in ways that are always original they are trying
to come to terms in man with reality. They do not abolish for
him all ethical conflicts, but compel 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 decide for him at what point, on each occasion, lies
the extreme limit of possibility for his persistence in the preservation
and furtherance of life. He alone has to judge this issue, by
letting himself be guided by a feeling of the highest possible
responsibility towards other life.
We must never let ourselves become blunted. We are living in truth,
when we experience these conflicts more profoundly. The good conscience
is an invention of the devil.
* * *
What does reverence for life say about the relations between man
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 as fodder for his cows, must
be careful on his way home not to strike off in wanton pastime
the head of a single flower by the road side, 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 reflection that their cruel 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 anxious care to mitigate
as much as possible the pain inflicted. How much wrong is committed in
scientific institutions through neglect of anesthetics, which to save
time or trouble are not administered! How much, too, through animals being
subjected to torture merely to demonstrate to students generally known
phenomena! By the very fact that animals have been subjected to experiments,
and have by their pain won such valuable results for suffering humanity,
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 only 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 sufferings
which for that reason it has 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. He must not soothe his conscience with the reflection
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. At the same time we think that others have become more
"rational" than we are, and regard what we are excited about as
usual and a matter of course. Yet suddenly they will let slip
a word which shows us that they too have not yet learnt to acquiesce.
And now, though they were strangers, they are quite near us. The
mask in which we deceived each other falls off. We know now, from
one another, that we feel alike about being unable to escape from
the gruesome proceedings that are taking place unceasingly around
us. What a making of a new acquaintance!
The ethics of reverence for life guard us from letting each other
believe through our silence that we no longer experience what,
as thinking men, we must experience. They prompt us to keep each
other sensitive to what distresses us, and to talk and act together,
just as the responsibility we feel moves us, and without any feeling
of shyness. They make us join in keeping on the look-out 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.
In the matter also of our relation to other men, the ethics of
reverence for life throw upon us a responsibility so unlimited
as to be terrifying.
Here again they offer us no rules about the extent of the self-maintenance
which is allowable; again, they bid us in each case to thrash
the question out with the absolute ethics 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 I may keep for myself.
In the question of possessions, the ethics of reverence for life are outspokenly
individualist in the sense that wealth acquired or inherited should be
placed at the service of the community, not through any measures taken
by society, but through the absolutely free decision of the individual.
They expect everything from a general increase in the feeling of responsibility.
Wealth they regard 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 man judge
his neighbor. The one thing that matters is that each shall value what
he possesses as means to action. Whether this is 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 it is to be of the
greatest benefit to all.
Those who possess little 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 ethics of reverence for life do not allow to
belong to me. They forbid me to still my conscience with the reflection
that, as the more efficient man, by quite legitimate means I am
advancing myself at the cost of one who is less efficient than
I. In what the law and public opinion allow me, they set a problem
before me. They bid me think of others, and make 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 any use 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 our hearts. 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 reflection about misery that I see or suspect,
and it does not allow me to drive away the uneasiness I feel.
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of
the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life
for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around
me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper
into my ear. You are happy, they say; 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 ethics 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 off their smooth track 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 hard-heartedness 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 favored as to be released from
responsibility for self-devotion as men to men, the ethics of reverence
for life will not allow to be legitimate. They demand that every one of
us in some way and with some object shall be a human being for human beings.
To those who have no opportunity in their daily work of giving themselves
in this way, and have nothing else that they can give, it suggests their
sacrificing something of their time and leisure, even if of these they
have but a scant allowance. It says to them, find for yourselves some
secondary activity, inconspicuous, perhaps secret. Open your eyes and
look for a human being, or some work devoted to human welfare, which needs
from someone a little time or friendliness, a little sympathy, or sociability,
or labor. 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 working capital, a human being, can be employed?
More of him is wanted everywhere! Search, then, for some investment for
your humanity, and do not be frightened away if you have to wait, or to
be taken on trial. And be prepared for some disappointments. But in any
case, do not be without some secondary work in which you give yourself
as a man to men. It is marked out for you, if you only truly will to have
it . . . .
Thus do the true ethics speak to those who have only a little
time and a little human nature to give. Well will it be with them
if they listen, 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
ethics of reverence for life do this: they force him without cessation
to be concerned at heart 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. They will not allow the scholar 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. They do not allow the very busy man to
think that with his professional activities he has fulfilled every
demand upon him. They demand from all that they devote a portion
of their life to their fellows. In what way and to what extent
this is prescribed for him, the individual must gather from the
thoughts which arise in him, and from the destinies among which
his life moves. One man’s sacrifice is outwardly insignificant.
He can accomplish it while continuing to live a normal life. Another
is called to some conspicuous act of self-sacrifice, and must
therefore put aside regard for his own progress. But let neither
judge the other. The destinies of men have to be decided in a
thousand ways in order that the good may 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: "He that loseth his life shall find
it."
* * *
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, always forgive, always exercise forbearance, always be merciful.
But each of us comes into a situation where he is responsible not for
himself only, but also for a cause, and then is forced into decisions
which conflict with personal morality.
The craftsman who manages a business, however small, and the musician
who conducts 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 appear any longer, although he knows what distress he
thus causes.
The more extensive a man’s activities, the oftener he finds himself
in the position of having to sacrifice something of his humanity
to his supra-personal responsibility. From this conflict customary
consideration leads to the decision that the general responsibility
does, as a matter of principle, annul the personal. It is in this
sense that society addresses the individual. For the soothing
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.
No course remains open to current ethics but to sign this capitulation.
They have 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 ethics of reverence for life. These possess, as we can see, what
the other lacks. They therefore never surrender the fortress, even if
it is permanently invested. They feel themselves 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 furtherance 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, that
of another, I can never unite the ethical and the necessary to
form a relative ethical; I must choose between ethical and necessary,
and, if I choose the latter, must take it upon myself to incur
guilt by 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 be shown, in defense 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. Only the reverence felt by my will-to-live for
every other will-to-live is ethical. Whenever I in any way sacrifice or
injure life, I am not within the sphere of 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 unawares the territory
of the non-ethical. The bridge must be broken down.
Ethics go only so far as does humanity, humanity meaning consideration
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 system of ethics hitherto current has hindered us from becoming
as earnest as we ought to be by the fact that it has 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,
becomes guilty again and again. True knowledge consists in being
gripped by the secret that everything around us is will-to-live
and in seeing clearly how again and again we incur guilt against
life.
Fooled by pseudo-ethics, man stumbles about in his guilt like
a drunkard. If he gains knowledge and becomes serious, he seeks
the road which least leads him 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. Because
ethics start with world- and life-affirmation, they do not allow
us this flight into negation. They forbid us to be like the housewife
who leaves the killing of the eel to her cook, and compel 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, in 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 this not in the spirit of the collective
body, but in that of the man who wishes to be ethical. In every individual
case, therefore, we struggle to preserve as much humanity as is possible,
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 aware and
earnest, we think of what is usually forgotten: that all public activity
has to do not only with the facts which are to be made actual in the interest
of the collective body, but also with the creation of the state of mind
which promotes the welfare of that body. The creation of such a spirit
and temper is more important than anything directly attained in the facts.
Public activity in which the utmost possible effort is not made to preserve
humanity ruins the character. He who under the influence of supra-personal
responsibility simply sacrifices men and human happiness when it seems
right, 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 our sense of humanity. There is too little among us of this kind of
struggle. From the most insignificant man who is engaged 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 realize the smallest
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 resolved in a purposeless conflict of force
against force because there is nowhere at hand such a spirit as will make
them soluble.
It is only through our struggles for humanity that forces which
work in the direction of the truly rational and expedient can
become powerful while the present way of thinking prevails. Hence
the man who works with 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 disposition
which has to be created.
Thus we serve society without abandoning ourselves to 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 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 an ethical teacher. To this, however, it
has no right. The only ethical teacher is the man who thinks ethically,
and struggles for ethics. 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 the gold of the ethics
of reverence for life. But so measured, the rate of exchange is
revealed 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 an ethical, instead of the purely natural, entity,
which it is by origin. 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 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 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 ethics of reverence for life. We allow currency
only to what is consistent with the claims of humanity. We bring into
honor again regard for life and 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 rights.
We call once more for justice, not that which imbecile 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 confront the principles, dispositions, and ideals of the
collective body 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 ethics of reverence for life put 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 minds of individuals and in the
spirit of society.
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