LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 11/ 



and to pass into motionless Nirvana. Hasten, then, 

 the day when the pitch of misery shall have brought 

 the race to the saving anguish of despair, and man- 

 kind in united and complete renunciation shall exe- 

 cute a universal atito da fe, by final self-immolation ^ 

 ending the tragedy of existence forever ! 



Nevertheless, while this is the sum of its theory, 

 ethics may have the important practical question to 

 settle, How shall we make an end of things the sur- 

 est and soonest ? There is here indeed no duty, there 

 is no such thing as duty ; there is simply a possible 

 satisfaction of the desire for release from misery. 

 But to this end there may be an alternative of 

 means. We may each promote the end, either by 

 an indirect and negative or else by a direct and 

 positive agency. By following the traditional stand- 

 ards of virtue, we may advance society in order, 

 peace, prosperity, and apparent welfare, the indirect 

 though real outcome of which is however but the 

 profounder despair ; or we may by passion, fraud, 

 and violence heighten the rising flood of misery 

 directly. Which each will do is in fact a matter of 



1 Ilartmann, like Schopenhauer, requires us here to make a refined 

 distinction between this final " act of devotion " and suicide. Suicide, 

 both say, is only an enraged and disappointed form of the " will to 

 live." The real difference, however, is that suicide, directly, fails to go 

 far enough; nothing short of self-annilnlntion will answer. But it is 

 difficult to see why, with their doctrine of individual transiency, suicide 

 doesn't "get there all the same." 



