If we wish to recognize only the moral form of activity, we soon perceive that it draws with it the other, from which it is distinct; for our action, although universal in its meaning, cannot but be something concrete and individually determined. What is put in practice is not morality in universal, but always a determinate moral volition: as Hegel remarked in a different connection, we do not eat fruit in general, but cherries, pears, plums, or, these cherries, these pears, these plums; we hasten to comfort in this or that way an individual, made in this or that way, who finds himself in this or that state of misfortune; we do justice at this or that point of time and space to individual beings on a definite matter. If a good action be not solely our individual pleasure, it must become so: otherwise, how could we carry it out? Thus, by closer examination, we realize that our action always obeys a rational law, even when its moral law is suppressed, so that, when every inclination that transcends the individual has been set aside, we do not on that account remain the prey of caprice. We shall desire only our own will, we shall follow only our own individual inclination; but, even so, it is necessary to will this will and this inclination coherently, not to undulate between two or more volitions at the same time. And if we succeed in really obtaining our desire, if, while the moral conscience is for a moment suspended within us, we abandon ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and attain to it in spite of many obstacles, thus executing a masterpiece of ability, a practical masterpiece; even when, in this case, populus non plaudit, we for our part certainly nos nobis plaudimus, and feel most satisfied, at least so long as lasts the suspension of the moral consciousness; for we have done what we willed to do, we have tasted, though but for a little while, the pleasure of the gods. Whereas if, although we follow our desire, we do something different from it, or mingle several mutually exclusive desires with one, and having decided not to drink wine, for example, in order to obey the advice of the doctor and to remain in good health, we yet yield to the wish to drink it, that pleasure is, so to say, poisoned by preoccupation, the taste is at the same time distaste, unless we succeed in forgetting for some moments the advice of the doctor, or think that very possibly he does not know what he is saying. We continually apply the same criterion to the incidents of life; actions and individuals, of whom we cannot morally approve, drag from us sometimes cries of admiration for the ability with which they have conducted themselves, for the firmness that they display, worthy (as is said) of a better cause. The Epicurean Farinata, who raised himself erect on his red-hot bed, or the impious Capaneus who cursed Jove beneath the rain of punishing fire, obtain from us that esteem which we refuse to those sad souls who lived without infamy and without praise. Art has celebrated in tragedies and poems the strong characters of great criminals, but it has turned to ridicule in comedies little criminals, the violent who show themselves timid, the astute who let themselves be cheated.

The ethical form.

As we cannot fail to recognize this form of the practical activity, quite individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic, and the importance that it possesses, joined to or separated from morality, as the case may be, and the special practical judgments that have their origin in it (the judgment of convenience, whether it be called utilitarian or economic), so it would be impossible not to recognize the moral form. Yes, the volitional act satisfies us as individuals occupying a definite point of time and space, but if it fail to satisfy us at the same time as beings transcending time and space, our satisfaction will be ephemeral and will rapidly be changed into dissatisfaction. To one desire succeeds another, and to this another, and so on to infinity; but the one is different from the other, and the new either condemns the old or is by it condemned. If we succeed in arranging our pleasures in series and classes, and in subordinating and connecting them, certainly there will be some gain; but the gain will not have been a true one on this occasion either. We shall at the most be able to guide our life according to some plan, and for a certain time that has not the exactitude of the moment; instead of the instantaneous will to which succeeds a different will, we shall have general ends for which we shall work. We shall propose, for instance, to do certain work and to abstain from doing certain other work, in order to marry a loved one, to win a seat in Parliament, or to obtain literary fame. But those ends are also merely contingent (they are general, not universal), and consequently cannot assuage our thirst. When we all have attained to them, we shall experience le déboire that la cueillaison d'un rêve au cœur qui l'a cueilli always leaves behind. The company of the fair beloved will weary, the political ambition realized will leave the soul empty, literary fame will seem the shadow of vanity. Perhaps too, we shall change our side, like the sick man who cannot rest on his bed of feathers, and begin to follow other ends; the lover deluded with matrimony will turn to other loves; the ambitious man, weary of political life, will think of new ambitions, or of that of not having any, and of retiring to so-called domestic peace; the seeker for literary fame will long for ease, silence, and forgetting. But in vain: dissatisfaction persists. And it will always persist, and pallid Care will always sit behind us, on the croup of our horse, if we are not able to tear from the contingent its character of contingent, breaking its spell, and bringing ourselves to a full stop in that progressus ad infinitum from thing to thing, from pleasure to pleasure, to which it impels us, if we be not able to place the eternal in the contingent, the universal in the individual, duty in desire. Then only do we acquire that internal peace, which is not in the future, but in the present, because eternity is in the moment, for him who knows how to place it there. Our actions will always be new, because reality always places new problems before us, but if we accomplish them with lofty souls, and with purity of heart, seeking in them that which surpasses them, we shall on every occasion possess the Whole. Such is the character of the moral action, which satisfies us, not as individuals, but as men, and as individuals only in so far as we are men; and in so far as we are men, only by means of individual satisfaction.

Impossibility of eliminating it.

Those men in whom the moral consciousness is wanting, or is confused and intermittent, make us fearful—fearful for ourselves, obliged to be on our guard against them and to ward off their snares and injuries, and fearful for them, for if they have not already fallen the prey to the most terrible torments, they certainly will do so. They are like people dancing unconsciously upon ground that has been mined; the conscious spectator trembles for them, they do not; but if by chance they escape the danger, they will be retrospectively horrified when they look back. The inebriation evaporates and the clear outlines of reality reappear, but that which restores form to those outlines is the eternal, not the contingent, morality, not desire. We see this take place in an intense form in what are called conversions, followed by the intention of leaving the world and its false joys and retiring to a cloister; or, without metaphor, of becoming regenerated, of beginning a new life with new ideal presuppositions. But intensive conversions are catastrophes which occur, like popular revolutions, when continuous evolution is impeded. The wise man is converted and renewed at every moment, without the solemnity of a conversion, and with the memorare novissima he retains in the contingent, his contact with the eternal. He knows that he must love things and creatures one by one, each in its individuality, for he who does not love thus is neither good nor bad, not even being a man. He will wish for literary fame, political power, matrimony, according to his aptitudes and to the conditions in which he finds himself; but he will wish for all these things without wishing for them; he will wish for them, not for themselves, but for that which they contain of universal and constant; he will love them in God, ready to abandon them immediately their ideal content shall have left them; he will seriously desire them with all ardour for themselves, but only when their self is also "his other self." No thing, no creature possesses unconditioned value, which belongs only to that which is neither thing nor creature. The value of our individual life is conditioned for each of us, and we must guarantee and defend it as vehicle of the universal, and we must be ready to throw it away, as a useless and pernicious thing, when it does not serve this end, or rebels. But the value of every being dear to us is not less conditioned, and Jesus said with reason, when preparing himself for his divine mission, that he had come to separate men from their wives, their sons, their friends, and from their native land. That separation in union, that union in separation, is the moral activity, individual and universal.

Confirmed by facts.

Thus it happens that art, which has celebrated strong characters, able men and affairs well conducted, has also celebrated, and with greater liveliness, those strong men who have placed their strength at the service of that other strength which surpasses them and makes them eternal. For this reason, no embittered soul, no sceptic and pessimist remains long firm in his negation of all moral light; such negations are indeed as a rule true amantium irae. The singer of the lesser Brutus who had thus ferociously imprecated:

Foolish Virtue, hollow mists and fields
Of restless ghosts
Are thy schools, and Repentance turns her back upon
thee, ...

is the same who, on witnessing a slight act of generosity, exclaims with emotion:

Fair Virtue, when my spirit becomes aware of thee,
It exults, as at a joyous event....