The awful recovery of our consciousness: not of the individual, but of the human species. Let us reflect; let us think backwards; let us follow the narrow and broad highway.
A.
Man seeks "the truth": a world that does not contradict itself, that does not deceive, that does not change, a real world—a world in which there is no suffering: contradiction, deception, variability—-the causes of suffering! He does not doubt that there is such a thing as a world as it ought to be; he would fain find a road to it. (Indian criticism: even the ego is apparent and not real.)
Whence does man derive the concept of reality? —Why does he make variability, deception, contradiction, the origin of suffering; why not rather of his happiness? ...
The contempt and hatred of all that perishes, changes, and varies: whence comes this valuation of stability? Obviously, the will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world.
The senses deceive; reason corrects the errors: therefore, it was concluded, reason is the road to a static state; the most spiritual ideas must be nearest to the "real world."—It is from the senses that the greatest number of misfortunes come they are cheats, deluders, and destroyers.
Happiness can be promised only by Being: change and happiness exclude each other. The loftiest desire is thus to be one with Being. That is the formula for the way to happiness.
In summa: The world as it ought to be exists; this world in which we live is an error—this our world should not exist.
The belief in Being shows itself only as a result: the real primum mobile is the disbelief in Becoming, the mistrust of Becoming, the scorn of all Becoming....
What kind of a man reflects in this way? An unfruitful, suffering kind, a world-weary kind. If we try and fancy what the opposite kind of man would be like, we have a picture of a creature who would not require the belief in Being; he would rather despise it as dead, tedious, and indifferent....