He had failed to find deliverance from the tyranny of living in the contemplation of the Beautiful—in Art for Art’s sake.
Still obsessed with the misery and cruelty of the world, he sat beside his lamp and opened the fourth book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, whose fearless brain had compelled upon him the tragedy of existence; had promised to show him the way out—two ways. One had failed.
He now turned eagerly to the other and the steeper road. He climbed the rugged path of Asceticism.
The will urged always to Life, but——
Life was a sordid tragedy.
Why consent to take part in it?
Why indeed? asked scowling Schopenhauer. No man who has seen through the torment of existence, who has grasped the fact of the eternal unsatisfied Want, who has realized the brutalities and the cruelties that are the very conditions of Life, can desire anything but Quiescence—and complete quiescence only comes with Death. The Buddhist and the primitive Christian had done right—both of them. The Buddhist had looked to Nirvana, a state of Nothingness, of eternal calm—the primitive Christian, with the lure of a vague future bliss before his eyes, finding life on earth a designed brutality, had looked on the life of this world as a pitiful thing, and fixed his hopes on the gateway of Death to bring him into the garden of eternal peace. The pessimism of the East had had the seeing eye.
Death is the eternal sleep. And it may be met half way, in bouts of contemplation upon Art. But—better—it may be met almost the whole way. Until the will wholly cease in death, its eager impulses, its insistent urgings to self-preservation, self-aggrandisement, may be baulked and rendered futile by deliberately opposing them. In asceticism the eager desires of life could be almost wholly baulked. Through asceticism alone could one refuse to be an accomplice in this designed crime of living—this preying of life upon life. No wonder the medieval churches had gripped the imagination of man! The child need not be born to continue the brutal struggle for life. The ascetic monk and virginal nun sternly refuse to hand on this miserable heritage to further generations. Across the design of life stood the monk and nun; their stern order—thou shalt not.
Through a great and profound pity for the suffering and the weak and the losers in the brutal struggle for life, one could oppose one’s self to the cruel order of things. In this sympathy and pity alone could we raise a foundation of ethics that could demand justice against the design—which opposed itself to the triumphant brutality of the life’s struggle. In this great human pity for the down-trodden could one not only find alleviation for the misery of the world, but in it also could we find some balm for the criminal fact of our very existence.
The road came out upon the pilgrim’s way. The pessimistic conception of life led to the very gates of Rome.