Here, contrary to the teaching of Schopenhauer, the good consists in individual attainment, the extension and fulfilment of the distinct interests that arise from the common fund of nature. To be and to do to the uttermost, to realize the maximum from nature's investment in one's special capacities and powers—this is indeed the first principle of a morality of action.
The Ethical Community.
§ [145]. But a type of ethics still further removed from the initial relativism has been adopted and more or less successfully assimilated by subjectivistic philosophies. Accepting Berkeley's spirits, with their indefinite capacities, and likewise the stability of the ideal principles that underlie a God-administered world, and morality becomes the obedience which the individual renders to the law. The individual, free to act in his own right, coöperates with the purposes of the general spiritual community, whose laws are worthy of obedience though not coercive. The recognition of such a spiritual citizenship, entailing opportunities, duties, and obligations, rather than thraldom, partakes of the truth as well as the inadequacy of common-sense.
The Religion of Mysticism.
§ [146]. As for religion, at least two distinct practical appreciations of the universe have been historically associated with this chapter in philosophy. The one of these is the mysticism of Schopenhauer, the religious sequel to a universalistic voluntarism. Schopenhauer's ethics, his very philosophy, is religion. For the good and the true are alike attainable only through identification with the Absolute Will. This consummation of life, transcending practical and theoretical differences, engulfing and effacing all qualities and all values, is like the Nirvâna of the Orient—a positive ideal only for one who has appraised the apparent world at its real value.
"Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all it's suns and milky-ways—is nothing."[304:27]
The Religion of Individual Coöperation with God.
§ [147]. From the union of the two motives of voluntarism and individualism springs another and a more familiar type of religion, that of coöperative spiritual endeavor. In the religion of Schopenhauer the soul must utterly lose itself for the sake of peace; here the soul must persist in its own being and activity for the sake of the progressive goodness of the world. For Schopenhauer God is the universal solution, in which all motions cease and all differences disappear; here God is the General of moral forces. The deeper and more significant universe is
"a society of rational agents, acting under the eye of Providence, concurring in one design to promote the common benefit of the whole, and conforming their actions to the established laws and order of the Divine parental wisdom: wherein each particular agent shall not consider himself apart, but as the member of a great City, whose author and founder is God: in which the civil laws are no other than the rules of virtue and the duties of religion: and where everyone's true interest is combined with his duty."[304:28]
But so uncompromising an optimism is not essential to this religion. Its distinction lies rather in its acceptance of the manifest plurality of souls, and its appeal to the faith that is engendered by service.[305:29] As William James has said:
