Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/404

 REFERENCE TO ETHICS.

For reasons I have stated in the beginning, confirmations of the rest of my doctrine are excluded from my present task. Still, in concluding, I may perhaps be allowed to make a general reference to Ethics.

From time immemorial, all nations have acknowledged that the world has a moral, as well as a physical, import. Everywhere nevertheless the matter was only brought to an indistinct consciousness, which, in seeking for its ade quate expression, has clothed itself in various images and myths. These are the different Religions. Philosophers, on their side, have at all times endeavoured to attain clear comprehension of the thing and, notwithstanding their differences in other respects, all, excepting the strictly materialistic, philosophical systems, agree in this one point: that what is most important, nay, alone essential, in our whole existence, that on which everything depends, the real meaning, pivot or point (sit venia verbo) of it, lies in the morality of human actions. But as to the sense of this, as to the ways and means, as to the possibility of the thing, they all again quite disagree, and find themselves before an abyss of obscurity. Thus it follows, that it is easy to preach, but difficult to found, morality. It is just because that point is determined by our conscience, that it becomes the touchstone of all systems; since we demand, and rightly demand, that Metaphysic should give support to Ethics: and now arises the difficult problem to show that, contrary to all experience, the physical order of things