The evil and failure which darken the
present are necessary to the illumination of the future. Time is long.
"God tosses back to man his failures" one by one, and gives him time and
strength to try again.
According to Schopenhauer, we move across the stage of life stung by
appetite and goaded by desire, in pain unceasing, the sole respite from
pain, the instant in which desire is lost in satisfaction. To do away
with desire is to destroy pain, but it also destroys existence. Desire
is lost where the "mouth is stopped with dust," and with death only
comes relief from pain.
Thus the Pessimist tells us that "the only reality in life is pain." But
surely this is not the truth. He who knows no reality save appetite has
never known life at all. The realities in life are love and action; not
desire, but the exercise of our appointed functions.
Action follows sensation. The more we have to do the more accurate must
be our sensations, the greater the hold environment has upon us. Broader
activities demand better knowledge of our surroundings. Greater
sensitiveness to external things means greater capacity for pain, hence
greater suffering, when the natural channels of effort are closed. Thus
arises the hope for nothingness in which many sensitive souls have
indulged. With no surroundings at all, or with environment that never
varies, there could be no sense-perception. To see nothing, to feel
nothing - there could be no demand for action.
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